Nature Deficit

It's not listed as a medically recognized disorder, but I know I have it. Richard Louv in a 2005 book about children not having enough time in nature came up with the phrase, Nature Deficit Disorder. According to Wikipedia:

[H]uman beings, especially children, are spending less time outdoors resulting in a wide range of behavioral problems....

Louv claims that causes for the phenomenon include parental fears, restricted access to natural areas, and the lure of the screen.

Louv argues that sensationalist media coverage and paranoid parents have literally "scared children straight out of the woods and fields," while promoting a litigious culture of fear that favors "safe" regimented sports over imaginative play.

In recognizing these trends, some people argue that humans have an instinctive liking for nature—the biophilia hypothesis—and take steps to spend more time outdoors, for example in outdoor education, or by sending young children to forest kindergartens or forest schools.

Louv has a book now, The Nature Principle, that says the same is true for adults as much as for children.

I agree. Wholeheartedly.

Last week several people at work asked me either
Are you feeling okay?

or

Is anything wrong? You don't seem yourself.

No, it's not seasonal affective disorder. It's not about the amount of sunshine available in my life; it's the amount of nature time that I'm not able to get at this time of the year. Add to the cold (frigid at times) the fact that we haven't had the snow to be able to get out on my snowshoes and you have my low energy and lack of pizazz in my life, actions and affect.

It isn't about exercise, either, since I still get a lot of that. I've done over 70 miles on the stationary bike this month- and i haven't even been pushing it.

The treatment is obvious. Get outside. Bundle up and move my body to the great, wide outdoors. Which in Minnesota is easier said than done, of course. In a few weeks I will be able to get out and get my winter quota of beach and gulf water, sun, and sand. I will be refreshed. Until then, well, I am whining to all of you about it. That's a start. Talking always helps.

Then I can look at pictures like this one:

That gets me thinking about the summer ahead when outdoors is easier.

Or this picture:

Which reminds me of how wonderful the world around me is, even in winter.

And one more:

That tells me that an outdoor baseball stadium is still the way to watch the game.. 

and opening day is only 9 weeks away.

For No Reason Whatsoever

Other than Steven Wright is just plain funny.....

I have the world's largest collection of seashells. I keep it on all the beaches of the world...
perhaps you've seen it.
--Steven Wright

Works in Progress

There's a divinity that shapes our ends,

Rough-hew them how we will.

--Hamlet

Playing With Pictures

I have been taking pictures for most of my life, starting at age 9 or 10 thanks to a Dad who loved new things. It never gets dull. In fact with the wonders of digital, it becomes more and more interesting.

Last week I tried seriously to do some HDR work with some of the pictures I have taken in Alabama. I have tried some of this before but this is the first serious work on it.

Here's how Wikipedia describes HDR photography:

high dynamic range imaging (HDRI or just HDR) is a set of techniques that allows a greater dynamic range between the lightest and darkest areas of an image than current standard digital imaging techniques or photographic methods. This wide dynamic range allows HDR images to represent more accurately the range of intensity levels found in real scenes, ranging from direct sunlight to faint starlight, and is often captured by way of a plurality of differently exposed pictures of the same subject matter.

In simpler terms, HDR is a range of techniques geared toward representing more contrast in pictures. Non-HDR cameras take pictures at a single exposure level with a limited contrast range. This results in the loss of detail in bright or dark areas of a picture, depending on whether the camera had a low or high exposure setting. HDR compensates for this loss of detail by taking multiple pictures at different exposure levels and intelligently stitching them together so that we get a picture that is representative in both dark and bright areas.

I have been using Paint Shop Pro for my image processing for well over ten years- back when it was shareware. In its latest incarnation PSP has some good HDR processing tools. So, here are a few of my attempts.

First are two sunset pictures. On  the left is just the empty beach with some color out there at the horizon. You can, of course, add color saturation (or vibrancy) but I liked the particular balance in this one.

Here to the right is sunset with all the added elements from several pictures allowing the wide range of colors and rays to show up. The rays are not "artificial" in that this was the way the camera recorded it in a picture that underexposed the shore and allowed color from the sun.

The Gulf Shores pier at Gulf State Park is quite photogenic. Here I combined several exposures that allowed for that sharpness and contrast of color HDR can give.

From the condo balcony in late afternoon I played a little more with this one to get a more artistic style. Tone mapping and clarity (whatever they are) were used in this one. It was a mostly cloudy day and I thought the HDR allowed for color, yet still giving the cloudy day feel.


Some might begin to argue that we are no longer dealing with real pictures. Having worked with prints back in the dark(room) ages, it has always been easy to change reality, making a photo more than a photo and becoming an artistic statement. Photshopping is no different.

Now I have some older pictures that I took to try to do this from Whitewater Park. With the new tools in Corel Paint Shop Pro X4, it's time to try them, too.

A Picture for Today: Surprise!

I had walked to the beach for sunset- the wonder of a day at the shore. I had been looking to the east and then turned to head west into the sun- and there he was.

Surprise.

I got to about 15 yards and took some pictures.

What a great added wonder.

I also managed to get him just as he began to fly away. He looks upset at me.

Alabama Birds

In my taking-it-easy recuperation time the other day I managed to finally get a video from last years trip to Alabama - Gulf Shores, to be exact. I put together some of the bird videos and then added the music. Just for fun with no goal in mind other than to remind me of the Gulf of Mexico and the wonderful flow of the tides.