Monarch Butterfly Birth

If you search Monarch Butterfly's on the internet you will find Petabytes of information and photos and such. Here is my contribution to the pile.

For the last several years I have actively raised Swallowtail butterfly's.
This year I planted a bunch of milkweed in hopes of adding Florida Monarchs to my garden full time. I think the first milkweed plant actually came with a few eggs on it. See below.



A week later they hatch and start eating.



And eating.



Then the caterpillars hang upside down and turn into a chrysalis.



The pupa or chrysalis of the Monarchs are very cool. Jade green with a gold necklace. A week later the butterfly will emerge.



These are Florida Monarch Butterflys (Danaus plexippus) they do not fly to Mexico, they stay here all year round or fly to the Northeast in the summer.
So, if you live in Florida be nice to Monarchs you may be looking at one of my babies.

Here is a video of the Monarch being born.

Aloe vs Plumeria

One corner of my garden is a free for all.
Everything that does not have a home ends up there.
Kind of a "lets see what happens" place for horticulture experiments.
Two long time residents are my purple plumeria.
And a patch of aloe.



One of the fun things about having your own green oasis are the unexpected things that happen.

Never, did I think there would be a cage match.

ALOE VS PLUMERIA

"Tonight an exclusive Getawaymoments premiere"

"A plant plastering"

"A bush battle"

"A rumble in ruffage"



ALOE WINS !!!!

With a stiff uppercutting spear to the leaves.

Ouch, that had to hurt.


.

IT WAS RAINING OPOSSUMS

BANG

BOOM

POW

All good words to describe the quick precise din of a furry mammal slamming into the pavement.

What the @#$%@#^&@.

Exactly, what just happened?

While working on a shoot today the unexpected happened.

An Opossum tried to fly, unsuccessfully.

His perch was way up in a live oak tree his landing in the middle of a driveway.



and no, not the low part.

The Opossum laid there motionless.

We were all sure death was instant.

We went back to work trying not to think of the grizzly scene behind us.

A couple minutes later our interview subject declares "its gone"

Poof!!!

Now I have heard of cats having nine lives but opossums?

On closer inspection the failed skydiver was spotted hiding in the "Y" of the tree. Embarrassed and demoralized but still alive. Ready to raid your trash cans tonight.

GoPro Firmware is here!!!

Great news. The long awaited HD GoPro Hero firmware is here.
Sound the horns. It is a happy day in GoPro land.

Here is the link to GoPro's website where you can download the new firmware.
I did it in less then ten minutes for two Hero cameras.
The download and install is quick and easy.

Now, how about the fix.

I am most interested in the 9999 problem so I checked and it appears to be fixed.
When you do time lapses now the camera will record 999 frames in a folder.
At frame 1000 it starts another folder and so on.



I will check what happens at frame 9999 tomorrow.

Also, when you reformat your sd card the counter keeps climbing.
It does not restart at 0001.

******** update*********

YES!!!! It is working. I just finished running a long time lapse that straddled the 9999 file number and it worked without a glitch. The file numbers jumped from gopro9999 into a new folder starting with gopro0001.


************************

Somethings Missing?

Its September 2nd in Tampa Florida, and something is very wrong.
The sky was crystal clear this morning and dry.
Hot by mid-day but not humid.
Shades of blue we normally don't get to see till November.

How can this be?

Easy when you have a monster in the neighborhood.



I have always enjoyed the strange meteorological things that happen
in the presence of monsters.
Of course I'm referring to Hurricane Earl.
For days we have nervously watched as he approached, then he turned
and has sucked every drop of moisture from our sky's.
I'm glad Earl did not visit us, but his passing has left us with brief
wonderful escape from the hottest summer I can remember.

.

Pan Left Portland

So here was the idea.
Do a travel log made up of time lapses shot with my GoPro Hero camera.
Well, I've done that in the past so this time how about a continuous pan.



The downside of my revolutionary egg timer time lapse panning
thing-a-ma-jig is that it only pans left.
Hence .... Pan Left Portland.




Now before I get a bunch comments, I only scratched the surface of cool
shots to get in the Portland area.
We wanted to get Mount Hood but it was socked in on the Gorge day.
Same for a great downtown shot.
As with all travels to new places you must leave some things for the
next trip.

I think the flying panning time lapse shots are a first of its kind, definitely
with an egg timer.

Music by Portland local Podington Bear.


.

Underwater GoPro Eggtimer Panning TimeLapse?

I never dreamed my egg timer time lapse thing-a-ma-jigs
would travel the world.
First to Key West, and now to Palm Springs.
The folks at Canon Filmmakers found a use for the simple
devices that even I had not imagined....
Shooting an underwater panning time lapse ......?
Watch this.
Really? That's just silly.
But my next question ..... Did it work?
It appears it did, suction cup issues aside.
Now I have stated on this blog that I will
try and put a camera almost anywhere to get a cool shot,
this use must be confirmed.



I passed on the suction cup and moved to my Joby Gorillapod.
Silly? Yes. Did it work? Hell yea.
360 degrees? Stay tuned.