In my few spare moments lately I've been playing with images. I'm not a digital expert—other than being able to count my fingers and toes—but I've been taking photographs and using digital tools to change their look. It's all rudimentary stuff. My colleagues who work in the art department at Sports Illustrated would no doubt liken my efforts to finger-painting. No matter. It's fun. If I had a finger-painting tool on the computer, I'd try that too.
This is a hoopoe specimen that Pamelia photographed at the Natural History Museum in London and I photo-doctored with a colored-pencil tool.
This is a watercolor twist on an iris Pamelia photographed at the Asticou Azalea Gardens on Mount Desert Island.
A paint-daubing tool enabled me to alter my photo of a fox in the snow at our house.
This is supposed to have a plastic feel—very unlike The Naturalist's Notebook, of course, but an interesting effect.
I gave a wave treatment to this photo of a juvenile bald eagle (taken, I think, in 2009 by young ornithologist Pat Johnson, part of the Notebook's founding team).
A photo I shot of a water drop on lupine, made more abstract with a cutout-paper technique.
Pamelia's moonrise photo, tweaked with a smudge tool.
Guess what? This isn't computer-doctored at all, even though (at least to me) it looks awfully painterly. I took this sunrise photo at our house a year or two ago.
A Planetary Follow-Up
In a recent blog post I showed a mussel shell that resembled a globe with the continents merged. I said that the continents looked that way hundreds of millions of years ago. Well, here's a map of the Earth from 200 million years ago, when continents were connected in a supercontinent called Pangaea. Note that what's now Maine was connected to Africa and was below the equator. The continental plates are still constantly shifting beneath our feet. Right now Maine and the rest of North America are moving away from Europe, toward Asia, at the same rate your fingernails grow.
The Eagle Owl in Super Slow Motion Thanks to LJ for sending along this remarkable video of a large Eurasian owl called the eagle owl, shot at 1,000 frames per second. Watch it and be mesmerized...
Good News Remember that abandoned Lowe's big-box store I wrote about a couple of months ago? This week the globally respected Jackson Laboratory of Bar Harbor said that it plans to buy the Ellsworth, Maine, store and use it to expand the lab's mouse-breeding operations. In addition to its extensive research work in genetics and other fields, the Jackson Lab breeds mice for scientific use around the world. The lab said that the Lowe's operation could employ 300 people within a few years.
Answer to the Last Puzzler
a) It's TRUE that President Martin Van Buren had two tiger cubs as White House pets. b) It's TRUE that President Andrew Johnson had white mice as White House pets. c) It's TRUE that President William Taft had a cow as a White House pet. d) It's TRUE that President Calvin Coolidge had a raccoon as a White House pet. e) It's NOT TRUE that President Harry Truman had a donkey as a White House pet. In case you're wondering, some of the animals above were gifts from state or foreign leaders. The presidents didn't want to insult those leaders by getting rid of the animals.
Calvin Coolidge's wife, Grace, with their pet raccoon. Among the other animals the Coolidges kept in the White House were a pair of collies, a donkey, a bobcat, canaries, a goose and a mockingbird.
Today's Puzzler
I mentioned above that the North American continental plate is moving away from Europe and toward Asia at the speed your fingernails grow. Roughly how fast do an adult's fingernails grow?
a) about an inch a year
b) about two-and-a-half inches a year
c) about three-and-a-half inches a year