Feed Me Seymour

DSCN1484, originally uploaded by wooac.

Not sure what this was. It is really only a bud but it struck me as the plant from the Little Shop of Horrors. Feed Me Seymour....

Face in a Flower

DSCN1538, originally uploaded by wooac.

This flower was photographed at the Presidio Native Plant Nursery, way in the back where the plants are probably not native. So the question is why would a flower mimic a face or do we just see a face in this? I suspect the flower is really mimicking a face, not to attract bees but to dissuade potential eaters, like birds, to stay away.

Ice Plant Flower

These are closeup macros shot with a reversed 50mm lens on a Point and Shoot camera of a single ice plant flower in Lincoln Park. Ice plants are known for their brilliant color and their ability to attract bees. But I would not have guessed that the pistols were so wild inside it. Also, the octopus like inner structure is quite amazing. Of course, on a spring day there are bits of pollen littered everywhere either from the wind or an errant bee.

Dandelion

Dandelion, originally uploaded by wooac.

This is a closeup of a dandelion seed head before they've blown away. It was taken with a Point and Shoot Nikon P5000 with a reversed 50mm lens outside the 3x zoom lens off the fairway on one of the holes in the Lincoln Park golf course.

Some interesting things come out of this photo. The feathery spokes which loft the seed are not uniformly distributed. It's close but not quite. They do have bilateral symmetry however. I wonder if gravity is reasonable for this deviance from uniform or the closest packing (hexagonal) of the seeds themselves which forces this arrangement.

Davies Symphony Hall

Davies Symphony Hall is an acoustically engineered room. It is optimized for the sound from the Orchestra to reach the audience as clean, clear music. I think it has been mostly optimized for the Orchestra floor level and we have box seats. It's particularly bad in the far back on Tier 1 and higher. Also, the reflectors actually make the organ sound worse and the cement structure and floor create a very cold hard sound.

One of the features I don't understand is this array of slots and protrusions. My guess is that is supposed to act as a slot array for extremely low frequencies because the size and distances are so large. But I can't think of any instrument, except for the organ, which produces such low notes. My other guess is that there is motor noise from something, perhaps in the ceiling itself or above like the HVAC unit and this array alleviates that problem.

If you have any ideas, please let me know.

Merced River Macro

Merced River Macro, originally uploaded by wooac.

As part of the Ansel Adams Gallery Photo-walk the group walked along the Merced River from the Stone Bridge to a steel one. These macros were taken just to the west of the steel bridge. What surprised me was the amount of oil on the water along the banks. I was told that propane replaced heating oil in the Valley so I suspect that this is crankcase oil washed into the river from the roads.

Evaporation After An Overnight Snowfall

Evaporation After An Overnight Snowfall, originally uploaded by wooac.

Taken from the North Bank of the Merced River of the gap to the east of Sentinel Rock. The rain turned to snow overnight. Scattered showers this day with occasional breaks of bright sunshine. This was one of those breaks with the sun directly over this gap, causing the flare. I particularly like the wave pattern in the sky above the condensation. It's not something I see that often.