New Cottage on the Lake

Friday, 15 June 2012

My sister and brother in law just bought a cottage on the west side of the state. It's on a lake, so last weekend we helped them move the jet boat and boat hoist.

Here's pictures of the weekend we were up north to take the hoist apart. Then this weekend all of the parts to the shore station/boat lift were loaded on to a trailer and strapped down.

On our way with the jet boat and hoist.

Here is a panorama of the lake and cottage.

(click to enlarge)

I tried out my homemade ND filter with my camera. It really makes a calm looking photograph, especially when it's converted to black and white. This picture was a 30 second exposure.

Here's a time lapse video of us putting in the dock and putting the boat hoist together. It only took 2.5 hours to do but unfortunately my camera battery died after about 2 hours. So you miss seeing us push it over the sea wall and into the water.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yRTklcaGzc

The rest of the weekend was spent swimming and watching max jumping off the dock, into the water.

This is a picture i took from about 8' past the end of the dock.

That's his Kong he's chasing on the right.

And here's more pictures of the lake and Max.

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Cottage on the Lake - Putting in the Dock and Boats

Wednesday, 23 May 2012

Last week i went up north to our cottage to help put in the boats and docks. Also my dad and i took apart the aluminum boat hoist. We weren't sure how long it would take, but it ended up only taking a few hours.

A lot of the bolts were rusted from being in the water for several years. Luckily the nuts were at the ends of the bolt, so once we broke them free there wasn't any corroded threads to deal with.

Here is what the boat lift/shore station looked like when it was all taken apart. All of the cables and pulleys are inside of the aluminum beams. And the heaviest part was definitely the white cable crank at the top left.

Also at night i wanted to try taking more pictures with my homemade ND filter, the stars at night and spinning wool. Here's the links to some of those previous pictures and how they are done:

• ND Filter at Lake Erie
• Spinning Wool - Night Photography
• Star Pictures
• Tennessee New Year

Here's the pictures i took with my ND filter. I really like the way it makes the water have a glass surface, it's a very calm and dreamlike photo.

With the photos taken using the welding glass there is some post processing in Photoshop. I have 4 or 5 presets saved so it saves a lot of time since now with just 1 click i can fix the colors. But in a lot of cases, converting the picture to black and white is the best way to emphasize the texture and detail.

Also you can see in this photo that the ND filter acts as a polarizing filter too. It lets you see right into the water.

This was me just experimenting. I had to sit real still for the 30 second exposure.

This is a panorama photo of the lake at night. It was created using 6 pictures, each of them at 53 second exposures. Then i processed them all the same way in Photoshop and combined them into one picture using Autostitch.

(click to enlarge)

I took several pictures of the night sky, but this one turned out the best. I think at first i had the ISO set too low on the camera. I could have forfeit a little bit of added noise for more vibrant pictures. For the panorama i set the ISO at 250, you can see a couple of shooting stars in there too.

This was the spinning wool photos i wanted to try. If you click on the link above you can see the setup i used to hold and light the steel wool.

I was expecting some amazing photographs from this, but none of them were all that great. I think the hardest part was in being the right distance from the camera. You want to be close to the camera to get the dramatic effect, but not so close that all you see is the sparks from the steel wool.

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Water with a Homemade ND Filter

Saturday, 10 March 2012

While i was out testing my DIY - Camera Polarizing Filter, i also brought my DIY - ND Filter i made from a piece of welding glass. I was really happy with how the pictures came out before when i was at Lake Erie.

Here's a slow-moving river near Flat Rock, Michigan.

The ND filter makes a very calm effect. The blurs in the picture are a flock of geese.

I used my new Manfrotto Tripod and it worked great, it was smaller and a lot easier to carry around.

The same picture as before, converted to black and white.

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Macro Photography - Leaf Closeups

Sunday, 26 February 2012

I was experimenting the other day with close-up photos, using different camera settings, of water on a banana leaf. Here's some of the results.





And here are some similar pictures i took a few years ago while i was working in the woods of West Virginia, Kentucky and Jackson Michigan.

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Backyard Pond

Wednesday, 30 November 2011

I thought it would be a cool idea to make a pond in my backyard. Next summer i could plant the lotuses and lily-pads, maybe add some goldfish too.

Here's the area i planned on putting the pond. It would be 'L' shaped and fit in between the wood fence and the concrete slab.
I dug down about 4" the approximate area of the pond. I removed the topsoil, leaving the clay.
Then in Photoshop I drew in what i thought the pond might look like. I added water, rocks, lotuses and a tiny waterfall in the corner. The waterfall would help aerate the pond and i would also filter the water using a homemade first flush filter.

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Random Photos - Lake Erie

Friday, 21 October 2011

These were taken in October, in Monroe, on the shore of Lake Erie. The water level was about 1 foot lower then it typically is. There were several sand bars 100 feet off shore which are usually under water.


Zebra muscles on a rock.
Also it was some sort of Monarch Butterfly migration. Every tree branch and bush on the shore line was covered. There were tens of thousands of butterfly's there.

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Salsa and the Pressure Cooker

Monday, 20 June 2011

I borrowed a pressure cooker from someone at work because Karrie made lots of really good salsa. We did the first batch, 4 jars, but then figured that since we had the pressure cooker we should do more. So we made another pot.

We had to look up online how to use the pressure cooker, how much water to add, how long to cook and at what pressure.
We ended up doing 10 pounds of pressure, 15 minutes after it started boiling. Here's a video of what it looks like when you are at the correct pressure.

The first batch was fine, all the jars sealed. The second batch had 3 jars that didn't seal properly so we re-pressure cooked them.

Here's all the jars and lids, ready for the second batch.
Boiling the lids, just before sealing.

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Banana Tree

Thursday, 16 June 2011

I'm surprised how well the banana tree grew in my house. It had lots of roots.
With it now being 80 degrees i decided it was safe to move and replant outside.
It likes a lot of water. I've noticed that even watering it every day outside isn't enough, the leaves sag a lot and turned brown. But a water pan underneath it's doing better.

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Sprouting Lotus Seeds

Wednesday, 12 January 2011

To start with, i recently read this article about the American Lotus spreading near Detroit.Lotus in Detroit
"The American lotus is threatened in Michigan, and there is a fine as high as $500 for picking it, according to the state Department of Natural Resources."

Just so everyone including the DNR is clear, i didn't pick any plants. I merely "gathered" some seeds from the floating seed pods. Plus that law is ridiculous.

How can a plant be "threatened" in Michigan but in other states be a nuisance species. That's like saying penguin's are endangered here in the US. Or that cow's are threatened in Siberia. It's not like this is the last pocket of the species on Earth being killed off by people. Down south the lotus is taking over entire rivers.

It's threatened in Michigan because it's cold here. The water needs to be clean and warm for them to grow, 99% of the time Lake Erie is neither of those two things. Like i said earlier i found it near the Consumers Energy power plant water discharge pipes. If the plant wasn't discharging warm water constantly the lotus plants would probably die.

With that said, here's how the Lotus seeds are looking so far.

The ones on the left are some original dry seeds (that i "gathered") and the ones on the right are the seeds that i sanded the shell and have been soaking in warm water for 5 days. I put the cup of water sitting on a heat vent to make sure it stayed warm. Notice how much they have swelled up with water from their original size.
Three days ago i removed the shell from two more seeds. One seed i removed the outer shell only. The other seed i cracked completely in half.
It turns out that completely removing the shell is the way to go. That seed sprouted after only 3 days. It took the seeds with the partially sanded shells 6 days for the first one to sprout. So removing more of the shell means faster sprouting. It must be because removing the entire shell allows for more water to be absorbed faster.

Here's what the seed looked like after 3 days, compared to 5 days for the other seeds.
I sprouted these seeds in a wet paper towel in a zip-lock bag rather then in a cup of water.
Not surprisingly the lotus grows best in swampy, organic, muddy clay soil. I was going to use kitty litter because it is primarily clay. But i ended up using soil from my back yard, which is mostly clay with a little bit of top soil.

I bought 4 pots from Home Depot the other day. They were in the back corner of the store and due to a clearance pricing mistake, 2 of them cost only 1 cent each. Totally legit.
Here's pictures of the lotus planted 1 inch deep in mud in about 3 inches of water.
Here they are after day 10 or so. They are still growing as long as i don't let them dry out. After reaching the surface they started to dry out so i covered the pot with saran wrap. I'll definitely "juice 'um" with some fertilizer to get them growing big.

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