Winter is the time of mulled wine and snowy landscapes...

Except that this year there is no sign of any snow, and that has been getting truer each year.

Not to be outdone by mere nature I thought it would be a good time to publish this one. I can't recall ever having published a monochrome for Sliders Sunday before - I normally go for the retinal burnout approach, though I realise I need to change my ways :)

The image was taken last February and is of the drive of one of the larger houses in our valley. The property used to be called Luggershall Farm, but they changed it a few years ago to something a little more refined (see the in-camera version below).

I'll publish links to both the in-camera original and a 'proper' edit of the image in the first comment so you that can see the levels of deviousness employed. The editing was done entirely in Affinity Photo on the iPaddle with the subterfuge mainly taking place using the sliders of the B&W adjustment layer...

Hopefully, some people will be surprised that it's fake. That's the fun of misdirection :)

Thank you for taking the time to look. I hope you enjoy the image. Happy Sliders Sunday :)

Tags:   Sliders Sunday HSS monochrome black and white

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So why the erratic routing for this path?

I have a deep suspicion it’s to do with local pubs. My village has one and so does the next door one. This is the path between them (it also involves an almost 500-foot climb!). So if you are doing a pub-crawl involving both pubs in one night, what can you expect?

Or it could be the cattle avoiding the trees and the brambles of course, but that would be a tad boring.

It’s probably not the Romans because they thought in straight lines. I mention the Romans as a real option though - a significant Roman temple has been discovered in the woods just on the left (see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uley). I think they preferred the local wine anyway, rather than the village-brewed beer.

This is for the Smile on Saturday groups Autumn Joy theme this week, taken on a walk a few days ago. No, I was remarkably sober at the time...

Thank you for taking the time to look. I hope you enjoy the image. Happy Smile on Saturday! Happy Autumn Joy!!

[Handheld in sunlight. Developed in Capture One for colour. Final tweaks in Affinity (16:9 crop; USM sharpening - High Pass was awful - and soft dark vignette.]

Tags:   nikon z 6 Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 50mm f/1.8G fall leaf season nature wood landscape maple tree park branch outdoors environment scenery scenic colour flora rural countryside no person Autumn Autumn Joy HSoS joy Smile on Saturday

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Stroboscope.

I thought I would try and avoid meters and rules for this week’s Macro Mondays group’s theme measurement, mainly because I had done them before.

This is the device on my vinyl record turntable for making sure it is rotating at precisely the right speed. This is important because the pitch that the recorded music is played is directly proportional to the rotation rate of the record.

Old high-end turntables like this one had a direct drive motor on which the speed could be finely adjusted to correct any change.

The table’s stroboscope is a light of regularly fluctuating brightness shining onto the spinning plate. The fluctuations are caused by the mains alternating current which in the UK fluctuates at 50 cycles a second, though in America and some other countries with lower voltages the electricity fluctuates at 60 cycles to carry more power in compensation.

In the picture you can see four rings around the spinning table. The rings are all made as a string of black and white blocks a bit like Morse code.

In daylight all four would be equally blurred but in the light of the stroboscope you can see the third ring outwards is seen as black and white blocks. That’s because the lamp is only lighting the blocks when they are in one position, and is dim while they move on to the next position, taking the place of the block in front of it. Minor deviations from the target speed cause the blocks to move slowly around, and you can then adjust the motor speed until they still.

There are four rings, two for the two turntable speeds (for singles and LPs) for each of the two electricity alternating rates (50 and 60 cycles per second). A neon bulb is used because it fluctuates in brightness much more during the alternating current cycle than a hot filament would, which explains the orange colour. The bulb lights a plastic prism which directs the light down by inner reflection.

In physics omega is often used as the symbol for angular velocity (rotation speed) hence the title.

The image is just over two inches in total width, so within the group limits. The device is not interested in measuring the size of the deviation, just whether it exists and in which direction so that it can be eliminated.

Thank you for taking time to look. I hope you enjoy the image! Happy Macro Mondays :)

[Tripod mount; remote release; self-lit. The shutter speed was limited to show the blur.
A focus stack of eight images in Affinity Photo (not enough really for this aperture as you can see by the bands of softness in the turntable plinth surface; I should have used a smaller aperture).
A bit of tidying up from stacking artefacts around the prism edge.
A little tweaking in Curves LAB mode for colour and luminosity.
Finally sharpened using Unsharp Mask.
Yep, a dark vignette would be entirely pointless (though I was tempted!) :) ]

Tags:   pitch instrument neon prism omega measurement reflection orange vintage speed Macro Mondays light dark turntable science deviation warm scientific stroboscope fluctuating vinyl player rotational velocity record precision alternating current strange

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Ethernet plug.

No, this is an unmanipulated single-capture macro image without digital additions...

Yes. It’s visual trickery :)

What I did was place the RJ45 plug in front of my PC screen and then using Corel Painter I used a particle brush to paint the spark behind the plug on the LCD screen which formed the background. I did the painting while viewing the result through the camera as that made it quicker to get the height and dimensions correct.

As you can probably tell from the quality it’s more of a proof of concept than a refined work, but time was short and this was already Plan B. I think it was more successful than I anticipated, though like all experiments I’d do it differently next time. The main problem with using it for a macro was the pixelation in the screen background which becomes obvious if you zoom the image. I really needed to focus a bit nearer to the camera to blur the background.

I guess the best result would be with adding the spark digitally after the capture using Painter. But, for me anyway, I didn’t feel that was in the spirit of the Macro Mondays group challenge Plugs and Jacks, for which this was created.

The image is cropped to a three-inch width to fit in the group's limits.

Curiously Plan A was helpful too. The idea there was to use the PC screen as a polarised light source and put a polarising filter on the lens to generate wonderful colour highlights through the plastic (which changes the polarity of the light).
Well, wonderful they were but there is so little plastic in the plug we really needed to be a micro group to see it.

But what I did discover is that you can use the polariser on the lens to vary the perceived brightness of the LCD screen and its background image, which helps to balance it with the ambient lighting on the object in front.

I shall leave you with a final thought which seems apposite: We have the technology... it’s just the cable we’re missing :)

Thanks for taking time to look. I hope you enjoy the image. Happy Macro Mondays!!!

[Tripod; remote release; manual focus in LiveView; VR off.
LCD screen and ambient daylight.
Processed in Affinity Photo using Levels to drop the background to black. Selectively changed the colour temperature of the plug to harmonize the ambient light with the PC screen background; sharpened mainly using a High Pass filter in Linear Light blend mode.
Crop; cleaned up using Inpainting brush (Healing tool), and then sharpened overall with Unsharp Mask.]

Tags:   connection electric synapse neuron Corel Painter corona trick lightning Macro Mondays plug spark cable blue ethernet particle brush computer Plugs and Jacks RJ45

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This is an image of a foxglove flower I pressed for several months and then photographed on my LED light table (cheap from eBay). Pressing it means everything is on the same focal plane which is a boon in macro photography.

I’ve done it as a monochrome, toned, as the original colours had been mangled by pressing for so long. More of the original colours would have survived if I’d only pressed it for a few days, though it may not have been so transparent.

Processing was a bit convoluted and probably unnecessarily so. First I inverted the luminosity channel, then converted it in Silver Efex using one of my existing presets toned blue, and then back in Affinity I inverted everything because I thought the white background looked more authentic.

I like the result with its delicacy and see-through details. It does remind me of a jellyfish though, especially as it’s all one colour now. The Latin name for the plant is digitalis or finger, and all parts of it are very poisonous, so it’s one to keep the toddlers away from. It is rather pretty with its delicate spots and hairs, and the bees love it .

Thanks for taking a moment to look. I hope you enjoy the image. Happy Donnerstagsmonocrom :)

Tags:   nature fish animal chalk out disjunct illustration art wildlife biology no person underwater insect scribble old Design desktop seafood image tropical food Donnerstagsmonochrom Thursday Monochrome Nik Silver Efex toned pressed flower foxglove digitalis

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