Last week's mystery photo went down better. My congratulations and the virtual Midmarsh Gold Star go to Adrian, Wilma and Ragged Robin who all managed to recognise it was a close view of a garden bell. It is one I have by my side gate usually used by the postman and delivery people as I can hear that when I am in the back garden:
Back indoors for this week's close view of an object.
Guess What:
Please leave any guesses in the comments.
They will be revealed, along with the answer, next Monday.
No prizes. Just the chance of a virtual Midmarsh Gold or Silver Star.
It was time to replace an old wooden planter which has stood next to the pond for more than a decade. The wood was beginning to rot but what to replace it with? I had had my eye on a wishing well planter for a while and finally got round to ordering one. It arrived by courier on Saturday morning so I set about assembling it. I had wondered just how much assembly would be needed but there were only 15 parts and sections which needed screwing and bolting together as some sections we pre-assembled. In a bit less than an hour there it was ready to put in place:
Then came the task of dismantling the old planter and finding some wood to make a shallow stand to raise it up a bit. That was when I found the minibeasts sheltering under rotting wood:
Among the dozens of woodlice was a rather splendid beetle:
Seeing how the wishing well would look in its chosen spot next to the pond:
At home on its shallow stand which has spaces underneath for frogs and newts to shelter:
Now all I have to do is buy some more compost and a few plants to finish it off.
To finish off here, here is some hand held video of the minibeasts:
All in all a satisfactory day with afternoon Sunshine and the temperature reaching 16C. I ended up wearing jeans and a short sleeved shirt as it was really warm working where I was sheltered from any cooling breeze.
Although I have sprayed it three times my Kangaroo Paws plant is infested with greenfly:
Microscope captures:
Single shot:
Focus stacked shots:
Hand held focus stacked camera shots:
Looks like I will have to find something stronger to get rid of them.
In case anyone is wondering - the time lapse of the apple is still in progress. Two weeks now. It's a slow process. After the first three days I did reset the timing from one shot every 10 minutes to one shot every 20 minutes.
I had another session in Aperture using the NIK filters from Google starting with a rather bland photograph taken at Covenham Reservoir:
This time I used the Viveza filter which enable me to place control points on various parts of the photo and make local adjustments, sometimes darkening, sometimes making a section lighter and other parts where contrast or definition were increased. That enabled me to bring out the clouds, make the sail appear as though light was shining through it, increasing the colour on the sailor's jacket and so on. Last of all I used the Dfine filter to reduce any noise introduced in the first process:
