Progress or is it?

"Year in the swamp: sunken dreams" -project moves along, or does it? While I was ill and delirious from a high fever, I came up with an idea for the project. Yesterday I took the first steps at making that idea turn into reality. Getting a complete picture of the entire area is not as simple as one would imagine, but not at all impossible. The cost is one thing to consider, the technical implementation another. Both have problems to be solved and I have to do a balancing act between the two. If cost would not be a factor, the technical side would be easy to accomplish. The lower I try to keep the cost, the harder the technical side becomes. Interest consideration at its best or worst, however one wants to look at it.

When my fever had come down, I also looked into how to complete the entire project. After a very brief study of the matter it became clear that self-published is the only way to go. The publishers' only interest is in making a profit and the markets for a book of this type are so small that there is no way it would be of interest to a publishing company. Lucky for me, self publishing has become easy in recent years and even rather cheap to a certain extent.

A morning walk-about

After being stuck inside for so long, it was great to get out into the wild this morning. I walked about the swamp area without much aim, just looking at the sights, enjoying the peace and quiet and taking a few pictures. I stopped by at the hide to have a snackbreak. The hide was still tightly in place, the camonetting had not come loose and even the rain had stayed outside. I got to spend the morning outside and even managed to get a few pictures for the book project, mainly plants and insects this time, since the fall migration of birds is not on yet. Here are the "blog pictures" of the day:

A burning sensation inside

For the past two weeks I have had a burning feeling inside me. I've been like an animal in a cage, restless and irritated. Earlier today I could no longer control myself when I saw something dark hovering over the sun lighted flowerbed behind our kitchen window. I grabbed my camera and rushed outside. It was time to do something about that burning I was feeling. At the corner of our garage, next to the flowerbed, I crouched, aimed and shot. I rushed behind the next cover, changed position, aimed and shot. I seeked different angles. Shot some more. Slowly I could feel myself getting closer to harmony. A few more pictures and I felt tranquility setting in. I put my camera down and just watched as the admiral butterfly sailed on:

Feeling ill

I've been sick for the last couple of days. I even went to see a doctor. I was told that I had a normal cold and not the swine kind that everyone's been so hype about lately. Nice to know.

Fishing

Some time ago I promised the kids I'd take them fishing. Today was the day that we went. After a few coincidences our departure was delayed quite a bit, so that we didn't have much time to spend at the lake. The girls really enjoyed every moment and we agreed to go again in the near future.

A few pictures:

And the necessary evidence photo to prove that Susanna proved her fishing abilities on her first time out:

Eleven years

Rasberries and bugs II

I had received more orders for the morning, so I went to the supermarket. After getting the shopping done, I headed out to pick rasberries. As allways, I had my camera with me. I left my backpack and camera at the edge of the rasberrybush, close enough to be grabbed on short notice if something interesting came into view. I took a few insect pictures. Here's one:
I had also promised another nature photographer a picture of my WK. This is what it looks like:
There were loads of rasberries. A couple of hours in the bush, and I had gathered just short of a bucketfull. There would have been plenty more to pick, but I ran out of time since I had to head of towards home to pick up the girls from daycare and get myself ready for nightshift at work. If there will be many more years like this one with wild berries, our family will need to invest in another freezer.

A morning in the woods

After getting up in the morning, I did as I was told and cleaned the house. After vacuuming the last dustball away, I grabbed my backpack, a bucket and berrypicker and headed to the woods. Before lunchtime I had picked a bucket of blueberries and as I walked about, I found a great spot for rasberries. I'll have to go back in the next couple of days. I kept practicing taking pictures of insects. I obviously need the practice, since most of todays pictures turned out lousy. I seemed to keep making mistakes with focusing. The problem was a gray cloudy day in rather thick terrain, I didn't have much light to work with. I was concentrating on depth and did not take note of the extending shuttertimes as I had my camera set on AV. The end result was a lot of motion blur and obviously shaken pictures.

Along the way I snapped a picture of a fairytale forrest:
Here is a example of the days bugshots:

Not exactly what I was hoping for, I like the composition, but it would be much better if the spider would be completely in focus. I was planning to go out to the swamp this evening, but the dull gray weather does not make me feel like heading out. I think I'll just wait for a day with better light.

Rasberries and bugs

My idea was to go pick blueberries. At first I had trouble getting myself started in the morning and once I got into the bush, I decided to concentrate on rasberries for a couple of hours and leave the blueberries for another day. While picking berries, I also practiced taking pictures of bugs, since I'll have to start taking closeups for my project sometime in the near future among a lot of other things.

The days pictures: