Water striders …commonly known as water striders, water bugs, magic bugs, pond skaters, skaters, skimmers, water scooters, water skaters, water skeeters, water skimmers… use the high surface tension of water and long, hydrophobic legs to help them stay above water. Water molecules are polar and this causes them to attract to each other. The attractive nature results in the formation of a film-like layer at the top of water. This top layer has gravity acting downward in addition to the water molecules below pulling down the upper molecules. This combination creates a touch surface tension. ~ Wikipedia

I had planned to get up early in the morning and get some bracketed shots of the Princeton Boathouse, at the eastern end of campus, at the edge of Lake Carnegie. I had hoped to use the bracket images to create an HDR image. I think I got up a little too late. None of the HDR images are very pleasing. I did however, catch some rowers out for practice and my wife and I agree that this shot was better than any of the HDR images.

It wasn’t a total waste though. I got to watch the geese swim on the lake. A man came by with his dog. He and his wife had setup chairs to watch the moon. He was using the same app to locate the position of the moon in the sky.

Three exposure HDR (+3/-3), tone mapped in PhotoMatix Pro.

More photos on my Tumblr.

I don’t know what kind of plant this is but I see these white flowers all over the neighborhoods in my area. The trees have sparse green leaves but are covered with a plethora of white flowers. Some of the trees have pinkish flowers.

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I was driving along Nassau Park Boulevard on my way to the office. The strip of land along the road was lined with many trees all of which had blossom in full bloom. The early morning sun was shining through and despite the chill (and my severe allergies) I could not resist. I parked my car and walked back with my tripod. I took a lot of shots but my wife and I really liked this one. I processed the image in Adobe Lightroom 4, Photomatix Pro and Pixelmator.

We’ve had warmer weather in early Spring and most of the trees are in full bloom. While not great for my allergies it has been great for photography. For this demo I’ll use a photo of some blossoms I shot³ while visiting at the home of my wife’s sister.

Original RAW photo imported from my Nikon D40

Setting up

I imported the RAW image from the SD card using the iPad camera connection kit. I could have just as well shot the image on my iPhone and used the iPad Camera Connection Kit or the beam feature of iPhoto to import.

After launching iPhoto, select the Camera Roll or the Photos tab to get a listing of photos. iPhoto works in either portrait or landscape orientation. Use whichever orientation provides the most visibility for editing your photo. I’m using landscape mode for this edit.

Finding files in your photo library

Before you start editing you’ll want to familiarize yourself with the environment. If you touch the question mark icon, tool tips will be overplayed on your screen to explain the various icons. You’ll also want to adjust the size of the film strip to maximize your workspace. You can do this by touching and moving the grey bar located just above the film strip.

Help is just a question mark away

Once you have your environment setup select a photo from the film strip and click “Edit”.

Select a photo to edit

Editing

Once in edit mode you’ll be presented with a new set of icons. Again, it’s a good idea to click the question mark icon to familiarize yourself with the working environment.

Learning about the options in the Edit mode

Crop

The first thing I wanted to do was crop the photo. I wanted the flowers to be the focus of the photo but I thought they were a little too centered. I selected the Crop & Straighten tool and then selected the edge of the photo and dragged the box around. I used the rule of thirds to place the flowers within the grid marks on the right third of my image.

Using the Crop tool

iPhoto edits are cumulative and non-destructive. This means that your original photo is not touched and you can undo all the changes you make. When you are done you can save the result to the Camera Roll or share via the options provided.

Exposure & Color

The next thing I wanted to do was adjust the exposure and white balance of the image. The Exposure tool provides a single slider I can move back and forth to get things just right.

Adjusting brightness and contrast.

While the Color tool provides a number of sliders for manual adjustments I decided to use one of the white balance presets.

Adjusting white balance

Brushes

There are so many ways these can be used but I wanted to sharpen the main object of my photo for displaying on the web. I used the pinch and zoom gesture to zoom in on the area I wanted to work on. I chose the Sharpen brush and using my finger “painted” over the areas I wanted to sharpen.

Using Brushes

Effects

If you are familiar with Instagram then you already have experience applying various filters and textures to your iPhone photos. Effects are similar. There is no right or wrong here. Choose a filter effect that appeals to you. I chose one that added a little more pop to the orange in the flower stamens.

Adding a filter effect

Finishing up

Now that I’ve completed my edits — after tapping the Edit button to exit that mode — I can either save them back to the Camera Roll⁴ or choose one of the many built-in sharing options. Although I’ve just made a bunch of edits to my photo, I need to save the image back to the Camera Roll if I want the edited photo to be available for use by other apps or to sync back to iPhoto on my Mac using iCloud.

Final image after processing in iPhoto for iOS.

I hope I’ve given you a good intro to editing photos on the iPad using Apple’s iPhoto app. Although I prefer using Adobe Lightroom 4 for OS X to edit my photos, the iPhoto app is the perfect compliment to those who use iPhoto or Aperture in combination with iCloud on the Mac.

I love good food. I’m not a chain restaurant diner. Often the food is engineered to cater to the least common denominator by a bunch of people wearing lab coats. That usually means bland, boring, middle of the road food that is high in calories and low in nutrition. There are exceptions of course but very few.

I prefer to eat from restaurants run by chefs who have a love for the craft and who source their ingredients locally. There are a few like that in my area.

Today I took a walk around Rocky Hill – a borough in my Township of Montgomery. I know, I know! I should not have. I have severe allergies to tree pollen and given that the pollen count was so high, I should have stayed inside.

But the tree-lined main street was seductive. After snapping a few good shots with my camera, I stopped in at the One 53 for lunch. My favorite waitress Amy working today. She seated me near the corner window and we chatted while I reviewed the food and beer menu.

I sipped on a bottle of Innis & Gunn Oak Aged Ale – Rum Cask while finishing my Arugula Salad with Roasted Beets & Toasted Goat Cheese. The salad had no protein so Amy offered to add a serving of shrimp. The salad was surprising spicy. I’m not sure that was because of the beets or something that was added to the seasoning that covered the shrimp and chick peas. I’m not a food reviewer but I think this salad was delicious. My wife would enjoy it.

I love gardening. Growing up in the West Indies I was always surrounded by lust tropical vegetation. The island where I was born¹ has a now dormant volcano² but previous eruptions have left the soil dark and fertile. Almost anything will grow on this island without much help. Plant it and it will grow. I grew up with a backyard filled with coconut and avocado trees, and what natives call plum trees³.

I brought that love of grading with me when I moved to the United States but I have nowhere to plant until we bought our first home. I had to learn a lot. The soil in New Jersey is not as fertile and the sort of plants that would grow here are quite different. I had to learn about perennials and annuals and when to plant what and in what soil and with how much fertilizer. It took many years but I think I’m getting the hang of it. Last fall my niece and I planted a whole mess of bulbs. I love watching here face when she comes over to visit and she sees what we created together.