Charlie's Fake Blog

For the past twenty-five years that I've lived here our cars have been plagued by the sap raining down from a poplar tree on the edge of the driveway.  We have been looking for someone to cut it down.  A contractor that was replacing the door to our deck recommended a fellow named Art Martello who has a tree trimming service.  We contacted him and after getting an estimate hired him to cut down the tree and trim some branches out of the Maple tree that stands next to the house.  He was here Friday and did a pretty good job. We had agreed to cutting the tree trunk up ourselves so that we could give it to a neighbor for fire wood.  So, there's a pretty big log laying along side the driveway. Newly dropped tree.  My Commander in Chief ( AKA Linda ) informed me that under no circumstances was that log going to lay there for years.  I was to get it cut up post-haste.  This morning I looked at the work I had top do, Looked at my old chain saw th...

Recently I got a Chance to get out my fly rod and go fishing a a tiny trout stream in Elk County, PA.  I decided to make it more about photo taking than fishing and, trust me, no fish were harmed in the making of these photos.  The first thing you notice about streams that are suitable for native wild trout is the fact that they are heavily forested over.  Little sunlight reaches this creek. Since the water sees little sunlight from the time it emerges from ground until the stream wanders into more open farm country it is pretty cold.  As you can see from the picture, at this time of year the flow of the stream is low and slow.  there aren't a lot of nutrients for fish and consequently the fish are small. The wild brook trout are from four to six inches generally.  To find one bigger is rare.  They are survivors and therefore spooky when it comes to trying to present a dry fly.  So while I saw fish here and there and on two occasions I entice...

It's been awhile since I've posted here since I've been using instagram and G+ to post pictures but for this post I need more space to go on about a few things.  The first thing is Panoramas.  I really like making panorama pictures.  It's nice to be able to go to scenic places with a 50mm or 35mm lens and still feel confident that I'll be able to get not only a wide view but a wide view with a great deal of detail and low distortion.  Even with a wide lens there are landscapes that are just too wide to capture with one shot. A panorama in it's simplest form is a fairly easy thing to build.  You only need a sequence of overlapping photos taken from a stable platform of some kind and software to stitch them together.  My A6000 can build a panorama in camera but I prefer to take a series of raw files and use the panorama feature in Lightroom.  I generally set my camera vertically in order to get more pixels in the up-down direction and I generally try to ...