Ben and I went for a walk in the park and came across this tree. It really reminded me of one of those scary apple trees from the Wizard of Oz, that threw its apples at Dorothy.
Here’s the comparison.
Here is a look at its gnarled trunk.
T his is a close up of the tree bark.
My daffodils have had a slow start this season. Usually they are farther along by this point, but anyway, here are a few pictures of the different types that are blooming in my yard right now.
I think I have conquered the process of the two frame animation, I am still trying to master three frames, but at this point it’s still too confusing.
I still need to get better at taking two pictures that are exactly the same, except for the movement of the subject. I have a little problem with the backgrounds jumping around, because I didn’t keep my camera still enough. I wanted just the beak of the cardinal to open and close, and the little sparrow’s head to move, but the tree is moving too! I’ll keep trying, I love a challenge.
Everyone talks about how pretty male cardinals are. Here are a few pictures of the ladies. They are quite attractive too, though in a more suble way.
Yesterday was my son Ben’s 24th birthday. But he’s not the only one of my children with an early April Birthday. My Daughter Megan will be 22 on April 7th. This Picture of Ben and I was taken on april 6th, 1987.
I had slept over my parent’s house because Chris was playing soccer, and I didn’t want to be alone that night. The next morning, I sat at my mom’s kitchen table and read my horoscope. That is something I almost never do. Megan was born at 7:11 that evening. Both of these items were copied from Megan’s baby album.
This Downey Woodpecker has to work hard for his food!
∗ Happy 24th birthday Ben!!! My son turned 24 today.
My original thought was to do something more plausible for an April fools post, but as you can see it didn’t quite turn out that way because I over did it. I probably should have stuck with just one squirrel. Oh well!
A couple days ago I saw this blooming dafodil.
And this pretty robin.
I took this picture yesterday. Not surprisingly, the robin could not be found.
Would anyone like an icy Bud?
Ben came home for the weekend, and he gave me a lesson on simple animation. This little clip was created with two photos of the little finch. But there are three frames that loop over and over. The third frame is a merging of the two separate photos. I would call it superimposing one photo on top of another, but Ben tells me that the correct terminology for this is extrapolation.
This animation of the little sparrow was made by Ben. It was the demonstration created by him for my lesson. If you look carefully at both of these animations, you will notice that the colors are not as vivid or sharp as my usual photographs. There is a good reason for that. When you save a photograph, you use a .jpg extension. “Jaypegs” are capable of displaying millions of colors! To convert the jpg’s into animation, you must change the extension fom .jpg to .gif. Gifs can only use the color safe pallete of 256 colors. Your browser will approximate the millions of colors from the original jpg, and by a process called dithering, pare down the photo’s colors. This unfortunately, can make the animated photos look a little grainy.
Kitty bling: could it be the newest fashion fad?
There are just so many exciting uses for milk jug rings!!!