Otters in the Peak District

Otters at the Chestnut Centre for Otters and Owls, in the Peak District, UK:

Puffins!

From a recent trip to Maine (gallery now posted here)...

Photos of Venice, April 08

I am finally getting these together - a sample from the week in Venice in April. There are a few unusual or creepy ones, because Venice can be rather weird, as well as the more typically touristy shots. Also notice how much laundry - why is it prettier in other countries?

Microscopic? Or Jelly?

The latter... from my new membership to the New England Aquarium, I think this is a kind of Japanese jellyfish. You can see everything it does, inside and out.

Focusing for Self-Portraits

Consultants need to provide photos of themselves that look professional for speaking events and publications from time to time. Blogs and social networking sites also benefit from author photos; and if you're in the online dating game, you need to make your self-portrait a serious piece of work.

Here's a nice list of techniques for getting your portraits focused, if you're the one taking it on timer or otherwise: I'm Ready for My Closeup. I will admit that I hadn't thought of half of these!

As a bonus, if you aren't using your DSLR in manual or advanced modes yet and don't understand some of the terms above, you might read this article from Lifehacker: Master Your DSLR Camera, Manual Mode and More.

Compelling Travel Slide Shows

A link for my family, and anyone else in this situation: You've come back from the vacation of your life, and you want to share. Your vacation photos should leave them wanting more, not less, and definitely not caffeine. Read "The Ultimate Guide to Memorable Travel Slideshows."

Some tips: Choose one or two evocative pics, not 8 of the same thing. Mix up people with landscape, for variety. Insert movie clips occasionally, to spice it up.

Software to make this easy: Surprisingly difficult to make a simple animated slideshow, it turned out. I tried a few programs that were on my computer and finally got results from Photoshop Elements, which will export a nice slideshow movie to Premiere Elements for creation of the DVD itself. On the Mac, the settings and process was a little hidden and didn't offer the same control over the zoom/pan effect, but you can achieve the same results with iPhoto and iDVD. It seems that Picasa will do it (haven't tried). Some DVD authoring apps will, and any movie-making app, but you really want some tools built for slideshows to make it easier for yourself.

Disclaimer: I've definitely violated these rules too, so this was a good reminder to me, too.

Cayman Island Critters

I went to Grand Cayman for snorkeling, and while it was excellent, I saw a lot of unexpectedly interesting animals.

The Blue Iguana is indigenous and endangered, but there are lots of other green iguanas and little brown lizards running around. The retired ones sun themselves on rich people's personal boat docks and pose for you. The blue iguanas roaming at the botanic gardens sport blue bling, a sample shown here:

The sting rays at Sting Ray City were amazingly interested in people. I guess they know a good food thing when they see it. You are swamped by them when you drop anchor in the shallow waters. The story is that fishermen cleaned their catch out there to avoid mosquitoes on land, and one smart guy turned it into a tourist attraction, undetered by Steve Irwin's sad demise at the tail of one. (Here is an article on "sting ray injuries survived.") They feel mushroomy on their underside, and sandpapery on the top side.

Here's a romantic shot of them in the water, but for up close and personal, you need to go see my critter picture collection here. (There is only one underwater shot there, to show off their smile, and one of the sting ray kiss you get wrestled into when you visit them on the tourist boats.)

Finally, turtles are farmed for food and tourists there. I found the crowding conditions a mite disturbing, but it's undeniably an aesthetic experience to see all those shells and mottled skin up close. Also, undeniably expensive to get in. I did it for the photo opp, and the chance to snorkel in a private lagoon with turtles in training. Training for people like me touching them while swimming, I guess. In said turtle park were also pretty birds from the Caribbean, which you can see in the critter photos.

When I got home, I discovered a newly arrived National Geographic Traveler mag had an article reviewing destination islands, scoring them in part by how much tourism is affecting them. [I discovered I'd been in a few of their top 20 already, and added more to my destinations desired list.] They were pretty much on target about Grand Cayman: "Exceptional diving and snorkeling but banking defines the island. Tourism is heavily weighted to cruise ships." I'd add: with huge resorts, and retirement McMansions as seen in Florida. But it was the best walk-off-shore-snorkeling I've found yet.

Cayman photos here: turtles, lizards, birds, rays, beaches.

October Roundup: Owls, UFOs, Ghosts

I've been busy on non-work related activities, for once!

Owls: Saw-whet migration is upon us. The local birders with Mass Audubon were caught off-guard by how many of the little owls are on the move south from Canada this year. Record numbers on some nights, and earlier than usual. These are tiny, adorable owls, who seem to like people and hang out for a bit. They even like being petted, which makes them a great ambassador for birdkind.

I put up a gallery of their extreme cuteness: Saw Whet Owl Banding in MA. I will be posting some video later. But for now, I require you to be amazed (this is not a baby bird):

Here's another set of photos (with a better macro lens) featuring yours truly holding one of these cutie pies.

And just to be slightly scientific, the site with the most data on the migration patterns and how to track these guys lives at Project Owlnet.

UFOs:

Last weekend I also went to a local UFO conference, hosted by Mass Mufon. There were two very interesting talks, one on crop circles and the other on the Shag Harbor Incident in Nova Scotia.

The crop circle presentation started quite strong, with a lot of data and images that can also be found on the website at BLT Research. My data analysis interest was piqued but then dismayed by claims of correlations as "proof." The speaker got less scientific and more, well, peculiar towards the end when she announced a bunch of other phenomena including the ghost of her dead brother caught on film at recent circles. I don't quite understand why the folks interested in paranormal end up mixing it all together so readily; one phenomenon probably has nothing to do with another!

The Shag Harbor UFO Crash Incident from 1967 was entertainingly recounted by Chris Styles, a good storyteller who had collected a lot of documents from the Canadian government (who are much happier to send things out on request than the US government). The most interesting sidebar was that a character named Maurice "Mace" Coffey was working as a parapsychologist investigating mysterious phenomena in the Canadian Air Force at the time of the "crash." He was the Fox Mulder of Canada. He's also editor of a collection of Maritime poetry and was later an important figure in the Northwest Territories (once helping find a downed plane, in which the survivor had lived only by cannibalism). I personally wanted to hear more about Mace, and maybe less about the RCMP.

Ghosts: I've received a few more stories about Windhouse, the haunted house in Scotland that I keep track of here. The essay is updated at the bottom with more photos from contributor Phil Mortimer (scary Photoshop work as shown below) and from another relative of a former inhabitant, Kate Bainbridge.

Moon in Rigging, Salem, MA

Waterfire Photos

On Saturday, I visited Providence's town-wide art installation, Waterfire. Picture a huge number of bonfires in the middle of the river and a large crowd of fire watchers, some lucky gondola riders with glasses of wine in hand, fire volunteers in black boats with logs, and eerie music. Very pagan. You can smell the smoke and wood from the river banks.

Angry Bluebird, Happy Bunny

Both of these fellows were seen at Drumlin Farm, an Audubon site in Lincoln, MA.

Goat Mockery

From a nice day at Drumlin Farm, in Lincoln, MA:

Swiss Farms in the Spring

It was early, and the mist was burning off the valleys, so these look a bit like watercolors.

Swiss Bunnies

I've been away for a week and a half, looking at green hills and mountains, tinkling cows (their bells, not relieving themselves), and other cute animals. These are Swiss checkered rabbits, who are good friends. They live in Ballenberg, an outdoor folklife museum. I think it's fair to say that their disapproval is less intense than that of your average American variety, although it seems to be a basic trait of the species.

Fractal Art

I've been playing with 2 fractal-generating applications recently, and recommend them for different reasons. If you'd like to quickly generate random beautiful 2d images, of often breath-taking beauty, use Apophysis.

If you like to play with dials and sliders and 3d imagery, and generally do a bit more work yourself, I recommend Chaoscope, a "3d strange attractors" rendering package.

Samples from both:

Owl and Bear

At the Worcester Ecotarium they have some nice animals. I especially enjoyed the polar bear and the porcupine. Unfortunately, the latter was hard to photograph as he was very busy running in and out of his cubby hole. (But there is a very relaxed and lazy one sleeping on a tree in my animal photos from Nova Scotia here.)

This little screech owl is moulting.

The polar bear likes to play and scare the guests. Expect more of her...

Icy Whiskers

Mayan Art

From Chichen Itza this January. The eagle is eating a heart.

I am reading a great book, Breaking the Maya Code, by Michael Coe. The first paragraph says, "It was 12 cycles, 18 katuns, 16 tuns, 0 uinals, and 16 kins since the beginning of the Great Cycle. The day was 12 Cib 14 Uo, and was ruled by the seventh Lord of the Night. The moon was nine days old. Precisely 5,101 of our years and 235 days had passed since the creation of this universe, and only 23 years and 22 days remained until the final cataclysm that would destroy it. So the ancient Maya scribes and astronomers would have calculated, for the day was 14 May 1989, and we were in Leningrad."

Owls in Massachusetts

Last weekend was an "owl festival" at my local Audubon nature preserve. First was a great presentation on snowy owls at Logan Airport (not given there, about owls who hang out there) by Norm Smith of the Blue Hills Audubon nature preserve. Yes, there are snowy owls all over Logan's landing strips. No, this is not good for the airplanes. Yes, they are hard to spot if you're flying out from there, as I discovered a day later-- white could mean snow, trash, or owl.

Norm has some great pictures of them, and points out how little we understand them -- they don't seem to be migratory in the usual sense, and might even be circumpolar. They are able to filter out the sounds of the jets to tune in on squeaking rats. They all look a bit different, and have different personalities, too.

Some articles and links worth looking at on this work:

• A PDF paper on the snowy owl study, featuring many photos, including of his kids, who helped band and track as they grew up.
• A CS Monitor article on the owls, and a recap of the story of his daughter Danielle discovering during a high school 4-year science project that saw whet owls are common in MA and migrate through the area. None of the local bird folks thought she had a good idea, when she said she wanted to study saw whets, but she proved them wrong. Unfortunately, she is now an accountant, not an ornithologist.
• A video clip on the news showing Norm holding some owls, and aren't they gorgeous!
• An Audubon page on the study, since Norm works there.

This is a map of where some of the owls he attached transmitters to ended up in Canada -- mostly up towards Hudson Bay. Some have been tracked to Siberia, though. (Hey, I've been there. I saw no owls, however.)

The day after Norm's terrific talk and slides, a guy brought in some birds living in captivity because they've been hurt or grown up with people and now identify too much with people to hunt properly. These were beautiful birds. Below you'll see this fellow with a screech owl, incredibly cute, and a wonderful great horned owl. None of my pictures turned out very well due to the interior lighting, but you get the idea.

After the demo of the birds, we went on an "owl prowl" walk in what was probably 14F degrees at best. In the gathering dark, I add, because at the point where I'd had enough of the cold, I didn't think I could see my way back to the lodge. We crunched all over the grounds of Broadmoor making dumb owl calls, and hearing not a peep back except for the bored kids shifting around while we listened and whining a little and sometimes pretending to be owls themselves which didn't really help us. It was so cold even the CD player with some real owls on it wouldn't perform properly. An owl bust, all around. Now that I know what screech owls and saw whets sound like, I can confirm I have never heard them where I live beside the reservoir. Too bad! They are really cute.

Mexican village kids

Morocco Photo Selection

I haven't had the time to do this carefully, so this is rather hasty -- but here's a selection of the photos I took in Morocco this summer.

Atlas Mountains Town

This is where they filmed the slave town in Africa for Gladiator -- they added a fake Hollywood gate to the front of this place for the movie.

Alligator

Moroccan carpet seller

In Morocco. (It's tough to pick which ones to post -- I've got so many.)

Atlas Mountains at Sunset

One of my vacation nights involved a hike into the mountains.

Morocco, Atlas Mountains, October 2006

Park near my house in Natick

Wetlands

Birds at the Ren Faire in Carver, MA

Archimedes looking intense. RenFaire, MA, 06

A fluffy photo post: Rabbits and Flickr Stuff

A friend sent me this link to some hilarious rabbit photos: My Rabbit Disapproves.

Just after laughing a lot at the justice in this woman's photo captions, I found this new flickr tool for browsing pic categories, which I spent a fair amount of time enjoying when I should have been driving to Nantucket. The search on bunnies turns up some really nice rabbit pics, not disapproving in the least. Cats are okay, but not as nice a collection. Gargoyles are a good contrast, and turn up a surprising number of cat pics. Or, perhaps not surprising, to a cat owner.

Flickr Storm.

Youth Hostel, Nantucket.

It's a good thing I'm not too old for youth hostels yet, or I would have missed this pretty building on the south side of the island.

Rusty Bench

Nantucket, MA

Graves in the North End, Boston

Joanna Grant, Copps Hill, Boston

Here Lyeth

Puffin Pics Album

Finally, after about 15 years of missing the puffin season everywhere I travel (Scotland, Maine, UK...), I went on a special puffin trip to Nova Scotia. I got a few good pictures, although not many of them in flight, the classic silly puffin shot. Surprisingly, I like the water ones best!

Nova Scotia Animals Pics

A bunch of animal photos are up on this gallery.
It was a hot day -- so there are lots of sleepy, cuddly looking animals and only a few scary ones. Check out the bunnies, otters sleeping on their backs, porcupine draped over a tree branch, and fierce eagle in a kiddy pool.

This owl could be a muppet, but he's not -- he's real and he's just hot. I'm trying to get my pics from my recent vacation online in a web gallery, but it's taking the usual too-much-work...

I found a turtle in my backyard today! He scurried away, slowly.

Critical dragonfly, Garden in the Woods, Framingham MA

Mt Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge MA.

Watercolor Angel, Mt Auburn Cemetery.

Mt. Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, MA.

Montreal, treetop and lamp.

Old Montreal 2006.

Greyfriar's detail, Edinburgh.

Closeup of the Edinburgh Castle in snow.

Edinburgh Castle in the snow.

St Giles from Greyfriar's Kirkyard, Edinburgh.

Wardrop's Court in the sun. Edinburgh.

Wardrop's court in the snow.

Greyfriar's Kirkyard, Edinburgh.

Deacon Brodie's on the Royal Mile, Edinburgh

Glasgow, "The Magic Tea Rooms" (I assume all these juxtaposed colors are no accident--?)

Glasgow Railings, West End.

Houston St., New York City.

Broken glass in New York City.

French Wall Art Photos by Me.

Man, have I blown a lot of time on this: French Wall Art photos I took this last spring. Just the tip of the iceberg of stuff I never posted last year, especially the ones from Paris which I quite liked, for once.

If you like the Misstic graffiti pics I've posted before, there is more here. And some other phenomenal street artists.

Ice Photos and Photo Blogging Wishlist

My referrer logs suggest I'm not keeping up with the needs of depressed teens on Xanga and MSN Spaces for bleak winter photos to illustrate their poetry. So here's a few recent ones of ice in Massachusetts.

In the photo blogging software update, I have none and am increasingly frustrated. I'm one step closer to just using Flickr, but I am reluctant to send people there when they click on my pics. I am not cool, I guess, in that I am not a fan of their UI for viewing, at least not till they let me customize the page experience a bit better. In case anyone has any other recent suggestions, what I need is this: tagging, auto thumbnailing and image reduction on upload, option of date or tag viewing, display of optional captions. Ideally CSS etc. for the pages themselves. Help, anyone? (I don't want to install and fix up Movable Type just for a photo blog, life is too short.)

Printing with Photoshop

When I was working on UI design for color management at Adobe (for CS2), one of the things that made our cut for "must fixes" was the print options in Photoshop. They looked like this, if you recall:

The goal of this original design was to provide enormous flexibility in how printing is accomplished with respect to color handling. Color "management" is a hard science topic that is not for everyone, and barely understood even by most creative professionals in the print industry. The average Jane trying to print her photos in Photoshop (or even the average consumer pro photographer) was tripped up by this dialog all the time. What does it mean, "same as source?" When should I choose something different? What combinations are good and which are bad, and for what??

The short story of color handling is that there are conversions going on all over the place -- an image viewed on the screen looks one way, because it has been interpreted by your OS and screen settings to be seen as you see it. It may not be seen the same on anyone else's screen. A common complaint from the common user of Photoshop is "I printed and it looked different." It will always look different, because you are now converting to what your printer can print, not what your screen can display.

"Profiles" are descriptions of how the colors in a file should be handled in conversion, more or less. One of the strengths of Photoshop is that it lets you simulate ("proof") how something will look on another device. You can even use your printer to simulate another printer. But you have to pick all the right combinations of profiles, and have good ones so you get accurate previews.

Photoshop has an excellent conversion engine. Some printers do too, and some consumer printers do, but you can't be sure. Every device will differ a little, and consumer profiles are batch produced. I grew up in my understanding of color handling at Adobe concluding that I'd never use my printer's color management because these consumer devices just won't be reliably good; I'd rather trust Adobe's world class color scientists, with whom I was then working!

Now, here's the shipping (CS2) version of the design I helped to produce to clarify your choices in Photoshop, showing the two crucial options for home printers:

We couldn't do much about the consumer printer drivers and in particular couldn't override their own color handling, so we relied on rollover help that I think ended up a little vague about what you need to do next. In my Canon printer dialog, the necessary place for enabling or disabling color management in the printer is buried in this "ICM" language:

But now that I have the new Photoshop CS2 UI to experiment with, I've discovered (to my chagrin) that a color management problem I hadn't been able to diagnose is Photoshop's conversion's fault. At least, I get the best results from enabling color in my printer, instead. The preview my printer driver gives me before it prints is quite accurate, it turns out:

There's obviously a lot more to say about color management in printing (entire books have been written on it), but my reason for posting is to say: I hope we made the world of the Photoshop user a little simpler, at least as far as debugging their printing issues goes. I haven't heard any customer feedback on this myself, but it sure has helped me! (And I was privileged to have been able to work on this with the color management team at Adobe, including Lars Borg, Chris Cox, Russell Williams, and Matt Philips.)

Fair Isle Travel Tales

Despite what it looks like from these pictures, everything on Fair Isle is not blue and red. Some of it is green, but there are red birds. There might be blue birds too, but I didn't see any. The