Lampion basteln - eine schöne Variante aus dem Drucker mit Vorlage

Ein Lampion basteln aus Pappe oder Pappmaschee ist schön, aber klappt nicht immer. Diese Variante ist schnell, schön, und individuell. Ich konnte keine Vorlage finden für einem Lampion den man ausdrucken kann, also habe ich selbst eine Lampion-Vorlage entwickelt.

Climate change and insect declines were worrying ecologists long ago - 1850-1900

 

Since various studies have suggested that insect biomass has declined about 75% in recent decades, one could say that there were four times as many insects. Large biomass losses also occurred in the time earlier (agricultural revolution, as e.g. described in Rachel Carlson's book 'Silent Spring'). The 75% loss refers to the latest decades only. How many insects were there around 1900 or before? Why is there so little data?

Klimaerwärmung und Insektensterben waren lange her bereits besorgniserregend für Ökologen - 1850-1900

 

Seit verschiedene Studien nahegelegt haben das in den letzten Jahrzehnten 75% der Biomasse der Insekten zurückgegangen ist, kann man im Umkehrschluss sagen das es davor vier mal so viele Insekten gab. Große Verluste gab es in der Zeit davor auch schon (Agrarrevolution, wie z.B. beschrieben in Rachel Carlsons Buch 'Der stumme Frühling'). Der Verlust von 75% bezieht sich auf die letzte Phase. Wie viele Insekten gab es um 1900 oder davor? Warum gibt es so wenig Daten?

Exposure stacking of a moonlit landscape - a challenge in Photoshop

 

You may have tried this yourself, trying to photograph a nice landscape with the moon during the twilight hours in the evening or morning. For a landscape like this you need a tripod and a long exposure time. The moon being many times brighter needs a very short exposure time. In cases with such brightness differences you normally make an exposure series as shown here (with tripod!) and use high dynamic range techniques and exposure stacking which is nowadays quite straightforward to use. However with the moon and a bright planet (Mars, or Venus) below the moon this does not work for several reasons:

• The long exposure gives 'stripes' for the stars, planets and the moon as well, because the earth moves
• Even more problematic for the same reason is that the moon, stars and palnet change position across the image between exposures
  
• The exposure difference is too extreme. Even stacking the cropped moon alone with over 10 images does not yield a nice image

As I will explain here, there is a 'dirty' solution to this problem, which is not as realistic as exposure stacking, but gives a result that is quite true to the experience of the viewer. In short: the washed out moon needs to be cleaned (and not as bright), as well as planets and stars visible as stripes. From the end of the exposure series you copy in a layer and set it to blend mode 'lighten'.

Advanced Photoshop technique for image restoration: remove erratic backgroud structures

 

This new Photoshop technique will allow you to remove any erratic, chaotic background patterns, caused by old printing machines ('random dotted pattern') or visible paper structures (fibers, depths), with the least possible blur. Note that there are various methods for recovering halftone prints from newspapers or color magazines (with the fast fourier transformation method) covered elsewhere. The images have in common that they show at the highest zoom a kind of chaotic leopard pattern. What you would like to do is to lighten the spots, and darken the background, so that they merge to a uniform color. The difficulty is to get a selection that is exactly right.