A new lens for macrophotography, an OM Systems M.Zuiko ED40-150mm F4.0 PRO.
































































A new lens for macrophotography, an OM Systems M.Zuiko ED40-150mm F4.0 PRO.
































































Dan Drollette Jr interviews Professor Henk Dijkstra of Utrecht University who addresses the dynamic oceanography of the AMOC.
(Inspired by a post and report of the same title by Bill McKibben.)
Time lapse proof of extreme ice loss. TED Talk by James Balog.
The “D.O.G.E.” asked federal employees to report “what they did last week” per this summary:
Musk Email Prompts Weather Agency to Compile Nonresponders List
This included NOAA and the National Weather Service.
Naturally an employee being considered for termination and knowing that was a consideration might not trust the process of termination to be done consistently, fairly, and objectively. Some of these positions involve highly technical data and demand good skill at using it. Even if that were appreciated it might not affect outcomes.
So, why not comply as requested but answer with the highly technical language appropriate to the meteorological skill rather than in a form which members of D.O.G.E. are likely to understand And refuse to provide any additional explanation. What’s the worst that can happen? Sure, termination, but the alternative is working with little chance of advancement or any appreciation for a group of people whose leader thinks forecasting the path of a hurricane is simply a matter of drawing lines on an easel. And the same group and leader believe anthropomorphic climate change is bupcus, and not caused by human mediated emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels.
What’s there to lose?
The loss came in part today: 880 NWS workers fired.
It’s not NOAA, but it seems the same folks are trying to do similar things with EPA, and not knowing what exactly they want to do, or the difference between people and money,

The place I worked and photographed a lot, all macrophotography of mosses.
Powisset Brook in Hale Reservation.
Read the article if you care. I won’t repeat who is at fault. Those responsible don’t know what science is and they don’t care. Nor do they care a smidgeon about the future of the United States. Or the futures of our grandchildren.
We’ve just come through a light smattering of snow over the last week, then gone into a couple of days when temperatures ranged from the teens Fahrenheit through the 40s F, with sun during days. And tomorrow, Thursday, through weekend, we are expecting a mess. So I decided to photograph our Polytrichum after and before, along with soil temperature measurements. There’s also some Atrichum in shots, especially under lingering snow, and a couple of other pleurocarps.
Even if I had a better experimental setup, it’s not clear what it would tell with this weather mess, typical for New England at this time of year, certainly southern New England. Not sure what knowing temperatures of moss leaves would say. I have apparatus which can do that, but not under snow, for it needs line-of-sight.
















These were almost all taken with an OM System M.Zuiko 90mm macro and non-macro 1:3.5 digital lens. Some in the outing were taken with an Olympus 12-50mm 1:3.5-6.3 zoom EZ “ED” “MSC” lens having a Tiffen 52mm neutral density 1.2 filter.
Several professional photographers who teach use of OM System (nee “Olympus”) cameras and lenses recommend recording photos on camera in raw file format as a default. These are called “ORFs”. Any OMD camera can be set to do that. I use an OM-5 camera for nearly anything these days but I have done a lot of bryological photography with the TG-6 model. In fact I have two of those.
I publish most of my photos on the Web as JPEGs, however. So given that all I have are ORFs, how do I get JPEGs?
There are a number of options. For example the MOVAVI software company offers an online conversion service for the purpose.
However both Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Lightroom offer a means of doing the same. Many photographers have both Lightroom and Photoshop and use Adobe’s online photo storage as well. I use the latter but most of my photo storage is right now with Google Photos.
Anyway here is a set of photographs taken with the OM-5, a Laowa 50mm lens and a neutral density filter (= 0.9). These were taken and stored as ORFs then converted to JPEGs using Photoshop before being uploaded for presentation here.









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From The Vasculum
Winter 2024 moss experiment ended, at least as reported on WordPress, due to theft and vandalism.












With two lenses:
(1) OM Systems 12mm-45mm 1:4 macro
(2) Laowa 50mm F2.8 macro 2X “CA Dreamer”.
All with OM Systems mirrorless camera OM-5.







































































Snap of mosses, mostly Polytrichum from location on Dover Road in Westwood, MA, USA:
























































Geographic coordinates N42.227, W71.230, Westwood, MA, USA.