Summer Celebration

As you know I have not been traveling much this summer. It has  expanded my horizons to subjects I would not ordinarily consider photographing. Our annual Bavarian Blast summer festival is a case in point. After ignoring it for 10 years I sat on the curb and recorded this, a cacophonous contrast to the tranquil prairie I usually record. For those of you like me who have a hard time sitting thru a 90 minute parade the essence has been distilled to about 35 seconds. Sound recorded on the iPhone, otherwise my Canon made a brief appearance for the still shots.

Room with a View

I have been laid up getting tuned and metaled up for the next couple decades. My "tripod neck" that I attributed to age and overuse was much more serious than that requiring a few neck vertebrae to be fused (bolted) together. 

One morning, while pondering when I was going to go home, a young lady came in and said "What a beautiful view!" I looked at her and thought "What??" It was then that I realized I had been looking down at the barren rooftops and she was looking at the beautiful blue sky. She changed my attitude!

The other realization during my confinement was how tough some families have it when loved ones are ill and will never return to normal. I am grateful I will be back to normal. I have been reminded that I am not in control and time is limited. It is time to get back to seeing and sharing nature's beauty.

Prairie Rose Cafe

I'm continuing my exploration of the prairie using high speed video recording on the iPhone. These small flies were busy one morning last week and tolerated the close up attachment that requires a distance of about an inch for optimum focus. Recorded at 240 fps which means one second of action translates into 8 seconds of video. Now if I could afford a more sophisticated camera that records in high speed. Most cameras limit the shooting time to a few seconds because of the intense onboard computer commitment to process and store that volume of information. The high end cameras have a pre-record feature so you can save the action after it has happened. This is a great feature since it can take several seconds for a camera to transfer the information to a memory card.

Bees & Butterfly Weed

I'm continuing my test of the iPhone for nature photography and videography. This piece was shot using the stock lens at 240 fps, replayed at 30 fps. Audio was also recorded at the time of capture. I used creative license and put the best buzzing at each of the flight times, along with dropping the level of background audio. New lens attachments are being tested and there will be a video available next week.

For those of you who are more interested in still photography I have started using Flickr regularly and can be found at:

Flickr Photostream

As always, just sharing my love of nature.

Enjoy,

Dale

My kind of foraging.

I love wild raspberries, especially over ice cream. They might be a little gritty if you are used to domestic berries that have had the seeds genetically minimized. There is something satisfying about finding the berries, picking them, and then enjoying them. There are lots of edible wild plants but none as sweet as wild raspberries.

Technical: iPhone6, ProCamera app, iPro Lens system macro lens.

Fireworks mimics Nature?

Am I the only one who thought of this while watching fireworks last night? Perhaps I'm anxious to get out in the prairie while July colors are still there, but then there are always the yellows and purples of August to look forward to.

Technical: iPhone6 capture, Lightroom to sharpen

Holiday Color

We went to the traditional July 3rd fireworks at Cambria, MN, last night. The village easily swells to at least 3 times the normal population of 300 for a few hours each year. Their display is excellent and allows for up close fireworks photography. A wide angle lens is all that is needed for the overhead shots. However, not all the color is in the sky. Hope you get out this weekend to see some holiday color and reflect on the history of the day.

At the Rock

This small puddle has intrigued me for the last several months so I put a camera on it for most of the month of June. I was hoping for some small critters but was pleasantly surprised by the pheasant rooster.

Any softness in focus is due to me putting the camera too close to the rock. The camera has a minimum sharpness range about 40 inches and I crept in a  little to close. All sounds with still images were recorded at Cottonwood Prairie using an iPhone6 Audio during the video was recorded on the Reconyx.