Who speaks the sound of an echo?
Who paints the image in a mirror?
Where are the spectacles in a dream?
Nowhere at all–that’s the nature of the mind!
~Tree-leaf Woman (J. Hirshfield, Women in Praise of the Sacred)
Nikon D750 f/7.1 1/50s 170mm ISO 100
even tortoise and crane
meet their fate…
autumn evening
~Issa (www.haikuguy.com)
Nikon D750 f/7.1 1/125s 300 mm ISO 100
Going through the gate
I also am a wander
this twilight in autumn
~Buson (Y Sawa & E Shiffert, Haiku Master Buson)
It began that first Halloween in Des Moines, Iowa, when I found myself wondering if the ghost, goblins, and witches that appeared at my door were also messaging the onset of seasonal changes. It was that year as my daughter’s Halloween costume was atop layers of clothing and hidden by a winter coat, I first noticed–and then again during later years in Wyoming and Colorado–that Halloween is often accompanied by a significant drop in temperature that generally lasted well into spring.
Today, the November 1, 2017 edition of Aljazeera reported that while Halloween is not recognized outside the western world “the date is climatologically significant in that it ends the three-month climatological autumn. Figures will now be confirmed and compared, by climatological statisticians, with autumn seasons from previous years.”
Additionally, at the end of October:
The Indian monsoon withdraws to the tip of India and Sri Lanka and the second cyclone season begins in the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal. The Australian cyclone season officially begins.
Both Australia and South Africa have seen particularly stormy spring seasons and are settling now into summer.
China has entered its winter season with the northeast monsoon now prevalent. In the United States, the last few days of October brought some proper snow to the northern states.
Northern Europe has been battered by a windstorm followed by a big drop in temperature. The system responsible is still covering Belarus in snow. Western Europe, and in particular Iberia, is yet to realise the change of season.
Sometimes one’s private musings do have a bit of merit.
Tokiwa Mountain’s
pine trees are always green–
I wonder,
do they recognize autumn
in the sound of the blowing wind?
~Ono No Komachi (J Hirshfield & M Aratani, The Ink Dark Moon)
Nikon D750 f/14 1/30s 28mm 100 ISO
a peek of autumn with Ono No Komachi
Lumix GX85 f/7.1 1/320 s 32 mm ISO 200
A valuable resource for those who have an interest in expanding their understanding of street photography can be found at the Streets of Nuremberg. His intention is to to give back to those who have given him so much by offering a “one stop resource pool” where photographers can find free tips, tutorials, inspirations and everything else.
The above image was created (with a bit of awkward anxiety) using Streets of Nuremberg’s Photography Quick Tip 1 for photographing inconspicuously; that is,
Line up in the general direction of your subject, raise the camera and shoot something behind or above him/her. Absolutely avoid eye contact, best look through the viewfinder of your camera. Bring the camera down, pretending to check the image you just took on the LCD back screen of your camera, your finger still on the shutter, still avoiding any eye contact with your subject. Instead of checking the image you just have taken above or behind your subject, compose your shot with your subject through the LCD back screen of our camera and shoot the “real” picture. Do not (!) check the photograph you’ve just taken, instead raise the camera again and “redo” the first shot behind or above the subject. Repeat as needed. And don’t blush 😉
We meet and we part,
Coming and going — hearts like passing clouds.
Except for the marks of a frosty-hair brush,
human traces are hard to find.
~Ryokan (K Tanahashi, Sky Above, Great Wind)
the old dog
looks as if he’s listening…
earthworms sing
~Issa (www.haikuguy.com)
once green, now fading yellow
a beautiful leaf
all by itself in autumn
dandelion wind
and departing parachutes
awaiting a spring
Rounded, created with iPad
You didn’t come into this world.
You came out of it, like a wave from the ocean.
You are not a stranger here.
~Alan Watts
The healing way of Shinrin-yoku is through the medicine of simply being in the forest. A gentle path to wellness accessible to almost everybody. Studies have found that the benefits of forest bathing include:
I’m hoping that the Youtube video below motivates you to kick off your house slippers and rummage through closets for your long-forgotten hiking boots…
_()_
In Raj’s latest xdrive photo lesson he continues the discussion of setting the camera to raw by comparing the differences of raw and jpg images that are produced within the camera at the exact moment with the same camera settings.
Below you will see comparison of a raw image of apples and their reflections edited in Capture One with the exact jpg images created within the Nikon D750. I chose to have the aperture set at f/1.8 as a means to expand my understanding of the complexities of focal plane, sharpness, depth of field, and aperture settings. There were a series of images created using manual focus that were discarded as the sharpness and detail were a bit fuzzy.
I generally photograph with the camera set to raw with a black and white setting as a means to encourage a greater awareness of the range of white to black. When the raw images are transferred to Capture One for raw editing they are in color.
Nikon D750 f1.8 1.3s 35 mm ISO 100
2. When I opened up the jpg images from the Nikon, I found that they remained in black and white; therefore, I went back into Capture One and created a black and white version of the above image to use as a comparison to the Nikon’s jpg.
Nikon D750 f1.8 1.3s 35 mm ISO 100
The Nikon jpg image below seems to keep the reflected apples in greater shadow. Also the variations of the texture and appearance of the apples and their reflections are less apparent than in the image above.
Nikon D750 f1.8 1.3s 35 mm ISO 100 JPG
A cropped comparison of one apple and its shadow.
At the beginning of this project, I found myself acknowledging a need for a basic understanding of editing pros and cons; for example, it is very easy for me to over sharpen images that result in haloes.
In closing, I’m also including two additional apple images in which I moved the camera closer as part of my open aperture setting and focal plane study.
Nikon D750 f/1.8 1.3s 35mm ISO 100
Nikon D750 f/1.8 0.4s 35mm ISO 100
The right apple and it’s reflection appear to be less sharp than in the other images; whereas, the first apple’s reflection is in less shadow. My initial understanding of focal plane tells me that the right apple must have been placed a bit further back than the other two.
Over to you Raj.
a meditative journey 
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