Hooray, summer's here, and that means it's time for dragonflies once again! I didn't do a whole lot of photography over the spring and early summer, but now I've been picking it back up with a lot of trips to Steinmetz Park to see the dragonflies. I do have new photos to post--most excitingly, a Great Spreadwing damselfly (it was huge)!

A bit of news: I've graduated finally, and have gotten a summer job doing computer programming for the biology professor I've mentioned before, who does research with dragonflies. So I'm getting as big a dose of dragonflies as I can stand. I'll be entering grad school in August, going for a PhD in math, and I've got an apartment and everything. Gah, it almost feels like I'm entering the real world!

In the meantime, hopefully I will have some time to be more active here on DA and catch up on all the commenting I need to do.

This is exciting! I woke up, hopped on the computer, and randomly went to DA, expecting the usual couple of messages. Instead I found almost a hundred comments and favs, on a bunch of different images, with no clue as to what was going on. I figured someone with a lot of watchers must have featured me in a journal or something, when I got a sneaking suspicion and clicked on

I've got a DD! I still can't quite believe it! Thanks to ^Myana, and to *flutterbyfae for suggesting it.

Maybe this will get me off my butt and make me go take pictures of some of the projects I've recently finished.

I'll use this opportunity to plug my newly begun blog, called Intrinsically Knotted, which will focus on math (lots of math), some discussion of religion and atheism, art (especially my own knitting/crocheting/nature photography), and whatever else I want to write about.

Some of my recent work:







FEATURES!

As usual, I've hardly posted anything in the last few months of fall and winter--I have a lot of photos still to post, but I just didn't feel like going through them all and finding the good ones, then doing all the editing in Photoshop. The apathy that comes on with winter is hard to shake sometimes.

But recently I had a chat with a biology professor at my school who does some really fascinating research with dragonflies. He takes super-slow-motion video of the dragonflies taking off and capturing simulated "prey", and measures the nerves that fire in their brains as they observe the prey going by. It's really interesting, especially since even though I don't know much about the biology I've learned a lot about dragonflies in the last year by watching them, taking pictures, and looking them up in books and online. Anyway, the professor was very excited by my dragonfly photos and I offered to give him the high-res versions of them for him to use in presentations, papers, etc. (with appropriate credit to me, of course).

So over the last few days I've gone through all my thousands and thousands of photos and pulled all the dragonfly (and damselfly) photos into their own iPhoto library, which I organized by date and location as well as by species. It seems like a lot of work, but it was really pretty fun, because I hadn't realized just how many different species I've photographed and how many really good shots I've gotten, most of which have never been shared. I gave the completed library to the professor, and he helped me identify several of the species I hadn't IDed, and now I've decided to do the same for my butterflies and moths, and eventually for all the bugs. (Other animals, too, but there's no hope for the plants and flowers--there are too many, and in many cases too hard to identify.) It's really nice to get all these things organized, remember the fun I had taking the photos, and remind myself of all the great shots I need to share.

All of which is leading up to the fact that hopefully this'll spur me to finally polish and post these photos (most from the last year, but maybe a few from summer 2006). So keep an eye out for lots more from me over the next few weeks!

Tragedy, that turned out not quite so bad:

Last Friday my Powerbook died on me--would not start up at all. I was in quite a panic, because I hadn't fully backed up since March, and I had a number of important documents as well as--most importantly--all my photos of the last seven months (many of which are some of the best I've ever taken, even though I haven't gotten them up here yet). Anyway, I got over to the Apple Store for the Genius Bar folks to take a look at it, and they determined that my hard drive had failed, but not so badly that I wouldn't be able to get my files off it.

So I came back to school and hauled my external drive and my Mac over to the Mac lab, to use another computer to do the file transfers. I was able to get all my documents, as well as all of the photos that I had modified before submitting them here, but when I tried to move my iPhoto Library (where all the originals are stored) it failed repeatedly. I proceeded to spend the next few days moping around, kicking myself for not backing up my pictures more often, and generally feeling miserable until I could make it back to the Apple Store, as I did last night.

Well, I don't know if this particular Apple Genius had the magic touch, or if letting the hard drive cool down did the trick, or what, but on the first try (after about 15 minutes) he had gotten my photos off the laptop and onto my external drive, which I then hooked up to another Mac to verify that the photos were okay, which they were! Hooray!

Unfortunately, although he did everything he could to save the computer, he couldn't figure out what was wrong with it, so it still has to be sent in to be repaired. So I'll spend a week or so with very little computer access, and I'll have to work extra for the rest of this term to pay the cost of the repair, but at least my photos are safe! Hooray!

And now, since I should have done this a long time ago, have some FEATURES!

It's about time I finally did a feature, and *magpie-poet provided the perfect opportunity--if you're one of the first ten people who comment on this journal with a request to be featured, I'll go through your gallery, pick out a few favorites, and feature them in this journal! But, of course, only if you go on and do the same.


In other news, spring is well and truly here, only it seems to be going by extra fast to make up for arriving so late. Every time I turn around, there are new flowers blooming and the previous ones have finished, and I'm trying desperately not to miss a thing!

I've been walking through the gardens watching the butterflies; so far there have been hordes of Cabbage Whites but no others. But yesterday I spotted a black butterfly with yellow on the edges of its wings--and scared it away before I could get a picture! I'm not sure what it was--its wings were the right shape to be a swallowtail, although I couldn't see the lower wings clearly, but it seemed awfully small for a swallowtail. I've been lurking in that area ever since, hoping it will come back.

The Albany Tulip Festival came this weekend, and it was the first time I've gone when it wasn't raining! The tulips were at their peak, which was actually something of a mixed blessing for me. I really enjoyed last year, when they were at their peak a week before the festival and I could take pictures without being surround by crowds (the park attracts lots of lookers and photographers all spring, but there weren't quite as many). I also enjoyed the art show at the festival, and got some interesting ideas from some of the artists there.

Finally this spring (senior year, of course, when I won't get another chance) I've started exploring some of the other natural areas around the area. There's Vale Park, walking distance from the school, which has a nice pond and lots of trees. There are all sorts of water birds, and the other day I saw a heron flying away from the park. I also checked out a nature preserve in Albany, which has a lake and LOTS of birds. Getting there was an adventure, though--you have to trudge up and down hills with muddy trails covered in tire tracks, dodging bulldozers and construction, before you finally go down the last hill toward the lake and all the noises fade away. Finding my way back was even more interesting. While I was there, I saw a Canada goose sitting on a nest, and I almost caught a picture of a red-winged blackbird. So that was exciting.

So that's the State of the Susan right now. Spring feels wonderful, and now I'm going back out to catch some more of it!


FEATURES:
Woo! First commenter is =nellvixen !
You guys know I'm a sucker for bugs, and color, and this photo has both! Not to mention dragonflies are gosh-darned hard to catch!
This Canada goose is very striking on the ice.
Ooh, I love foreground/background shots, and this one is beautiful and sharp!