9 posts tagged “photo”
My clot had been caused by Deep Vein Thrombosis in my leg. This is where something gums up the works in the wall of a vein and the blood starts to clot like it does when you get an external cut. It goes hard. Unfortunately, when this is inside your body, it can continue to grow - blood will clot on the end of the existing hardened blood cells, and grow like a stalagtite or string inside your body. Mine grew to around 35 centimeters before I knew anything was wrong. In fact, I didn't know anything was wrong until I collapsed from oxygen deprivation (the doctors told me my "O2 sats were 60%", which is pretty bad. Normally it's 95% or above), because a huge chunk had broken off and travelled up into my lungs, where it promptly broke into about 1,000,000 peices, blocking all those useful holes that let you breath air.
This morning I had strange dream. It was one in where I was being told news I really didn't want to hear. But I couldn't get away from the person who was telling me. I awoke in a fug around 4:30am and was seriously unable to go back to sleep. I knew exactly what my problem was, for today was my meeting with my haemotologist (blood specialist) to determine how long I would be on these little green and white drugs. I was nervous. I shouldn't have been: my clot was diagnosed as completely gone on the 17th of December last year, but to this day no-one can tell me how my body formed the clot in the first place. I didn't have symptoms at all, and I didn't have the usual diagnosable problems when I went into hospital that would indicate a clot. It was a mystery. My morning nerves were from thinking that my doctor was going to tell me that I would be on the little pills for life.
These little pills make my blood less susceptible to clotting. So if I get a cut that bleeds, it would take two to three times longer for me to stop bleeding than other people would take for the same size cut. Not such a problem for small scrapes and such, but for major breaks or bruises or internal damage it can be life threatening. To be on them for life would mean I would either need to buy a portable INR lab kit, or simply live near a pathology clinic and go there once or twice a month for a blood test for ever. The stuff these pills does to your blood can get wildly out of control very quickly, and you don't want your blood to be messed up. It's kind of important, you know?
My doctor could have told me two things today. He could have said "You're slightly overweight, I want you to stay on the pills for another unspecified-vague amount of time until you lose that weight and keep it off". Actually, I'm 100.1 kilograms at the moment, according to the highly calibrated scale at the hospital. I'm around 185cm tall, so this weight is not excessive. The doctor could have also said "That's it, clot's over, get off those pills and go have a nice life." Thus my morning anxiety. Would the doctor surprise me and tell me I had twenty minutes to live?
In case you're interested, he actually said "That's it, clot's over" and sent me on my way. I'm pretty happy about that, to understate it. I needed to take a photo of the pills for my memory, because they're going in the garbage now for ever.
Well then. I'd say that's a challenge!
'Course, the reason I don't post too often is that I don't actually have an interesting life, and can't rant or rave about current events because I'm living under a rock. It can be dull under here, you know, so on the occasions that I do get out, I like to visit such far and distant places such as my local botanic garden just down the road. Perhaps you'd like to join me, one day? When I first came to Coffs Harbour, I thought that the botanic gardens would feature (as many do) formal garden areas; leafy walkways, fountains and waterfalls. And then found out there's a duck pond at the start, some bushland exactly like the rest of town, some mangroves exactly like the rest of the creek, and some lawny bits interspersed with unkempt paths and unevocative trees.
Happily, things have picked up. There waterfall - man made and rather poorly landscaped - has been turned on most times I've been there. It's odd to see it running one minute, then the sound to die away and water to slowly dribble to a halt.The red asian bridge over the lagoon still goes to a patch of dirt and unmown lawn and as such provides great photographic opportunities from one direction only. The orchid and cactus house (in the same building, of course, because these types of plant go so well together) has been locked on every visit bar one (when the door wasn't locked down properly and I was able to open it to the public myself). Quite interesting cacti inside, if you're into such things:
I'm afraid I'm not that much into cacti, other than an interesting diversion for a photo. At any rate, there was a red paper wasp nest of particularly large size attached to the side of a prickly pear cactus, and since I am considerably allergic to the little buggers, I only snapped off a couple of shots that particular day. The cactus house has remained locked ever since. On my most recent visit I was pleasantly surprised to find that quite a bit of work had gone on and many of the scatty tatty bushes and trees had been visciously pruned; extensive mulching had been done under most of the common public areas, and that the swampy birch grove was indeed swampy (and a mosquito paradise to boot), as opposed to the parched overgrown backtrack I'd previously ventured down.
Not that I'm trying to talk it up. It still has that red bridge to nowhere, the crazy unmaintained scrubland tracks with plastic-coke-bottle-and-shopping-trolley-laiden mangrove swamp views, the nature walk along the chain link fence between bracken infested scrub and cemetary, the annoying wedding parties taking up all the good reading spots.
Still, you do find the odd gem here and there.
I haven't been anywhere near my camera in about a month. And it's been quite a bit longer than that since I've actually done any photography decent enough to want to share.
Not so recently I ordered a ND400 filter, and two days ago it finally turned up. This is basically a filter that blocks the amount of light that gets into the camera. It's dark, and that allows me to use longer exposures in bright light. As you can see from the image above, the ocean takes on a strange appearance. If I had waited till dusk, I may have even allowed the exposure to go longer, giving an even milkier appearance.
This one last photo did seem to work out just as I had planned, though.
It's been quite a while since my last blog. The usual excuses people go for are that they are busy, or are having a life, or are tired from work/school/college/relaxing-too-much. Actually I haven't seen that last one. I forgot my Vox password and so I haven't posted. I know there's a link there on the logon page to retrieve it, but I've been lazy. Up until now.
That's a midday sky here in Coffs Harbour, which is quite different to the almost-white colour I'm used to getting. I'm happy with this lens - for now. I'm of course wanting a ND8 or anything higher now. And some warming filters. And... oh, the list goes on.
Anyway, here's a few more shots I've taken recently that I'm also happy with.
But every so often I hit the jackpot, which is what happened with the photo above. It worked, just the way I wanted it to. I actually ended up with two shots from a similar angle that worked on these falls (incidentally, part of the Dorrigo National Park, a world heritage listed rainforest area), as you can see below on the left.It's a little darker, but you get to see more of the area.
Have I mentioned that I love my ultra-wide angle lens? I guess I also love my macro lens. But what good is a macro lens for waterfalls? You'd only see a single droplet!
Anyway, I'm a sucker for running water. If I can fudge the exposure just enough that my picture doesn't come out all white, and keep it exposing for a second or two to capture the "smoky" effect of moving water, I'll have a go. Even a little weir like this one below is enough to grab my attention.
While the soft focus effect isn't something I was going for, it was quite a pleasant surprise. It was only last night that I was perusing the Hoya website and checking out their soft and special effect filters. The effect here isn't such a filter - it's simply me with a 300mm telephoto lens, 2x magnifier and fogged up glasses. Yes, I thought the foggy effect was sweat on my glasses, so I ignored it. But what an effect!
I was also busy getting super close to flowers this afternoon, trying to capture the little details that most people don't see. For instance, in the red flower to the left, I've always thought that the centre part looks like figures holding hands and dancing around a tree. See that centre yellowy but with the spotty orange "trunk". That's the "tree". Other people think I'm crazy.
I've been shooting in Raw mode lately. This is really cool because I can twiddle the images a whole lot easier that with jpegs. My EOS 350D came with a rather drab raw processing program, but if you're willing to look past its pretty hopeless interface you find all the neccesary options for brightening or fixing your photos. There is a problem with shooting in RAW though - each photo is 8MB big on disk, and also has a 3MB jpeg version as well. So not only can you shoot 1Gb of photos without breaking a sweat, you transfer them all from the camera and end up with doubled up shots!
I was happy with today's flowers. I actually shot about 200 images, and am currently exploring software that can manage them all (Picassa looks ok, except it has no ability that I can see to detect or manage duplicates). The interface is quick and it understands the .cr2 file format, which many products don't do.
Anyway, tell me what you think of my flowers.
My Groups
-
Aussies Updated: 1 hour ago
-
Great Southern Land. Updated: 3 hours ago
-
Photography Updated: 4 hours ago
