TAZM PICTURES

So you’ve heard of macro photography – and I’ve been blogging about it recently as well.  But what about micro photography?  Ever wanted to take a picture of something you can only see under a microscope?  Well, how about video?

It used to be really expensive, but there are a couple of options out there for under $100 that actually work.  I picked up this digital microscope from the Sharper Image for $79.99 which is a great value for money.  Although the description is not quite accurate, it does a lot of fun stuff – and in my opinion, not just for kids!  Of course, some of us are still kids at heart…

The website says it magnifies at 30X to 300X – in actuality it appears to do optical magnification of 3.5x OR 35x – and then you can digitally magnify that image 1x to 4x with the press of a button – though the image gets pretty noisy when you do that.  But I found that 35x is already quite impressive.

What I think is cool is that you can also do video.  Although when you take something that’s moving, and magnify it 35 times, it’s pretty hard to keep onscreen.  There are a number of setting options to change the resolution of your photos (1.3 MP max) or videos (30 fps), and you can even take 3-shot bursts.  Given the depth of field issue, however, it quickly becomes clear why microscopes are generally used to view things on slides.

Take a look at these photos and consider what you might be able to do with one of these.  I’ve been fooling around with it quite a bit the last few days.  Of course that has a lot to do with the fact that someone stole my laptop and camcorder. *sigh*

This is the head of an ant, magnified 35 times.  How did I get him to stand still?  Well, he was already dead – I just had to get his buddy to stop dragging him for a minute.

You know those tiny red bugs you sometimes see crawling on bricks?  No larger than, say the ball of a ball-point pen?  This is one of those, magnified 35 times.  I think it’s called a spider mite.

This is what happens when you stack the digital magnification on top of the optical.  I think this is 3 times 35x.

Some green algae I found floating in a pond.

And just for good measure, I’ll include some video. TURN DOWN YOUR VOLUME! I’m not sure what the rationale would be for sound on a microscopic video, but there you have it.

Last year I wrote about how Ridley Scott and Kevin MacDonald were seeking YOUR contributions to use in a film about life on Earth’s most documented day – July 24, 2010.  I was disappointed to miss the film’s release on July 24, 2011 because I headed off to my new home in Africa the day prior.  Well, now that it’s made its tour of the theatres (with pretty good reviews, I might add!) you can watch the film for free on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/lifeinaday).

Interesting to see what footage, from the 4500 hours they were offered, they decided to include.  Mine wasn’t chosen – was yours?

There are so many insect species out there that it’s almost impossible to identify the ones you come across.  This one flies and lives in Namibia, and has odd hind legs, almost like a bee laden with honey.  It’s fun to take pictures of, though.

According to some statistics, 60 percent of Namibia’s urban dwellers, 25 percent of all Namibians live in so-called “informal settlements.”  They come to Windhoek in search of jobs, opportunities and a better life.  And in spite of the fact that Windhoek enjoys a reputation as a city which has taken better care of its newest settlers, they are perpetually behind.

Namibia’s former (Apartheid era) township, Katutura is a dense network of symmetrically laid out roads and small, squarish houses laid out in neat rows at close intervals, and activity everywhere.  But these settlements are not informal – the city has laid out a grid, named the roads, and at regular interval are water spigots and street lights.  They are the envy of the favelas and the shantytowns of the world’s larger cities.

But as you start heading out of town you pass one-room homes of plywood and sheet metal, built at all angles on the hillsides surrounding a clinic or a radio tower.  Interspersed among the homes are the southern African bakkies or pick-up trucks – some quite late model – and the occasional SUV.  Some of the houses lean impossibly, or are built parallel to the contour of the hillside.  Ladies in Victorian dress with their traditional herero hat sweep outside, on weekends men braai or barbecue over a wood fire, and the area is impeccably clean.  Yet there is no running water or plumbing, and for miles in both directions on the paved highway one sees men carrying bundles of wood, perhaps to be sold for a few Namibian dollars.

Check out these macro photos of a grasshopper (or, as my daughter felt was more appropriate, “locust” – it was a good 3 inches long!) that was perched outside out front door.  If you look close, you can see little droplets of water on his face.  The full resolution photos can be downloaded at tazmpictures.photoshop.com.

Although you can’t beat the price for video and music editing software when it comes to iFilm and GarageBand for the iPad, trying to create a video from top to bottom using nothing but an iPad 2 still leaves a bit to be desired.  Probably people who have never used any other video or music programs never notice – but I find myself constantly wishing I could resize the video, fade music in and out, or make color alterations.  This is to say nothing of trying to use an iPad to record video in the first place.

I recently took a trip to the Namibian coastal town of Swakopmund, and took the very rare step of bringing neither a camera nor a computer.  Of course, as I arrived, the “golden hour” at sunset was approaching (the hour or so after dawn and before sunset when the light lets you capture amazing footage) and I thought the wind and waves at sunset on the westward-facing coast would make for some good video.  So I grabbed my iPad.

The video below is the result – all of the footage was captured with the iPad (you can see some of the auto-balance and lighting issues), edited using the iFilm app, and then I added some music made in iPad’s GarageBand.  It runs a bit long at the end, mainly because the music is a bit long.  Then I uploaded it to YouTube and cheated a bit – using the stabilize function to cut down on the movement caused by the strong coastal wind hitting the iPad while I was recording.  I think it turned out OK.  Yes, that is a dead penguin on the beach.

When 18 white dudes from southern Africa with German names get together for a blues show, you know it’s gonna be authentic.  Or was that ironic.

Anyway, enjoyed a rare blues show in Windhoek a couple weeks ago when local “Mojo Blues Band” teamed up with the 11-piece brass “Wikiaphoniker Orchestra.”  Although at times there was something just not quite right – I could never put my finger on it – with the sound, you’ve got to hand it to these guys who obviously know their American blues history and lore, and put on an energetic show for an audience of older white people from southern Africa mainly speaking German.  Hey, like I always say – this is Africa.

They didn’t really want me recording this sampler, but then ZZ Top probably didn’t want these guys performing their song for money either.  Let’s call it even.

This month’s category in the Afrikaans-language Die Republikein (published here in Namibia) was macro, so I thought I’d give it a try and got an honorable mention for this photo:

Now I know what you’re thinking – I was thinking the same thing.  Probably there were only like 5 entries.  Turns out there were like 161.  Check out the rest of the macro photography entries at Die Republikein.  Next month’s category: “Namibia’s treasure chest”.  Not quite sure what is meant by that.

I happened to catch this interesting spider on a glass door, and snapped a couple of different photos.  I believe it’s Selenopidae, or the wall crab spider.  Because it’s so flat, depth of field/focus issues are not as much a problem as with ordinary macro photography.  Because the spider is about an inch across, not a lot of magnification was needed to get an interesting set of shots.

The first is without flash.  Because of the daylight on the other side of the door, we get a nice profile:

Next I thought I would take a photo with flash, but from underneath the spider.  It took a few times to get the focus right on the spider, rather than on the imperfections in the glass.

And finally, flash photography of the spider from the top.  In this photo, the spider is partially reflected in the double glass.

rejkel

Last weekend, I joined a hundred or so other runners in Windhoek’s northern township, Katutura – which means “place we do not want to live” – to run as many laps as possible for charity.  As I wrote in a previous post, the event was “Namibia Runs for Charity”; and as a barefoot runner since July 2010 I was hoping to run ten miles barefoot.  We hgad been given the opportunity to nominate the charities we wanted to support, and I wanted to raise money for the International Women’s Association of Namibia, which supports 9 other charities that help vulnerable communities in Windhoek and Katutura.

Barefoot running has been challenging in Namibia because the roads are especially rough, and virtually every plant here has some sort of thorn or spine (and they end up on the ground).  So I was apprehensive about running on the dirt track – more than I normally am because of the odd looks I’m sure to get.  But as I arrived I was surprised to see that most of the runners were local schoolkids – about half of them running barefoot, some in flip-flops or sandals, and a few wearing dress shoes.  A few teachers, and a group of women running to support the local SPCA wore traditional running shoes.

So as I arrived (an hour after the event had started) the Namibian national anthem was played, an announcer wished us luck, and I set out on the track, which consisted of a fine dust with scattered pebbles of varying sizes – just enough to keep me on my toes.  A rare rain had fallen that morning, and a quarter of the track was wet, bringing cool relief from the sharp stones as I rounded the far curve each lap.  While I was running, occasionally a child or two would stick with me for a few laps, but generally most of the kids insisted on a faster pace than I was willing to run.

I spent a good five miles or so running with “Ernesto.”  About waist-high to me and with a big gap where he had just lost his “baby teeth” he quietly ran with me, ignoring the bigger kids who were constantly passing.  I finally asked him how many laps he had run, and he said, “First I ran 29, then 19, and now I am on 3.”  Doing the math in my mind I realized he had run in the neighborhood of 13 miles by that point.  By the time he left the track to put on his sandals and head to the hostel behind the arena, he completed 83 laps, or nearly 21 miles.  All good motivation to keep me moving.

A local DJ kept things hopping with some kwaito music and local dance groups alternated with local kids dancing in return for frisbees.  Some of the kids had to be shown how the frisbees worked.

As I finished mile 10, it wasn’t the stones that were making running tough, but the temperature of the track.  While the kids appeared impervious to the heat, I was concerned about getting blisters under my calloused skin, and slipped on a pair of Vibram FiveFingers to try and do a few more laps to bring me up to a half marathon.  By this point a 12- or 13-year-old girl had joined me, and, for the last few laps, another group of 4 or 5 kids.  As I cruised in for my final lap, Namibia’s Director of Tourism, Sem Shikongo, was encouraging many of the kids who had finished their runs to do one more “victory lap” with him.

Here’s a photo taken near the end of the run, which ran in the local Afrikaans paper:

And a short video on the event.  Next year I’m going to try for the full marathon!