Every Blooming Thing through a Different Lens

Sue and I walked at the bottom of our hill this morning. It seemed like a good time to try out my new DxO One camera. All the pictures that follow were taken with the new camera using my iPhone screen. The pictures turned out nice, and I'm still fiddling around with the controls. You can just look if you like, but I'll critique them a little bit.

One thing I wanted to mention about it is that it took a long time to charge the battery to 100%. Possibly, there is something wrong with the cord I was using, but it was the only one I had along when we were in Bandon. When I got home, I left it plugged in for a good long time, and finally, I was able to get it fully charged. I only mention this because it seemed as if the battery discharged awfully quickly when I was using it. Now that it's been fully charged for the first time, it seems to hold the charge longer. And I'm only telling you this to remind myself someday when I'm wondering what went wrong.

Okay, so let's get to the pictures, shall we? When we walk here, we park at a "community hall." It used to have a sign out front advertising it as a dance studio, but the dance studio seems to be no more. Now it has a "hall for rent" sign, and some other signs with phone numbers, but otherwise, it doesn't seem to be in use. Recently, someone has done a lot of work on a pretty garden planted out back. Just FYI, those buildings on the other side of the fence are used for growing marijuana. We can smell it from the road. Oregon is a green state, so it's all perfectly legal.

We liked the propane tank disguised as a caterpillar. Here, you can see his face.

As you know, I've taken this next picture many times. I wanted to see how well I could improve on the iPhone's zooming-in capability, and the new camera does a much better job. The iPhone alone tends to be grainy when I zoom in on things. This picture is an improvement over the iPhone alone.

It does a good job with close-ups too, although the iPhone alone takes excellent close-ups. This is a years-gone-by clover crop growing at the edge of this year's wheat crop.

Here's a pretty lilac.

In this next image, I messed up because I was trying to adjust the exposure to darken the image a little bit. If you look closely and squint your eyes, you can see Mt. Hood in the distance. I was adjusting in the wrong direction and turned the exposure up instead of down. A little work in photoshop brought out the mountain a little more, but it could have been a better image if the photographer had known her camera better.

Look at this pretty Hawthorne. We saw quite a few of these along the way, and this one was right next to the road.

Here's a close-up.

Sue and I agreed this is about the prettiest azalea color we've ever seen.

Okay, in this next image, I was testing again the ability of the camera to zoom in and maintain image quality. You can see Mt. St. Helens off in the background. This is cropped from a larger image, and you can see how the edges of things have gotten sort of digitally hard and unnaturally sharp. This is what I usually see with the iPhone alone, but the camera was still an improvement over the graininess of the image.

Here are some wild iris growing by the side of the road. How does a bulb flower get planted wild? Squirrels, maybe?

This next one is one of my favorite trees...the Golden Chain tree.

Back home, ours is just getting started.

So, I was still using the new camera for these next images, but mainly, I was just documenting progress on the things in the garden. This is the dappled willow. I've mentioned this before because I keep waiting for it to do its pretty thing. It isn't quite there yet, but you can see how the new foliage is variegated, and different from the older foliage. It is beginning to allow light to shine through. I've only ever seen these trees from a distance, and so I don't know if its show will be produced by foliage or flowers.

Here's a close-up of one of the branch ends. Possibly there's a flower there, but it's hard to tell for sure. I'm watching it every day now, hoping it will do its thing.

Across the sidewalk from the dappled willow, another of the rhododendrons is showing its colors.

The Photo-A-Day prompt today was "pink," and so I went around taking pictures of the pink things. Here's the pink geranium.

These are the non-cyclamen cyclamen; meaning, I don't know what they are, but they're in the same pot with the cyclamen.

This is the image I posted to Instagram of the pink rhododendron.

Back in the house, this is always a troubling sign. They could be out, but instead, they're in...lying in wait for some critter they brought in and lost. Let's hope it's nothing big.

And that'll be what's up next here at the Three Cats Ranch...go figure out what the kitties have cornered.

Also today, I'm working on Mt. Laundry. I thought I might do some housework today, but laundry is enough, don't you think? Instead, I'm going to sew. I'll finish off the pansy mosaic, and then I'll get to work catching up on the Tiny Tuesday blocks. I'm three weeks behind now.