Charcoal Filter Charcoal

Our drip coffee maker has a little water filter inside which needs to be changed occasionally. We changed it for the first time in about 6 years this past weekend. I had bought the wrong filter though (the Keurig one looked like it would fit our Cuisinart!!!!) and the new filter needed to be, uh, drained of some of its charcoal in order to fit.

So, here's how these things work: Water goes through meshy fabric, water goes through charcoal, water comes out pure and not full of chlorine and minerals.

I snipped open the old filter too, so we could see what used filter charcoal looks like. These photos are of charcoal grains about the size of sand grains, maybe a little bigger. In these examples, the new charcoal (photos 1 and 2 where the grains are dry) looks exactly the same as the old charcoal (photo 3 where the charcoal is wet) which had been in service for 6 years. I had thought maybe there would be some discernible difference in the look of the charcoals, but I can't see any.

At the bottom of this post is a closeup of the fabric of the container that makes up this charcoal filter. Looks like a synthetic fiber to me, but I don't know for sure. You can see some crud has become trapped in the fibers. So, REMINDER, change your cruddy old water filters. They're gross!

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Hoboken Studio Tour/Tiny Lab: Money, Money, Money, Mo-ney

Above, you're being watched by Lincoln' eye, from a $5 bill. You can see the cotton fibers of the paper, and even a little shine off the ink where it's adhered to the fibers. Being a bit of a printing geek, I am intrigued by the amount of detail in the line art on this bill. It was shot on request at my exhibit during the Hoboken Studio Tour.

Below are two gold coins with ridged edges that look cool close up. One coin was from South Africa, and one was from the US, and they live together in the wallet of one of my visitors from the Studio Tour.

In case you missed it, here are some photos from my Tiny Lab exhibit the day of the Studio Tour. And if you are curious, here is a slideshow the photos I ultimately hung for that exhibition.

Thanks again for all your encouragement and support!

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The Fabric of our Lives™

Had a request/suggestion for a macro/micro photo (yay!, thanks Peta). This is a cotton ball, all made up of gnarly little strands. You can see that while the cotton strands above appear white, they are actually clear like cellophane noodles.

Below is another shot of the cotton, showing the clear strands a little better. And below that, a crop of the center section of this photo, which clearly shows (no pun intended) that the strands are not white. Rather, these twisty fibers reflect light on many curving and bending facets, making them appear white to the naked eye.

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Of Belly Buttons and Straw Hats

First of all, I wanted to enlighten my devoted audience as to who they are. Below are the top 10 web searches that send visitors to my site:

1.	worlds biggest belly button
2.	worlds largest belly button
3.	belly button fuzz
4.	adam saynuk
5.	biggest belly button in the world
6.	bubble ornaments
7.	largest belly button
8.	pieromainea
9.	the worlds biggest belly button
10.	world's biggest belly button

So, who knew there was such a huge demand for information about belly button size and the fuzz which such a belly button can collect? Should I be offended that "worlds biggest belly button," "worlds largest belly button," and "belly button fuzz" are more popular reasons to hit my photoblog than I am. And I'm a bit surprised that not one of my top ten popular keyword searches has anything to do with macro photos or photography at all!

FYI, this is the post these belly button fans find in their journey here.

The strange world of Google. Now, on to the macro photos, not that all you belly button-obsessed people care anyway.

Here are two photos of straw hats, up close and personal. One, Sarah likes, the other will be returned to the store from whence it came. Interesting how different their weaves are. One, shiny and smooth, the other rough and scratchy looking.

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Mimi's wool winter cap

Today, I adapted my lens by "stacking" another lens with it in order to gain greater magnification. This is the result.

I had been capturing an area about 22mm wide with my previous setup. Now I'm getting about 8-9mm (with a little cropping due to an unfortunate vignette effect).

This is a shot of the fibers of Mimi's winter cap up close. I think that large white line is a dog hair, courtesy of Dash. What you find as you look at smaller and smaller things, is that there are no sharp and hard lines. Everything is a rounded edge at some lower limit, and it sometimes makes for difficult edge clarity in a shot like this.

These fibers appear to be oval, and semi-translucent, making them show up less sharp than I would like. Though this could also be an undesirable effect of my stacked lens which would not be present in a far better lens.

EDIT: OK, so I have an edit to this one. Not only was I wrong about the material (it's acrylic), but I was wrong about its ownership (it's Violet's). The hat, however, is still actually blue-green.

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