Category Archives: Uncategorized

Anyone for ice skating?

fire hydrant

runoff from open hydrantDear city water workers,

I don’t want to tell you how to do your job — and I’m sure that you gave this a lot of thought — but… when the overnight lows are predicted to be 20 degrees below freezing do you really think that it’s the best evening to open the fire hydrant in my yard and let it gush for a few hours? I’m just sayin’.

Oh, and if you see the phone company guys, tell them I LOVE what they were doing with the underground lines last Fall. They will come back in the Spring to fix the massive holes they dug, right? Again… just sayin’. Might make mowing fun come Summer.

Your loyal tax-paying customer.

Life is a blur

Warming up the thoroughbreds

I think I’ve shown other shots from this series on my previous blog but I don’t think I’ve shown this one in particular. It’s from last Spring in Lexington, Kentucky. The jockeys were giving the thoroughbreds their morning warm ups at Keeneland. I was looking for a blurry, almost abstract image and experimented with several shutter speeds to get different amounts of blur. This one was 1/5 of a second at f/14. With speeds that slow I was only getting two or three shots on each pass so it was a bit hit-or-miss.

I’m posting this photo today because – 1. I didn’t want a week to go by without posting (bad me!), and 2. this is kind of how my life feels this week. It’s all a blur. As I’ve mentioned, I’ll be leaving for the Canadian Rockies at the end of the week and I have a lot to get done before I can head to the airport. Usually I use weekends as my compression valve to get things done that I know I won’t have time for during the week but this was a busy weekend as well.

Saturday we attended PodCampMidWest in Kansas City. We met lots of great folks (hey everyone!) and learned a lot about the podcasting industry. This will make more sense to you as the year wears on but consider it a clue to some of the exciting new projects that I hinted are in the works for 2008. More on that later.

Sunday was my chance to hit the office and make some progress but a freakish rain/thunder/snow storm hit and as I was driving downtown around 8:00 in the morning the ice and slush was terrible. I was driving on a straight section of road, not accelerating, not braking, and the car decided to suddenly go into a spin (Mom, if you’re reading this, I’m okay). Time went into slow motion as a brick retaining wall was coming closer and closer but, luckily, no traffic. Finally, my tires got enough grip that I could stop but I was now facing the wrong direction. Seemed like a sign that I should head back home… so I did. Nothing got done at the office that morning but I was able to make it in around noon and crank out a few projects.

Today’s been a blur, too, and looking ahead at the calendar it looks like I’ll need to be at full-power for the rest of the week. Maybe I can sleep on the plane.

So, I’ll try to post again soon and definitely — technology willing — several times from the road. Wish me luck!

Aperture 2 released

Aperture 2

Apple has released a new version of Aperture. I’ve never tried Aperture myself. It looks interesting enough but my poor, aging G5 has never met the minimum requirements to run it. Now, however, it seems Apple has lowered the requirements to the point that I just sneak in. Or I’m reading something wrong. At any rate, I look forward to downloading the free trial and seeing what it can do but it will have to wait. Too much work right now with my trip to Banff just over a week away. Patience, patience…

Nikkor 24mm tilt-shift lens

Nikkor 24mm PC lensNikon has announced new products including a D60 DSLR as a follow-up to the popular D40X. Interesting to a smaller segment of the population is the addition of a 24mm Perspective Control lens. Canon has had one of these for some time while Nikon only offered an 85mm PC lens.

Perspective control, or tilt-shift, lenses have movements that allow you to correct for perspective distortion (Wikipedia has more info). For instance, when shooting architecture from a low angle, you can “straighten” the building so that it doesn’t appear to lean back. Happily, that particular function is now also available in Photoshop. I use the “distort” function to do this but there is also a “perspective” option.

An additional advantage of tilt-shift lenses is their ability to distort the plane of focus. By tilting the front element you can angle the plane that is in focus to artificially create deeper (or more shallow) depth of field. Landscape photographers have been doing this with bellows movements on large format cameras for decades. And then there is the ability to use this effect to take shots that look like tiny models.

Whether any of these uses allows you to justify the rather steep price is up to you but at least those of us on the Nikon system now have a wide-angle, tilt-shift option.

New Ireland gallery

Sunrise at Killarney

I’m trying to get a new gallery posted to my new website every week to get some content built up. This week is Ireland. The photos come from 2002 — the last international trip I made before moving to digital. The shot above comes from a frosty morning overlooking Killarney.

I still remember going through airport security with my large ziplock bags full of film. I’d taken the film out of their boxes but had left them in their clear plastic canisters. The security folks would first try and run the bags through the x-ray but, when I asked for a hand check, they would comply by taking each roll of film out of each cannister and wiping them with little swabs they held in tongs. Needless to say, with hundreds of rolls of film, it made the connections a little tight.

I do everything I can to make getting through airport security a simple thing. On days that I’m flying I take all my change out of my pockets, don’t wear a belt and make sure I have shoes on that slip off easily. My camera bag is packed to hold my keys and anything else metallic that I need to have with me and it all rides through the x-ray machine just fine. I like to do what I can to get through the metal detector in one try so that I can catch up to my gear as it comes off the conveyer belt on the other side.

The security people have an important job to do and it’s often a thankless one. By doing everything I can to make their job a little easier it will hopefully make both our days a little better.

MacBook Air

MacBook Air

There you have it. The new MacBook Air from Apple — the world’s thinnest notebook computer. It’s an achievement for sure but I don’t think I need to place my order today. Thin is great — light is even better — but I’d really like small. I would like Apple to make something like Fujitsu’s Mini-Notebook with a CF card reader built right in. I don’t need a large screen but being able to do very minor Photoshop work and send emails is about it. Basically something that would allow me to get files to clients from the road in a pinch. And small and light would be key. And rugged wouldn’t hurt. I’m afraid I’d snap that MacBook Air in half in my backpack. Oh, well.

On the other hand, I did like seeing the addition of email to the iPod Touch. That and a portable storage device with a card reader and I’d have a lot of my needs taken care of. I’ll do some thinkin’ on that.

Anyway, the excitement is over now. I’ll have to switch over to DP Review’s PMA report to see what the camera manufacturers will bring us at the end of the month. There’s always somethin’…

Oh, and I promise to actually post a photo one of these days.