Some days

You just know you shouldn't have gotten out of bed.

The plan today was to try and get a stack of a dragon's face, but any bug that was prepared to pose long enough would do. The best chance for a motionless dragon is very early in the morning, before the temperatures start to rise. So, first light at 05:30 was the decision.

I prepared the camera, loaded the charged battery and inserted the card. The card didn't seem to want to go in nice, so I pulled it out and had a look. There was a small string of plastic sticking out between the contacts. Nothing I could do to repair it, so I pulled it off and had another go. It inserted fine, so I did a few test shots and they were fine too. Have to keep an eye on that.

After tying up the tripod to the bike (that's the next project, a tripod clamp for the bike), I noticed that my rear wheel was flat. Bitterly disappointing but no big surprise. On the way home from the airport yesterday, in the dark, I hit a couple of massive potholes in the road. All the recent flash floods had taken their toll.

I checked the tyres when I got home last night and all was fine, so obviously a slow puncture. I own an air compressor, so I filled the tyre and decided to see if I could at least get the blip out of the way. I arrived at my blipping grounds and the tyre was still good.

About ten meters in, I found a spider in a web that I have tried photographing many times, but never managed a good image, a perfect subject. I set-up the tripod, went to load the camera -dammit - I forgot the little plastic tripod attachment. With my mind firmly set on a stack, I had no choice but to return home. Already, the early start ploy was blown out of the water.

Up stairs to the studio, no sign of the thingy. Must have left it on the bench in the workshop - no, not there either. I checked the studio and the workshop a few more times, no sign of the illusive thingy! So I sat down and decided to do the 'dreamwalker' thing, wiggled my finger and had a think.

It must be in the house, as I have not taken the Makrak out since I finished the camera clamp. So, what was the last thing I did with it - then I remembered that not eight hours ago, I blipped the Makrak with my old camera mounted for demonstration purposes. Sure enough, the thingy was still screwed to the camera. Don't you just love the power of the human brain!

The tyre still looked good, so I topped it up and headed out again.

I found a different spider in a web this time. Set-up, test shot to check the exposure, adjusted focus and because of the distance, judgimated that 1mm steps would be fine. Half way through the shoot, the spider scampered off to collect a fly but returned to the same place, so I started over and all went well. Although there was no wind, there was still a chance that the large expanse of web could have moved, so I continued on to find more subjects. I did find dragon opportunities, but there was no chance of setting the tripod on the narrow path.

The path was very wet and muddy. There must have been very heavy rains yesterday. Inevitably my foot stepped into a muddy puddle and I realized that I had forgotten to pack the hand towel. Now, with both feet seriously slipping and sliding in my flip-flops, I realized that it was time to call it a day and hope for the best with the spider stack. I dropped the bike off at the bengkel for a tyre repair and hobbled home and went back to bed.

Processing - I loaded up the first four images and pulled into layers. On inspection the layers were wildly misaligned. This was due to the instability of my cheap tripod and having to fire the camera by hand (my remote shutter release has packed in). I decided to continue with the auto align, to see if it could handle the anomalies and it did quite well. I went back and did a manual alignment to help the auto, but it was no better, so I pressed ahead with auto.

After several hours of stacking and re-stacking, then stacking from the back and then from the middle. I tried stacking two at a time, four at a time, cropping, stamping and much more fiddling than one paragraph should ever hold. What a disaster. Decision time - blip the fourteen legged spider with a fuzzy face or get out there and do better!

I went out again, around the corner to my old blipping grounds, 'the grove', so you get a straight, no messing about hopper. I remember someone requested this last week, so there you go.

Nearly forgot - almost stood on a snake this morning. It reared up at the last second. Had to change my underpants when I got home!

Dave