Oh…the weather outside’s disgusting,

I can hear my knee-joints rusting,

so it’s here inside I’ll grumpily remain,

let it rain, let it rain, let it rain.

With apologies to Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne for fiddling with their classic.

I’m staring out the window at a medium waterfall that earlier was the downspout-less end of the  eaves trough.  It’s overflowing.  The narcissus and daffodils in front and in back of the house resemble a lost colony of colorful morning-after fraternity row students, crashed face down all over the yard where an overindulgence of rain has left them ’til they dry out a bit.  The last few days of seeing them up and alert seemed to promise a return to getting out into the yard with a camera.  Meanwhile, I’m thinking drab little scattered thoughts, as disciplined as a herd of cats, so I am going to post some spring-like pictures, photographic and fractographic, to keep my anticipation going, although some of these need to be re-taken using  better eyes.

Translucent petals on flowers alway make me want to saturate an image with their color. To that end, closeups taken from in front of (in some cases inside of) the flower with the sun or a pair of flashes lighting it from behind, can bring out shades not seen in reflected light shots.

Bright direct light may help penetrate translucent flowers, but it’s hard, flat quality is not really very attractive, as can be seen on this skipper having a midafternoon snack on some dwarf asters.  The light is unflattering on the flower and creates such contrast that the relatively middle-toned brown of the butterfly, lit from the other side, looks much darker than it actually is.

Early morning and late afternoon light ‘rules’, in photographs.  Being down in a valley between two ranges of coastal hills, we don’t get as much of a chance at the rich tones of early evening sunlight as I’d like.  When the sun is rolling downslope to retire it has to find gaps in the hills, and in rooftops and dense small trees, to have the tones of ’sweet light’, golds, peaches, pinks, reds and purples, pervade the front yard and add warmth to photographs, such as this spotlighted miniature rose.

Picture taking has become  somewhat more difficult for me during the best time of the morning for light. Since I’ve taken over the feeding of the outside critters, I have to wash the various oils and residues off  of my hands before handling anything, and the skittish eaters outside will abandon ship if I come back out after going in to wash and fetch gear.  That’s one advantage of having the good old ‘fractal camera’ on the desk.  A walk through the fractal garden is virtually limitless exploration.  Depending on one’s choices,  you may find something that leads to the forming of a blossom, such as this multilayered spiral…

or, some other structure out there in the mathematics might allow you to tweak a spiral with formulae that alter form, and a palette customized for what you feel like applying to what you found, giving you an imaginary nibble on some variety of what seems to be a broadleaf cousin of the blueberry.

Mmmm, blueberries.  Goodies from the garden, bounty of the raised bed.

To get a close-up, or do “macro” work in  the fractal math world, you can “zoom in” or “zoom out” mathematically.  In fact, the ability to expand the math of the default size fractal is so great that an equivalent  would be expanding the area of the fractal on your screen to several times the size of the known universe.  It takes a very long time to calculate at that depth, though.

For garden things in the real world, a macro lens can help explore things that are familiar in ways that make what you see a little unexpected. Even just getting to life-size on your camera’s sensor,  allows a much more detailed, up close and personal adventure.  Getting a bug’s-eye view of the world can be pretty interesting.  Sometimes, because of the characteristics of optics, you see structure not immediately apparent to the normal viewpoint. This salsify blossom, when you hold it up and look at it, sort of resembles a giant dandelion. Taken with a macro lens and natural lighting, limiting your depth of field, gives you a  cross section of the framework (The same thing happens if you try to photograph a dandelion with a small depth of field).  If you look closely at this salsify seed-head (click to see larger), you can see the tiny fibers that  hold the radiating ribs of the seeds’ parachutes. Cool, eh?

I miss having salsify in the yard, both for the photographic fun and for the delicious roots, although the plant parts are a skin irritant. Sauteed with butter, the roots  are a delicate oyster flavor; leading to the common name of ‘oyster plant’.

It’s fun to think of the Spring to come and the [at last!] reloading of fractal software with which to fiddle.

However, it’s still raining. The eaves are still a waterfall and the Big Fish in the other room needs its tank netted out, so I’ll get to work and try to wait as patiently as this little fella on the central California coast.

Waiting out the rain,

Cheers,

pete