Fingers in photos

This thread reminds me of Encouraging a sense of scale in photos.

Hands are available in a pinch, and coins are helpful, but non-standard, and often lacking after buying all the necessary camera gear for iNatting…

What about something as widespread as a glass bottle cap. Are they standard across most of the world?

A big plus is that if a specimen is small enough, the cap acts like a dish/container to keep it from crawling away. Also, local culture can be shared depending on the bottlecap design.

New edit, on the subject of hands for scale, I’m not sure if anybody thought of this option yet. Possibly the next innovation in natural photography, right after digital photography.

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Enjoyed reading this one. Lots of fun, little side threads in it that as a newbie, gave me a sense of… well, scale.

A few of my own triggered (and wandering) thoughts and side trails…

Stealthy living
Fingers (or hands) can also be used as ‘decloaking’ backgrounds for well-camouflaged small organisms that are hiding atop their natural background. (Will we someday discover a moth that has evolved to blend in perfectly with human skin tones?)

“Carats are divine, you get a dozen for a dime…”
Recognize that line? If so, you probably spent too many Saturday mornings with Bugs Bunny (like I did). And you may also already know, that the carob seed is the historical base of the trading weight standard for gold and gemstones because of its rather remarkable consistency in weight and size. (Including shoes. It’s the unit behind European footwear sizes.)

Hmm. Maybe we could carry some of those in our pockets for macro shot scaling for a more ‘natural’ and less CV-confuddling scale ref? (But what if you lost any and they sprouted?)

Working for scale…
If I had to design a practical macro shot scaling tool, I’d probably look for some kind of thin metal rod with uniformly spaced, high-contrast rings along its length. Any source ideas? I’m thinking welding rod in terms of weight but maybe a little more malleable so that you could bend it a bit to suit the shot. Hmm. I dunno. Knitting needles? I’ve seen those in a flexible format. I’ll keep thinking on that one.

What would happen if…
An avid fungi hunter was focusing so intently on his find that he missed the mother grizzly that he had surprised? In tribute, friends uploaded his last image to iNat…

Finally, if it’s okay with you folks…
From the ‘Love the Creations, not Necessarily their Creator’ file, from a 1981 piece by Garrison Keillor, titled Shy Rights:

Where, for example, can we find a single paragraph on America’s hundreds of scale models, those brave men of average height whose job it was to pose beside immense objects such as pyramids and dynamos so as to indicate scale in drawings and photographs? The only credit that scale models ever received was a line in the caption -“For an idea of its size, note man (arrow, at left).” And yet, without them, such inventions as the dirigible, the steam shovel and the swing-span bridge would have looked like mere toys, and natural wonders such as Old Faithful, the Grand Canyon and the giant sequoia would have been dismissed as hoaxes. It was truly a thankless job.

(https://www.dmagazine.com/publications/d-magazine/1981/december/manners-shy-rights-if-its-ok/)

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You could use an old phone charger cord. I have a few that have busted ends and cloth covered, 10 feet long.

Flexible wire 14 gauge maybe? Welding/fencing supplies would have options as long as you make sure the metal is suitable (how much twisting can it handle before it breaks) and many times it’s sold on a spool.

Joey is an iNatter? Amazing. I love his videos.
I also have gardener’s hands and quite often I find creatures that I want to record while gardening so dirty hands are just going to happen I’m afraid. I like stingy nettle tea too and quite often pick them by hand for that. I’ve only had one comment about the state of my hands in photos though.

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I don’t think they are. That hasn’t stopped me from using one, though:
https://www.inaturalist.org/photos/15452578?size=original

(pic from https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/10975147 )

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Well, somewhat surprisingly, using flexible wire never occurred to me. I say surprisingly because here ‘down under’ us Kiwis have a reputation for fixing anything with Number 8 Fencing Wire:

The term “number 8 wire” came to represent the ingenuity and resourcefulness of New Zealanders, and the phrase “a number 8 wire mentality” evolved to denote an ability to create or repair machinery using whatever scrap materials are available on hand .

Carrying a coil of fencing wire over one’s shoulder would also enable one to measure the height of trees. Why didn’t I think of that before? :thinking:

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I enjoyed your musings, but yikes!, if my fingers ever get to look like that I’ll know it’s definitely time to stop including them in photos!

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Your Number 8 wire is probably what we in the States call baling wire and it is valuable for many things in the field. I could’ve used some this week in the backcountry when all that was available were some worn-out bungee cords and scraps of string.

A clinometer would be easier to carry. Of course, then you’d need to know trigonometry.

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Probably a lot easier to learn trigonometry than to cart around coils of wire to measure trees with.

I am greatly amused and glad to be of service @chrisc , for Canadians it’s duct tape…now I’m thinking a hose cart (with good wheels) to have multiple options for all your Inatting needs!

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Is it normal for tree enthusiasts to carry such equipment to exactly measure height? I assume guesstimation is more popular, no?

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I confess… Photoshop. And, not my finger.

Though the Xylaria polymorpha behind the fake finger, are the real thing.

Guessimation is more popular, but I’ve used long measuring tape plus a meter stick when I had to. And a bit of math, but not even trig. Now there are electronic devices that can replace the tape and stick.

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Today I started adding a tag “fingers in observations” to observations that have fingers in it

like this one

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Thanks for reminding me: I have been meaning to upload this one.

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This week I tried using a card instead of my fingers (altho blog readers said they like to SEE how tiny the flowers are)

No fingers this time
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/123082617

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In all this discussion I had forgotten that the experience which gave rise to the first entry in this thread was not the first time I had been discouraged from using fingers in photos. I had an earlier episode with a crab! I’m a slow learner!
https://inaturalist.nz/observations/84279554

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What about toes in photos? :upside_down_face:

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/125500734 :worm: :bird: :interrobang:

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