That is what it feels like, after two sun-filled days with temperatures in the 40’s and low 50’s - what the Middle-Earthers refer to as “warm”. It is not warm, of course, but one could be forgiven for thinking it is after two weeks of soul-destroying single digit highs and digit-destroying sub-zero lows. And some of the ice and snow did melt this afternoon, though not for long - most of the water in Middle Earth has phase-shifted back to the solid form. While not many who know me would accuse me of being prone to optimism, I have come across a silver lining to this meteorological catastrophe called winter. My fear of freezing to death out in the elements has forced me to face up to my fear of freezing to death in this basement, and this has allowed me to attack a few projects that have been somewhat neglected since the beginning of winter, seven years ago. Throwing myself into these projects has renewed my enthusiasm for making stuff, and you know what happens when I get enthusiastic about stuff- I feel duty-bound to get you enthusiastic about stuff too. That is my goal for this, the last week of February, 2025.

Kicking things off on Tuesday I aim going to come at the subject of DIY obliquely, walking you through the steps required to modify your macro platform for use at high magnification and high resolution. At the heart of these modifications is a gadget that, to the best of my knowledge, cannot be purchased but must be constructed. I plan to show you exactly how this is done, from start to finish, in under an hour. The link to this episode of Macro Talk, which starts at 8PM on

On Thursday, in Macro Talk Too, I will come at DIY in macro photography more directly, breaking down the various skills and tools that I believe are worth acquiring, in order to get the most out of our macro photography. I will do this by giving multiple examples of how my growing experience with tools and techniques have paid off in my macro experience over the years. I think it should be a lot of fun and if you would like to join the conversation, here is a link to the livestream on Thursday - https://youtube.com/live/JV1z2k_IatM?feature=share

This is the last week of the February Macro Competition - your pictures must be in before midnight on Friday. The theme for this month is Symmetry and I can’t wait to see what you have come up with! I will announce the theme for March later this week. Saturday is going to be a busy day for me as I will be judging the competition on Saturday while also hosting our first Pzoom meeting of the month. I am trying to come up with a creative way to combine these two activities and I think I may have a workable solution - should be fun!

For anyone who is interested, I placed a bid on a microscope this morning. It is a gorgeous Olympus CX53 fluorescence scope with DIC. It comes with a full complement of high NA objectives, DIC prisms and a multifunction condenser. I has literally everything I want in microscope - but I lost the auction in the last 5 minutes. I’m not really surprised - my bid was ridiculously low for the almost new $20K microscope, so it didn’t take too much to beat it and someone was watching closely. The final price was only $1,700, but that is out of my comfort zone until the IRS has my pound of flesh. You win some, you lose some!

Sorry for the lateness of this post - I lost my whole Monday, helping a friend out of a bind. Tuesday was spent getting my two microscope focusing devices ready to ship to two very patient photographers.

I hope you have a great week and don’t miss Thursday’s livestream - lots of really original stuff to tell you about!

Allan