At the April 21, 2007, Computer Club meeting Dr. Gerald Barad gave a presentation on Macro Photography. It covered some of his work on the pollination of Stapeliad succulent plants. These plants are grown in Africa, mostly Southern Africa, are very large, and have a putrid odor but a beautiful flower. He was able to show us close up pictures of the pollination process of these plants through photographs using a camera and the Proscope Microscope.
When he became interested in the pollination process years ago, he found there was no information on the topic He has been working in this field for the past 15 to 18 years researching, discovering, and documenting the process of Stapeliad pollination. The process he used to get the pictures was to cut a flower in half and dissect it under a microscope. He would then take amazing photographs using his camera mounted on his microscope. Though his technique he was able to photograph an area of one-fifth of a millimeter or the size of a dot on a newspaper.
During his many years of research he created numerous photographs, which he then converted to slides. He used PowerPoint to create the presentation with an attractive background and captions and headings on the slides. He used Photoshop software to remove any defects on the slides. More recently he used a digital camera for pictures to show seedlings and their growth over time. New technology allows him to send his slides and photographs to people all over the world.
Thanks to Dr. Barad for sharing his study of these plants and his techniques for taking the pictures with a microscope with us.
During the general part of the meeting, Lon Hosford, the President, encouraged the members to register to view the blog and to become columnists. There have been many interesting posts over the last few months and it is a good way to keep up with new information. The process to register is to send an email message to Lon who will approve the person for access to the site. The first post of the club member also needs to be approved before you are able to access the site freely.
Q&A
A club member said that after she installed the free AVG software it came up with a screen message that a virus had been found and they wanted her to pay to get rid of it. Since other club members had not seen a message like this with their AVG, Lon told her to get the exact wording of the error message and post it on the club loop for analysis and opinions.