Distant pintails

Just discovered something. A couple or three years ago, I bought myself a new pocket camera, something to put in the glove compartment of the car for emergencies. I took a few photos and was disappointed: they turned out flocculent; enlarging to anything beyond the mini-screen showed a flaky texture, something like the detritus at the bottom of a goldfish pond. Oh, well; it was for emergencies only; it would do.

This week, someone I follow on Twitter was showing how well her camera zoomed, and I was envious; none of my lenses are near as good at seeing an eagle on the far side of the bay, where my eye sees only a small black dot. She must have spent a fortune on equipment, I thought. And then someone asked her about it, and it turns out she's using another of those little point-and-shoot pocket cameras. With great zoom.

So I tried mine. A different camera: this one's a Lumix. And it zooms nicely! I had never bothered trying; if it wouldn't do close shots well, I didn't expect it to see far away.

It's better than my "real" camera. Still flocculent, but look: these were just dark dots on a distant shore.

Pintails, Oyster Bay.

Live and learn.

So today, I took the Lumix for a walk. With the Nikon as back-up. Photos tomorrow.

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Acabo de descubrir algo. Hace unos tres años, me compré una cámara nueva, algo para el bolsillo, algo para tener en el coche por si se me presentara una oportunidad fotográfica cuando no llevaba la cámara "verdadera". Y no me quedé tan contenta: las fotos salían lanudas; viendo las fotos en cualquier tamaño más grande que la pantallita de la cámara descubría una textura como la de la basura que queda en el fondo de un estanque de peces dorados. Bueno, serviría para emergencias, pero nada más.

Esta semana, una persona que sigo en Twitter estaba mostrando como hacía zoom su cámara, y sentí envidia: ninguna de las lentes de mi cámara se acerca a su capacidad de ver un águila en un árbol allá lejos donde el ojo no ve más que un puntito negro. Ella debe haber gastado una fortuna en su equipo, pensé. Y luego alguién preguntó, y ella respondió que solo usa otra de esas camaritas baratas, de bolsillo. Pero sí que hace zoom muy bien.

Así que hice la prueba con la mía. Es otra marca; una Lumix. ¡Y hace zoom igual que la de ella! Nunca había hecho el intento, creyendo que si no servía para las cercanías, menos iba a servir para lejos.

¡Es mejor que mi cámara Nikon! Las fotos siguen lanudas, pero, ¡mira! Estos patos rabilargos eran apenas unos puntos oscuros al otro lado de la bahía.

Foto: patos rabilargos, Anas acuta, en Oyster Bay.

Siempre hay algo para aprender.

Así que hoy saqué a la Lumix a pasear. Con la Nikon por si las moscas. Fotos mañana.

It pays to slow down

A forest in a raindrop ...

Snowberry, Ridge Trail, Elk Falls Prov. Park.

Zooming in and flipping.

Tiny, tiny. Tinier.

On a weedy playing field, cropped close, many miniature plants were in flower below the mower line. I collected one entire plant and brought it home. It was, roots to flower heads, less than an inch tall.

The entire plant, with roots. I planted it in a clamshell.

I set the plant in a sunny window and kept it watered for a few weeks. It never grew any larger. The flowers shrivelled, and didn't produce seeds; my window seems to be lacking in pollinators.

It looks like one of the cresses; the basal rosette and flowers are like that of the Little Western Bitter-cress, but that one grows from 4 to 18 inches tall. The hairy leaves look like those of Field Pennycress, up to 20 inches tall.

I needed a magnifying glass, or the camera lens, to appreciate the flowers.

White, pink, and yellow bouquet.

Ant-level view. Small ant, of course.

And to think that I must have stepped on hundreds of these flowers walking across the field!

Of time travellers and horizons

Maybe it is because I grew up with my toes in the ocean, but I love the look of a distant horizon, with nothing but water for miles. I always take too many photos of water and sky. I love them, then I delete them: what's there to share? A blue screen, with a line across, where the colour changes. Slightly.

When I was a kid, I used to draw the scene outside my window. A line. That was the horizon. A wavy line above; the mountains. A few waves. A gull or two. And a boat over by the horizon. Always the same, with the only variation the positions of gulls and boat. I never got tired of it.

Unfortunately, most people are not so monomaniacal. So I shoot, look, delete.

I kept these photos, though, from our last walk on the beach. They at least have something else going on.

Pink boat float, and slightly pink floating Mount Baker.

That's from my camera, but it was wearing the macro lens, so all the others are from Laurie's point and shoot.

Boats off Point Roberts, and what looks like mini-glaciers calving, but is really sea foam.

Backpacker and dog walking on water, heading out to sea as the tide comes in.

I love photos of people out on the horizon, so far away they shimmer. With our wide, shallow bays, they seem to walk, all in a line, on the surface of the ocean, not sinking, not subject to the rules of our universe, as though they were tourists from the next universe over, or maybe time travellers from the 30th century. Everything about them is strange; their postures, their silence, their pursuits. Where are they going? Where did they come from?

See what I mean about "all in a line"?

Zooming in. Walkers and talkers and one ball thrower.