Photography

[Ray]

Yes,... I've been a bit quiet on it, for the last few days.

After I posted my last photos I started going through what I had, My findings staggered even me and even more surprising was that among all the out of focus, blurred and under exposed rubbish, I found photos I had long since forgotten about and I came to the conclusion that some of them were well worth saving. It got me to thinking, I'd say without much fear of contradiction that we have more photos of our pets than my parents had in their lifetiime.

So, to save them,.... "That's easy" I hear you say, just don't delete them,...  Yeah, that is true, but there lies the rub, what use are photos unless those looking at them can find what they want among them, and even more, can find out what they are about and who the people are, that are in them?

At first I was just going to add details to my photos as I looked at them, and then decided, No, that would mean that many would never see the light of day, so,... I decided to start adding "Keywords" to the photos so that at least they may be searched through giving me some degree of control. hopefully this will also help when I come to adding "Comments" to them.  The difference being that keywords essentially divide your photos into searchable categories, Family, Pets, Scenic, Sport and so on, whereas Comments tend to contain more detail, such as the names of people in a sporting team, where photos were taken and for what reason. C'mon, be honest,... how many of you have been looking through your old photos only to say, I dunno why I took that???

So far I've done about 6200 photos and that is only 2 of 102 folders. Thankfully they are the largest by a long shot, never the less, I'd say I'm less than a third of the way through my collection.

[Ray]

Several times during the last week whilst moving about our back yard, I have run into a very strong spider web strung between our orange and lemon trees. So tonight I decided to have a look and see if I could catch the  culprit in action.

So proceeding up the yard with a torch and camera, this is what I found. From what I can find in the 'net, it appears to be a "Garden Orb Weaver",... as opposed to the "Golden Orb Spinner" and more info can be found here: http://www.mdavid.com.au/spiders/orbweavers.shtmlThe part I was relieved to read was,...

These spiders are big, heavy-bodied, hairy, and harmless. They are mostly grey or brown.

Now, it wasn't here at a little before sunset, so that means that "Spidey" has completed this web  about 50cms in diameter in a couple of hours. I must admit that I've never seen a spider like it before.

Unfortunately there is nothing to show his size, but i will say that his body is larger than the largest Huntsman I have ever seen, but his legs are quite a bit shorter and thicker, and covered with spiny bristles.

[tricky]

These spiders are big, heavy-bodied, hairy, and harmless. They are mostly grey or brown.

Well Ray ...... seeing how these massive spiders are so harmless, I will arrange for them all to live in your backyard!!!!

I hate spiders; particularly the big ones!!!!

[Ray]

I don't mind them,... so long as I know where they are.  

My worst experience was when cutting wood several (about15) years ago, I had one drop down the collar of my overalls at the back as I was sawing a branch off a tree.  I had to put the saw down, and pull the top down of my overalls so TLW could shoo her onto the outside whom where we encouraged her onto a piece of bark and then onto a nearby tree.

I just went out looking to see if Spidey was still there, the web was in tatters, and true to the advice on the website Spidey was curled up under a leaf nearby.



To get underneath, I had to lay on my back and shoot directly up with Spidey only about a foot above the lens. unfortunately the branch was moving quite a bit in the wind and using my closeup lens i had very little depth of field so it's a bit blurry. I didn't feel like waiting there for ten minutes hoping for it to steady up.