A Fair

My interest in photography leans very heavily toward landscapes. When I think about grabbing a camera and going somewhere to shoot, I’m thinking about landscapes. Shooting people or events rarely filters through my consciousness and as an event photographer, I’m probably an almost-adequate landscape photographer. Despite my shortcomings in that arena, people continue to ask me to shoot events. On request, I’ve shot parties, parades, baseball and football games, and weddings, among other events. Yesterday’s event was an Easter Fair for a local church. I walked through the fair for an hour and a half, covering the entertainments,  the various “booths”, the crowd, and local politicians. The payoff for me was the kids. Children are often good subjects when they don’t know they’re being photographed, and the fair was crowded enough that they weren’t paying much attention to me.

Snaked Again

At the end of the hike mentioned in the previous post, In The Canyon, as I walked the last two hundred yards to the parking area, this snake began crossing the trail. I stopped, got down on one knee and framed through the viewfinder to capture the image. The snake had paused as I stopped, as if it was profiling for the photograph.
The Nikon autofocus was hunting for the main subject, so I switched to manual focus and took a few frames. I had seen a couple in their twenties behind me on the trail. They walked up behind me, then stopped abruptly as the woman said, "Oh!"
"There are no rattles, so it probably isn't poisonous." I said. "Looks like it might be a gopher snake. My granddaughter could tell us immediately what it is."
I took a couple more frames of the snake. "It isn't coiled to strike.", I said and stepped around it by the edge of the trail.
The couple hesitated, then walked a large u-shaped detour through the thick undergrowth of the adjoining hillside where there were considerably more likely to be snakes than around the trail. I didn't mention that probability to them. They seemed nervous.  
  

About Color

This one was about color. I was shooting a wedding for friends, the second time I had engaged in that particular activity. The flower girl squatted down to check out a sprig of roses. I was struck by all the color in the scene and quickly captured a frame. I shot it for myself with no intention of including it in the wedding photo book I was going to create for the bride and groom. Later, when I was putting together the book, I still liked the photo so much that I included it along with the formal (posed) and informal photos.

Zabriskie Point

The photos below are from Zabriskie Point, in Death Valley, known for its erosional landscape. It is composed of sediments deposited in Furnace Creek Lake, which disappeared around five million years ago. 

Twin Towers

The twin water towers shown in the photo below are in Death Valley Junction, California. I don't remember seeing twin water towers anywhere else, but that may be the result of a memory failure. It struck me as odd when I saw them on a two-day motorcycle ride that Mike Harmon and I took through Death Valley National Park in March, 2011. The towers were part of what appeared to be an abandoned mining operation.
It certainly made sense that additional water storage was needed in the area, since it frequently records temperatures in excess of 120 F during the summer, and holds the record for high temperature for the Americas at 134 F, recorded in Furnace Creek on July 10, 1913 

Hiatus

I've taken on a short "fire brigade" writing contract, and due to that contract, it is extremely unlikely that I'll have time to also blog and work on some other writing I've become engaged in (sorry, the other writing wins out).

So I'm taking a break from this blog. Check back here for more ramblings in April.

Slow Photography

A few days ago, I pulled out the first digital camera I owned, a Kodak DC3400. The camera was a birthday present from my wife Lisa, given in the Fall of 2000. I hadn’t photographed anything with the camera for about seven years. I questioned whether it still worked.  The camera came with an 8MB Compact Flash card, which I upgraded to a “big” card with a whopping 256MB storage capacity. The upgrade allowed me to store 412 .jpeg photos. Four AA rechargeable batteries account for a large portion of the weight of the brick-shaped camera. Just to play around with it and “remember” how it was to shoot with it, I took only the DC3400 on a group motorcycle ride on January 29, 2011. Photos from the ride appear in Mojave Desert Ride, the previous post.

One of the bonuses of this old technology is the simplicity of the camera. The menu system is very limited, so it is quite simple to change from color to black and white. This camera was considered an above-average point and shoot digital at the time it was introduced to the public. It was assigned a MSRP of $499, though it was quickly available for around $300 from various retail stores.

The DC3400 forces you to shoot slow. There is no alternative. The specifications say that you’ll have to wait 1.5 seconds between shutter releases, but in practice I’ve never experienced it being that quick. To further slow things down, the default ISO setting is 100. It’s slow shooting speed forces me to take my time, which is probably a good thing. For another article on slow photography, see Tim Wu’s Slow Photography.

Mojave Desert Ride

The map below shows the route for a group ride on January 29, 2011. The 334 mile loop through the Mojave Desert took us from the Inland Empire (Riverside and San Bernardino) on Route 60, Route 62 through Yucca Valley, Joshua Tree, Twentynine Palms, Amboy Road to Amboy, Route 66 through Bagdad, along I-40 to Barstow, I-15 through Victorville, then down the Cajon Pass to the Inland Valleys. The map below is courtesy of DeLorme. See Delorme. The photos in this post were made on an outdated (11 years old, gasp!) digital camera, the Kodak DC3400. The DC3400 was a 2.0 megapixel camera, which was a big improvement over the 1.0 megapixel cameras of the time (around the year 2000). For more information on the DC3400, see the following post, Slow Photography. As always, click on a map or photo to view the larger version.

Testing out the black and white, I snapped the photo below at a gasoline station in Riverside after setting the camera to –1 stop exposure compensation. It was a very bright day and I didn’t want to wash out the sensor on the Kodak, which tends to happen in very bright conditions.

The photo below was taken at the roadside on Indian Canyon Avenue in North Palm Springs.

The photo below was taken in the pass through the Sheephole Mountains between Twentynine Palms and Amboy. The view beyond Mike Harmon (left) and Dan Underwood (right) looks down toward Bristol Dry Lake and the town of Amboy, many miles in the distance.

Below: There’s no mistaking that you are on the “mother road”, Route 66, which runs through Amboy.

Below: I have too many photos of Roy’s sign, but black and white seemed appropriate.

Below, the tank in this photo sat on display beside the gas station in Barstow when we stopped for the third and last tank of fuel for the ride.

The ATSF caboose shown below also resided beside the gas station in Barstow.

The Ultimate Keyboard

The following statement is just my opinion, of course. Yesterday UPS delivered the best computer keyboard ever made to my door: The “IBM” 101-key. As I mentioned in The Crown of (Keyboard) Creation, the IBM 101 was manufactured by IBM, then by Lexmark for IBM. It is now manufactured by Unicomp and is available in multiple configurations at http://pckeyboards.stores.yahoo.net/ind.html. This particular model, the Customizer 101, doesn’t have the superfluous  Windows-specific keys. I deliberately ordered it that way. Those keys, like the human appendix, are totally unnecessary.  I’ve logged approximately 1,200 words on the keyboard in a day and a half, and am happy to report that this board is the real deal. It has the “click-back” of the original 101 board, because it uses the same buckling spring technology. It feels exactly the same as the original keyboards, though that isn’t surprising since it is manufactured to the same specifications.

Compared to the sponge-like and cheaply made Compaq keyboard that I used most recently, it is a joy to type on. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not faulting Compaq for the typing sponge that came with the Compaq machine I bought ten months ago. It is exactly what it was intended to be: A cheap board that allowed the company to trim $50.00 off the price of the tower/keyboard/mouse combination. But if you do a lot of typing, and loved the old IBM boards, it is probably worthwhile to look at the new Unicomp boards.

The photo above shows the effect of ten months of typing on the Compaq board. The alpha characters are starting to wear off. Click on the photo and the wear will be plainly visible. The A is nearly completely gone, the E is half-gone, and the S is getting quite squidgy around the edges. The characters appear to be decals. They’ll all wear off at some point in time, though it is unlikely that the board will last that long without some mechanical failure.

My wife Lisa used the new keyboard for a time last night. She was and is a big fan of the original IBM keyboards. I asked her what she thought of the new 101 keyboard today. “It feels just like a keyboard should.” She said. “It’s like the good old days, when times were slower, and keyboards were clickier.”

Waiting For The Light

For months, I’ve watched this view at Anza Narrows. A photo of it appeared in an earlier post. Over time I’ve captured it with minor variations of viewpoint - where I stood or kneeled to press the shutter. But what I’ve been watching for, waiting for is the light, the most critical variable. The light was right earlier today, as shown in the photo below.

Statistics: Nikon D200, Nikon 28mm manual focus lens, Tiffen 0.6 graduated neutral density filter. ISO 100, 1/30 s, f/11.

The Beer + UFO Equation

This is the story of a proof. Of sorts. In the end it is not a proof of alien visitation, but it does show an anecdotal relationship between beer drinking and UFO sightings. Unfortunately for Alien Visitation Theorists, it does not show the relationship in the manner they would prefer. For more information on the connection between Beer Drinking and Alien Visitations, see Typewriters???, The History of Beer, and Beer Versus Anarchy. The photo below was made with a Lumix DMC FX01, a now-outdated 6 Megapixel digital point-and-shoot camera. My riding group, the River City Riders, was relaxing on the patio of a restaurant in Idylwild, California, in the San Jacinto Mountains. We were paying the appropriate amount of attention to the task of drinking a couple pitchers of beer when I made the photo shown below. It was Blue Moon Beer, I believe.

This photo appeared in an earlier post, UFO, in May of 2009. This photo did not show a saucer-shaped flying craft, despite what it looks like. To find out what it really was, click on this link: UFO.

The Crown of (Keyboard) Creation

"The new phone book is here! The new phone book is here!"

Two or three people may be interested in this, though I'm not sure whom, except former IBM Selectric typewriter operators who still use a keyboard all day. In the deep past, when we were using "AT" level PCs (286s & 386s), one could get an 82-key or 101-key IBM keyboard.

Those keyboards, made by Lexmark for IBM, were wonderful, though somewhat noisy, state of the art keyboards. I loved them despite the racket (or maybe partially because of the racket, because it always sounded like one was doing something). They were a very close match to the Selectric in the area of tactile feel, the result of using the same "buckling spring" technology to produce the classic "click" feel of the key actions. To be fair, the computer keyboards were only half as noisy as the Selectrics, since they weren't accompanied by the hum of the electric motor and noise of the moving mechanical parts. Regardless of the noise, it could easily be argued that the IBM buckling spring keyboards were the crown of keyboard creations. 

I had one of the 82-key keyboards which didn't survive the 286 era and two of the 101s that I used on 386s, Pentium, and Pentium III computers (Pentium II computers were such dogs that I wouldn’t buy one). The 101s required periodic maintenance to keep them functional. Maintenance was a matter of partially disassembling the keyboard and cleaning it. I kept the 101s working for years, but both finally bit the dust, or choked on the dust, since I could no longer get them working with a good cleaning.  

Whilst daydreaming yesterday about using a Selectric II typewriter to write notes with, it suddenly occurred to me that I could probably find a used 101 keyboard for sale on the Web. It is amazing how often a Web search does not occur to me. I did a search and turned up a couple used ones. I then stumbled upon an article that traced the manufacturers of the 101. Amazingly enough, the 101s are still being made and one can buy them with USB connectors! Here is the link:  http://pckeyboards.stores.yahoo.net/cus101usenon.html.

I'm still thinking about picking up a Selectric II in the near future because of the nature of all the notes I've been scribbling using Stage 3A writing technology (paper and pen). I don't like the look of my hand script, and I don't like the act of writing full 8.5" X 11" pages. I should have taken shorthand in school... A slight return to Stage 4 writing technology could make my note-taking easier. But I'm quite happy to discover that it is still possible to get the best computer keyboard ever manufactured (keeping in mind that "discover" means uncovering something that was there all along). I will probably pick up one of the 101s in a couple months. I'll also have to learn to shut the office door when using either IBM keyboard at 5:00 am… 

Waiting For It

These photos are from my first shoot of the year 2011, on January 2. The previous morning was not good for a lot of color in the sky. I typically check the cloud formations thirty to forty minutes before sunrise. When it looks like good photographic conditions will arise, I ride to a favored location and set up the tripod. As often, this morning would be good from Anza Narrows, and I had adequate time to ride there and set up. So much about landscape photography is dependent on getting to the right spot to shoot. Obviously, if you’re not in the right place, there is no photograph. The rest is a matter of waiting for the light, particularly during the Golden Light of a sunrise or sunset.  The sequence of frames in this post was captured over a period of twenty-nine minutes.

The photo above was the first frame captured. The clouds, ripples of gray just two minutes before, were beginning to split the light nicely, a foreshadowing of warmer highlights.

Above, the fringe of red is beginning to climb out of the east. The long ridge on the left is Box Springs Mountain. The bump in the center is formed by the shoulders of Mt. San Jacinto, some forty miles away. The peak is obscured by clouds (but in a non-Pink Floyd way).

Above, the color looked good, but I knew it hadn’t peaked yet.

The photo above shows the strong colors I was waiting for. This was the peak of the light.

Above, the colors are softening. The light is on the wane.

Above, the light is quickly fading. Within a couple minutes the golden light was completely gone and the sky cover a cold gray-blue.

The Very Last Shoot (Really)

Well, I lied. I thought that this morning’s shoot at Anza Narrows was the only one I’d get today, the last day of 2010. The mercury climbed up into the low fifties by midday. With just a bit of cloud cover across the blue dome, the sky was cooperating with the clear horizons.

I rode out to Hidden Valley Wildlife Refuge, and climbed a hill, shown above, near the entrance to get these views. The trail grew progressively chewed up by horse hooves. It looked like two horses had gone up the trail two days ago when the ground was still soggy from the recent rainstorms.

The photo above was taken on the shoulder of the hill where the trail leveled out. The background peak is Mt. Baldy in the Angelus Mountains.

The photo above was taken on the crest of the hill. Again, all of the photos in this post were made with a 28mm, f/2.8 manual lens (42mm = 35mm equivalent).

The vertical frame above is a view to the east. The peak of Mt. San Jacinto is visible in the background.

The Last Shoot

The photos in this post are from the last morning shoot of the year 2010. It was the coldest morning of the year on December 31. The mercury was topping out at 32 F when I rode to Anza Narrows. The short ride was a test of a new jacket. The jacket seems like a good one, and it will work well as a jacket liner under my leather riding jacket.

Since the wreck that totaled my last motorcycle, I’ve been a bit skittish about riding with the windshield attached, since the edge of the windshield opened a 6-stitch scar just under my lip. I was wishing I had put the windshield on about the time I got up into third gear. The frozen air rushing against my face reminded me of the blizzards of the northeast. My face went numb from cold in short order. I was happy that the park is less than two miles away from my garage.

These photos were made with a APS-C Nikon and a prime lens, a decades-old 28mm, f/2.8 manual lens. This 28mm is turning out to be my favorite lens. I like using manual focus, and the extra aperture stop or two, though I use two telephoto zoom lenses when it make sense for sports like football and motocross.

The 28mm lens works out to a 42mm frame on an APS-C sensor. As it is turning out, I’m framing correctly for a photo with my eye before looking through the viewfinder, so it seems that I’m using the lens enough to get used to it.

Despite the cold, it was a good shoot. I liked the quality of the light and the long shadows from the trees. I kept my cloth glove liners on while I used the camera. In the photo below you can see my footprints in the frosted grass.

Art and Function

When we buy a new motorcycle, we spend a great deal of time simply admiring it. Particularly in the first few days of ownership, we spend hours gazing at it. It doesn’t matter if the motorcycle is new, ninety years from the gates of the factory, or born some time in between. A new-to-us motorcycle is a thing of great beauty.

It isn’t the function of the bike alone that draws our gaze, though it doesn’t hurt that the object of our affection will take us over farm lanes, through woods, along an ocean, across the desert, over rivers and streams, and through high mountain passes. The eye candy is in the way the exhaust pipes flow, cylinders thrust, frame arches, and fenders curl. It is in the way that art, or form, combines with function in perfect balance.

It doesn’t much matter which brand or model. All motorcycles are functional art, a blending of form and function. The example shown above is my ride, a 1999 Road Star. Yamaha did a wonderful job when they designed the Road Star, known as the Wild Star in Europe. As I mentioned in the Motorcycles post, this is my second Road Star. The first one didn’t survive an attempted-murder-by-automobile. At the time it was designed, this was a perfect long-haul cruiser. Now it is a bit dated. It would need a 6-speed transmission, and a displacement upgrade to 113 Cubic Inches to bring it current. A fuel capacity of seven gallons wouldn’t hurt, either. It seems unlikely that Yamaha will update the Road Star. During the past few years the company has been content to market the Roadliner, Stratoliner, Raider, and Stryker models, while ignoring the great need to update the Road Star. Why is an update needed? Well, just look at the four newer big cruisers. There are solid power plants buried under the bad design decisions that cover the four newer models. It certainly is just my opinion, but in stock form they look butt-ugly, but not quite butt-ugly cool. They could all be customized to the point where they looked as good as the Road Star for a few thousand dollars, but why bother? Just buy a Road Star and you are already there. Now, where can I get a six-speed transmission for mine?

A Holiday View

This is a somewhat rare view of Mt. San Gorgonio made on
12-25-2010. It is rarely this clear in the Inland Empire area.
Mountains always look more majestic to my eye when they
are capped with snow.