Also, blog.

I wish I had more photomos but the weather has been a little poopy and I don't ever seem to make my way outside until the light is just about gone. Instead, I will attempt to entertain you with words, a daunting task indeed.

It looks like Saturday I'm going to be heading out to Davenport to visit with Justin's grandfather. I'm trading him photoshop lessons for photography lessons and embarrassing photos from Justin's youth. Score, right? In the mean time, I'm trying to organize some sort of portfolio-ish thing that I could show him (or, you know, other people). Right now, it looks like this. Feel free to peruse my flickr account and leave me suggestions. I think it's still sort of a toss up between photos that are good and photos I just like.

I've gotten to the point that I really want to do something with photography but I don't know what or how to get started. So far, my only real idea has been to put together some of themed series over the summer and see if I can get it hung up in one of the local coffee shops that do that kind of thing. It's a fairly half-assed idea and I'll probably never go through with it because it would require me to talk to people. Argh!

I've come to realize that if there's anyone subscribed to my RSS feed, they probably get an update every time I change a photo which happens super often and must be excruciatingly annoying. If you exist, I apologize. I'm just really finicky about post-processing. I am constantly uploading new version and deleting the old ones and the idea of having missing photos in my blog I ind bizarrely upsetting.

PS. Photos vs. pictures: does anybody care but me?

Toads and Farmy Things

We went to Justin's parents' house again yesterday for Memorial Day. It was fun. Food was eaten. Pictures were taken. At least one person (me) got a very mild sunburn. Anyway, I brought all my camera stuff so I could run around and take pictures only to find that my battery was dead. Both batteries. Also, the only camera related thing I didn't bring was my charger. So, yeah, way to go me. Luckily, Justin's mom has a Nikon D40 (I've got a D50) and was nice enough to let me use her camera body (I still had all my own lenses). For really not being that different from mine, it was really sort of awkward to use her camera. I kept pushing the same buttons but different things happened. I got it mostly figured out though.


Toad's are pretty inanimate for being living things.


I did actually see this one eat an ant which was cute. Also, I need to get used to depth of field being a thing I can manipulate. Note to self: pay attention to the things which are not in focus as well as those that are.

Toads have really reflective eyes. In the large version, you can very clearly see Justin's parents' house. Kind of bizarre.


You can see me laying down in the dirt, holding the camera in his eye. Once again, check the large version.


He was under the bushes, hanging out in the shade. This toad is both practical and whimsical-looking.


This photo is really not that great. I'm not entirely sure why I'm posting it except that I really want a nice picture of dandelion fluff (which I've obviously yet to achieve).


The obligatory picture of sheep. Also, Justin's aunt.

So a funny thing happened. Zach, the son of Justin's cousin, decided he really wanted to shovel some llama poo. He would not let anyone else help. Also, he was making sure to warn Ande, the llama and creator of said poo, not to step in it. These are definitely ones for the photo album. The really embarrassing photo album your parents pull out when you start dating.






He is clearly a determined little fella.

In other news, I'll be going back to Arkansas June 7th through the 21st. Also, I'll be going back to work for Prof. Kletzing tomorrow.

More Macros

There is no earthly reason why you should not look at the large size. Me and Justin came across this little dude on the edge of the pond next to the art building. He was an extremely patient frog especially considering I was using flash (by the way, here's the before on that). I got my socks all muddy but it was totally worth it.


More irises. Different garden than the ones from before.


Mickey Mouse-shaped flower whose actual name is unknown to me.


This is the exact same iris from the entry before last's photo. I like how frilly it is.


My macro lens all so serves as a decent telephoto. These ducks, unlike the frog, were not at all patient. I actually had to get Justin to run downstream and chase them up towards me. Shame the ducklings are all hiding though.

I bet you can't guess what came in the mail yesterday

Stargazer Lily


Octopetal


So I didn't quite hit the focus on this one (my horrible eyesight makes manual focusing kind of difficult) but I think you can see what I was getting at. I just need more practice (and possibly a new set of peepers).

This is pretty much what I'm going to be up to for the next week or so.

This doesn't make sense

So I woke up with a really sore back today. However, I did not go to sleep with a sore back nor did I do anything yesterday that would warrant a sore back. I think I threw my back out sleeping funny. This is dumb, really, severely dumb.

Also, I've come to find that my monitor recalibrated itself in a bad way last week and I didn't notice so the last two batches of pictures I posted were all very poorly color balanced. I spent most of today fixing them which was really annoying. But now if you look at them, they're fixed and not weird looking. So enjoy.

FYI

My boyfriend used to be a Mythbuster.

More pictures

Mirri




A few not terribly awesome attempts at taking pictures of flowers. However, I just ordered a macro lens. It should get here by next week and then I can reshoot these. With more awesome (and by awesome, I mean attention to details).

It's Summer!

I'm finished with school. Thank god. It was a long and arduous semester. I'm glad to be rid of it.

In celebration, me and Justin went down to his mom's again (we were supposed to go for Mother's Day but we both had finals the next Monday). I love Justin's mom's farm. It's full of interesting critters.


Cinnamon, world's friendliest farm cat. He purrs if you so much as talk to him. When I was taking his picture, he rolled over on his back and reached up at my hands with his paws. Then he took my hand and pulled it to his face. It was kind of hilarious.


Cute.


Zach, Justin's cousin's son, playing with Emma. Zach's adorable. I love the way kids his age pick up random things and don't ever let them go. Right now, he's super fascinated with poop. Justin stepped in some and then that was all Zach talked about for the next day and a half. We were gonna go over and visit the horses but Zach wouldn't let us. Too much poop.


Remember these guys? Well now they look like this. They're also super friendly.


It's Ande again. He's less a couple parts since the last time we saw him but he seems generally unfazed.


Jasmine. She really likes to be petted. Hopefully I can do some horseback riding this summer. I haven't done it since high school. I really miss it.


The lambies are funny.


Pretty.


This one is named Fiona. They're going to be keeping her.


Bailey. This is probably my favorite picture of the bunch.


They're also keeping this one. They named him Broderick but I'm calling him Sparticus because he has a helmet.


Hahahahaha!

We only stayed Friday night and Saturday morning then back to Iowa City for Nate's graduation party. There was karaoke. It was ridiculous.

More fun times to come. Exciting!

Petey and Fire Dragons

Petey is really cute. This is his "feed me" face. Petey eats more than any other lizard I've ever known.


Fire dragons summoned by Justin's and Luther's juggling.






This is what it looks like when they're actually juggling.


Lastly, dumb artsy picture of water reflecting light onto the ceiling.

1 final down, 2 to go.

Cats on a Treadmill

WIN

Nebulae and clouds (they're pretty much the same thing)

I finally finished that mosaic of the Rosette Nebula for my astronomy class. It isn't the whole nebula but it's all the images I could take before the project was due. (Click for bigger.)


(Click for bigger.)

I talked my professors into giving me ( read asked them for) some time on the telescope over the summer. I think I'm going to try a really huge mosaic of the nebulae in the Orion constellation. It'll be awesome if it happens.

Extra sweet, there was a contest for the best image, prize being that they print your image out all poster-sized. I won. "Easily." I get it tomorrow.

So last weekend, me and Justin went to his parents' house (like we're doing this weekend for Mother's Day). On the way there, I tried to take some pictures of the clouds since they were super awesome and fluffy but apparently shooting through car windows craps out image quality. Who would've guessed? *eyeroll* So I decided to try out some neat photoshop filters. What do you think?





Neat? Stupid? Your call.

现在我应该去复习中文要不然我明天考试考得很不好。再见。

Science: It's for Real!

Observe the science!

A little physics will tell you that the energy of one of those balls is equal to the sum of the kinetic and potential energies (before anyone nitpicks me, this is a simplification).

At the ball's maximum height, velocity is zero so the equation looks like this:

And since energy is (more or less) conserved (meaning the total energy is always the same),

Add a little algebra magic and you get:

If you set g (the acceleration due to gravity) to be 9.8 m/s and ymax to be 1 m and graph it, you get this:

What this says simply is that the higher the ball on its trajectory, the slower it moves and the less blurry it will appear in the photograph.


Science! (Also, Justin can sort of juggle 5 balls now. That's a lot.)

Now with that out of the way, stupid pictures!

Vilka Kitty


Here, blurriness doesn't indicate position along a projectile trajectory but desperation to escape.


Remember that time we dorked out and drank margaritas whilst watching Battlestar Galactica? (Also, I'm squishing your head).


It wasn't really a sleepover as Mirri's shirt might suggest.


This was right before Travis zombied Mirri's brains away.


Fridgeside doodles.