Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

Our friend S. has done more for the Lockardugan clan than we can possibly repay. She has nursed kitties, watched over the house, coordinated showers, served as a maid of honor—the woman does it all, with a smile.

She's getting married in a few weeks, and asked me if I could take pictures at the wedding. This is something that fills me with alternating waves of dread and excitement, because I'm thrilled from a technical aspect, flattered from an artistic standpoint, and terrified I might fuck something up. I've been doing some research into basic wedding photography tips, and one of the newsletters I subscribe to had a list of good articles on the subject.

The first article is focused on making happy clients, by doing things like mapping out a shot list, using diffused light, setting expectations, etc. I know I'm going to have to scout out the location of this wedding because it's outdoors, and definitely find a few backdrops to shoot against.

The second article adds a technical tip: shooting in Aperture Priority. I spent a lot of time fiddling with the Manual settings the last time I shot people outdoors, so I'm going to muck around with this setting a little tomorrow—I don't know why I didn't try this earlier.

Several of the commenters suggest lenses that are out of my current price range. The 18-200 VR lens would be a good choice, and a wide-angle lens like the 12-24; I can rent the 18-200 for $35 locally, which isn't bad at all. I'll have to see if they have a wide-angle too.

The thing that scares me the most is using the flash; I'm still not up to speed on settings yet, and that's going to take practice. What I need to do is read up more on TTL metering to see if that's my best bet, or use something else. I found a book at the store last night which had some great, simple rules of thumb for using TTL flash (especially to reduce red-eye), and doing some digging around the internets I've found a few places where the concepts are explained in plain english. This is an article on using multiple wireless TTL flashes. I'll add more here as I learn.

Posted on August 23, 2008 10:30 AM | link to this entry | comments (0)

PowerShot Woes.

Apparently the Canon point-and-shoot we own, the PowerShot SD110, has a known issue with the CCD going bad and distorting images. According to the service notice, they will replace the CCD, but I don't know if this offer is still good. I'm going to call tomorrow to find out.

Update: They believe the problem is theirs to fix (but aren't sure yet). They have sent me a prepaid UPS label and an address to their repair facility so that I can send it in. For a four-year-old camera clearly out of warranty, I am truly impressed by their customer service. This is the kind of thing that keeps me loyal to the brand.

Posted on July 23, 2008 9:05 PM | link to this entry | comments (0)

Ooooooooooooh, Barracuda.

There's a guy near here who has a '67 Barracuda with a 10-foot paint job (it looks great from 10 feet away or more) that I finally stopped to shoot pictures of. It was parked in such a way that good shots were hard to get, but I did my best for you, esteemed readers.

Posted on July 11, 2008 5:01 PM | link to this entry | comments (4)

Changing Perspective.

Spending WAY too muh time at lunch reading, I came across this article about changing perspective.

I wish I knew more about the psychology behind this, but my guess is that we as humans are visually stimulated by novel points of view. If it’s something we’ve seen before, well, it’s just not as visually stimulating as a photo taken that we’ve not ever been able to see with our own eyes.

I know I am fascinated with alternative viewpoints, from macro shots, forced degradation, timelapse to 3-D, I've tried it all with varying degrees of success. Point-and-shoot has its place, but I'm interested in trying out stuff like kite photography.

This has me thinking about an idea I'd hatched a year or two ago: buying a painting pole, rigging a mount at the top, and setting a camera on it with either a remote shutter release or on an intervalometer, for things like the parade.

Especially considering the number of similar shots I've taken at the parade over the years— often of the same subject.

It also got me to thinking about my next Nikon lens, a 12-24mm wide-angle. Of course, it's $900, but a guy can dream, right?

Update 8.14: Photojojo just did an article on this, with some helpful advice on tracking down parts.

Posted on July 7, 2008 2:36 PM | link to this entry | comments (0)

That Could Have Gone Better.

Remember when we were kids, and we'd play games out in the street or in someone's backyard, and we'd call a do-over? Somebody'd kick the ball into a bush, or a car would come down the road right in the middle of an important play, and it was universally understood that things would just rewind a couple of minutes and start again, like erasing a videotape. Well, I'd like a do-over for most of yesterday, please.

It started out on an upbeat note; Mr. Scout brought over the window regulator for the Jeep and we tore the door down to put it in; unfortunately, the part was not a match to the one in my Jeep, and there seemed to be no way to use parts from the replacement to fix the broken unit.

We then decided to take advantage of the weather and go back to the pick & pull yard to hunt more Jeeps. It seems that parts (and part vehicles) are more plentiful for Grand Cherokees than for the regular model, both online and in the junkyard, and my particular model (2-door, second generation, power window) is even rarer than the 4-door. We did however find a junked PT Cruiser, which featured luxurious bucket seats that are supposed to be bolt-in replacements for Scout seats. Eight bolts later, we were walking up to the pay area with the seats on our heads, but not before making a detour to a section of the yard we hadn't seen before, featuring some ancient Detroit iron: a three-porthole Buick, a rounded early 50's Ford, and a pair of Opels, among other things. I shot about ten pictures, and we were on our way. As we got up to the counter, the redneck in charge of shoplifting told me they have a strict no-camera policy, and made me erase my memory card after giving me some bullshit about smashing lenses.

Returning to the Scout we'd found last week, we pulled a lot of plastic and other rare parts, having no luck pulling the hubs or the seat bases. It was about this time I checked my phone and found this lovely sight:

I don't know when or how it happened, but it was enough to ruin my day right there. Strangely, I can still call in and out, and the touchscreen still works on the damaged areas. I'm going to visit the Apple store to see if there's some kind of repair they can make; if not, it looks like I'll be purchasing a 3G iPhone earlier than I planned.

My afternoon was spent working on an illustration; I decided to experiment with an idea I'd had a few months ago to see what results I'd get, using the negative space instead of the positive. The results were a lot less than I'd hoped for.

The linework looks cheaper, like a quick marker drawing, and not expressive like I'd imagined. It also could be because I've been having problems getting my cutting nibs to vary line weights properly—they seem to get dull very quickly, which is not what I'm used to. If I could regulate line weight better, I'd be happier with the results.

I took the same sketch and started making a traditional cut, and about three-quarters of the way through I realized the initial sketch, while reasonably good, did not capture McCain the way it should, and the resulting piece looks like someone else (Jen says it's Ed McMahon). His head is not as long as I'd made it here, and his distinguishing features aren't represented well enough.

There were several highlights from yesterday, so it's not like I was constantly followed by a black stormcloud: we have Andersen 400-series windows officially on order for the front porch. Jen had a great client meeting on a new project, and we got our second delivery from the organic farm (I don't know how we're going to eat all this lettuce, chard, and spinach). I was just hoping to produce a success of my own, something I'm sure everyone can understand.

So it's back to the drawing board for Jeep, phone, and scratchboard.

Update: One trip to the Apple Store, my choices were thus:

1. Continue to use the busted phone and guess at everything on the left side of the screen.
2. Wait until July and buy a new 3G iPhone for $200, but take an additional $10/mo. hit on my data plan.
3. Spend $250 to replace my iPhone with another 1st gen model.

I chose 3, because I'd love to have the 3G but I don't want to pay AT&T an additional $120/mo. for features I may not even use. As it was, when the Genius rang me out, he told me happily they'd just reduced the replacement cost from $250 to $199, so I "saved" a little more money.

Upon inspection of the iPhone cases available at the store, only a select few might have protected my phone from catastrophic screen damage, and they tended to be the ugliest offerings on the shelf. (Imitation calfskin? stitched black leather? I don't think so).

Posted on June 13, 2008 8:56 AM | link to this entry | comments (2)

Up In Your Grille.

Posted on June 3, 2008 11:33 AM | link to this entry | comments (0)

Distracting Myself.

My pop is now off the ventilator, with a tracheotomy tube, and sitting upright, which is a great sign. He's writing things we can actually understand and itching to get out of the bed; most of all he wants to EAT.

This is a revisit of the postcard Jen and I bought months ago, and for this one I decided to overlay the old with the new to see the changes 100 years will make. It took a little finagling with depth of field and a bit of Photoshop work to get the postcard light enough to see, but the results are worth the effort.

Posted on May 9, 2008 12:52 PM | link to this entry | comments (1)

Super Cream (night).

Posted on May 7, 2008 12:08 AM | link to this entry | comments (0)

Local History.

Today I was at a client site attempting to troubleshoot what could generously be called the worst piece of commercial software I've ever looked at. It turned out that I couldn't do anything to solve the problem, but what made the trip worthwhile was the location: a bombed-out looking collection of stone and brick buildings, decidedly 19th century architecture, surrounded by fields of junk and a mountain of steaming mulch. Many of the structures looked fascinating and practically begged for further exploration, but discretion won out over curiosity and I elected to shoot from a distance (mostly).

My Google-fu reveals the origins of this strange wasteland: it is the remnants of Daniels, MD, a mill town dating back to the 1840s, which was laid waste by Hurricane Agnes in 1972. The cupola in the photo above is the bell tower of the St. Albans church, now bricked up to prevent vandalism.

For train nuts, this is a tour of the old B&O Main line, which cuts right through the heart of what used to be Daniels. This site is notable for the excellent aerial photo of the mill in 1956.

Posted on March 20, 2008 4:27 PM | link to this entry | comments (0)

Seven-Up

This is a shot of some excellent signage in beautiful downtown Columbia, Pennsylvania, an old foundry town on US 30 outside of Lancaster.

Posted on March 19, 2008 2:21 PM | link to this entry | comments (1)

Jet Danger Intake

Visiting Jen's father this weekend in the LP City, I played hooky for a few hours and brought the big camera over to the Patuxent River Naval Air Museum to shoot some planes.

The museum is a curious collection of donations, acquisitions and working machinery, and they have a remarkable collection of hardware parked outside spanning fifty years of aviation history. I am always drawn to older designs, so I spent hours skulking around the oldtimers in the group, trying to find good angles and interesting subject matter. Ducking inside for what I thought would be a quick review of the exhibits, I was shanghaied by a friendly, garrulous older guide who showed me every nut, bolt, and rivet of the exhibits inside on an hourlong personal tour.

Back at the house, I pulled the last of the shelving down in the corner, exposing a pencilled note from the original workmen. The room was, as far as I can tell, finished out in 98° heat, on July 12 19(28?)

Then, I pounded all the nails out of the debris on the floor of the exam room and stacked it neatly in the garage for disposal. Tomorrow I'm going to swap filters in my aspirator and start pulling drywall and molding from the walls to see what's underneath.

Posted on March 10, 2008 11:17 PM | link to this entry | comments (1)

Oldsmobile

It's been quiet around here lately, so I'm going through the archives to pull out some pictures from years past to share. This is a pretty Ninety-Eight Holiday Jen and I spotted in Oella a few years ago with beautiful chrome styling and a two-tone paint job.

Posted on March 6, 2008 9:07 AM | link to this entry | comments (0)

One

Posted on March 3, 2008 5:11 PM | link to this entry | comments (0)

Snorkel Beach 2

It's day 4,000 of gray February 2008, so I thought I'd post a picture of some sunshine and blue water to remind myself what "warm" felt like.

Posted on February 26, 2008 8:46 PM | link to this entry | comments (1)

Upgraded Seats.

The site isn't quite finished yet, but I'm writing here anyway. MT 3.3 is pretty slick. I'm now only two years behind the technology curve instead of four, which will provide things like better spam filtering, a refined editing space, and better plugins. After this exercise is finished, I'm going to take a long hard look at upgrading to 4.1 now that my puzzle-solving synapses have warmed up.

Other than that, things around Idiot Central are pretty quiet. On Saturday I stopped over to the Beerfather's house to bottle the result of our efforts: two and a half cases of wheat beer, sitting neatly in the basement fermenting on the shelf where I stored the bin full of Scout parts. He and I are hatching plans to go wrenching on the truck this coming weekend, something that leaves me with a bittersweet taste in my mouth: I'm excited for him. His enthusiasm reminds me of myself ten years ago when I had a lot more money and big plans for my new truck, but it will admittedly be hard not to feel like I failed in my efforts to keep it in shape. So I'll be bringing a box of tissues along with my socket sets on Sunday, and try to keep the blubbering to a minimum.

I'm also signed up for some photography this weekend—the paying kind, and it will have me dusting off the panoramic rig for the tripod I was testing out last spring. I have to buy some cheap spotlights this week, and I'll have to spring for a copy of Stitcher to process the photos, but I'm excited to finally start working on this for real, and this time it's all paid for.

My Mom's new MacBook showed up last Friday, and I've played with it only enough to update the software. It's a really nice little machine—it feels solid, it's quick, and she's going to get a kick out of the built-in camera as well as a fresh battery. I got her old Pismo in the mail yesterday, so I'm going to transfer her data over and set her up with a chat account so I can use screen sharing to troubleshoot any problems with her machine. Meanwhile, I'm helping Jen's father work through problems with his wireless printer. Troubleshooting Vista over the phone has been like doing this year's taxes while guiding a non-english speaker through a root canal on a CB radio. He will explain what he sees on his screen, and I will frantically Google whatever he can describe to figure out what to do (I don't own a copy, and am trying to avoid buying one). Adding to the pain is the fact that his patch cords have all vanished, leaving him with no way to directly connect to his printer. Argh!

Guitar lessons have gone reasonably well; I missed last week's lesson but got back in the groove this Tuesday. It's to the point now where I miss playing it if I go too long without it, which I'm taking as a good sign. I also broke down and bought an electric tuner after consistently coming in for lessons out of tune.

Add to all of this the fact that it's half past February and I've only done one illustration this year. I need to clone myself.

Posted on February 21, 2008 9:45 AM | link to this entry | comments (0)

Driving With Handcuffs On.

On a whim, I went to look at a Scout for sale over in Dundalk this afternoon. While it runs, this particular Scout is worse off than the one I just sold, so no deal. But it did have a great steering wheel and a death's head shift knob. Bonus!

Posted on February 14, 2008 3:43 PM | link to this entry | comments (0)

Bar

Posted on February 7, 2008 9:42 AM | link to this entry | comments (0)

Calendar

A brown package showed up on the doorstep yesterday, containing the calendar I've been talking about lately. It's really out of the ordinary—the whole thing is printed on 14 sheets of thick pressboard, notched in the top and on the bottom. Sliding any one of the cards into the top notch displays a month, and there's a photo on front and back. My photo is technically the 'back' of January (turning the whole thing around reveals a shot of the Aquarium with the dates printed over top).

Posted on January 11, 2008 3:55 PM | link to this entry | comments (0)

The Skeptic.

A few months ago I was contacted through my Flickr account about possible usage of a photo I'd taken in Georgia during a loooong commencement speech. At first, I was a little skeptical about the whole thing, but the gentleman who inquired explained the purpose and scope of the project, and I signed on board. After negotiation of rights and agreeing on a price, I sat back and waited to see what happened. Things were quiet for a while until last week, right before Christmas, when an envelope with an unfamiliar New York address appeared in the mail bearing a check. I've provided a wide variety of creative services over the years, and now I'm happy to add photography to the list.

Posted on December 27, 2007 6:06 PM | link to this entry

Rappin' Santa

Something that always brings a smile to my day is a funny little toy my Grandma gave me. It's a fabric Santa who wiggles and does a barely legible rap to "Jingle Bells." I've had him since I was in high school, which means he's been packed and unpacked across multiple apartments for almost twenty years. He's tacky and goofy and he sounds awful, but he reminds me of my Grandma's smile, and that's why he always gets a place of honor on the mantle and a pair of fresh batteries every year.

Posted on December 19, 2007 8:49 PM | link to this entry | comments (1)

Merry Cristmas

One of the unfortunate side-effects of living near a school is the barrage of discarded papers that seem to blow into our yard. Yesterday morning I found this one next to the Jeep as I loaded up for disaster recovery—a consulting client got walloped by the windstorm two nights ago, and their servers, printers, and network were down. A solid day of troubleshooting cut into my Cristmas [sic] purchasing time, but I got them back on their feet by close of business. Meanwhile, our dining room fills with boxes delivered by the brown truck, and decorations are slowly appearing around the house. Maybe this year's holiday won't fly past before we get to enjoy it a little.

Posted on December 18, 2007 10:36 AM | link to this entry

Tin Soldier

This used to be a pole decoration–probably fifty years ago. He has a great nostalgic look to him. Nowadays it would be a product tie-in.

Posted on December 14, 2007 6:24 PM | link to this entry

Diner

Just kidding. I haven't been out of the house all day.

Posted on December 10, 2007 11:57 PM | link to this entry | comments (1)

Oregon Coastline 2

I finally got around to scanning the medium-format negatives I shot in Oregon last year. Overall, I'm very pleased with the results—amazed, actually. Besides a yellow cast on the film, probably due to the flatbed scanner color-shifting negative to positive, and two examples where I double-exposed the film, I got a handful of beautiful shots on one roll. For these shots, I cheated with the light meter on my Canon, shooting the scene first digitally and then transferring the shutter speed and aperture settings to the Rolleicord. Now that I've got a better grasp of that relationship, I can take full advantage of the camera's potential.

This is enough success to consider buying a flatbed scanner with a transparency adapter and shooting a lot more medium-format film. Can anyone with color developing experience tell me if it's stupidly expensive to do at home, or more complicated than black and white?

Posted on December 7, 2007 9:10 AM | link to this entry | comments (3)

Harvey A.

Posted on December 4, 2007 3:18 PM | link to this entry | comments (1)

No Ball Playing

Posted on December 1, 2007 11:17 AM | link to this entry

Crabs.

Posted on November 26, 2007 4:38 PM | link to this entry | comments (2)

Miracle

The lights on 34th Street, Hampden.

Posted on November 24, 2007 10:38 PM | link to this entry | comments (1)

Desoto Teeth

While I was out yesterday, I spied an older DeSoto sedan on the side of the road that I've been meaning to shoot for months now. Pulling a highly illegal U-turn, I stopped in and took pictures until the battery on my Canon died.

This particular model is a Fireflite, first released in 1955 as the flagship model, and cost $3,544 new. It's a huge four-door sedan featuring a V-8 engine with a lever-controlled automatic transmission. With styling featuring a grille full of chrome and a beautiful hood ornament suggesting a pair of wings bent back in flight, DeSoto sold 114,765 of the model in 1955.

Unfortunately, the DeSoto name did not last beyond the 1960 model year, a victim of Chrysler's machinations (it competed directly with the Dodge and Plymouth brands as a mid-priced offering) and the recession of 1958.

Posted on November 15, 2007 4:31 PM | link to this entry

Wireless SD Memory Card.

WOW. This is so awesome, it gets a full-page post. An SD memory card with built-in wireless capability, so that pictures taken on a camera can be uploaded to a computer or a Flickr account (or one of 14 other online photosharing services). Still using CompactFlash (like me)? They're testing CF adapters for the SD cards, and expect to have them ready in a week.

That's some cool shit, there.

Posted on November 1, 2007 11:00 AM | link to this entry

Early Sampling.

It's been a busy, strange week here at Lockardugan Central, so we decided to have some drinks and dip into the Halloween candy reservoir last night to, uh, test it for quality. It's funny how Dark Chocolate Twix make everything so much better so quickly. Jen just came back home with a pile of decorations for the house, so we're going to close the studio early to get the house ready for the kids this evening.

Addendum: The photo above was taken hand-held in exceptionally low light, on manual settings. I've made a breakthrough with the D70 since I got the new lens, and suddenly everything makes more sense. I've been shooting everything manually since the Oyster Festival, and now the F-stop/shutter speed combinations are drilled into my head in a way that I could not learn on film cameras. I've also learned to use the ISO settings to my advantage, and I'll be getting into the intricacies of metering next.

Posted on October 31, 2007 1:24 PM | link to this entry

Red boots

Jen and I needed to get out of the house this afternoon, so we checked out the Elkridge Flea Market on Rt. 1. After navigating a highly chaotic parking lot, we found the pickings to be slim, unless as a shopper you're interested in cowboy boots, secondhand tools, kung-fu DVD's, or cellphone holsters. As a slice-of-life destination, it's hard to beat, however.

Posted on October 27, 2007 10:32 PM | link to this entry

Warplanes

Taken at the Collings Foundation fly-in, Westminster, MD. Find more here.

Posted on October 13, 2007 6:34 PM | link to this entry | comments (3)

Carry-On Luggage: the Camera Edition

We're driving north on Saturday with Jen's father to check out the Collings Foundation fly-in, where there will be three 1940's era bombers parked for the public to see. I've been wanting to do this since I found out they were touring years ago, and I plan to stay as long as I can, bring as many cameras as I can carry, and spend as much time as possible in each plane.

In preparation, I bought an inexpensive but valuable tool for my D70: a F/1.8 50mm Nikkor lens. I've read several articles in the last couple of weeks touting its power and simplicity and when I put it on the Nikon I was transported back to my first weeks of photo class, using a Minolta with an identical lens: the view is the same and the camera weighs the same (maybe a little lighter, actually). Using it to snap some basic photos, I remembered how much more it made me work back then—in order to frame the photo correctly, the photographer is forced to move, making the process that much more intimate and engaged. In the short time I used it, it made me think harder about how I wanted the photo to look and where I needed to be instead of simply zooming in to compose. I spent a lot of time habitually tugging on the focus ring trying to get closer...oh, right.

The other great feature of this lens is manual exposure setting. Most of the kit lenses shipped with new DSLRs are auto-exposure only, which means a whole measure of lighting control is lost. Both of my current lenses are auto-exposure, unfortunately. This one takes me back to the basics, which I've forgotten completely, so I cracked Jen's copy of Horenstein's Black and White Photography: A Basic Manual this morning and started reading up on my basic camera theory.

What's funny is how boring I thought depth-of-field exercises were at the time (and how expensive they proved to be) but how fascinated I am about getting the theory down today. I'd like to get to the point where I can shoot manually without stopping to remember if F/1.2 is wide open or closed down, but I think that's probably a long way off. (Tom Baird, I hope you read this someday and reconsider the low grades you gave me in theory class.)

I'm also going to take my through-the-viewfinder rig and hope that the event staff doesn't think I'm shooting lasers at them or something. I've been perfecting my setup for that rig for a while now, to the point where it has a preset on my Canon and shoots with excellent results about 90% of the time. The only thing I wish I had for it now is a macro lens for the Nikon so I could get larger-quality originals; I'm at the limit of what I can do with the pairing of the Canon on the rig, and I'd like to be able to expand the possibilities. All in good time.

Posted on October 12, 2007 12:35 PM | link to this entry

Come In, We're Open

The Mobile Chapel is parked at a rest stop in southern Pennsylvania, and it's open for business at 6:30 on a Monday evening.

Posted on September 25, 2007 10:01 AM | link to this entry

GTO

A beautiful Pontiac conveniently parked aross the street from my parents' house yesterday afternoon.

Posted on September 24, 2007 11:03 AM | link to this entry

gray window

Posted on September 23, 2007 6:49 PM | link to this entry

Monarch

Taken in my father's garden, upstate New York.

Posted on September 23, 2007 11:55 AM | link to this entry

Afternoon with a Hudson.

I have a client inside the beltway who I have to visit from time to time. On the way there, I've spied a beautiful green touring car of 20's vintage sitting in a nondescript gas station parking lot through sun, rain, and snow. On my way back from a meeting, I finally stopped to shoot some viewfinder pics of the car, and found it to be a Hudson sedan in reasonably good shape. At this point in time, I'm stopping to shoot every interesting car over 30 years old because of the ravages of Eastern winters on pre-undercoated and galvanized bodywork. This particular car looks like it was treated to a comprehensive overhaul sometime in the last ten years, and then left to its own fate outside in the elements. A grand car like this deserves to be stored in a climate-controlled garage, and then packed each weekend with suitcases, a picnic lunch, and a family, and then driven to scenic destinations—in other words, loved and used. It pains me to see rust bubbles on the sills of the running boards and spiderweb cracks in the chrome on a survivor as proud and dignified as this, because I'd hate to see it deteriorate past the point of restoration.

From Detroit Michigan, U.S.A. And don't you forget it.

Even the accessories on this car have class. I could remove this from the car and use it for a high-class doorknob on the front of my house.

I love the green of the car contrasted with the red license plate.

This is a wee little running light right below the base of the windshield, about the size of a baby's fist.

There's only one brake light, high on the left side, about the size of a baseball. Don't tailgate!

Again, almost the full address is printed on the hub. That's pride.

Posted on September 20, 2007 2:50 PM | link to this entry

Galaxie 500

A boxy mid-60's Ford spied at the gas station on rt. 40 yesterday. It was gone this morning.

Posted on September 12, 2007 4:51 PM | link to this entry | comments (2)

Lunchtime

After shooting the Buick on friday, I stopped in at the Forest Diner on rt. 40 for a burger and some photos. The food isn't the best in the land, and I can do without the preponderance of Betty Boop statuary, but I'm a sucker for lunch at a stool in an original Silk City diner car. Plus, the local diner chain™ is parked right next door, and I like to boycott their bland food whenever I can.

Posted on September 10, 2007 11:35 AM | link to this entry

Hula Buick

On the way out to Ellicott City, I spied a green '50 or '51 Buick Special by the side of the road with a 'For sale' sign in the window. Along with my recent resolution to get off my ass and write more, I've been trying to be more regular about photography, and again it paid off: I had my camera with me and filled a memory card with pictures.

Posted on September 7, 2007 3:02 PM | link to this entry

Knives

Another classic, onsite at a client location.

Posted on July 20, 2007 5:10 PM | link to this entry

Knives

Another classic, onsite at a client location.

Posted on July 20, 2007 5:10 PM | link to this entry

Sprite

This is the front end of a beautiful little Austin-Healey I spied in a parking garage where I've been doing some consulting this week. It took a herculean effort not to commit Grand Theft Convertible, so I opted for pictures instead.

Posted on July 18, 2007 6:57 PM | link to this entry

Parade Photos

There's a set of photos from the 2007 Lockardugan Parade Spectacular up on Flickr this morning. As susal, the bulk of the photos are from the actual parade and not from the party, as I spent a good deal of time behind the grill. As always, it was fantastic to see friends and family, and everyone enjoyed the under 85° weather, up until the point it started pouring (and then we just moved the party inside.)

Posted on July 5, 2007 12:28 PM | link to this entry | comments (1)

Lily

Our neighbor has about 20 of these beauties in his backyard.

Posted on July 2, 2007 4:23 PM | link to this entry

Conspicuous Consumption.

Shopping carts tucked neatly away under the stairs at the College Park IKEA this afternoon.

Posted on June 28, 2007 11:13 PM | link to this entry

+ | -

OK, the D70 dark image issue mentioned elsewhere is fixed; at some point I set the exposure compensation to -2.0 and never returned it to 0.0.

Apparently exposure compensation is a global setting, meaning when I used it in Program mode and switched over to Aperture Priority, for example, the EC setting was still -2.0 and didn't reset itself like my Canon does. While annoying (all the photos I shot in Curacao suffered from this oversight) it's another thing I've learned and won't forget again.

Posted on June 27, 2007 1:17 PM | link to this entry

Flickr Gadget Testing

Huh. Pretty cool, eh?

Posted on June 21, 2007 12:24 AM | link to this entry

DeSoto

Posted on June 4, 2007 2:44 PM | link to this entry

Bee Line

Posted on May 31, 2007 12:44 PM | link to this entry

Daffodil

Finally, some warm weather. It's going to be 70° this weekend, and I have work-work to do inside, when I'd rather be outside with a rake and shovel. Argghh!

Posted on April 20, 2007 6:41 PM | link to this entry

English Car

Posted on April 8, 2007 4:48 PM | link to this entry

l33t skills

After pulling the last of the photos off the two cameras I brought to California, I'm afraid to say my abilities as a photographer are in a steady decline. Waaaaaay back in the early days I had a Kodak DC-3400, an absolute clunker of a camera, and I somehow made it take very good pictures. After graduation to the Canon, I had a long string of lucky shots until I started reading the stupid manual and finding other excellent features I hadn't noticed before, and then it all went to hell. For this trip, I took the D-70 and a little Canon PowerShot, and I got about five good pictures out of a hundred taken or so. All the D-70's shots were too contrasty or overexposed, and the point-and-click Canon made everyone in the shot look like disciples of Satan, even though it was set on redeye flash.

At this point I don't know whether to be worried or pissed; I threw the little Canon in a drawer and reset the D-70 back to factory specs. It's going to take even more reading of the cryptic Nikon manual to learn about metering shots properly and learning where the sweet spots are, but I'm getting the hang of the camera slowly. I'm going to try and post as many pictures as I can now that the weather is warming up and the flowers are blooming, and hopefully find some of my mojo again.

Posted on April 4, 2007 1:14 AM | link to this entry | comments (4)

Home Again

I'm back in Baltimore after a whirlwind tour of San Francisco. My internal time clock, which has never really been that accurate, woke me up at 7:45 EST after being forced backwards all week.

I didn't really get the chance to take a lot of pictures this time around, because much of my time was spent working, commuting, eating, or sleeping. The job itself is new and challenging, and I like the people a lot. While I was out there I was able to catch up with a bunch of friends, which made the trip twice as valuable to me—a lot of good people are out on the Left Coast now, and my work schedule has made it possible to visit with them and get paid for it, something I appreciate greatly.

Meanwhile, I've taken over some additional responsibility on a current project which should make April a very frantic month, something I view with a mixture of excitement and dread. There are a lot of balls to juggle in the upcoming weeks, and I hope I have the ability to do so.

Posted on March 30, 2007 11:00 AM | link to this entry

Reward

Posted on March 7, 2007 2:36 PM | link to this entry

Panoramic Research.

I'm doing some in-depth research to figure out how to do panoramic photography for the web this morning, and it seems like there's a lot of information out there but not a lot of clear direction.

I should back up and mention that I got my Panosaurus rig in the mail on Friday, and I'm very happy with it. Setup took a bit of time, but the included directions were clear and informative. The materials are all very good quality, and the only problem I had with the whole thing was due to the fact that my tripod head is too weak to support the weight of the rig and the camera. Borrowing Jen's 18-55mm lens, I shot the entire living room and uploaded the images (37 total) to my laptop for working.

Now, to the software: Apple led the way back in the day with Quicktime VR, a technology that seems to have fallen by the wayside in recent years. The only source for a copy of the VR Authoring Studio is Amazon, and it looks like it's still a Classic application (!?!) as far as I can tell—the design of the box pictured is vintage 1996. Apple has a number of cryptic and oblique little apps that handle some of the specialized tricks the larger suite does, including a Classic app called QTVR Make Panorama that will convert a stitched panoramic photo into a QTVR movie embeddable in a webpage.

This is a preliminary test, so I didn't lock the exposure or light the back of the room, makng it uneven and blown out. I believe SHIFT and CTRL are the zoom controls.

There seem to be a number of applications that have come along to challenge QTVR and work with their own proprietary Java applets, including one I've used in the past, PhotoVista. PhotoVista is a decent application, doing a good job of stitching images and creating a Java applet viewer to show the final product. Unfortunately, due to the way iseemedia has written their applet code, I can't deep-link to a source file as per the standard methods, so all I can do is link to a separate page, which is a lousy, inelegant solution.

About the best resource for other applications I found was this site, Panoguide.com, which has some helpful articles and links to various vendors. Unfortunately, some of the information is years out of date, as are some of the linked applications. The always excellent Steves Digicams has a small page dedicated to photostitching software where I was able to find some applications that did a pretty reasonable job with what I'd shot, most notably The Panorama Factory. PhotoVista and The Panorama Factory won't (as far as I can tell) stitch images shot on more than one plane automatically, which limits them to circular panoramics only.

RealViz Stitcher also did an excellent job of putting together panoramics and made the process very easy, up until the stitching was done. While it got points for its output of clean, crisp images and being available for OS X, Stitcher has some rough edges to polish. The interface, which starts out looking clean, becomes a nightmare when the images are stitched together:

This is the main view window. It's not resizable either, as far as I can tell.

The great thing about Stitcher is that it recognizes photos shot on multiple planes automatically, so when I added all 37 images I was rewarded with a stitched file that included the floor and cieling elements. Additionally, the output options in Stitcher are very robust—I had a choice of standalone Java applets, QTVR movies, or simple rendered images I could import into other programs for final output.

What I wanted to end up with is a cubic view, meaning a complete 360° panoramic shot including the floor and cieling, or at least more than the field of view I'm dealing with now. Initially, I couldn't find anything that would stitch the photos I shot in a way that didn't induce vomiting when they were viewed. The end product of the stitch needed to be something other than a wide image file that went into an applet viewer, either a six-face or equirectangular image:

An equirectangular image

One of the problems I found with the process is that I had to have a glossary for the specific terms each vendor, programmer, and developer used, because some of them are the same thing and some of them are not. For example, I was pretty sure I had the ability to save a file from Stitcher that I could then import into a handy Apple utility called MakeCubic. But it took me some time to dive in and figure out which export option under which menu I needed to select to get the right file type in Stitcher.

This is a full-blown 360° panorama. The stupid yellow flags are there because I'm using a demo of the software. Note the gaps in the cieling.

So, to recap, I have to do some tweaking of the panoramic head to get rid of the parallax and other ghosting errors and be sure to shoot more photos in each series. I can make a circular panorama with PhotoVista, which is simple and available in QTVR or Java formats. Stitcher ($119 US) will allow me to put the photos together and output an equirectangular image I can then import into MakeCubic and output a QTVR file for the web.

As I continue refining the process and doing more research, I'll add it here, as well as share my examples.

Bibliography:

• HTML Scripting for QTVR-includes some handy links for hotlinking movies together.
  
• Panocube-creates QTVR movies from equirectangular panoramas much like MakeCubic.
  
• Apple's QTVR tools-Most are still Classic apps. Have fun.
  
• How to set up the camera-good info here.
  

Posted on March 5, 2007 11:35 AM | link to this entry | comments (2)

Fire Caddy

I saw this warhorse in a parking lot on my way out to a client's this morning, and stopped to take some shots of it. It's a two-door convertible, tricked out with flames, hood scoops, and old-skool lettered wheels. Somebody's parents were afraid of this car, for sure.

Posted on March 1, 2007 12:05 AM | link to this entry

Snowy Cardinal

Yep, more snow. We celebrated by having steamed mussels and homemade cornbread.

Posted on February 26, 2007 8:45 AM | link to this entry

Tulips

One of my favorite things about late winter and early spring is fresh tulips.

Posted on February 22, 2007 3:43 PM | link to this entry

David's TV

My brain sort of resembles this storefront today. A little worn down, a little faded. I have a to-do list about a mile long and nothing completed on it yet. It's one of those kind of days where in order to do Task A, I first must complete Task B. But Task B requires Tasks C, D, and E, and the methods of completing those tasks are foiled by technology (or my lack of understanding the technology.)

Anybody else having a day like this?

Posted on January 30, 2007 2:57 PM | link to this entry | comments (3)

Enchanted Forest

On the way back from Dave's house yesterday afternoon, I stopped to shoot a few pictures of the Enchanted Forest through the gate that surrounds the old park. I love this guy.

Posted on January 28, 2007 10:28 AM | link to this entry

Entrance

There's a hamburger joint out on Rt. 40 with a huge sign that used to be red neon, the last of the old-skool signage left on that stretch of roadway. It's been painted and the patina is gone now, but for years it was a lovely peeling white and black, just waiting for a long lens to capture its beauty. In the back of the parking lot, almost hidden by bushes, sits this entrance sign, equally as retro and time-worn, but ignored by the march of progress.

Posted on January 26, 2007 2:13 PM | link to this entry

Beetle Butt

For sale up the road from my house. Too expensive for my pocketbook, but I've always wanted to own one.

Posted on January 17, 2007 11:40 AM | link to this entry | comments (1)

Jen, listening to her father

We stopped down to Jen's father's house this weekend to install his new DSL modem and get his laptop set up to be on the internets. Afterward, we sat around in the kitchen and swapped stories.

Posted on January 15, 2007 10:52 AM | link to this entry

Pinkerton's Sticker

At an undisclosed location in upstate New York. There's a For Sale sign in the window, but the number is blacked out, which leads me to believe it's not on the market anymore. The fins on this car are HUGE.

Posted on January 10, 2007 11:25 AM | link to this entry

My Pops

Over a tray of clear liquids, which is a good sign. His appetite is strong and he's looking much better.

Posted on January 6, 2007 10:21 PM | link to this entry

Fergus

Through the lens of my Duoflex II.

Posted on January 6, 2007 12:56 PM | link to this entry | comments (2)

Toy Truck

I set up the light tent to shoot some shoes for a comp Jen was working on last night, and remembered this toy truck sitting in the bottom of a box, waiting to be displayed again. I found it on sale at an antique store because the trailer it originally came with was missing, but I loved the rake of the grille in the front.

I had to do some serious color retouching because I still don't own a proper flash unit and the lighting situation is still less than optimal— these issues affect DSLRs as much as my G3. But I'm excited to do some more experimentation with brighter lights and learn to use my camera better for this kind of thing.

Posted on December 12, 2006 11:18 AM | link to this entry

Red Top Market

On the way back from New Jersey.

Posted on December 5, 2006 12:47 PM | link to this entry

Field of Dreams

On my way back from a client meeting in Frederick yesterday, I saw this line of cars in a farmer's field and stopped to snap a few photos.

Posted on November 1, 2006 9:21 AM | link to this entry

View Lodge Motel

California—well, the whole west coast in general—is a neon lover's paradise. In Santa Cruz, there were about ten motels within spitting distance of the beach (naturally), each with its own excellent signage. This kind of signage exists over here in precious few places, so whenever I see it I shoot it.

Posted on September 16, 2006 10:55 PM | link to this entry

Viewfinder

An old-skool telescope on the "boardwalk" in Santa Cruz.

Posted on September 14, 2006 8:47 PM | link to this entry

'57 Chevy

One of my co-workers, a guy who wears crisp button-down shirts and slacks every day, drove in his custom Chevy yesterday. He's had it since he was in college (20+ years) and it's absolutely cherry. I can't say I like the colors all that much, but the car itself is beautiful to look at.

Posted on September 13, 2005 10:20 AM | link to this entry

4th of July Parade

I uploaded some select pictures from the 4th of July parade in Catonsville this morning, and I'm just now getting to mentioning them here. Thanks to everybody who came and we hope you all had a good time!

Posted on July 7, 2005 11:18 AM |