Jewel in the Poppy

Isn’t it just incredible how inherently beautiful nature can be? You can also see the inspiration for various kinds of jewelry.

This shot was taken in fairly low morning light. I seem to get better color saturation in lower light. Not news to most photographers I guess, but I’m still learning a lot from every session.

The summer is waning. Most blossoms are showing the wear of the late date, but I’m going to continue to document the cycle of seasons.

Fly on Tiger Lily

These guys usually split before you click.

Supporting the Troops

The right wing attack machine constantly shouts down people who question the link between Iraq and the war on terror. They yell “support the troops” in response to any question of the usefulness of being in Iraq, as if finding justification for leaving Iraq and saving American lives would somehow NOT be supporting the troops.

As if over 2000 American soldiers wouldn’t still be alive today if they hadn’t been killed in Iraq. As if 20,000 or more American’s wouldn’t have been seriously wounded, their lives changed forever. As if 30,000 or more Iraqi citizens - civilians - wouldn’t still be alive today if America had stayed home. Clearly, supporting the troops (and innocent life) in general means NOT letting them die for a lie.

Yesterday President Bush flatly stated that Iraq had NOTHING to do with 9/11. Problem is, 90 percent of american troops in Iraq think they are there in response to 9/11. You can’t blame them, given the Whitehouse has been pushing this line since the beginning. Countless reports from countless sources have shown Bush’s agenda was to link 9/11 and Iraq. Yesterday he said they are not related.

Now who’s supporting the troops? Hypocrites.

Murdering hypocrites.

Nanotech Assembler

If we don’t extint ourselves, we might be able to do some amazing things…

Spiderman and flickr color profile management

This arachnid has an almost superhero quality. You can’t help but anthropomorphize a bit when it looks like he’s wearing a mask. (Is there a shorter word for “project human qualities onto non-human objects/creatures?).

I got really lucky with the focus on this. Spiders in their webs are difficult, especially handheld, because the lightest breeze will push them out of the depth of field, and they tend to move around quickly when you get in close, which can be freaky with the bigger ones. This spider was about a half-inch long in the body. This specimen was hanging out in magic hour light next to the Gorge Waterway in Victoria.

Turns out Safari is the only browser that respects color profiles. Other browsers apparently assume a specific color profile and the result can be washed out colors in photos.

Same goes for flickr. I noticed images I uploaded to flickr were looking rather pale after the trip. When resizing photos flickr discards the embedded color profile (saves them significant disk space I guess) and renders your photo differently. Look at the spiderman on the left.

The solution is to save your photos in a different color space. Convert the color profile using photoshop (a hassle, I know). In this case I chose generic RGB, but I’m sure there is a better one. Look at the spiderman on the right. He’s got more color. I made no other adjustments. UPDATE: it appears Flickr is no longer discarding color profiles, but the issue remains due to browser interpretation. You need to test to see which profile will work best in all browsers. Some say generic RGB is the best choice.

So much for exporting directly from iPhoto.

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