Thank you for your kind words, my friends. It's good to know that someone finds some joy in my visions and efforts.
The turbulent and strange Spring has mostly passed; the flowers have for the most part fallen; the creek is now surrounded by a jungle of growth that will likely only yield a few landscape shots (assuming steady rains through June) here and there. Fall and Winter will likely (as has been the case over my brief four year stint as a photographer) be similarly sparse for subject matter.
The DMC-LX3 processed with DxO and followed by 16-bit editing functions (re-sampling and USM) has made an impressive showing - yielding imagery rivaling (and even exceeding) that rendered by my old DMC-FZ30 (which had a much larger, wider, and higher quality Leica lens-system) for beauty, clarity, color, as well as signal/noise ratio (at subject distances up to around 6 Meters).
My DMC-FZ50 (which has remained mostly unused since I bought it) will likely be the more appropriate tool with which to record the occasional (wider and farther ranging) landscape shots that I hope to be lucky enough to make under the green canopy of tree leaves sheltering my beloved creek in the near-dusky light of Summer and early Fall evenings. Since DxO does not support the DMC-FZ50 RAW shots, I will use the (under-rated) UFRaw, and the 16-bit processing tools of the Artizen and Sagelight editors, in order to bring forth a few more glimpses of Nature's beauty.
Thank you for watching and listening (and hopefully enjoying) my digital diary recording my search to witness the miraculous and sublime beauty of Nature that exists before our eyes, and under our feet. I am lucky to live near such beauty, and to have had the time and energy to yield (and to polish) a few precious gems (about one in a hundred) from a large number of diligent attempts.
I accept little personal credit for my small successes. Anybody with fairly good quality tools, some rudimentary technical know-how, and (more importantly) the time, tenacity, and dedication to record a large number of shots, find the rare gems, and lovingly polish those gems can produce similar results! I hope that you have found some of your own "poetry" in my visual "prose" ...
