Big silver bromeliad in the yard, flowering now.

Edited: 07/16/2022 at 09:30 AM by ww

VOW handboard, Paulownia wood body with cork veneer. Bottom side.

Top side, cork. Excellent leash.

Since I posted, these guys have been advertising on social media. Very much in business

Edited: 07/30/2023 at 02:37 PM by ww

A couple of recent edits. First, Villa Borghese in Rome. The god Apollo turning Daphne into a bush. Of course there's also a real group of bushes whose scientific name is Daphne.

Around the corner, a plaster statue of John the Baptist by a young Jean Antoine Houdon, who had won a scholarship to a sculpture training program in Rome. He went on to become a favorite maker of portrait busts and statues, including a trip to the young US to do George Washington. The statue is in the Capitol in Richmond, with bronze copies all over.

Backyard, bromeliad 'Little Harv' flowering.

Edited: 03/16/2023 at 02:19 AM by ww

Recent re-edit of a Wedge photo. Not entirely sure I like the shiny look of the wetsuit and the face may be over-processed, too.

Here's the full image, also recently re-edited for better contrast.

This photo was shot in June 2021. Topaz has been updating its editing software ever since. This image was well focused and caught the movement effectively despite a "slow" ISO of 250. But it's fuzzy, with a lot of fine noise. So editing helps.

Here's the head in the original version (transferred from RAW to jpg format):

And an edit that seems overprocessed to me:

An edit that seems as good as I can get, except for the patch of fuzzy hair on the head. Thats a problem with the software's "face recognition." Leaving a bit of noise/grain gives the face a better look. I'm not an expert photo editor. More like an idiot with toys. Still surprised that a camera with a tiny sensor (a quarter the size of an old 35 mm film camera image/Kodachrome slide) can produce images that can readily be enlarged to 13 inch and more prints

Edited: 03/15/2023 at 03:52 PM by ww

Beach morning glory

Unidentified, Vero South Beach surfer, Jan. 3, 2018

Branden DeFilippo, South Beach, same day.

Edited: 09/11/2022 at 02:48 PM by ww

Edited: 09/17/2022 at 02:17 PM by ww

Yucca's selling "creamsicle" fins. The in-house padding isn't available in Gator blue. Nor Carolina blue. Aqua or navy.

Useful sticker for a two-stringer board.

The new board

As you can tell from the checked boxes, it's pretty basic except for 2 stringers. Cheap slick on the bottom.

A real, cheap Japanese woodcut print from somewhere in the 1800s, not a reprint (note the fold lines). It shows a traditional snow party, but with a revolutionary innovation: thanks to imported Dutch books, Japanese artists had learned European perspective and quickly enjoyed using it. This print is an excuse to play with perspective

.

Japanese artists got widely familiar with European-style perspective from Dutch books around 1800, well before the revolution that opened the country up and set off a wild period of commerce and creativity. This is a wonderful, and very cheap, case of tradition meeting innovation.

Edited: 04/08/2023 at 04:09 AM by ww

A bit of fun. I spotted a ghostly pattern on a sidewalk, obviously made by a pressure washer with something serving as a mask.

Here was the mask, a door mat.

At beaches, look for beach stars. They spread by underground stems toward the ocean; they're in the first row of plants onshore. Cyperus pedunculatus, found on tropical beaches worldwide. In Florida, the northern range limit was in Indian River Co., but it's been collected at Patrick in recent years.

Edited: 10/27/2022 at 01:01 AM by ww

More swim fin stuff.

Edited: 10/30/2022 at 12:39 AM by ww

The bodyboarding Hubbard brothers' business, Hubboards, has a new color for one of its staples: swim fin pad/tether. The tether snaps locked and free with a little plastic closure on each foot. Insert and press to lock, press both sides of the closure and pull to unlock. Fast and easy.

In Fort Pierce, the Heathcote Garden of Lights is materializing. Mostly Friday and Saturday, starting the day after Thanksgiving. The top photo is probably the best I did this season. But the parrot might need more work.

Edited: 04/08/2023 at 01:33 AM by ww

What you clean a beach with. Sea grapes weren't bothered by the Nicole salt spray. A few days later, Vero South Beach was immaculate.

It's a specialized Beach Raker company. That machine, with its sand rake, lives at South Beach Park and serves all the town's beaches.

Edited: 03/01/2023 at 01:45 AM by ww

What a variety great photos!
I am guessing you do not often drink beer..but when you do it is Dos Equis ;-)

-------------------------
Time and tide wait for no one.....

Thanks. I can walk over to a good microbrewery from my house. There was really good luck with pretty cheap travel over the last few years. Been busy lately, so not many chances for beach photos.

Surf mat maker in Paso Robles. T-shirt from Yucca Swim Fins, which of course go with surf mats (which in turn are having a bit of revival). A coral rock bench and whatnot (the corals are plastic foam) turned into a reef at Heathcote Botanical Gardens

One of Yucca's many nutty t-shirt images. The little NO BBQ sticker on the boat is presumably a reference to Tim Burnham, film maker (Dirty Old Wedge and Part of Water, a tribute to Ben Carlson, the Newport Beach lifeguard who drowned in the line of duty).

Edited: 11/28/2022 at 09:17 PM by ww

The final version was pretty easy to manufacture, but it took endless fussing to figure out how to colorize stuff painted in fluorescent paint and glowing under the (unintentionally) ultraviolet light from cheap LED spotlights that are supposed to be "blue".

More Heathcote. I've had very limited time for photos. The red fan palm is a Bismarckia whose silver leaves were perfect for colored lights. It had languished for years, then got healthy. Go figure.

This photo's gotten a lot of looks at Flickr. Thanks.

Edited: 04/08/2023 at 01:35 AM by ww

Heathcote Gardens again. Open Thursday and Friday before New Year. The big alligator looked out of place y last year's "stream" on the main lawn. Right at home in the Forest, next to a tiny artificial creek.

Gator's head. Really happy with getting the string lights in the correct exposure and color.

Edited: 04/08/2023 at 01:36 AM by ww