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 Pacific Madrona (Arbutis Menziesii) The Pacific Madrona, native to the Pacific Northwest coastal lowlands, is an evergreen broad-leafed hardwood tree that is scattered about the forests and shores of our Kitsap Peninsula in Puget Sound. The leaves are thick, oval shaped, and leather-like and linger for a few seasons. The habit (structure) of the tree is sinuous with undulations in the main trunk and branches.
The bark produces some of the chlorophyll needed to feed it and in doing so, it changes during the spring-summer seasons. Starting out green, as it produces chlorophyll, it gradually changes to yellow-green and then to orange and finally orange-red before peeling to reveal a new smooth green layer. In these photos, you can see the smooth new underlayer and peeling upper layers of the bark.
I made these images while photographing the old Seabeck cemetery about five miles from here. Seabeck, a timber mill town was one of the first Washington Territory settlements but after the mill burned and the hillsides stripped of the gigantic Douglas Fir, Western Hemlock, and Western Red Cedar forests it was left as a ghost town and is still a tiny village.
 peeling chlorophyll producing bark
Peace
Tags: -print available-, abstract, kitsap peninsula, macro, orange, tree, wa
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the Canon PowerShot G9, that is... Here's one of my first image tests. It's a miniature dahlia in one of our raised beds.  ©2007 Ed Book Canon PowerShot G9, 12MP, ISO200, 1/250sec, f/3.5, macro mode, hand held, backlit flower The G9 is much bigger than my last 'pocket pal', more than twice as thick and also larger in height and width, as well as weight but it still fits in my pocket. Peace Tags: -print available-, flower, insect, macro, pattern, yellow
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ok 'how 'bout these blossoms that I'll bet you've never seen up close... if you've seen them at all... Paul, you've seen them, I know, but have you seen them this close and not gotten stuck?  © Ed BookPeace Tags: -print available-, cactus, california, desert, flowers, macro, plant, red
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 ©2005 Ed Book Gerea canescens, Desert Sunflowers (the plant grows about 18" tall and the flowers are about an inch across. In the other photographs that look like there are portions of yellow ground cover... it's the Desert Sunflower, they grow a couple feet apart and one has to get down to their level to 'bunch' them into view.
Peace Tags: -print available-, blue, california, death valley, desert, flowers, macro, spring, yellow
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 ©2007 Ed BookI made a few exposures with the 180mm macro lens but couldn't get far enough away enough for the composition I wanted unless I went to get a ladder so switched to the 24-105 macro zoom and added a D500 auxiliary compound closeup lens. The distance from the petals and flower internals was too great for them both to be in focus even with the aperture stopped all the way down so I made multiple exposures with different focus distances. The images were downloaded to my computer and imported directly into Photoshop Lightroom where they were initally adjusted the images narrowed to the two I would use and exported into Photoshop CS3. In Photoshop, I tried the improved Photomerge feature of CS3 to bring both images into one file and align them but found that it also did an automatic blend and I didn't like what parts were used from each image. So, I did it the old way– I put both images in different layers into one file and then lowering opacity of the top layer, I lined up one point common to both layers. Then I chose the Transform command with 'rotate' and lined the center point to swing on at the common point of both images. I then rotated the top image till both lined up where I wanted them. Then I returned the opacity of the upper layer to 100%. The reason both images didn't line up satisfactorily using Photomerge was because when making two exposures with different focus distances, there is a slight change in image size. Then, because the inside of the flower was darker because it was lit by light coming through the petals and the little opening in the flower, I was able to use a Threshold adjustment layer to select only the inside of the flower in the top layer (I would use the upper layer for the petals–the lower layer would be the flower inside) I used a mask based on the selection made using the Threshold adjustment layer and softened the selection edges by applying a gaussian blur to the mask.  Here's an image of the layers palette with all layers when the file size was >6GB. Then, I made curves and saturation/hue adjustment layers and used the new CS3 smart filters so I could go back to what I didn't do with adjustment layers to readjust later if needed for fine tuning prints. Resizing to print at 360ppi at ~24"x30" increased the file size to greater than 6GB and caused my computer to slow way down and it took about two hours for it to resize. It kept stopping along the way to rest and catch its breath, I'm sure. Then, when I tried to save the file, it chugged along again slowly and after generating all it needs to do, refused to save the file because it's greater than the normal Photoshop filesize limit of 2GB. I flattened the file and saved, safely arriving at a filesize about 500MB. I planted the Tree Peony about 6 years ago and last year we had the first four flowers. This year, we'll have over a dozen flowers before they finish. The flowerrs are about 5-6 inches across. We have more Peony but their flowers are different and the blossoms require ants to open them. I'll photograph them when they're ready. Peace Tags: -print available-, flower, macro, nika trail, red, wa, white, yellow
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