Daily Photo - March 01-15
For 2020, I am photographing every day, and posting the best of each day in half-month increments.
2020 March 01, Sunday
I started March by attempting French onion soup. First, I minced up four yellow onions and a green onion. I quartered the yellow onions and then cut them tip to stem, so that the roots would hold them together. It worked like a charm. I salted them and caramelized them in butter and oil for over half an hour until the aroma changed from icky to sweet. I added some apple vinegar cider (Not much is needed!) and also a scoop of plant-based protein powder. Next came vegetable broth and a long time of simmering, finished off with some herbs (veggie mix, summer savory, and pepper). Lastly, I poured them into ramekins and chunked in some crusty baguette and a slice of provolone cheese. They went into the heated oven for a quick broil, and were ready to serve mere minutes later. Mmm!
Olympus E-PL1: f5.4, 1/125 sec, ISO 200
IrfanView: Crop, Colour Balance
2020 March 02, Monday
After confirming the previous day that I hadn't concocted a disaster - something which has happened before! - I invited over my parents to try my soup. It's said that French onion soup is designed for heartbreaks and hangovers, and it certainly tastes great if you're feeling isolated, but it also does very well as a soup to eat together.
Olympus E-PL1: f5.1, 1/160 sec, ISO 500
IrfanView: Crop, Colour Balance
2020 March 03, Tuesday
The estuary was still packed with ice and snow. It made a nice contrast for the green onion sitting on my kitchen windowsill.
Olympus E-PL1: f5.4, 1/60 sec, ISO 500
IrfanView: Crop, Colour Balance
2020 March 04, Wednesday
For nearly all my life I've been doing blood glucose tests. In the past, the lancets necessary to get a drop of blood have been white. The ones I've been using lately come in a riot of colours. On the one hand, they're fun. On the other, I worry that having sharps in candy colours just invites kids and pets to eat them.
Olympus E-PL1: f5.6, 1/160 sec, ISO 200
IrfanView: Crop, Colour Balance
2020 March 05, Thursday
How many belts is too many? I have four. Personally, I think it's a good number. There are only three in this picture because I'm wearing the fourth.
Olympus E-PL1: f5.3, 1/8 sec, ISO 1600
IrfanView: Crop, Colour Balance
2020 March 06, Friday
Ah, sunset. Always so pretty, always so different! I really like the gradation of colours in the sky in this one, and the way the gaps in the clouds capture the low sunlight.
Olympus E-PL1: f7.1, 1/250 sec, ISO 200
IrfanView: Crop, Colour Balance
2020 March 07, Saturday
Bald eagles are a somewhat common sight where I live; the shallow waters of the estuary provide them plenty of food. Still, seeing one as it wings by and actually capturing that with a camera are two very different things! I'm always glad when I am able to snap a shot.
Olympus E-PL1: f5.5, 1/60 sec, ISO 200
IrfanView: Crop, Colour Balance
2020 March 08, Sunday
Vehicular light-trails are a fun thing to photograph. Cars are good, but trains are even better!
Olympus E-PL1: f4.2, 2 secs, ISO 320
IrfanView: Crop, Colour Balance
2020 March 09, Monday
There is a photographer named Xavi Bou who captures absolutely incredible mixed-frame pictures of birds in flight. He takes hundreds or even thousands of photos and merges them into images that show bird-trails somewhat akin to the vehicle trail I captured on the eighth. I'd love to try my hand at that, but I don't have the right software for it. I look forward to trying it once I do! For now, here's a still image of a crow.
Olympus E-PL1: f9, 1/500 sec, ISO 200
IrfanView: Crop, Colour Balance
2020 March 10, Tuesday
On March eleventh I did lots of photo editing, but somehow I forgot to actually take any pictures. Whoops! To compensate, I'm posting two pictures from the tenth.
The first is a shot of the things that typically fill my pockets. It's a somewhat silly concept, I admit. One of my guilty pleasures is watching men's style videos on YouTube (Stuff like ModestMan and RMRS). They sometimes do clips on this kind of thing. I don't think my collection is quite up to their par! Would-be muggers take note: I definitely don't keep $500 handy like Antonio Centeno! Also, trying to photograph an insulin pump that's literally connected to yourself is tricky!
The second picture is another light trail, from a car that passed by my house in the evening. In terms of luminosity it isn't as impressive as a train, but I think the dip and hill adds some visual interest.
Olympus E-PL1: f4.5, 1/60 sec, ISO 1600
IrfanView: Crop, Colour Balance
Olympus E-PL1: f4.7, 4 secs, ISO 200
IrfanView: Crop, Colour Balance
2020 March 12, Thursday
I took this dusk picture just moments after the Sun dipped blow the horizon. I used a high-dynamic range programme to process the original (single) raw image from my camera. It didn't change the sky much but did bring out some detail in the foreground trees. I t all came together quite nicely.
Olympus E-PL1: f7.1, 1/160 sec, ISO 200
PhotoMatix: HDR Toning, IrfanView: Crop, Colour Balance
2020 March 13, Friday
Here's the problem: In the evening it was rainy instead of the usual snowy. I wanted to photograph the event, but the drops wouldn't show up when I shot them out my window, or even through an open door. Solving this dilemma called for looking at things from a different vantage point: Going outside and catching the drops on the door itself. It was a very light rain, so I barely got wet. I think it worked out decently well.
Olympus E-PL1: f4, 1/8 sec, ISO 1600
IrfanView: Crop, Colour Balance
2020 March 14, Saturday
Covid-19 is a flu-relative unlike the foe we face in a typical year. It's a newcomer to the Human environment, which means the collective immune systems of our species aren't equipped to deal with it. As a result, the world is facing widely spread and fast-moving infections. While the real doctors and scientists work feverishly to fight it my family and I have no way to do so, except by modeling this kind of threat with a game of Pandemic. I'm sad to report that we lost... Let's hope the real doctors can succeed where we didn't!
Olympus E-PL1: f4.3, 1/125 sec, ISO 1600
IrfanView: Crop, Colour Balance
2020 March 15, Sunday
Non-medical professionals do not have a way to actively battle Covid-19... Short, naturally, of contracting it, which is obvioiusly not recommended! We can fight it passively though. This is through self-isolation, keeping away from others so that the virus has no avenue to move from person to person. Over the first half of March I gradually stocked up my shelves, and now have (I hope!) enough food and medicine on hand to sit out the next few weeks alone. There won't be any more games nights for a while, but that's a small price to pay for keeping myself and my loved ones healthy.
