Valentine’s Day 2021 - Mark Moeller's Blog

This winter kind of drags on, so when we get an excuse to celebrate we tend to go all in. We went wild on Valentine’s Day.

I bumped into my hairdresser just before the big day. She told me that everyone was dyeing their hair red for Valentine’s Day. If I didn’t believe her she had a portfolio to prove it.

It was a pretty convincing portfolio. Of course I didn’t want to be the only one without red hair so I said yes.

We prepared a feast to celebrate; meat, taters, shrooms, gus, broccoli, and garlic herb bread.

We then had some chocolates to finish the meal.

So Valentine’s Day is winding down and I am pleasantly plumped.

This is why it is better to eat out.

BOIDS

It is possible to shoot raw images with the Nikon P1000. I had been only shooting jpeg to date and decided to explore the raw capability. This required some changes to my post processing of image files. The first step was to download a codec from Microsoft that allowed me to view the files. Then I changed the post processing program to Aftershot Pro 3. To use it I had to go to the Corel site and download a camera file specific to the Nikon P1000. Then I was able to shoot a few images to play with the files. JPEG files are 5 to 7 megabytes and the raw files were 25 megabytes.

I post process my pictures and prepare the blogs on a desktop computer. I like having a touchscreen monitor as my primary monitor right in front of me. My secondary monitor is the same size and same manufacturer but not a touch screen. I put the post processed files on the second screen. When I convert the raw to JPEG for the blog, I was surprised that I could see the difference between the raw image and the compressed image. It was more different than I expected. Some of the difference could be due to the monitor differences. The one thing we don’t want to have happen is Mark playing with the color maps as it would likely produce some interesting results as he is red/green colorblind. He should get the Encroma glasses so he can see reds and greens for the first time and then he could play with color maps.

There is the feeling that the bird close ups are getting too good and you can now see how tough it is to survive in Mark’s wild kingdom.

Titmouse (you can see the house reflected in the eye0

Mammals

There was another story in the snow. These tracks are called a fisher cat slide. Apparently they slide through the snow.

Two Fisher Cats (both tracks going same direction

So not only do the birds and small mammals have to worry about hawks and foxes, but there are now fisher cats in the neighborhood. It really is a tough life for the little ones.