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While in England, Derry and I met up with our clients, Julie and Joe Golimowski.  While they are from Virginia, they happened to be in England while I was there, making it a perfect time for us all to meet. Julie is the editor and Joe is the publisher of  Quilter’s Quarters. We’ve been doing the website for their magazine for several years now.  Sadly, due to Julie’s MS,  the summer ’08 issue will be their last.

Julie is a beautiful, full-of-life, bubbly lady who hasn’t allowed MS to define her.  We laughed and walked and had a very nice visit together.  Meanwhile, Derry and Joe went off, chatting up a storm.  We are very fortunate to have such wonderful clients — although “clients” seems a distant, somewhat standoff word to use when our meeting was friendly and warm.

We met in  Stratford-Upon-Avon, being a beautiful tourist area and home of William Shakespeare which is shown above.

We all took a short boat ride across the River Avon.

If you’re interested in learning more about Stratford-Upon-Avon, click here. To learn more about Designer’s Quarter, click here.  A section of the summer issue is dedicated to MS.  And, most importantly, if you’d like to consider donating to the National MS Society for use in finding a cure to MS, please visit this page.

With York having such a rich, colorfull history, taking a ghost walk seemed a natural.  We signed up for “The Ghost Hunt of York,” which bills itself as the number one rated ghost walk in the city.

Our guide took his role seriously, although it was hard not to giggle at his antics.  Dressed in Victorian garb complete with top hat, step ladder (allowing him to be seen and heard by all), and bag (into which he collected quite a few £s!), he rounded up quite a crowd.

We were all to meet at “the bottom of the Shambles” — “York’s oldest street and Europe’s best preserved medieval street” which is also mentioned in the Domesday Book of William the Conqueror (making it date over 900 years).  Historically it was a street of butcher shops; today it’s filled with shops, restaurants, and plenty of tourists.

Our group of over 150 people were told to stay put.  He ventured off, and, like sheep, we waited.  Our ghostly guide, ringing his “death bell,” returned about 10 minutes later with another crowd following him until we all were grouped together.  I’m sure there were more than 200 of us.

Part actor and part jokester, everyone crowded around to listen to his entertaining narrative.  It all wasn’t laughs, as several stories were humbling and sad — a small girl abandoned and locked into her room because of having the Plague, individuals who fell to their death, marching Roman soldiers, and so on.

“The Golden Fleece” claims to be the oldest (being mentioned in 1505) and most haunted licensed premises in York, (featured in a 2005 episode of “Most Haunted”).  The wooden-framed building has no foundation which, as they explain, is why the building and staircases are crooked.

You can see how the second floor of the building dips.

And what would be next to the oldest and most haunted building in York?  A Pizza Hut, of course!

Here, our guide instructed everyone (on his count) to wave at the customers in a restaurant across the street from where we were standing.

Then, on his count, everyone walked towards the resturant and did a collective “boo” in the face of the customers.  I suspect this goes on nearly nightly, but it still was good fun.

After working 11+ hours a day all week, Derry and I took a trip to the historic city of York, a city with some 2,000 years of history (including Roman soldiers and Viking) located in the county of North Yorkshire. Luckily, the weather was unlike the entire week of dreary rain — it was sunny!  To take advantage of it, we crammed in a lot of tourist stuff.

First we walked across the Millenium Bridge, which opened in 2001.  The bridge crosses the River Ouse (pronounced “ooze”) and is a popular area for walkers, joggers, bicycle riders, and others interested in a stroll.

I should add that now, only two weeks later, York is experiencing severe floods.  I recently saw a picture of this area on the BBC news site and was stunned and saddened to see the the water covering the entire river bank and hitting the bottom of the windows on the buildings.  Currently, information about the floods is here.

Next up with Clifford’s Tower.  The Tower is all that is left of a castle built in 1086 by William the Conqueror.  The area has quite a history, and not at all a pretty one.  The remaining Tower dates primarily from the 13th century with some 17th century additions.  (Yes, I got the guidebook <g>.)

I took a lot of pictures of stairs and walls and and openings and such.  Some of the images lent themselves nicely to applying various affects to them in Photoshop.

As time permits, I’ll add more images from York, including a Ghost Wall, the Jorvick Center, and the City Wall.  Fun stuff!

Flying into England on a clear day is quite beautiful.  And, I can tell you from experience, it’s also somewhat unusual as that beautiful patchwork of lush greens results from a lot of rain.  A lot.

The first time I came to England, I sat next to a man who asked me where I was from.  I said New Jersey.  “Ah, American,” he said.  He went on to tell me how “unusual” Americans are, the amusing things we ask and say while on a plane.  He pulled out a notebook with pages of handwritten scribble.  He told me that he writes down all types of things he hears Americans saying with the intention on writing a book about it.  Knowing my ability to put my foot in my mouth, I thought it would be best to keep it shut or his notebook would be overflowing.  Each time he’d ask me a question, I’d politely smile and nod my head yes or no.  For those questions requiring more, my answers were very nondescript — a shrug of the shoulders, an “I’m not sure,” or other colorless responses.  When we started to get closer, I keep seeing the white dots.  You can see some on the lower left of the above picture.

I was so tempted to ask, “What are all of those white dots on the ground?” But there was no way I’d ask as I knew he’d fling open his notebook and jot down my question.  As we got closer and closer, there were more and more of the white dots.  It took a lot of effort for me to keep my trap shut.

Eventually, as we were nearly on top of them, I realized what they were: Sheep!  I am so glad I didn’t ask that question!  Now, every time I fly into England and see sheep, I always smile.  I photograph them all of the time and buy little stuffed ones to take home with me!

Just about landed in Birminham Airport and heading to Festival of Quilts on Saturday.

What do you do when the evil dark shade of the dreaded kernel panic descends down your monitor? When upon restarting you get various symbols from question marks to warning circles? When utility programs don’t work? Lateral thinking is a flop? When even Derry says “hmmm .. not good”? You get out the box from the rafters in the garage, pack up the less than one-year old computer, bungie cord it onto a trolley, and head over to the nearest Apple store.

Never had a kernel panic? Consider yourself lucky. I’ve had them in the past, but generally a restart and a run through of a utility program saved the day. This was the first time it didn’t work. In fact, this is the first time in some 18 years that I had to box up and return a Macintosh. What is a kernel panic, you wonder? It’s a punch-you-in-the-gut Macintosh operating system crash (well, Unix) — kind of like the blue screen of death — that generally indicates a fatal internal error. Nice, huh?

Not two months ago one external 500 gig back up died. Now this. Sad, sad, sad. Luckily, I did have many important things backed up. But, unluckily, not all. I was planning to. Really. Because I work from more than one computer, I tend to back up stuff from one computer to another and then eventually put things onto DVD and remove them from one place or the other. Lesson learned? It’s time to stop making backups of various important things by dragging them from one computer to another and instead just start using Time Machine. Once I return from England, I will begin using it. Heck, as soon as I pick up my computer from the Apple store, hopefully before I leave, I’ll buy a Terabye drive. Promise.

But, today is a new day. While I should be finishing my Quilt National entry (which will be rejected as it always is), it was another absolutely glorious day. The type where I keep exclaiming, “What a beautiful day.” Rather than dwelling on the time I spent at the Apple store listening to my very well-trained and polite Apple genius tell me that my drive died (as in no kidding), me nearly fainting when I realized what client artwork on that machine wasn’t yet delivered, it seemed better to go look for butterflies. Sure, I’ll use any excuse. But, it was a beautiful day.

As I was sitting in my office, promising myself that I would get some work done,  I started looking out the window at the very blue skies.  I drifted into thinking about those two pretty Swallowtails from earlier in the day. Next I’m noticing the late-afternoon angle of light which I know from experience will bounce off the pond and back light the butterflies, should they be there.  Before you know it, I started flirting with the idea of returning.  The voices  in my head started shouting: Go, the lighting is great and they might still be there.  Stay, you have work to do.  You were already there today.  Get a jump on Monday’s work.  Go.  Look at the lighting.  No!  Stay.  You have things to do.

While my brain was mulling over these things, I hopped onto video with Derry, telling him my dilemma of  do I stay or do I go. And, here’s one of the many reasons why he is the best partner:  He says, “Go!”

I returned to my favorite spot, and nothing.  I waited, and nothing.  I walked around to a few other spots, and nothing. I returned to my favorite spot, sat on the grass for a while when finally one Swallowtail swooped in.  But that’s all I needed.  Once again I was climbing around some rocks, trying not to fall into the water, just so I could photograph the bugger.  There are a couple low bushes that I am always mentally willing butterflies to land on (like they’ll listen).  In that area, the light reflects off of the nearby pond which tends to make interesting backgrounds.   It’s a hard place to photograph as I don’t want to trample on any part of the bushes to get the angle I want. I patiently waited as my butterfly was fluttering from one flower to the next and then taking off into the sky to make its huge loop before returning.  He didn’t stay in my preferred area long, and I was only able to get 6 shots there.  In total, I only took about 40 pictures  before he took off and didn’t return.  While I like the ones from earlier better, they aren’t bad.    And, tomorrow, work!

What can I say, I’m always looking for butterflies!  Today’s weather is gorgeous, and I couldn’t resist visiting a nearby garden to see if there were any butterflies about.  I spotted an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail, a Monarch, and a Spicebush Swallowtail.  These are a few of my favorites of the day.

A couple weeks ago, Rich and I went to Longwood Gardens located in Brandywine Valley, Pennsylvania. With over 1,000 acres of gardens, meadows, and woods, there was a lot to see.  The Gardens are also knows for its Festival of Foundations waterworks.  Being it was one of those 95 degree plus days with high humidity, it was a small wonder people weren’t jumping into those fountains!

My favorite place was the conservatory, a huge 4+ acre greenhouse with thousands of plants.  My favorite area within the conservatory was the water gardens.

These are just a few of the photos I’ve taken that day.

One of the water gardens.

We were very tempted to jump into that water to get some relief from the heat.

The waterlily pictures were taken inside of the conservatory’s watergarden.

Also taken inside of the conservatory

I love these types of stone buildings.  Inside is a very photogenic spiral staircase which I took several pictures of.

It’s me near the fountains.

On Saturday, Rich and I went to the Lakota Wolf Preserve in upstate New Jersey.  They offer serious photographers the opportunity to walk within two sets of wire fences.  There are panels  cut through the interior fence allowing photographers to get an unobstructed view of the wolves.  However, the fee for the privilege is several hundred dollars.  While I’m all for the money going to the preserve to help care for the wolves while giving the ability to take some nice photos (and maybe one day I will), there were other factors that swayed us away for the higher price tag:   We simply wanted a couple decent  photos to remember the experience, and there was only one camera between us.  Thus, we took the far less expensive $15 tour that kept us on the outside of the two fences.  It didn’t take long for me to realize that it meant photographing through two sets of fences.  After some experimenting with settings and watching the angle of the light, I was able to take some photos that look as though there was no fence, or, at worse, a pale shadow of the fence.

When my husband saw the pictures, he asked “How did you do that?”

I also received some email asking how I was able to blur out the background of the butterfly pictures.  The very short answer to both questions:  Watching the light and adjusting the aperture.   Watching the light simply means seeing where the angle the light is coming from, its intensity, and how it may affect the subject of the photograph.  Some photographic terms for defining how that light interacts with your camera are:

Aperture:  It defines the diameter of the lens opening and how much light comes into the camera.  The size of the aperture is defined by the f-stop.  The “f”  stands for fraction of a focal length.  Focal length is also referred to as depth of field.
Shutter Speed: how long the light is allowed into the camera.
ISO (or ASA) defines how sensitive the sensor (or film) is to light.

How you use the aperture, shutter speed, and ISO is a sea-sawing balancing act to get the end result that you desire.  Luckily, when using a digital camera, you can immediately see your results and make changes as required.

Shutter speed makes sense:  The longer the camera shutter is open, the more light that hits the sensor (or film). If you’ve used film, you probably remember buying 100 ASA film, 400 ASA film, and even faster films.  Most people generally used 100 because it gave very good results in most lighting situations.  While not exactly, ISO is like the digital equivalent of ASA.  Generally the camera defaults to 100, and sometimes people increase this number as the lighting decreases.  Like with film, the higher the number, the greater the risk of having a grainy image.  Both shutter speed and ISO are relatively clear.  It’s f-stops, however, that can get tricky.

If you’ve used a 35mm camera , you probably remember the series of numbers on the lens. Those numbers are the f-stops — for example,  f/2 to f/32.  There is a mathematical explanation between the progression of f-stops.  Each successive f-stop allows in half of the incoming light.  In other words, the f/4 setting allows in half of the light as the f/2.8 setting.  The f/2.8 setting uses half of the light as the f/2 setting.  The term “stopping down” means allowing in half of the light. You don’t need to know this math unless you want to.  What is helpful to understand, however, is the following:

The smaller the f-stop (F2), the larger the aperture and also the wider the stream of light coming into the camera.  The larger that aperture, the less the overall image is in focus and the smaller the depth of field.  A  small f-stop is ideal for photographing a butterfly.  It keeps the focus on the butterfly and blurs out everything else.  A smaller f-stop can work nicely when photographing a person.

• Small f-stop = large aperture or wide light beam = smaller focus area
  (small depth of field)

The higher the f-stop (F22), the smaller the aperture, meaning the more narrow the stream of light that comes into the camera.  The small the aperture, the more in focus, and greater the depth of field.  A high f-stop is ideal for photographing a landscape.

• High f-stop= smaller aperture or less wide light beam = greater focus of wide area
  (large depth of field)

It seems counter intuitive, as it would seem that the larger number would indicate the more light coming in.  But, not so.  Think of quilting needles — the higher the quilting needle size, the smaller the eye of the needle.  With f-stops, the higher the number the more depth of field because of the smaller aperture opening.

I really do get dyslexic with this stuff, and when I’m shooting I often think: small f-stop, small focus; high f-stop, wide focus.

This image has a medium high f-stop.  The higher f-stop means more of the image is in focus.  This is why the fence, especially around the area of the wolf’s head, is in focus. However, you can also see how the depth of field is graduating from somewhat out of focus to in focus.

This is taken from the same location, but this time I widened the aperture, meaning I used  a smaller f-stop which results in the focus being on the subject itself.  This means that the fence in front of the wolf is a bit blurred, and the area behind the wolf is a bit blurred.  Neither is very blurred because the wolf was relatively close to the fence.  Even so, I like this image better than the one above it.  Editing away the fence in this image would be far easier than in the image above it.

Here’s another example.  In this case, the fence is still visible, but not as distracting as it would otherwise be had I used a higher f-stop and the focus is still on the wolf.

Many cameras come with pre-programmed settings such as a close-up, a landscape setting, a person in the foreground and focus in the background, and so on.  In those cases, the camera is controlling the aperture and shutter speed for you (based on the ISO setting you’re using).  If you have aperture priority, that means you can set the f-stop and let the camera figure out the faster shutter speed it can use.  Shutter priority means you define how fast you want the shutter speed and it balances out the aperture.  Understanding these principals allows you to know when you may want to override your camera’s programmed settings.

In this example, the focus is on the head of the wolf and the nearby greenery.

Here’s another way to think of aperture and f-stops.   Think of a large circle, that circle can represent an f/2 aperture.  Then think of a series of progressively smaller circles, all within the large circle.  Each of the  progressively smaller circles have a progressively higher f-stop number and each smaller circle lets in less light.   It’s the large circle that is the constant.  The aperture can close smaller, but it can never open larger than the largest aperture of the lens.   And this is a prime reason why a “fast” 200mm lens can cost far more money than a much “slower” 200mm lens.  The wider aperture can allow in more light, meaning you can use it in a low light situation, but it can always be stopped down to let in less light.  However, a lens with a small aperture to begin with can only allow in so much light at its widest setting.  Thus, in the same lighting situation, one lens could require a tripod or flash, while another may allow in enough light so that neither a tripod or flash is needed.  But, again, it’s all a balancing act between aperture, shutter speed, ISO, available light, and even your subject (is it moving like in a sporting event or stable like in a landscape).

Here are a few more images using a smaller f-stop.

In this image, the fence is hardly visible at all.

While the fence is a bit visible in certain areas, it also looks like sunlight reflecting off of something like tree leaves.

When I was fooling with settings and looking at the results (I was using a digital camera), I realized that the placement of the wolf’s eyes affected the quality of the image.  When possible, I tried lining up the eyes within the space between the wire of the fences.  Otherwise, the eyes appeared less in focus because the wire of the fence was blurred in front of the eye.

None of these images are incredible (although I am partial to a couple of them),  and they are a bit “soft” because of having a blurred fence in front of the subject, but they all are better than they would have been if the fence was prominent.

So, to answer the question of how I photographed the wolves and the butterflies: I used a fairly decent lens with its lowest  f-stop,  I watched the angle of the light, and I focused on the eyes of the wolf or the head of the butterfly.

I mentioned in an earlier post that some years back my husband and I happened upon a park that had a zillion butterflies, that I didn’t have my camera, and I nearly cried. Yesterday evening, we took another long ride in search of butterflies.  We stumbled upon a park, and there they were.  It was like monarch city, and I had my camera with me.  I took several hundred pictures.  Okay.  Really more.  But, what the heck.  It’s fun.  It’s easy.  It’s digital.  If you have the cards and the battery juice, and there’s sometime good to photograph, I snap away!  Ahhh … now it feels like summer!

Rich found a bench and drifted off to sleep.  He said it was amazingly comfortable, the air was fresh and clean, and he had a nice nap!  I kept hoping a butterfly would land on him.

By the way, I really am working on my quilt for entry to Quilt National.  I’ve yet to get accepted to that show, and have tried for more than a decade.  Even so, I continue trying and now consider my entry fee as a  contribution to the organization (otherwise I’d feel like a total loser).

Yesterday I went to three of my favorite places to find and photograph butterflies —  Sayen Gardens,  Davidson Pond, and Farrington Lake — in Mercer and Middlesex Counties.  I was extremely surprised that I didn’t find one monarch.  It was the strangest thing.  One year there were literally hundreds of monarch butterflies at Davidson Pond, but I didn’t have my camera with me (yes, I nearly cried).  In years past, at the very least there were six to ten.  This year, nothing.  Maybe it’s the extreme heat and humidity.  It certainly looks prime, with many butterflies bushes in full bloom, blue skies, sunny.

This morning I got up earlier and went out again.  This time I found one, just one, Eastern swallowtail butterfly.  I was able to snap off some pictures, but not many.

There were several of these little guys.

And many of these moths.

But this was the lone “star.”.

I did speak with a woman who was also stunned by the lack of butterflies.

She seemed to think it was a ominous sign.  I hope not!

I waited, sitting under a large pine tree to keep out of the direct sun.

Click the link to the right to see the rest of the photos … (more…)

Every year I search for butterflies to photograph.

I have quite a collection.  Hundreds.

These four are not my best, but they are my latest.

Now that the weather is hot, and the skies are blue,
I’ll be on the hunt for more.

I take them purely for the enjoyment.  Plus, I get a kick out
of recognizing some of the patterns butterflies fly in.
I do a fairly good job at guesstimating where they may land.

I have other items that I am anxious to write about — making a panoramic image, cleaning my Janome sewing machine, photos from Longwood Gardens.  But, for now, it’s just some butterflies.