Brown pigeon, bato-bato

Bird	Geopelia striata
Common Name	Brown pigeon, Zebra Dove, Kurokurot,Batobatong Katigbe
Camera	Fujifilm hs25exr finepix bridge camera
Location/time	near U.P. Clarkfield
Date/time	February 5,2013, , 10:59 A.M.
Settings	1/350s, f/8
Phtographer	Dr. Ernesto P. Adorio
Host	Facebook
Reference	Birds of Alabang HIlls

Photo owned and copyright by Ernesto P. Adorio.

Brazilian candle flowers

First time to see another candle flower which is not a lutea.

Plant/Flower	pavonia multiflora x gledhellii.
Common Name	Brazilian Candle Flower Plant
Location	Negros Occidental
Camera	Samsung ES110
Photographer	Al Claud Jr.
Attributions	Al Claud Jr.(common name), Penny Quilter (scientific name)
Reference

Photograph owned and copyright by Al Claud. Linked with his permission in this blog.

Tree with showy blue flowers: the Jaracandra tree

Plant/Tree	Kingdom(Plantae),unranked(Angiosperms, Eudicots, Asterids), order(Lamiales), family(Bignoniacea), genus(Jacaranda), species(J. mimosifolia)
Camera	Panasonic S3 Digital Camera
Location	Australia
Photographer	Susan Estrope Dicker
Attribution	Identification(Susan Estrope Dicker)
Reference	Wikipedia

Photograph owned and copyrighted by Susan Estrope Dicker of Australia.

Simple tools for image manipulation in Shotwell

I am sometimes impressed what you can do with Photoshop which is a Windows application. For us Linux users, the free photo manager Shotwell provides simple tools. Here is an original image.




And here is a post-processed image obtained by a little straightening and a little adjustment.



So If you are short of funds in buying Windows powered computers and Photoshop software, LInux provides simple tools in Shotwell. The following are available:

Enhance, Crop, Straighten, Red-eye, Adjust.

Enhance will try to improve the contrast. Crop allows to select a region in the photo, Straighten allows to straighten photos, Red-eye will remove red eye reflections in photos which used flasth and Adjust allows setting the Exposure, Saturation, Tint, Temperature and Shadows. The best thing to do is to install Shotwell, which is already standard in Ubuntu based Linux distributions.

Indian tree and bird.

I saw the bird atop the Indian tree and photographed it in zoom mode with my HS25EXR camera.Details are lost in the bird but at least we can see features! These types of scenes yield USABLE photos instead of high RESOLUTION photos. Someday we may be able to catch the same bird much nearer to make a clearer photo, which I suspect to be a wild pigeon,but which my friends say is a shrike.




We will post more photos of the Indian tree.

Here is a photo with a lovely sunset as backdrop.

Plant/tree	Polyalthia longifolia chinensis
Common name	Indian tree
Camera	Fujifilm Finepix HS25EXR camera
Location	(first photo) UP Clarkfield, Pampanga; (second photo) Petron Station, NLEX, Bulacan
Date	(first photo)Feb. 19, 2013,(second photo)Feb. 28, 2013
Photographer	Dr. Ernesto Adorio
Attribution	Ella Bernales Jacildo(botanical name)
References	Stuart xchange, Wikipedia

Seagull photo with a canon S95

An incredibly clear photo with rich details of a seagull taken with a Canon S95 digital camera.



I like the way the S95 camera captures and renders the colors.

Bird	Seagull
Location	Bay of Monte Carlo, Royal Gardens
Camera	Canon S95
Setting	F 4.5, ISO 125, Expo time 1/1000
Photographer	Penny Quilter of England

Photograph owned and copyright by Penny Quilter. Published in this blog with permission.

Rivina humilis, weed like with bright red berries

Considered a pest since it can crowd out other plants, this plant attracts birds to eat its berries and disperse it in some other places. In fact I saw an untamed brown pigeon one day in our family house in Sum-ag Bacolod City near this plant which has created a dense thicket!

Strangely though it is a common plant, it is not listed in Dr. Stuart's Xchange database for medicinal plants.

Plant	Rivina humilis
Full name	Plantae| Angiosperms |Eudicots | Order: Caryophyllales| Family: Phytolaccaceae|Genus: Rivina| Species: R. humilis
Common name	Pigeonberry, Rouge Plant, Baby Peppers, Bloodberry, and Coralito
Location	Bacolod City
Photographers	Susan Estrope Dicker(1st photo), Dr. Ernesto Adorio(2nd photo)
Camera	Pansonic S3(1st photo), Olympus VG110(2nd photo)
Acknowledgment	Dinah Canada (scientific name identification)
References	Wikipedia
Albums	Facebook (E.P. Adorio)

First photo (c), 2013 by SED of Australia.

Images are not to be used for commercial purposes.