three phases of water

_DSC0024_three-phases-of-water  

I took this photograph at a beach a few minutes from my home.  It isn’t a great picture, but it’s interesting because it reveals some important characteristics of water and our planet that were essential for the origination and evolution of life on Earth.

Earth, as demonstrated in this picture, has just the right combination of surface temperature and atmospheric pressure to allow water to exist in all three physical phases: liquid (the ocean water), solid (the ice), and gas (the clouds).  Clouds are not strictly just gases because they actually consist of water in all three phases including water vapor, which is a gas, and tiny water droplets that form when the water vapor condenses around airborne particles of dust and ice crystals.

The picture highlights another important physical characteristic of water - ice floats.  If ice sank the oceans would’ve frozen solid long ago, and the complex, multicellular organisms with the emergent property of consciousness called people probably wouldn’t exist.

Monte

marathon lindsay

lindsay-immediately-after-marathon

This is my daughter, Lindsay, just after she finished the New York City marathon on Sunday, November 2, 2014.  I'm working on the marathon video - hope to finish in a few days.

Monte

little island beach

gary-beck-painting-at-little-island-beach

I was out at a beach called Little Island  yesterday trying to make a time-lapse video of the sunset.  The only other person there was this local artist, a painter who I occasionally encounter when I'm out taking pictures.  We speak briefly and politely to each other when we meet making the usual observations about the weather and the scenery.  But I can sense how  we  share a love for the effort of trying to capture a moment in a beautiful setting so that we will always remember it - him with a painting and me with a photograph.

I've lived in this small Cape Cod town for eleven years without fully recognizing how lucky I am to be here.   It is unfortunately true that life is what happens while we're making other plans. The camera is turning out to be good therapy for my scattered, anxiety-ridden brain.  Perhaps the painter feels the same way about his canvas.  The act of making a painting or taking a picture requires one's attention.  The camera makes me focus.

Monte

fall colors

big-tree-with-multiple-stockings

Out in my town taking pictures and shooting video today.  I found a street where many of the trees were wearing stockings.  Fall is here and I was hoping to get pictures of leaves changing color, but that won't be for a little while yet.  The stockings were a nice surprise.

Monte

focus

focus-right-here-650-size-for-wordpress

It's a metaphor (maybe a weak one). I was trying to work on a project today and I couldn't organize my thoughts. I couldn't focus on the right things. That's when the idea for this photograph occurred to me, which is an excellent example of how easily I'm distracted. The photograph has nothing to do with my project, but I spent a big chunk of time making it instead of doing what I really needed to do!

Monte

made in the stars

monte-reading-september-30,-2014

Reading an interesting book called Magic Furnace, which is a history of how scientists discovered where the elements come from (they're made in stars). Here is an amazing piece of data: Hydrogen accounts for about 90% of all the atoms in the entire universe, even though it is rare on earth. Helium is about 8% of all the atoms in the universe. The other 90 naturally occurring elements make up a paltry 2% of all the atoms in the universe! For every 10,000 atoms of hydrogen in the universe there are 975 atoms of helium, 6 atoms of oxygen, and only 1 atom of carbon!

But what really impresses me is that human beings have been able to figure this out.

Monte

birds fly past boat

birds-fly-past

This is an exported image from a video I shot several years ago on a Canon HV-40 camcorder.  I was walking home at dusk after spending the afternoon shooting video at the beach.  This lonely-looking sailboat in the harbor caught my attention and I worked as quickly as I could to set up my tripod while the last of the evening light faded.   The birds, flying low over the water, came past the boat  just after I turned on the camera.  The audio track reveals the sound of me gasping with delight at their unexpected appearance.  Lucky shot.

The image is converted to a drawing using the Topaz Impressions software plugin.

Monte

new software

boats-in-harbor-3-web

Playing around with the Topaz Impressions software.  It's fun, sometimes, to convert photographs to images that appear as paintings or drawings.  This image is a frame taken from a video clip I made of a harbor near my home.

Monte

private

private-gate

I found this gate with the sign indicating it was a private beach while walking around on an overcast afternoon. Private beaches are common here on Cape Cod.

The image has a lot of metaphoric possibilities.  What does it symbolize for you?

Monte

witch ball

witch-ballThis witch ball hangs in a window of our home.  It was a gift to my wife from one of her friends. I'd never heard of a witch ball, but it's an interesting story and a commentary on how humans think.  Witch balls are supposed to capture evil spirits before they can enter your home.  The evil spirit gets tangled up in the strands of glass inside the ball and becomes trapped forever.  At least this is what I've read.

The witch ball has got me interested in reading about the history of witchcraft and magic. Maybe a future video?

What looks like a small-meshed grid in the background of the photo is the exterior screen on the window.

Monte

hummingbird

In the garden with my camera today.

at-feeder01

To get this picture I set my camera (Nikon D5300) on a tripod with a 105 mm macro lens about 20 inches from the feeder.  The exposure settings were 1/3200, f 4.0, iso 400, no flash (it was late afternoon and the sun was shining at an angle on the feeder).  Then I cheated.

I could've waited patiently for the bird to show up, but I wanted to have coffee.  So I attached my gadget for shooting time-lapse photography to the camera and set it to take pictures every 3 seconds.  About 500 pictures later I got this one.

Monte

broken

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My natural inclination is to photograph the flowers that are as nearly perfect as possible.  Today I focused on the flowers that were old and imperfect, like me.  The ant was a bonus.

Monte

frozen bee

Bee-Approach-002

Today I was back in the garden with the bees.  Thanks to a guy named Jimmy Daly at this website I learned how to solve the shutter speed problem I mentioned in a previous post.  Evidently, Nikon sets the maximum shutter speed when using a flash at 1/250.  That is not nearly fast enough to freeze the wings of a bee in flight.  Mr. Daly has a great post on how to set the camera to override this default maximum flash sync speed.

This picture was taken at around 6:30 PM with my Nikon D7000 and a 105 mm macro lens with a ring flash system.  The camera settings were f 9.0, 1/3200 and an iso of 1000, which is too high and caused a slightly grainy image.  I was worried about the setting sun and the fading daylight.  I should have just boosted the power of my flash a bit more and stayed with a lower iso, but I'm learning.

In the category of missed opportunities, while I was photographing the bees a bird flew into my bird bath not more than a few feet from where I was standing.  The bird, splashing about, flapping her wings and generally having a great time, didn't seem to care about me at all.  It would've been a cool video clip.  So, tomorrow I will be in the garden with my camera on the bees and my video camcorder focused on the bird bath.

Monte