Look Look!

Hyperic First Impressions

2009-02-21T00:01:00.005-05:00

As someone who is in charge of a large network of different applications and hosts, I spend a decent portion of the day wondering if our software is working correctly. Some of our software is off-the-shelf, but much of it is application-specific custom built software. To further complicate things, much of this software interacts with other software and services. Staying "aware" in this type of large heterogeneous environment is serious work and in the past we've developed custom apps to monitor other custom apps. Clearly there must be a better way.

Check out this unrelated picture I added to spice things up!

Enter Hyperic.

I learned about Hyperic through this pretty interesting round-up. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, Hyperic is an open source, java-based monitoring platform. My first thought was that Hyperic kind of looks like Cacti (a rolled up fancy version of MRTG). In fact, it's quite a bit different.

Agent Based

The first big difference you notice between a grapher (like Cacti) and Hyperic is that Hyperic has an agent application. This caused me some initial alarm. I worry about having to install an agent on a bunch of boxes in the field. I also worry about the resources consumed by the agent. Fortunately it's pretty simple to install (just a directory containing a JRE and the software). The agent is also really smart at monitoring it's own processor utilization, so you can keep tabs on how much work the it's actually doing.

My agent-related fears assuaged I started setting up a small Hyperic pilot test. Server installation was pretty easy on Linux. For the pilot I decided to use the built-in DBMS (Postgres) rather than setting up an out-board MySQL database. The server started up easily and self configured itself. After setting up a few credentialed users I started installing agents.

Understanding Hyperic

When your first agent connects to Hyperic you start to learn about the system. Hyperic is pretty opaque at first. A new user is immediately confronted with the notions of Platforms, Servers, Services and more. The key to wrapping your head around Hyperic is understanding that a physical server is not a "Server" in Hyperic. It's a "Platform". This is important. It's called a platform because it can run multiple servers (FTP, HTTP, SQL, etc). A server process can then host multiple services. For example: IIS can serve multiple web sites (vhosts). Understanding this hierarchy is key to understanding the way that Hyperic monitors your environment.

So having now added our first platform we start to get a feel for the power that Hyperic brings to the table. Hyperic begins auto-discovering servers on each platform it's installed on. So on my first box it discovered IIS, .Net 2.0 and MySQL. It immediately provided detailed monitoring capabilities. When I say detailed I don't mean: How many MySQL processes are runnng? I mean: How many rows are in table X in database B?

Hyperic immediately provides granular monitoring of installed services.

Check out this other unrelated picture I added to show some contrast to the first unrelated picture!

It doesn't stop with "installed" services either. The next week I added a new service on the machine. Within hours, Hyperic had discovered the new server and made it available for monitoring.

Auto-discovery is all well and good, but it doesn't help us monitor those oddball custom applications. How do we find out if our FTP Uploader application is behind on it's transfers? Well Hyperic provides us two easy mechanisms to do this. The first is at the SQL level: I can have Hyperic monitor the result of an SQL query via the database server's agent. The other option I have is to go to the FTP Uploader's platform and modify it's "inventory" manually. I can tell it about the input queue directory and have Hyperic monitor the number of files inside.

Alerting

Which brings us to alerting. Hyperic has pretty cool system for defining alerting criteria. Anyone who's managed a real time environment knows that false positives are a real problem. To prevent this Hyperic has threshold-based alerting. This allows you to say: Only alert me if the disk is full for more than 1 hour in a 12 hour period. This functionality prevents regular fluctuations from causing spurious alerts.

Once an alert is triggered Hyperic follows user-defined "escalation trees". An escalation tree is designed to gradually increase the loudness of your systems desperate cries for help. For example: suppose a process, for which I'm responsible, begins to choke. An escalation tree might send me an email. But since it's 2am on a Tuesday I'm hardly checking my email. This process is important though, so after waiting a predetermined time, Hyperic decides to send me a text message. Normally that's the kind of alert that I respond to, but on this particular Tuesday night I'm sleeping one off, so I forget to charge my iPhone. Hyperic decides that I'm clearly not the right man for the job and can thereafter begin alerting other people or group mailing lists. All of this is readily configureably and pretty cool stuff. It tracks all sorts of data under the hood as well (IE: who fixed what, when and how).

Open Source

Hyperic is available in two varieties: An open source version called Hyperic HQ, and a closed source version called Hyperic HQ Enterprise. The enterprise version of the software has a number of cool features that could make my life a bit easier, but when I spoke to a sales representative the price proved to be prohibitively expensive in my environment. They seem to charge a per-server-monitored subscription fee. Unfortunately, for the price they ballpark-quoted me, I could hire a full time engineer who's job is solely to manage the open source version of the software.

Don't get me wrong though, the enterprise version has some very cool functionality (like the ability for the server to automatically react to certain conditions and send commands). But unfortunately Hyperic seems to charge on an all-or-nothing pricing model, so if I wanted to use advanced features on a small subset of my hardware I'd end up having to create two parallel installations or pay full price for every server I monitor.

What's next

Well these are all my "first impressions" so over the next couple of months, as I get more involved using Hyperic I'm going to need to get a grip on how much monitoring is appropriate. I have hundreds of servers that could benefit from this type of monitoring but that might create a load situation on the Hyperic server. Furthermore, there is so much data that we can keep track of - some of it incredibly useful. And some of it is... er... not-so-much. I hope that someone is keeping track of the "Number of Deleted Recurring Appointments" in exchange. There is clearly a trade off between performance of the Hyperic server and awareness of the environment. This is true at the network level as well: What if a significant portion of my bandwidth turns out to be monitoring-related messages?

The other factor is that the more systems we begin to monitor using Hyperic, the more Hyperic itself becomes a critical element in our infrastructure. We begin to need to keep tabs on Hyperic itself. This also means that we need to be methodical in our setting up and deleting of alerts. I suspect this will require some level of automation.

To me, this is all very interesting and exciting. To everyone else, my apologies.

Steel

2009-02-20T11:11:00.005-05:00

Just in case you're wondering what this is all about, basically over the past couple of weeks I've been thinking a lot about whats involved with working with steel in our shop. And decided to write down my thoughts.

Our scene shop has never really been a "steel" shop. We typically work with wood and wood-based products (note the distinction). When we started looking at the set drawings for our March production of Twelve Angry Men it was pretty clear that we were going to be working with steel.

So, what are the processes that we use when working with steel? Well, they're basically the same processes as working with wood (cutting, drilling, attaching, etc.). These processes look a bit different when working with a mailable material like steel and therefore require different tools.

Cutting

Cutting is the first major difference between working with steel and working with wood. Inexpensive toothed circular saw blades don't do so well when trying to get through most steel, so we end up using an abrasive cutting tool - an abrasive chop saw. Abrasive cutting uses a rough cutting wheel that deteriorates as it cuts. The result of this deterioration is that, rather than getting duller, the cutting wheel gets smaller as you go.

When dealing with sheet metal, cutting with a wood-type jigsaw generally doesn't work very well because of tendency of the sheet metal to bend. Instead, the more consistent pressure of a band saw is generally preferable it tends not to bend the metal and avoids overheating due to large surface area of the blade.

Attaching

Attaching the metal to other surfaces is easily done using screws and bolts. Drilling out holes for bolts and screws is more time consuming and consumes far more drill bits, but otherwise is pretty similar. Attaching metal to metal can be done using bolts as well, but in this scenario we have a new process which has no analog in the world of wood: Welding.

Welding, essentially, involves turning two pieces of metal into one. To do this we heat two pieces of side-by-side metal up, then join them by adding metal to both pieces until they form one new lumpy piece of metal. To do this we need a welder.

Our scene shop only has 120V power so I ended up choosing a Hobart Handler 140. For this show we need to be able to weld 1/8" steel - this is on the very outside edge of what 120V welders are capable of using gas MIG process, but the Handler can do it provided you take your time and go slow.

The MIG process is pretty simple. Filler wire starts to come out the tip of the gun when you pull the trigger. As the filler wire approaches the work piece a little lightning bolt shoots out and starts to heat both the work piece and the filler. If you do it right, the filler wire should go into the, now molten, work piece and allow you to build up the metal. If you build-up two pieces of metal at the same time, you've joined them together. Lastly, to prevent the hot metal from immediately oxidizing, all of this lightning bolt action happens inside an invisible plume of shielding gas (in our case Argon and CO2).

But, while the process is simple, actually welding two pieces of metal together can get pretty complicated. For starters there are four important variables: Gas Pressure, Wire Feed Rate, Wire Feed Pressure, and Current. Fiddling with these variables will yield different results depending on the thickness of the metal. Additionally, there is pure skill involved. That little lightning bolt likes to jump around - you need a steady hand, and lots of practice.

Now you've welded two pieces of metal together. But wait, there's more! How do you know the weld will hold? On the surface the weld looks good. There's no excessive oxidation, there are no gaps in the weld, there's no stippling or balling of the bead. That's all the information that you get by looking at it. Next step you can either X-Ray the weld, or you can beat the hell out of it and see if it holds. I'll let you guess which method we use.

Safety

Shop safety is our foremost consideration when doing any kind of work in the shop, and working with steel brings with it some new issues to consider.

The first, most general, issue is that metal tends to be sharp. Anyone who's ever gotten a metal splinter knows what I'm talking about. To mitigate this factor we make sure to dull down any exposed surfaces that have been cut in our shop and make sure to clean up after cutting or drilling metal.

Cutting metal on an abrasive chop saw has some safety issues of its own. Fortunately they're quite obvious to anyone in the vicinity of a saw. As the abrasive blade cuts through the metal it creates a shower of sparks and dust. This shower presents a hazard to both the operator and any bystanders. Bystanders need to keep their distance, the operator needs to wear long sleeves and pants, gloves and a face shield. Additionally abrasive tools should not be used around combustible materials or in the vicinity of volatile solvents.

Welding has a few safety issues associated with it as well. Welding creates heat and light. For the welder, heat is an obvious danger; it's why we wear gloves and use clamps. For the bystander it can be quite hidden. When a piece of steel has been welded it remains hot for some time - despite not necessarily looking hot. It's important that steps be taken to prevent bystanders from coming into contact with freshly welded metal.

The light created by welding has high ultraviolet content. It is therefore inadvisable to be directly exposed to the light cast by the welder. The operator is wearing a mask and gloves and sleeves to prevent exposure. Furthermore, its the operators responsibility to keep bystanders shielded from the direct light of the welder. Often, this can be as simple as avoiding reflective surfaces and keeping your body in between the weld and any bystanders.

Lastly, spatter from the welding presents the same types of fire hazards as operating a cutoff saw. Again, care should be taken to avoid situations that could result in fire. Additionally, consider that material you have just welded may be hot enough to start a fire and keep it appropriately safe.

*Important note: This is not a comprehensive list of safety considerations. Your mileage may vary.

Why Bother?

There are a number of reasons that having steel capabilities is a tremendous asset. In theater, one of the biggest is weight. Building structural objects out of steel can be done significantly lighter that out of wood. This is a crucial factor when designing large sets that need to be moved around or flown out.

Uniformity is another factor. Consider that when you purchase board lumber you're generally getting a natural product and as such it tends to have warps and bends. Warps and bends can really mess things up when you're dealing with close tolerances.

That having been said its important to maintain a balance. Carefully evaluate your material selection and, when choosing steel, be sure to factor in the safety considerations when making your choice.

In my environment I further have to weigh the fact that this is a high school shop and that therefore there are bound to be students involved in the process. At the moment I've decided to operate the steel tools myself and have the students facilitate the process. This takes away the "Operator Risk" and makes me responsible for minimizing the "Bystander Risk". I'm okay with that responsibility.

Operation Sleepy Eagle

2008-02-22T16:24:00.005-05:00

Well, the veil has been lifted on Operation Sleepy Eagle. A cunning plan to surprise my parents on their 30th wedding anniversary. It appears that we've managed to sneak in the entire out-of-town family without any leaks (though, truth be told, you can never be sure).

My sister and I have been working out the details of this party for a few months, and it's a relief that it went off without a hitch. I picked up the out-of-towners at Westchester Airport at 11:30 and got them started at a local bar. After that, all I had to do was get Mom and Dad to the restaurant at ten past six.

Last night we celebrated three birthdays and a 30th anniversary. Mission Accomplished.

Update:
FYI: Photographically, I had a frustrating night. I changed a white balance setting in my camera a week or so ago and forgot about it. Since then I'd performed a firmware update so I wasn't sure why all of my photos had a nasty hue.

Lesson learned: When in doubt, reset the camera's controls. It could take me an hour to search through all the settings on my camera, but it would probably only take a minute to restore my settings from scratch.

The moon and his buddies

2008-02-21T16:38:00.005-05:00

It's been a few years since I last watched the moon disappear behind the shadow of the earth. The last time was in the fall of 2004 - I think. While I'm having a little trouble remembering the date, I recall perfectly sitting outside in parking lot of the Dunkin Donuts watching the moon turn red.

There's something very cool about watching the moon change shape before my very eyes. I think the reason it appeals to me is that it's almost like watching a time-lapse event.

The dim red light illuminating the moon makes it a far less formidable photographic subject as well. Under normal circumstances, when photographing a full moon, I need to dial my camera's sensitivity way down in order to expose any lunar detail. However, with the fainter moon, the surrounding celestial bodies pop out of the night sky. Last night we were treated to the planetary glow of Saturn to the left of the moon and Regulus above it.

So why am I writing about this? Well, I'm afraid I don't have a very good answer. There's something about freezing my butt off trying to get a shot that makes me want to talk about it.

Managed mobility

2008-02-18T14:43:00.003-05:00

Have you ever been to dinner with someone who's cell phone would simply not stop making noises the entire night? If you have, you might have been sitting across the table from me.

I get a lot of text messages. Last month, I received about 8,000 of them.

Thats 8,000 little 'beeps'. Not to mention the countless number of emails that I get both at the office and on my Gmail account creating another 1,000 little 'boops'. Thats a lot of noise to go walking around with.

Now by this point, you're probably thinking: "Okay, he can't possibly be that popular. After all, he's a software guy with a blog." Well, you're right. I am not that popular. The vast majority (about 98%) of those text messages are from automated monitoring applications trying to keep me abreast of what's going on at the office.

This situation has two inherent problems:

I get so many alerts that I don't even try to keep up with them all
I have no good way to distinguish between text messages from people and robots

The first problem is interesting to consider, and only slightly less easy to fix. Anyone who's ever worked in a real time environment knows the importance of automated monitoring software. Software which will pro actively let you know when trouble occurs. Without monitoring software we'd only know about problems when a user told us. Obviously no one wants to do business like that.

The problem with automated monitoring software is, that unless its properly tuned, you can end up in a situation where you have a really crummy signal to noise ratio. It's very important to spend time thinking about what things you want to be alerted about otherwise you just end up ignoring the system.

In our situation we never spent the time to correctly tune our alerting system. As a result I would constantly be getting text messages. Maybe I'd get one or two every five minutes. And by and large I didn't read them - even though some of them were probably important.

So why didn't I just turn off the system? Well, my brain started to become a pretty efficient filtering system. I got to the point where I would tune out the text messages unless they started coming in quickly. What's more, my brain seemed able to do this automatically as well. I could sleep through the individual text messages easily, but I would usually wake up when they started coming in more quickly.

The second problem, that of distinguishing alert messages from human-sent text messages, was one that begged for a software remedy. Not wanting to reinvent the wheel, I went in search of such a product.

Watchflag has changed my relationship with my cellphone. Watchflag is a rules based message alerting system for portable devices running Windows Mobile 5 or Windows Mobile 6. In my case I run Watchflag on a Samsung Blackjack2. My cell phone now vibrates and lights up when I get a human text message. Computer-based text messages just get the little ICQ "uh-oh" noise.

The other cool thing about Watchflag is that it is apparently written by actual human beings. When I recently had a problem with a new version, I emailed support and got in touch with one of the developers who fixed the problem and sent me a new version. Additionally, at the moment, Watchflag is being developed very actively. In the past week it feels like we've had 3 or 4 new versions. To some people that can seem like a drag, but since every upgrade brings new features, to me it's like a fun little present!

Lastly Watchflag is inexpensive. At the moment it is only $15 (half-off) and seems to feature free version upgrades. If you use a Windows Mobile based phone I highly recommend it.

The real deal

2008-02-15T15:00:00.003-05:00

Lately I've been building sets at Staples High School in the evenings. Schedule-wise, this makes for some long days, but oh well, I like the work. At the moment we're building the set for Romeo and Juliet. The set consists of three walls forming an Italian plaza. The set is conceptual in its design so we make no attempt to disguise the fact that these walls are sitting in the middle of a theatre.

The centerpiece of the set is a gigantic clock. The clock is six feet in diameter and is built into the front of the center building. The clock rests about six feet off the ground and is designed to be illuminated from behind so that it can "become" the moon. The clock also needs to have real hands which dangle limply wherever we decide to put them.

So, it sounds like we need a gigantic lightbox. The design called for a six foot square lightbox to be skinned with rear-projection material which can be painted to look like the face of the clock. This all sounds good on paper, and when I converted the designers sketches into CAD drawings everything looked good. Yesterday we built the box.

Sometimes you can see something drawn on paper and not realize exactly what the scale means. I knew it was a six foot lightbox, but I don't think I knew what a six foot lightbox was. I think my first reaction was "Uhh... that's pretty big". Thats before I realized that we could stand people up inside of it.

My second reaction was "Uhh... that's pretty heavy". Here's the part where I admit to making a rookie (in the field of enormous lightboxes) mistake. The sides of the box called for 3/4" plywood so that it would provide structure to the building around it. The mistake that I made, was to build the back of the box out of 3/4" plywood also. The rear of the box is non-structural and, as a result of my mistake, is now incredibly heavy. Which means I now have to alter my structural design to support the new weight of Gigantor, the lightbox.

So, what's to be made of this? Nothing really. Hopefully there's a lesson to be learned. I think the lesson is, when building large things off spec, think twice about the materials.

A bit of knowlege

2008-02-14T23:36:00.009-05:00

In my real job, as a software guy, I frequently find myself combing the internet for answers to my daily questions. Usually the questions are mundane: "What is the syntax for datetime.toString()" or "Why won't my asp pages run". And usually I get some pretty good answers. What's amusing to me about this is that there's no natural-language magic going on to make these search terms work. The reason they work is that it's a big Internet full of lots of people... and many of them have the same questions.

Recently I was tasked with preparing and executing a database server migration. This was no small job. I was to move our live production database from an aging server running Microsoft SQL Server 2000 to a brand new Dual-Quad EM64 bad ass server running Microsoft SQL Server 2005. And I had to do it working against the clock.

Our database is really a gigantic string-buffer with some complicated counting bits. As words are said on TV or Radio they go into the database, and after a certain amount of time they are deleted to make room for new words. This system serves us very well, but we have to stay on top of things, because when we have a database server outage, all of the text that's meant to be coming in, just waits at the front door. When too much text is at the front door waiting we run the risk of never being able to catch up.

Oh, did I mention that this database is primarily responsible for putting food on my table?

So needless to say there was a lot of planning. I wanted to have a very good idea of how long our service would be unavailable to our users. So I came up with a plan:

Test
Stop the old database server
Copy database files from old server to new server
Attach the newly copied database files
Test for sanity
Swing DNS to point to the new server

Three of these steps take a little bit of time:

Figuring out the time it takes to swing DNS is easy. You just look at the domains TTL and thats about the time it'll take for everything to make the change (give or take 50%).

Figuring out how to copy the files took a little bit of work. Our production database is somewhere in the neighborhood of 500GB. In the Microsoft SQL Server world, that means I have one gigantic file: My_Really_Big_Production_Database.mdf which has to get copied from the old server to the new server. Without getting too into the nitty-gritty I ended up using a Microsoft utility called eseutil to copy the files. This method seems to work quickly and didn't require me to install 3rd party software on my new database server.

The only other part of the process that had me nervous was performing the database "attach". Normally I wouldn't think twice about the performance of this operation, but in this case we were performing a rather significant upgrade. Not only did our database files have to be converted from SQL 2000 to SQL 2005, but it also had to go from 32bit to 64bit. What this means is that SQL Server performs a series of iterative upgrades on the database structure to get it up to date. So obviously I performed scaled down tests. Attaching and detaching little shell databases didn't get me any closer to an answer. The attach would either take 5seconds or happen instantaneously.

So obviously I turned to the internet. Oh no! No good answer! ACK! At the end of the day I had to cross my fingers and hope for the best as I executed the attach statement. Well, I got my answer. And now I'm giving it back to the internet. [drum roll...]

Question: How long does it take to attach a SQL 2000 database to a SQL 2005 server?
Answer: About 19 seconds for my 500GB database with about 300 tables. The truth is we moved a number of databases on that day. They all seemed to take between 3 and 19 seconds, and it didn't seem to matter how big the database was.

Phew... ok Internet, you can rest easy now.

Update

If I were writing this post in vi, now would be the time where I run this::s/I/Jared and I/g

Due to lateness of the the hour when I wrote this post I inadvertently left out the fact that without the help of, my friend, Jared, this migration would have most-likely crashed and burned. I was fortunate enough to benefit from Jared's encyclopedic knowledge of SQL server throughout the migration. Thanks bud!

Update #2

Success! Now the Internet people, with the same question that I had, can have an answer!

RE: Blogging

2008-02-10T22:01:00.000-05:00

Memo From the Desk of Zorlack:

It's been a while since I've written here. For those of you reading this post and thinking "I told you so". Yes, yes you did. Also, get off your horse.

For you the reader: Here is a list of new truths.

1) I will not attempt to catch up: The futility of trying to get a casual blog-reader caught up with the goings-on in my real life is enormous, and any attempt would not only be unsuccessful, but very boring as well.

2) Here be format changes: Yes, I will no longer be posting exclusively about photography. I've decided that since, on occasion, I do think about other things, that maybe those things should be fair game also.

3) Some things will stay the same: I'm the same person, more or less.

I feel like every return-from-hiatus blog post should follow the following format:
¶1: Hello
¶2: Yeah, yeah... I forgot about you
¶3: Here's what I'm gonna do this time around (in a list)
¶4: Recursive meta discussion regarding return-from-hiatus blog posts
¶5: Conclusory mea culpa.

So, in sticking with the format, and without further stalling: I'm sorry for disappearing. My bad.

Building a Plywood Huey. Part 1!

2007-07-30T11:35:00.000-04:00

I have to build a Huey for our production of Miss Saigon. And it just so happens that my new tiny DV camera has arrived, so I decided to document the helicoptering process.

Plywood Huey - Part 1 - Watch a funny movie here

Party at Maya's Parents'

2007-07-03T11:02:00.002-04:00

This weekend's big event was the going-away/birthday/graduation party that everyone looks forward to.

I carried my camera through the whole cookout. I hate doing that, but I'm pretty pleased with this shot, so I'm not going to complain. This is a photo of Jimmy and Lex hamming it up for another camera. Obviously I tweaked the color a bit - also I did a little bit touch-up on some faces.

Out of focus rollercoaster girl.

2007-06-20T15:49:00.000-04:00

Don't get me wrong. Flickr is wonderful. It's both an outstanding piece of web-based software and a wonderful community full of talented photographers. (At least I think a piece of software can be a community... that may be another discussion altogether). Nevertheless, there are times when my fellow flickrites wear me out.

I took this shot at the 100th Yankee Doodle Fair in Westport. The weather had been hot and balmy all day until around three when a huge thunderstorm rolled through. Afterwards, we had this wonderful warm misty thing going - normally, not my kind of weather but for photographic purposes: outstanding.

This shot was one of about 10 that I took of this particular subject. I'd say I started by focusing the camera on the front of the car, and then I shot a few with the girl in focus.

During post I decided that this shot was more meaningful to me. Somethinig about the way that the shallow depth of field amplifies the expression on her face... Yes, I realize that sounded a bit doofy.

Whatever. I'm proud of my shot. I post it to all the flickr groups that I usually go to. What happens next, I wasn't prepared for: The shot gets absolutely panned. Of the 20+ comments, probably half contain some variant of "too bad the girl isn't in focus".

I know that criticism is feedback. Sometimes its amusing. Sometimes its helpful. Other times...

What do you think?

Slam Dunk at Kate's Parents in Redding

2007-06-15T13:20:00.000-04:00

We went for a cookout at Kate's parents house for her birthday (Pang and I got her a weed-whacker). While there I managed to score shoot some great photos of the general going's-on.

Created with Paul's flickrSLiDR.
I'm not sure if I like the idea of posting slide shows here. It seems to me like its a cop-out. Like I couldn't be bothered to pick the best one. So you'll probably only see a few of these pop up from time to time.

Some catching up to do

2007-06-15T12:25:00.000-04:00

I've been learning a few things about my new lens. Here is a short summary:

Big lenses weigh a lot. I've had to buy a new more comfy camera strap.

f/4.6 isn't very big. Well, I guess I knew that coming in, but its a bit of a shock when I switch from the 18-200 f/4.6 to the 50mm f/1.8.

Just cause you can, doesn't mean you should. Sometimes it's hard to resist zooming in on things. Narrow-field composition is a very different beast than shooting wide.

Well, yes, I took this photo in captivity. And my photographic-cred takes a hit for that. Frankly, I'm not sure I'd want to run into this bugger on his own turf. That can-opener is a serious piece of hardware.

I'm Back

2007-06-14T14:47:00.000-04:00

By popular (err... not-so-much) demand.

And to prove it:

A Long Overdue Job - Celebrity bloopers here

First day with a new toy

2007-05-09T09:51:00.000-04:00

About two weeks ago I got my new toy. My first real uberlens. :)

The venerable Nikon 18-200 3.5-5.6 AF-S D VR

Needless to say I'm very happy with it. It's just about the most lens you can get for under a grand. And it replaces the need to carry two lenses. Thats not to say it doesn't have its downsides. For one thing the lens grows by about 200% when you zoom in. Imagine attaching a roll or paper-towels to the front of your camera-body. Yeah.

The other down-side is that it more-than doubles the weight of my camera, and all that weight is in the front. This means that a day of shooting comes with significantly more wrist-strain. Truth-be-told, I'm discovering new ways to hold my camera to account for this factor. I now almost always wear my camera's strap and use it take some of the pressure off my right hand.

Well how about some photos. Here are two photos taken on my first day shooting with the 18-200.

The truth about this image is that the focus isn't really as hard as it looks in the "medium" view. When blown up there is some blur in the texture of my shoes. Still, I like the foreground blur afforded to me by the long lens length.

Ok, it's pretty obvious what I'm doing here. I'm playing with the distance. Fine, you caught me. Its a long lens, and I think its cool. :-)

It's time to get caught up.

2007-05-09T09:35:00.000-04:00

Wow,

Sorry about that I just realized how long it's been since my last update. Let me try to fix things:

I took this photo with my 50mm 1.8 lens, and it shows. Lately I've been coping with the low-light noise issues associated with the D50, this shot doesn't have the problem since I was able to shoot it at 2.2. In a little while I'll post one of my pictures from Rollerderby. It's a start contrast.

Something about this shot has a very "commercial" feel to it. If it wasn't a picture of my Dad talking to Kate I'd say it was generic stock photography.

A Day at Mystic

2007-04-11T11:10:00.000-04:00

An unexpected day-off turns into alligator madness!

Alright, I admit it! This picture has no photographic merits what-so-ever - err.. except that its a decent snapshot. No, the real reason I'm posting it is this:

Q: How often do you get to pet/photograph an alligator.

A: If you live in the North-East, not often.

More Beach

2007-04-04T09:57:00.000-04:00

As the weather gets a bit better, expect to see more beach photos... at least until they start requiring a sticker. Then they'll probably fall off.

Kate, Dylan, Max and I went on a rather impromptu trip to the beach with Sasha. I was shooting with my new lens - I got some pretty cool shots, while shooting wide-open. I had to strap on the CPL just to reduce the incoming light. Here's Sasha being a dog. To be honest, I don't think this is my favorite picture from the day, but I has a neat style (that it acquired in post).

See the other pictures.

At the beach

2007-03-27T16:21:00.000-04:00

Recovering from our karaoke madness required sleeping for the better part of Sunday. If for no other reason then having not slept the night before. Never the less around 5pm we found ourselves at Sherwood Island State Park.

This was shot with my new lens - I'm still (yes, still) learning on it. I like to be able to shoot wide-open, but there's just too much light when I'm shooting at the beach. I think I may have to slap on either the CPL or the ND2 and see if that alleviates the problem in an acceptable way.

Ermm.. Saturday Night

2007-03-26T14:22:00.000-04:00

I have no good pictures. We sang a lot. Maru. Karaoke. NYC.

Scary Gary Revisited

2007-03-21T12:09:00.000-04:00

I've been playing around a bit more in a studio-like environment. Now, don't be fooled - my idea of a studio is my workbench, a white card, some translucent plastic and a 500W fresnel. This particular shot was back-lit using Rosco Kelly Green and the translucent plastic.

Still scary.

AHHH!!

2007-03-20T10:49:00.000-04:00

Ok. Well. Hmm.

Yeah, I'm not sure I have any words about this picture. I don't recommend looking at it after 8pm. Or ever, really. Gary has a tendency to sneak into peoples dreams.

In other, slightly less interesting news, I shot this in my make-shift studio basement area. I'm going to be playing with my setup in the next couple of days, but this was a good first try. I shot it under a single 6" fresnel against a piece of white card. High tech, huh.

More new lensy-ness

2007-03-20T10:41:00.000-04:00

Well, I'm still experimenting with my new lens. So far the results have been mixed. It's a big change shooting from mostly-wide to mostly-narrow. I find myself having to back up a lot. On the other hand I often find I now have too much light, which is a great problem to have!

Close scrutiny of this shot of Gizmo reveals the other problem I'm coping with: Getting the focus just right. At 1.8 the depth of field is so shallow that its hard for me to distinguish what's in and out of focus in the viewfinder. In this shot you can see that feathers and beak are the sharpest, while Gizmo's eye is a bit soft. The lens also has some subtle vignetting which I'm having to correct for.

My New Toy

2007-03-15T12:19:00.000-04:00

Well, I've just acquired a new toy. A Nikon 50mm f/1.8D lens! I bought this lens to fill a need that my D50's kit lens couldn't fill. The kit lens is a 18-55mm but it's aperture at 55mm is a pretty-small 5.6. This makes shooting in low-light a bit of a pain. The new lens is, by comparison, a gaping f/1.8 at 50mm and its built like a truck.

So, will this be my new lens of choice? Well, only time will tell - at the moment it's taking a bit of an adjustment. I'd say with the kit lens I take a lot of wide-angle shots, with this lens that's not even an option. If I want to get more in the picture I have to back up, which certainly isn't the same thing. Never the less, the new lens is very sharp and pretty fun to use so far, so I'm going to withhold judgment till I've got a bit more time on it. One thing's for sure: I love shooting wide-open. The shallow depth of field is chocked full of goodness.

Lost in time

2007-03-12T13:45:00.000-04:00

This is a game I haven't played in a long time. Oh my god. It's awesome.

But, wait, don't take my word for it:

And see what happens when you try to pour acid on a horse:

Nice.

More Weather

2007-03-07T13:49:00.000-05:00

Here's another shot from my recent wet night out.

This shot is full of lots of shiny, greasy, cold awesomeness. A little bad weather goes a long way sometimes. Bricks, headlights, traffic-lights other stuff.

So Sue Me

2007-03-06T23:04:00.000-05:00

I don't think I should even bother trying to say that this shot "just happened". The truth is, I had a bit of technical trouble with it. I knew there was an image to be found when I walked under this phone pole, but the time of day wasn't "just right" and the color of the pole was a bit lack-luster. So I went for the slightly more artificial feel you see here.

I like this shot. Yes, I know what you're thinking: "Dave, of course you like the shot. That's why you posted it!"

Fine, you know what! I'll stop saying that.

You people can be so pushy.

PS: Sam informs me that in my previous post I used "telephone poll" instead of "telephone pole". She's correct. But I feel that at this point I should make something abundantly clear: Poland has nothing to do with this. I'm quite certain that all of my poles are made of North-American timber.

She's right

2007-03-06T22:56:00.000-05:00

Sam's absolutely right. I am way behind in my posts here. I'm not going to bother making excuses. I'm a bad person.

This past weekend was the first time I've had a good day shooting in months! I took this shot shortly after Friday's ridiculous rains had subsided. I'm going to post another shot from that outing, but I wanted to start with this one.

The bend in the Post road by Centro gives me the opportunity to take pictures of traffic heading right for me. Not sure everyone sees it that way - but thats how I see it. There are a number of reasons I chose this shot: First of all, it has some motion to it... hmm... on second thought that really isn't a good reason. Secondly, I love the highlighted bit of sidewalk on the lower left of the shot, the texture very real. And lastly, I like the way the shot is framed by the trees and telephone poles.

Hmm.. that whole analytical paragraph seems a bit self-aggrandizing. Oh well. Go me!

Happy New Years!

2007-01-03T14:57:00.000-05:00

What can I say that this photo doesn't say. We went to Medieval Times for New Years. It was awesome. Our Knight won. Sweet!

So, why did I use this photo? Well, aesthetically, it was the only shot out of over 200 that I actually liked. Good smile, over-the-shoulder lighting, great saturated yellow. Not bad for a "holiday snapshot"

More Shiftyness

2006-12-11T14:42:00.000-05:00

Sunday morning, after a rough night, Kate, Dylan and I drove up to Hamden to see the house they're trying to buy - a nice place, but not without its quirks. Afterwards we went to the Milford mall, and then to downtown Westport. I had my camera in tow - F5.6 Lensbaby attached. I actually managed to get a few good pictures!

This is a photo of Kate walking towards Starbucks in downtown Westport. I'm very happy with the light focus on her hair, as well as the texture in her shirt. I think the trick to using this lens is going to be: Have lots of natural light. Lensbaby works well with the on-camera flash as well, but it's a less "genuine" look.

Lensbaby Goes to War

2006-12-05T23:24:00.000-05:00

On my recent trip to the city, and to B&H, I picked up some new toys. First-off, I replaced my POS tripod, with a low-end Manfrotto. I also picked up a Lensbaby Original; a neat little tilt-shift lens for an SLR camera. Not quite sure if it's going to be a permanent addition to my camera bag - I suspect that it's not. Hopefully it gets easier to use with practice.

In the toy section of CVS I found a wonderful thing: Plastic Army Men. Not only were there fresh bags of Army men (A toy which I'd figured had gone extinct), but there were two different colors. That means I could have a little war! And if that wasn't enough, it seems that these aren't the cheep ones either. There are no less than 12 different poses for the little warriors.

Bazooka Guy

Recon/Radio Guy

Wading-through-chest-high-water Guy

Crawling-under-barbed-wire Guy

30cal-machine-gun Guy

C.O. Guy

Kneeling-with-rifle Guy

Running-with-rifle Guy

Prone-with-rifle Guy

Bayonet Guy

Minesweeper Guy

Mortar Guy

I'm thinking that with all of my new subjects I might do a war documentary. Something about an embedded plastic journalist inside a platoon of plastic soldiers seems like it could be funny. I just have to keep from running afoul of the plastic censors at the plastic pentagon.

Don't Smoke

2006-12-04T14:08:00.000-05:00

Sunday morning, after the Wii fiasco, I headed into Manhattan to take some pictures. Because I had family plans in the afternoon I parked my car uptown (where we'd be ending the night). I then walked from 85th on the east side down to the 30s and over to B&H to buy a new tripod.

My old tripod was a Sunpak and made with an almost supernatural-cheapness. On Thursday night when I went out to take pictures it was a bigger hindrance than a help. So now it's been replaced with the bottom of a good line. A low end light-weight Manfroto with an integrated ball head. The ball joint seems a bit cheap, but it's cast aluminum and it has a long warantee so I'm giving it a shot. It's only 2.5 lbs, but its significantly bigger than my old tripod. I think it'll need to travel in it's own case.

Also took some time to talk to one of the sales people at B&H about the elusive Nikon 18-200mm lens. This lens is by all accounts amazing: Not only is it incredibly versatile (IE: you only need one lens) is ridiculously affordable. Well, the salesman , using similar superlatives, confirmed that it's so rare he didn't expect to see one for a while. He said he expected to see some next year. I'm excited to see if he's right. While we were talking I happened to catch a glimpse of an inexpensive piece of photographic equipment that I've wanted to buy for a while: The Lensbaby.

The Lensbaby is a soft-focus lens which allows you to manually move the focus-point of the lens around by compressing a bellows. Much the same way you would with a large-format box camera. So far this lens has been trying my patience. As soon as I get a shot that I like, I'll post it.

My long walk down the East Side led me to the 59th street bridge. I took some time photographing the cars and the bridge and the cable-cars. But eventually I got fixated on the smokestack immediately South of the bridge. I took quite a few shots of it. This is one of them. Morning light, Polarizer, Rust. Sweet.

Wii-diculously Hard To Get [NAP]

2006-12-04T10:58:00.000-05:00

I'm sorry for the irrelevant nature of this post, but I need to vent about how ridiculous it is trying to find a Wii.

My first attempt was on Black Friday: Earlier that week, an employee of the Best Buy in Stratford, CT told me that her store was sitting on a decent sized pile of Wiis. She told me that the store was holding them and releasing them on Black Friday. So at 3:30 on friday morning I got up. Liz, Sam and I got to the store at 4am to wait around for the 5am opening. After an hour we raced through the doors only to be told - not that they'd run out - but that they'd never had any. Words could not describe the depths of my hatred towards this store.

My second attempt was on Sunday - the universally designated Wii re-launch day. This time I didn't even make it to the store before Jeannie called to say, Toys r' Us in Westport only had 14 Wiis, and she was about #44 in line. No rain checks, nothing. Just a "go home, you're out of luck".

There is nothing I can say or do. I hate this. And it has turned me off shopping for x-mas presents altogether. Don't get me wrong. I understand that there's supply and demand and they aren't always equal, I just wish resellers would offer alternatives to the eye-gouging race to the checkout that they hope to inspire.

I'd like to think that negative in-store experiences like these cause a decline in holiday sales. Alas, I don't think thats the case.

Wii-diculous

2006-12-04T10:31:00.000-05:00

Okay, Lots of new pictures: Here's a tivo-eyed view of the some wii all-stars. I took about 100 candids of Kate, Dylan, Max and Liz playing the new Rayman game for the Nintendo Wii. Most were pretty dark, but I got a few which look pretty outstanding when displayed large and on a really bright screen.

This image is a perfect example of a problem that's been affecting me more and more lately. Bad monitor gamma calibration. In an attempt to fix this I picked up a Huey. Huey is a monitor calibration tool designed to make sure your on-screen colors are accurate. For those of you unfamiliar with digital image manipulation, this is a problem with some subtle complexities. If my monitor is inaccurately reproducing colors, then the image I'm looking at will look and print differently in another environment. Hopefully Huey makes my images a bit more universally viewable. Too bad half the world uses dim or crappy CRTs. Alas.

It's Finally Over

2006-11-01T09:11:00.000-05:00

Well, yesterday was Halloween, and you know what that means: Today an enormous weight has been lifted off my shoulders. Something Wicked in Southport 2006 is over.

I'm too tired to even think about last night's escapades - In a nutshell: Turnout was good. Donations were kinda lousy. Praise was high. With any luck I'll now have a little bit of downtime over the next couple of weeks. At least I can hope.

An Underexposed Firetruck

2006-10-23T16:57:00.000-04:00

Well, my title may be a bit on-the-nose, but that's no reason to down on my dimly lit composition. Err. Something.

The story behind this photo is rather boring. But, since you've scrolled past the pretty picture I'll tell it anyways. This time of year the sunlight at 5pm is very low and comes shooting up the Post Road. This of course happens to be about the same time I'm walking home from work and some days I get inspired. On the day I shot this I was walking around Fairfield shooting all manner of things when a firetruck came roaring down the road. I was just barely quick enough to pull my camera up to my head and pull the trigger. What I got was an image of inconceivable darkness. After a little bit of post, what I was left with was an image of mostly darkness.
So why post the image? Low light. Long shadows.

-Sigh-

I do love a long shadow.

Taking a moment

2006-10-18T19:02:00.000-04:00

Truth be told, I took more than just a moment. I'd say I took a whole handful of moments. Like an individually wrapped packet of moments. I digress.

After work I decided to take a few macro shots on my desk - using some of my birthday presents from Matt and Megan. I took a few of fishy, pez-y and of course: Burny & Co.

Here's Burny and all his brethren. Also check out flickr to see some shots of Burny and his new Girlfriend. Ooh-la-la.

LolZ

2006-10-11T16:41:00.000-04:00

Ok, here's the skinny:

I'm tremendously busy. So busy I'm tired all the time. OMG I'm Busy.

SWIS2K6 is almost upon us. To that end, I present this image. Featuring Max, and a boatload of carpet adhesive!

Ahoy!

2006-09-05T11:24:00.000-04:00

On labor-day, after a stormy weekend, the bad weather lifted enough for an outing on Dave's boat. Truelove is a 30' Catalina - overall a pretty sweet ride. I even managed to take some pictures during the longer runs.

This photo seems to be getting a bit of attention from my flickry peers - I'm quite happy with it myself! Converging lines, sky, texture. Yada yada yada. Taking pictures on a rolling boat presents some interesting challenges. Good lesson.

La prise de la Bastille

2006-08-28T13:05:00.000-04:00

The onion remains trapped in Attached-to-the-wall-prison! Prepare yourselves! Today you are liberators!

Okay, well, that may have been a bit theatrical. Too bad. Deal with it.

This is a picture of an onion. The onion is in a wire basket. The wire basket is attached to the wall. My LED flashlight shines brightly. Word.

Pianissimo

2006-08-28T12:57:00.000-04:00

A weekend - er, Saturday afternoon - at Kate's parents in Redding had me taking pictures for no reason whatsoever. I had my new flashlight with me, so I started messing around with some off-camera lighting.

Well, I don't think it comes as a surprise that this is a photo of some piano keys. The nice thing about this shot - and indeed most of the shots from this weekend - is that they required almost no post-production.

The hard shadows cast by the LED flashlight are quite a spectacle. I'll post some more.

Another one bites the dust

2006-08-21T14:22:00.000-04:00

CATS closed on Saturday night. We struck Saturday night. I slept most of Sunday. CATS has been a pain in my ass for 10 weeks. Don't get me wrong, there is certainly the part of my that is sad to see it go - but all in all I wasn't really happy with my contribution to the production.
I probably would have been much happier if I'd had a full week to write the cues and if we'd had the pit for the full week as well. Instead I ended up with a show which only had half the cues I wanted it to - and the signal problems that I ran caused some wildly unreliable behavior from the hazers.
From a technical perspective we had two weak performances. Opening night and the first matinee were pretty bad. Opening night the fire marshall killed our Mojo - wreaking havoc on the crew's energy. The first matinee we have no excuse for, we were just off. Otherwise the show ran very tight - the cues looked great and the performances ran rather smoothly.

I spent some of the downtime before the matinee taking some final photos of the set
(under lights) for my own documentation. Here we have a partially lit cyc and warmly lit set. oooooh.

I don't like being glad to see a show close - I prefer the wistful melancholy that accompanies the closing of a show I'm truly proud of. Never the less - another one bites the dust.

Ghostie! The friendliest ghost-light.

2006-08-16T11:26:00.000-04:00

Ladies and Gentlemen,
Humble yourself in awe of my latest creation. I hereby bring to the end the months of anticipation and longing you have, no doubt, experienced. I present to you, in all of its glory and majesty, a creation of divine inspiration - I give you: The new ghost-light.

Ooooohhhh.....

Ghosty was once a humble sheet of plexi-glass - discarded in a pile of 1/4" ply. I sanded down the plexi to give it the translucent look it has now - then I cut out a body and arms. I secured the arms to the body with machine screws (yes - he's posable), and then further fastened the whole thing to the ghost light. After a little while I scaled him back from a 60W lamp to the 15W lamp you see before you.

Now, I know what you're thinking. "Dave, how could you have come up with such a wonderful, design? It's so full of whimsy I'm practically bursting."

The answer, my friend, is to be found in this simple equation:
downtime-between-shows + angsty-fidgetyness + pure-genious = Ghostie!

Chester Perches

2006-08-14T16:47:00.000-04:00

Ok, this isn't the usual sort of picture you're used to seeing on my blog. Blame it on the whimsical mood I'm in. Its Chester!

During the recent heatwave we, to conserve energy, went around closing the blinds to keep the sun out. An unintended consequence was that Chester no longer had a way to look outside during those slow and boring days with nobody around. To amuse himself Chester went in search of a new view. The solution he came up with: Sit on top of the kitchen cabinets and look down out the kitchen window. Genius! In this picture Chester is half-way to the summit.

So that's what's going on

2006-08-09T11:58:00.000-04:00

Oh yeah... photography. We are now in our third day of tech for Cats. It has been a rough week to say the least. Our plan was to do a cue-to-cue of Act I on Friday, a cue-to-cue of Act II on Saturday and start doing runs on Monday. This hasn't happened. Act I took longer than expected. Then Act II took longer than expected. We ended up cuing the second half of Act II on Monday. Then, after about an hour, a board-crash led me to inspect the cues we'd already written - that's when we found out how many cues hadn't been recorded. I'd say somewhere in the neighborhood of 20%.

To make the situation all the more rosier, Megan is calling the show out of a vocal score rather than the conductors score - this choice was made because it simplifies all the musical cuts. What it doesn't do is give her a way to follow along during all the rests. So we'll find ourselves with two bump cues somewhere in four bars of rests. Dang.

On the upside, the set - that piece of the show that I thought would never get done - is practically done. All that's left to do is mount one more step unit, precariously, on the side of a masonry scaffold.

In this picture we give a little thumbs-up to a long time Players supporter. Nice painting team!

Sun-Bleached

2006-07-30T14:43:00.000-04:00

I decided, this morning - err... afternoon, that I would venture out into the scorching heat and take some pictures. This task, by the way, was made doubly-hard by the fact that my car currently lacks air-conditioning - an experience that brings back shades of "the big e".

I like taking pictures of industrial... well, thingamajigs. Good news! There's plenty of thingamajigs at the Boat Yard at Calf's Pasture in Norwalk. And on a blindingly sunny day there are some cool textures that come alive. Shooting here was a bit of a nervous experience - I kept expecting someone to shout: "get out" or "private property" or "TERRORIST!". Fortunately everyone there seemed to be doing there own thing... and I'm not entirely sure I don't have every right to go there. Whateve.

Driving up the access road I noticed a crane barge that I thought would make an interesting subject. When I walked closer I discovered that what I was actually looking at is a crane that had simply been driven onto a barge. I don't know if that's how they usually do it, or not, but I think it's kind of cool.

Cats Turns a Corner

2006-07-28T11:19:00.000-04:00

Yes, that's right. Cats.

For those of you who don't know, I'm currently designing the set and lights for Staples Summer Theatre's production of Cats. This is quite a feat considering we have a huge stage (54' at the apron) and only three people on the crew. All of whom have full-time jobs or other daytime obligations. But yesterday was a turning point for our production (at least from a technical perspective).
So far everything is half done. The lights are hung but not focused. The thrust is built but not painted. The tire is assembled but not screwed to the deck. Yesterday's momentous occasion was the completion of the first piece of set/lighting.

Megan stands in awe (ok, not so much) of our glorious creation. Moonie is made up of a 44" circle cut out of 1/2" plywood, a cardboard backing, and a string of x-mas lights, also fabric and staples to finish it all up.
I'm extremely satisfied by the rough - cratery - texture that the x-mas lights are projecting onto the back of the fabric. And the softness added by the black scrim in the foreground really makes it work. I used 2x 1/16" AC cable to secure it to the fourth electrical - the cable is so thin you can't see it from the front row. Even with the cyc lighting up. Unfortunately some of this coolness is going to be lost when we run a power cable. Alas.

Never the less.... Go team!

We now pause the silence to bring you this brief intermission [NAP]

2006-07-27T14:58:00.000-04:00

Yes, that's right - this message marks an intermission in the daily inactivity that is this blog.

It's been an unbelievably busy time. Basically pedal to the metal ever since I got back from Colorado. I've spent every waking hour either at the office - where I'm working on a number of important projects. Or at the theatre where the set is... well, it still looks like a bunch of scaffolds and a wooden donut (which admittedly isn't that far off from a junk-heap). Just to make everything more manageable and pleasant I'm also, personally, going through a life-adjusting rough patch.

Long story short: When I'm not writing software or building a set I'm sleeping. As you can probably tell this leaves precious little time for photography of a blog-worthy nature. Which leaves me (and my blog) in a delicate position. I can either post nothing and risk loosing what few readers I have. Or post crap and risk alienating the same few readers.

Actually, now that I think about it there's a third option. I could annoy my readers by writing long, rambly posts about nothing interesting and then follow it up with a pointless video.

For want of a smile

2006-07-21T22:46:00.000-04:00

[not my photo]

New Shoes + Boredom at LGA = ?

2006-07-19T13:01:00.000-04:00

I suppose this is what happens when my Carry-on bag is my camera and my flight is running late. Last week I bought a pair of new shoes to replace my talking/floppy shoes for the Colorado trip - well, they haven't faired so well, but here is a nice macro-shot of them in all of their glorious freshness.

I shot this using two filters. One of them was a +1 magnification filter - I haven't quite mastered these poor-man's-macro-lens filters yet. The one thing I have noticed is that the filter leaves a very small sweet-spot in the center of the lens that can be in focus. Everything else, regardless of what plane its on, will be in varying levels of focus. I love this effect.
The other filter I used didn't really make much sense to use since its really meant for black and white film photography. I used a high-contrast orange filter. Why? I don't know. Oh well - it just meant that I had to do a little bit less post-production. It also meant I was completely unable to use the color information in the photo. Overall - not really worth it.

Kindling

2006-07-18T15:58:00.000-04:00

Yep, its time to post another shot from my recent trip out west (not all the way out west - just most of the way). Here's a tree I shot at Boulder Park looks pretty scorched either from the ridiculous current heat-wave or some past fire. In fact the whole area was ridiculously dry. Signs everywhere indicated that the Fire-Hazard level was high and that there was an open-flame ban in effect

Well, I guess its too late for this one, oh well. Photographers looking at this will recognize the richness in the sky as being the result of a polarizer. Yup.

I had a lot of fun shooting in CO, and one of the major reasons is that the light is very-direct. The altitude gets you 1 mile farther up into the atmosphere - and I'm sure there's some sort of inverse-square proportion governing the amount of haze (read: U/V protection) that I have to deal with when taking photos in broad daylight.

I'm Back

2006-07-16T22:09:00.000-04:00

I'm don't normally start a post with the photo, and this may be the first time I post a picture exclusively of myself. Sweet. Firsts!

I'm now back from my trip to go visit Sam in Colorado. Long weekend trips sometimes leave me feeling completely overwhelmed by the number of photos that I have to pour through and do the post-processing on. I think I've whittled down the 300+ shots that I kept to about 60. ish. You can expect to see some more of them making there way onto this blog. In the meantime, check out the rest of the trip!

A video clip [NAP]

2006-07-13T10:40:00.000-04:00

Yes, that's right its another Not-A-Photo entry.

Whaaaa??? Why is he posting a horribly compressed video clip?

I don't know. YouTube butchered the video I shot on my Sony DSC-T3 in super-high-res-ultra mode. Alas. Not sure if I'm ever going to do this again - this may be a one-off.

This video, I shot on my recent Seattle trip, features a friendly fish-chucker throwing a fish to a child actor in some sort of video production. The child entirely fails to catch the heavy fish.

How to annoy your friends

2006-07-12T09:32:00.000-04:00

In three easy steps

Step 1: Find a friend making an undignified face.
Step 2: Take a picture of said face.
Step 3: Post picture on your "blog" for the entire "Internet" to see.

Well, there's no doubt about what's going on in this shot. Max is eating fiberglass insulation on a dare.

Joking and funny faces aside; I really am quite happy with this shot. The ambient lighting and the high ISO value combined to add a really interesting grain to the left (camera-left) side of Max's face. Bonus points are always awarded for crazy ripple-y forehead action.

A Prolific Day

2006-06-28T22:22:00.000-04:00

I walked down the street this afternoon to take some pictures at the beach. I've been so ridiculously busy with the move that this was my first afternoon off in what seems like a month.

I'm very happy with this shot! The biggest reason is that the only thing I did to it in post was to change the color temperature and vignette the scene a little. You have to love it when a shot comes out well in camera. On the other hand, I had a feeling this was going to be a good shot - so I took about 12 exposures. Yay for digital!

So what makes this day prolific? Well, take a look at some of the other shots I took today. I like these two:

For want of a little traveling music

2006-06-18T23:26:00.000-04:00

Today I ventured, by train, down to Jersey to help Pang drive up his father's station wagon. We decided it will probably prove to be invaluable during our upcoming move. I arrived at the Westport train station only to discover that I'd forgotten to bring the headphones for my Zen Micro.

With nothing to read, I found myself sitting in the doorway of the train taking pictures of nothing to pass the time. Between the photography and the compulsive email-checking I must have looked pretty bored.

For a while during the trip I slapped on my magnifying filter and started shooting some macro shots. The thing about this filter that I love isn't its ability to move the camera closer to the subject - frankly, when it comes to this there really is no substitute for a macro lens. Rather, what I really like about shooting with the magnifying filter is the way it softly blurs anything that isn't dead-center in the frame.

This shot is of the writing etched into windows panels of the train's sliding doors. I took quite a few shots pointing at this text from odd angles - trying to meter the shot turned out to be tricky because the backdrop kept changing. In this particular moment you can see a smoke stack in the center of the image, however it is so blurred it might has well be a matchstick pressed against the other side of the glass.

As for the text itself, I've decided I don't really care about it at all.

Another one bites the dust

2006-06-18T23:02:00.000-04:00

Last night marked the close of the Downtown Cabaret's production of Sweet Charity. Followers of this blog (which apparently now include some members of the production staff) will recall that I've been acting LBO for this show for the past month or so.

It's always sad to see a show close - at least for me. Even the shows that I despise - the shows that go out of their way to screw with me - I can't help but feel a twinge of sadness. Despite some of the rig's more annoying features, this show has been a pleasure to run.

The photos I took last night were more along the line of "vacation photos" than anything else. None of them really good enough to highlite here. I spent a little bit of time last night cropping photos and presenting them like a pile of polaroids.

I'm not really sure what I think about this. For starters, I don't think I used nearly enough source imagery. Oh well, garbage in - garbage out. Additionally, the flickr resize algorithm beat the hell out of my hard lines. This pile really looks sharp when it's viewed up close. Lastly, doing this proved to be fairly time-consuming. We shall see whether or not I ever do one of these again.

Forgotten Shot

2006-06-13T10:29:00.000-04:00

In the few hours I had to walk around Seattle during my recent trip I took quite a few pictures. Today I rediscovered this one.

I love the way the polarizer turns the glare into a sheen on the side of this building. I think the colors make this shot really special; the subtle shades of brown, gold and blue play very gently on hard stone.

I do enjoy rediscovering a photo that I took.

Update: I'm looking at this picture again... Please view it large. Flickr's image resize really beat the hell out of my straight lines

A slow rising moon

2006-06-12T14:13:00.000-04:00

My parents, with Pang's help, finished painting the house while I was in a show. I stopped by to check it out - then went for a drive to unwind. I didn't realize how stressed out I was until I got moving with the windows down and the music going. Driving back-roads in CT is pretty relaxing, especially under a full moon - but when I turned the corner, crossing the bridge over the resevoir, and saw this - I simply could not believe what I was seeing.

What I have to say about this picture is this: I regard this photo as a complete failure. This picture fails, in all respects, to capture the most ridiculous moon-rise I have ever seen. Part of this I can blame on the medium - I don't think that there is any format capable of doing justice to this scene. In this photo the moon seems smaller and more distant. It also seems cooler and brighter.

Which brings us to the other issue which detracts from this photo: I messed it up quite badly. When I got to the site I was still wearing my blacks. It would have been absolutely insane to spend too much time standing in the road wearing black clothing in the middle of the night. Especially a road as well-traveled as this one. So I rushed. Big mistake. All my shots were over-exposed, and many of them were either out of focus or poorly composed. And they all had lens flares. Beebo convinced me to mark-up this image and reposting it. And I am thankful he did.

I think that as time goes on I will like this picture more and more as my recollection of the discrepancy fades. Well, that's something I suppose.

Flickr 1000

2006-06-11T23:46:00.000-04:00

The photo says it all. My 1000th post on flicrk!

The photo is of the new color of the walls in my kitchen. I'm really happy with it. It'll look even better once I've sanded and painted the existing cabinetry. Also - new hardware.

Hard and Soft

2006-06-11T02:34:00.000-04:00

My Saturday schedule leaves me with an hour of down-time between shows at the Downtown Cabaret Theatre. Today, after refocusing a newly-swapped-in Intellibeam, I had a bit of time to walk around on stage and take some pictures. Of course, the house was open so I had to stay upstage of the main, but I had some fun.

In this photo, the softness of the main puts it in stark contrast to the hardness of the masonite. The hardness of my shadow, cast by the movers, also adds an interesting element to this shot. You can see that the stage is somewhat in need of a paint-job. Oh well. Only 3 shows left.

A surprisingly decent picture of me

2006-06-05T11:46:00.000-04:00

Appearantly, but not surprisingly, the very first stages of home-ownership seems to be all-consuming. I've been burning the candle at both ends for about a week now. My weekday schedule has been: Work till five, then at the house till midnight. My weekends are no better performances at the Downtown Cabaret have take all the time that working on the house doesn't get. Oh well.

Here you can see the handywork of my dad and I. We opened up this door-way to make the space flow a little better. Check out my shiny new 2x6 header! My dad took this altogether acceptable picture of me - sure the lighting is a bit wonky. Whatever. Traitor.

Homeowner [NAP]

2006-05-31T12:20:00.000-04:00

It's official. I am a homeowner. Closed on the deal yesterday. Word.

I don't really have any good pictures yet, but as soon as I do I'll post them. In the meantime, here are some not-so-good pictures.

Sweeet.

Camera Shy

2006-05-28T00:17:00.000-04:00

On random drive through, among other places, Weston, I passed a town fair and decided to stop. It's definitely the right season for these things and I can look forward to a whole summer of them. There is really no end to the number of good shots that are there to be found. And they range the gamut from wholesome to tawdry and from shiny to dingy.

The two girls - yes two - in this shot proved to be something less than camera-shy. It's a bit awkward taking pictures at this sort of event because you have to do it in such a way that doesn't make you suspect. I try to make it obvious that I'm taking pictures of the event and not individuals. Obviously the truth lies somewhere in the middle - without the individual the shot has no emotion, and without the context the individual is lost.

I took quite a few shots at this particular event. Expect me to post more of them.

Spring's last stand

2006-05-27T00:11:00.000-04:00

With my rent's in Sturbridge for the day I was tasked with a dog-maintenance duty. Fortunately I arrived, for the walking of the dogs, during a break in the day's rains. I walked the dogs and then gave them some time to eat while I wandered the yard with my camera.

I studied my parent's clothes-drying-thingamajig for a while. It was really a fun subject. The rain-drops clung to it. Lots of parallel and intersecting lines. Metallic bits and brightly-colored plastic bits.

In short: I should have taken more pictures.

It might be...

2006-05-27T00:02:00.000-04:00

It might be tough to take a bad macro photo of a dew-laden flower. This is another one of those photos that feels like it was so easy that it shouldn't count.

I took this shot at my parents house after a pretty decent rain. Dew. Purple. Pretty. The real reason I posted this picture is because of the cool little thready detail inside the flower. Also, the purpley veiney-ness.

2006-05-22T00:04:00.000-04:00

My new weekend schedule seems to be making my weekend feel... er. Non-existent. On Saturday I awakened by the sun at 9:30 only to find myself sleeping in till 11:30. All of a sudden my Saturday was a race to make it to call for a 5:30pm curtain. I can't really complain, seeing as it's something I really enjoy, but I can't help but feel I'm over-extending myself a bit.

Work + Weekend Work + Buying a House = tired and stressed Dave.

Relief, these days, seems to come in three packages: Going to the gym for a run, driving around aimlessly and wandering around with my camera. Bad weather this week made me lose Monday and Tuesday for running, And rising gas prices are impeding the amount of driving-around I can do. Fortunately, this morning I was able to go out - while the sun was still out - and take some pictures.

This shot is of a street sign in downtown Westport, shot against the wall of the YMCA. Anyone from Westport knows the building the 'Y' is in. Its a gorgeous piece of architecture and tudor charm. The ivy is just there to hammer home the point.

Update: It appears that this is post #50. Go Dave!

Assorted Nerdiness [NAP]

2006-05-21T22:28:00.000-04:00

Just a reminder. In case you were wondering, NAP means not a photo.

I just wanted to take a second to show off some true nerdiness, I recently started playing with Google Notebook. When you first go to use Notebook it prompts you to install a browser plugin. From this point on it seems very much to want to be a del.icio.us replacement. And, while it's interface is pretty cool, its not yet clear to me how they will build it into a community product. Maybe I'm wrong about their intentions.

In any case, I've already hitched my wagon to del.ico.us, but I am totally digging the ability to have all of my little note documents, which I would normally write in notepad.exe, in a centrally accessible location. This is one of things that you don't realize you need until you have it.

Well, enough shilling for a google product. Surely they don't need me to do that. What I do want to show-off is a bit of nerdiness from my current theatre job. Many of you don't know that I'm currently the Lighting Board Operator, and kind-of fill-in ME for the Downtown Cabaret Theatre's production of Sweet Charity. What I've decided to do is post my performance notes in a public Google Notebook. And here it is.

Why have I done this?
No Reason.

I will take this last line for one product gripe. It occurs to me, that if Google wants its notebook service to take off, they should provide users with a way of making public notebooks with a memorable address. Perhaps http://www.google.com/notebook/zorlack/notebook_name.

Oh well.

Locking up 'G'

2006-05-19T11:01:00.000-04:00

Sam's basement apartment in Chicago is not unlike a million pre-war New York brownstone apartments. I love the under-the-stairs entrance into the first of six or seven ante-chambers. The only thing it's missing is a dozen-or-so pocket doors.

Lets face it, this shot is all about perspective. I found myself standing on top of the concrete barrier which forms the stairs looking down -camera in hand of course.
To me, a couple of things really stand out about this shot. The angle presents an isometric view of the action below. Something about it seems very uniform and stable.
Color is the next thing that pops out of the screen. The intersecting colors of leather softened by rainbow scarf and shimmering hair.
Lastly, the contrast. This was the first sunny day on my recent trip to Chicago so I was very happy to be shooting in direct sunlight. In this shot, the direct-sun paid some major dividends. I really like the play of light and shadow in Sam's jacket. I also love the way the bricks light up - they really add strength to the image.

Hmm... too much analysis.

Zug like picture. Grunt.

Standing at the corner of Fullerton and Sam

2006-05-19T09:31:00.000-04:00

While in Chicago, Sam and I decided to hit up the Museum of Science and Industry - which by the way is an institution of ludicrous scale. While standing on the El platform, waiting for a south-bound ride, I decided to play with the trains that passed us by. Long-suffering Sam was my willing victim.

It was a very bright day, so to get any kind of motion-blur without completely over-exposing the shot I had to iris in all the way. To make matters a bit more fidgety, this was the first time - during my stay - that I decided not to take the tripod.

Oh well.

I'm pretty happy with this shot. I treated it a bit differently than the others in the set of El Photos. I like the over-exposed sky and the grainy look of the Sam. I love the fact that you can see the "Fullerton" sign exposed between cars. I love the contrast on Sam's collar, sunglasses and forehead.

Chicago

2006-05-18T16:30:00.000-04:00

I spent last weekend in Chicago with Sam. Among the many memorable moment was this one at the Shedd Aquarium.

What you see here are three White-Sided Dolphins diving into the water simultaneously... of course the astute sea-creature expert will realize that this was probably preceded by three White-Sided Dolphins diving out of the water. You are correct.
It was incredibly difficult to get anything even close to a usable image of these fast moving pod-dwellers. This was as good as it got. I have a few other shots that made the cut, but none of them had this kind of score in the coolness department.
Shooting underwater, through glass turned out to be pretty hard. Especially when the subject is roughly the same color as the medium through which you're shooting. Alas.

Pastoral.... I guess

2006-05-16T13:59:00.000-04:00

It's been an incredibly busy couple of weeks. Those of you who know me know that I'm getting close to closing on a new house. Yay me! Unfortunately this endeavor has become an all-consuming time whore. I have found myself going to the gym a bit more often - so that's good.

I took this photo on a little stress-relief jaunt to the Southport beach. It's almost hyper-idyllic. I'm not sure I can cope. I don't normally this type of pastoral imagery - to be honest, I'm not even sure if I like this one.

I like the clouds and the tide pool.
I like the grass.
I like the reeds.

Hmm... Maybe I do like this picture.

Requisite Landmark Tourist Shot

2006-04-27T14:07:00.000-04:00

Hmm... On second thought I'm not sure that title makes any sense. Oh well.

For anyone who hasn't been, the Space Needle is 520 feet of 50's design, built in the 40's. At its base is the site of the 1946 word's fair, which celebrated the age-of-space. Somehow the Internet-age just doesn't stack up in the coolness department.

The fairgrounds, on this particular day, were completely deserted. It seemed rather surreal and post-apocalyptic I wandered around and managed to get a few cool shots. I bet it looks downright creepy at night. This shot is of the Space Needle rising above the top of a carousel. It was a sunny day, so I was definitely working the CPL.

Update: RBWright points out a bit of lysdexia. It's the 1964 Worlds Fair. Oops.

Sunny Seattle?

2006-04-27T13:56:00.000-04:00

A meeting, on Tuesday, landed me in Seattle, Washington, for a few days. It was my first time in the city, so I was greatful that the meeting ended in time for me to do the lame-business-tourist thing. I'll post some more pictures but I want to start with one that I can claim absolutely no credit for.

There is simply no angle or composition that can harm the gorgeous aesthetic of this Gehry masterpiece. Neither, however, is there any angle or composition that can truly do it justice. This building, home to the EMP and the Sci-Fi Museum, sits at the site of the '64 worlds fair just beneath the iconic "Space Needle". As impressive as it is on the outside, the inside is just as gorgeous. It seems to be a crumpled ball made of many different materials. Its other neat trick is that the red-metallic panels cast a red glow over anything near by depending on the light. It's confusing and wonderful.

See the full set.

Spring

2006-04-19T20:13:00.000-04:00

Taking the rental car onto the highway, upon my recent arrival in Charleston, I was struck by the degree to which spring had beat the hell out of South Carolina. That is to say: spring was squarely in the rear-view mirror. Summer had struck.

It seems, though, that while I lounged about on vacation Spring was hard at work on my home turf. Now, the smell of lilac and dogwood is overpowering - woe be to allergy sufferers.

I'm not really sure what kind of tree this is. I'm sure this statement will illicit an answer from Sam.

On my drive home, I pass a row of these trees within walking distance from my house. For the past couple of days, the 7pm sun shines low and warm on these trees. Today I took a walk down to take some pictures. I ended up spending 20 minutes playing with my flash and various exposure settings. I'm a serious novice when it comes to flash photography - though I feel a bit better after today. You can tell that the flash made a serious difference in this shot. Without it you would be looking at a silhouette.

Full moon rising over Charleston

2006-04-19T16:32:00.000-04:00

Will and I went out drinking on my first night in town. Aside from drinking, smoking cigars and talking about compile-time optimizers, we also took a few photos. Its hard for me to resist a balmy night in a strange but comfortable city!

Anyone who's looked at my photos as a whole is probably aware of my penchant for long-exposures. On this particular night I found myself grateful for having lugged my tripod around on a night out drinking. The way the moon shines, silvery, off the still water is fascinating. The next night the waters were a bit more turpid, so I'm glad I got this shot when I did.

Rainbow Row

2006-04-19T16:16:00.000-04:00

Charleston has a curious collection of antebellum architecture. Running along East Bay street by the Charleston gunnery battery is Rainbow Row. A row of houses, each with a different color. Here two houses meet a shadow cast by the left house breaks up the image. Stucco abounds.

The shot is slightly underexposed - this is for two reasons. When I'm in the field I tend to underexpose daylight photography so that I have a bit more texture to work with in post. The other reason is actually kind of embarrassing. I recently upgraded from a CRT monitor to a ultra-bright flat panel. The size and brightness has made my work-flow a bit more comfortable, but I think I'm being screwed up by a bad gamma setting. Oh well.

I took another photo similar to this one. I really am crazy about the texture of the stucco. The colors of the buildings glowed in the evening.

I'm Back.

2006-04-19T15:47:00.000-04:00

Well, I spent the past weekend in Charleston, South Carolina. Wow - just an absolutely gorgeous town. To make for an even better weekend I had the honor of being Best Man at WW's wedding. I'm not going to go on-and-on providing a detailed chronology of the weekend instead I will provide the following bullet items:

Got to see Will and Margaret
Sam met me there
The weather was gorgeous
Will got married
I gave a speach

As for my photographic responsibilities - I happily shirked them during the actual wedding. Perhaps if I'd been a bystander I'd have take more pictures. Instead, as a member of the wedding party, I had more pictures taken of me than I care to think about. I'm sure I'll be squinty/awkward in most of them.

This photo obviously catalogs a portion of my out-bound trip from Charlotte to Charleston. Airport stop-overs typically involve either boredom or drinking. In this case, the former. To pass the time I took some pictures. On this trip I opted not to bring my laptop so my carry-on item was my camera and tripod. I took this shot, plus a number of uninspired shots of a guy in a rocking-chair. Oh well.
There are two reasons I like this shot - actually three if you count composition (Now that I think about it - I'm sure most people do). I like the various levels of black and the texture of the canvas-esque plastic material.

By the way, here's a tip: Don't try to write on one of these yellow tags with a gel-pen. It'll all end in tears.

Westport Library

2006-04-06T15:49:00.000-04:00

The truth is, I'm not really sure why it took me so long to post this one. Things have been quite busy; between house-hunting and healthcare its hard to find my motivation some days. Here's the great news though: The recent daylight-savings change means that at 5pm-ish there's still plenty of daylight!

After a particularly wretched day I decided to get out and take some pictures. I spent my time wandering around downtown Westport finding myself eventually out behind the library taking pictures at the Levitt. Walking back to my car I stopped to take pictures of the glowing glass bricks which make up a portion of the Westport Public Library.

I probably took about 30 shots of this. My intention was to do some HDR on them and see what happens. Maybe someday. I take an over-under on all of my shots - which in this case took quite a while. I'm pleased with the layout, the color and the light.

Where have I been?

2006-03-30T14:17:00.000-05:00

Well, those of you were around last week know why I was an absent blogger. Sam was in town for "Spring Break". In Sam's case this is actually a week-long birthday celebration. This means that while I took many pictures this past week, very few of them are fit for posting - they tend to be more of the vacation-variety snapshot.

Those of you who frequent the New York art scene (I do not count my self among you) will recognize this as being the open-air garden area just east of MoMA. This is a big-old waterfall fountain, and one that I would love to spend hours taking pictures of... unfortunately, I found myself in the cold, without a tripod and with a low battery. Also apparently we had a spectator that I was unaware of, but that Sam noticed.

I'm still trying to learn how to best put my flash to use . In this shot it really upset the color of the image - though it's really ok, because I like the shot in black and white. In this shot the flash provides fill lighting for Sam's face and torso - without it she would be a heavy silhouette. I wasn't quite sure how to treat Sam's midriff... in the photo. Eventually I decided to leave it alone since burning it wasn't producing very interesting results.

Update: Midriff now removed. Disolved into a sea of blackness

Another shot from last weekend's jaunt

2006-03-17T14:18:00.000-05:00

This week has been ridiculous. I spend Sunday night doing a strike at the Downtown Cabaret in Bridgeport. I then worked two 15 hour days in a row, leaving work and heading directly to the Cabaret for a light hang. I was hurting pretty bad for a few days, so Wednesday was a recovery day. Yesterday was spent in preparation for Sam's arrival.

So here we are, and me with no new photos.

As you can probably tell, either by the purveyor or his merchandise, this shot was taken in Chinatown. The shot started as a bit of a color study, but I've been getting a bit braver about taking pictures of people - so I kept shooting until something interesting happened in frame.

More NYC

2006-03-12T17:51:00.000-05:00

Here's another shot from my recent trip into the city.

As you can probably tell, this shot spent some time in editing. I pumped the saturation over-all and then selectively pulled it down in areas. I then used the color gradient tool to do a little bit of manipulation on the shading of the people in the shot. I particularly like the way the 'Lotto ATM' light shines through the tape meant to obscure it.

Points to anyone who can pinpoint the location of this shot.

Shooting in NYC

2006-03-12T00:09:00.000-05:00

A landmark occasion. Today marks the first time that I ventured into the city for the express purpose of taking pictures. I was unencumbered by hangers-on to slow my trekking. Sweet. I walked from Grand Central down towards City Hall and then back up again. I zig-zagged the whole way of course. I will be posting many shots from today's adventure. Here is the first.

The energy in Chinatown is utterly insane. I could stand all day and take pictures there. In fact, I probably should have. NYC affords a certain amount of anonymity to the photographer who is a little afraid of shooting strangers. I just kept shooting people buying and selling. This is the keeper. I'm glad I was looking through the lens at this moment, otherwise I probably would have walked away, embarrassed.

A little behind

2006-03-12T00:05:00.000-05:00

Well, I've gotten a little behind. We had some tremendous weather this week. On Friday, I went out (without a jacket) and took a few shots.

Of all the shots I took on Friday this is my favorite. The sky gradient really came alive when I started to go to work on the raw file. I did a bit of saturation and color-temp tweaking.

I can't stress enough how excited I am for the return of good weather.

A Sunday wandering Westport

2006-03-05T22:11:00.000-05:00

That's about as accurate a description of my Sunday as I can come up with. I spent some time at the Bearing Hill Beach then made my way over to Earthplace... sorry... it'll always be NCEA to me. Heehee.

I took this shot from the bottom of a particularly extreme bit of tree-ness. As you can probably guess this is at Earthplace. I was hoping I'd see some animals (preferably of the cloven-hooved variety), but no such luck. I originally shot this completely upside down. I gave it a 180 degree rotation in post. I like the sunlight playing off the bark.

Update: I made it to number four. Awww yeah.

Icy Winds

2006-03-03T23:51:00.000-05:00

I managed, for the second day in a row, to leave the office while a little sunlight was still on the horizon. I headed for Compo Beach to take some tundra-like shots of the icy solitude. The wind was outrageous. It blew little face-cutting particles of ice around and making my exposed skin burn. I was fortunate enough to have brought along gloves but I forgot, entirely, the benefit that a hat would provide. By the time I made it back to the car (180 shots later) I was shivering and I couldn't feel my fingers or toes.

These tents proved to be particularly interesting. I'm not accustomed to seeing tents on the beach in the winter, and the 30mph winds made them particularly attractive subjects. I took many shots of the tents from the outside, and even a few from the inside. It wasn't until I started tweaking the raw files that I began to see on-screen what I had seen in person.

I am exceptionally pleased with this shot.

Update: Well, according to flickr scout, this shot has shown up as #3 on flickr's explore pages. Yay for interestingness!

Another Snowy One

2006-03-02T20:20:00.000-05:00

Unfortunately, on this particular snowy day I wasn't "trapped" in Chicago. I decided that on my way home from work I was going to catch a little bit of light and take some pictures in the snow. As soon as I got on the road however I realized just how suicidal it was driving around and so I nixed my original plans and went after some low-hanging fruit.

I've actualy wanted to stop at this rest stop and take some pictures in the past. Today seemed as good a time as any. There was even a news crew set up to record a live segment in front of the traffic. Yeah, that bit never gets old.

I took a number of shots, all of them came out fairly mundane. I had to spend a decent amount of time in Photoshop tweaking and poking until I had usable material. In this particular shot I added a serious amount of vignetting. I like the feel it gives the image. I also bumped the various exposure and curve settings. I chose this as the best of the bunch because of the gleaming snow illuminated by the truck lights. I was worried about condensation today so I made a bit of a scarafice: I rode around with the heat off so my camera wouldn't have to make fast temperature adjustments. I'm not sure if it paid off or not, but I didn't have any serious condensation. So thats good.

Flickr, Interestingness and Addiction

2006-03-01T21:15:00.000-05:00

I had, on Monday, the opportunity to read this article on FlickrNation. The article presents 10 tips to get more people looking at your photos posted on Flickr. Most of the tips seem to center on building yourself into the community. I like this. I used to only favorite those pictures taken by friends which I wanted to have a way back to. Now I use the favorite button like a thumbs-up, or a "Nice Job". When I give someone the thumbs-up they see that I have done so and take a look at my pictures in return. The same concept works for commenting as well.
I am now addicted. Looking at random pictures commenting and favoriting away. There's nothing disingenuous about this either. I love looking at random snippets of peoples lives and its great to give someone a thumbs-up. I'm an addict now.

So, is this all just attention whoring? Yes. But also no. Other than the occasional ego stroke, the fact that people are viewing my pictures puts on the pressure to produce and to maintain a level of quality that I otherwise wouldn't.

File it under pressure to produce. Despite the way I was feeling after work I decided to take some outdoor pictures. I've long thought about shooting some pictures along this particular stretch of the Post Road in Norwalk. It's particularly ugly and commercial and even features a stunningly rusty radio tower. The weather, however, was a bit more than I bargained for and I didn't go nuts walking around the area.

My goal for the evening was to take a series of photos, at different exposures, that I could later use for HDR processing. Unfortunately, I'm a terrible novice at this particular technique and so I didn't really manage to produce anything. I did however produce a nice non-HDR still image. Here it is.

Not a Photo [NAP]

2006-02-28T19:25:00.000-05:00

Ok well, this is a little bit of a diversion. Normaly this space is reserved for my pictures. But today something cool happened. I'm quoted on boingboing!

I responded to Cory Doctorow's post on, competitor, Podzinger by letting him know about Podscope. To my surprise he returned my email and asked me for a 1-liner talking contrasting Podscope. I'm quoted in the update. Here's the story!

-Dave

Composition and Contrast

2006-02-25T22:21:00.000-05:00

I took a couple of shots inside the pavilion at Sherwood Island. The pavilion itself is quite a piece of architecture. That is to say it is utterly dated in its outward appearance, but kind of charming in its own way. Looking at it the pavilion through the CPL was a bit like looking back in time.

Two things I really like about this shot. The contrast and the composition. The depth of the black makes the window seem to fade away. The black on top and bottom makes the window "pop" a bit more. I took a number of shots like this one. I may post another.

I did a bit in post to this shot. I raised the shadow levels tremendously - this is pretty obvious. I also bumped down the exposure and increased the saturation. It was very difficult to get any color showing through.

Update: This photo made it to number 82 on flickr's most interesting on February 25! Its my first time!

Praise be to sunlight

2006-02-25T17:35:00.000-05:00

Praise be to sunlight, that glorious thing which makes my Saturday afternoon warm.

The weather has been bad lately. Really cold. This fact, combined with the daylight-savings-related lack of light, has made it difficult to take pictures. Not so today.

I'm a Westport native. Never mind what my birth certificate says. Somehow its never occurred to me that they don't charge admission to get into Sherwood Island State Park in the off-season. Lesson learned. This gives me a whole new beach environment to take pictures of. Not only that, but the buildings have a great 70's style to them that makes them look incredibly dingy and interesting.

A lot of the pictures I took today where under incredibly harsh sun. I slapped on the CPL and under-exposed everything. I like the arctic-winter feel that it produces. Expect to see me post a few more of the pictures from today. I feel like this was my first good day in a while.

Boring Technical Note: My circular polarizer fogs up. A lot. Its starting to become problematic. I need a cloth that I can use on it.

Too damn cold.

2006-02-20T15:24:00.000-05:00

It has been cold. Very cold. So cold that when I go outside my tripod instantly becomes too cold to touch with bare hands. So cold that I have to let my camera's temperature adjust slowly so that the glass doesn't fog. In short: It has been too cold to take pictures outside.

Fellow CT dwellers may note that I am posting this on a particularly warm day. Well, for that, I have no excuse. I'm busy that's all. Heehee.

Determined to not have my blogyness completely undermined by the weather I decided to take some closeups of completely lame objects. The sort of flotsam that one can always find by Jullian's computer.

This picture pretty much explains how I feel about the weather of the past week. I hate in when it takes my fingers the entire day to warm up. bah. I used my recently acquired +1 macro filter. Kinda cool.

Graffiti

2006-02-15T12:33:00.001-05:00

There's a lot of graffiti out there. Most of it is probably destructive, impulsive crap. But there is a special kind of graffiti that warms the cockles of my ice-cold heart. When ever I see graffiti that exhibits a designer's aesthetic I take notice.

During my recent trip to Chicago I found myself hanging around DePaul's Merle Reskin Theatre. On the east side of the venue an alley provides a service corridor to the nearby buildings.

This is exactly the style of graffiti that puts a big grin on my face. Someone drew a "Block" next to the sign reading "Do Not Block". I hardly know where to begin - the fact that the cube is so simply rendered makes it even more amusing.

I did a bit of post-production on this shot. I first bumped the contrast and saturation to produce a very vivid, if oddly colored, image. I then desaturated the image and added some texture using a thread-pattern and a brightness/contrast mask. I'm still new the whole masking-layer technique. Its a remarkably effective work-flow tool.

King of the Hill

2006-02-14T23:26:00.000-05:00

Some animals are insane camera-whores. You may recognize this little rodent as a meerkat. A group of meerkats once graced the cover of National Geographic in much the same pose.

Sam and I were at the Lincoln Park Zoo. I turned a corner to discover a group of meerkats sitting on a log in their standard pose. I decided I had to sneak up - so that I could capture them standing on their log - just like in the NG cover. I tip-toed closer and closer until I was standing right in front of them - they didn't move.

Go stealthy Dave.

Wrong. I could have performed a one-man version of riverdance on the same hollow log that they were standing on and they would have just rolled with it. Oh well. I took some pictures. They didn't come out well.

The only interesting picture was of the king-of-the-hill meerkat. This guy just sat up there the whole time we watched. He was content with his lot. And I was content to take his picture.

-D

Snowed In.

2006-02-12T19:57:00.000-05:00

Well, I'm not actually snowed in, but I am trapped in Chicago until Tuesday morning. All the flights into BDL were canceled. Well boo for travel, hooray for another day and a half with Mina. Meanwhile, the nice people at AA were, after quite a while on hold, perfectly happy to get me on Tuesday's earliest flight. And, with coach being full they bumped me up to first class. I hope I get some sort of cool mileage incentive.

All of this is sort of an explanation for the lack of postings. I've been in Chicago since Thursday evening. I've got all sorts of really cool pictures to post (including a swimming hippopotamus). The chi-town pictures will start to trickle in once I'm back at home base.

-Dave

NOTE: This is my first non-meta posting to not include a picture. Hmm. Any thoughts?

A Long Late Night

2006-02-07T16:14:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was a long day. A long day which proceeded into a long night. The kind of night - at the office - that I truly dislike. I didn't even get a chance to leave until after 11pm. No dinner. Bleary eyes. Headache.

The cold air in the garage dulled my headache enough for me to take some pictures of the some late-night parking-garage eirieness.

It's easy to hate the light cast by so many mercury vapor lights. For that reason it's odd when I find myself moth-like and kind-of drawn to the hard lines and ugliness that they project. I'm sure this isn't the best picture that I've posted on here, but at the moment I took the shot it seemed perfectly in synch with the way I was feeling. So. Hmm.

Small and Pointy

2006-02-06T20:31:00.000-05:00

House hunting has left me with little time to go out with my camera. Although its possible that I'm just using that as an excuse for not hanging outside in the cold. Alas.

This is a crop of one of the shots I took in long island. I feel like it may be a bit cliche' - I'm not sure. I find myself drawn to taking pictures of fences - in part because they provide interesting contrasts, but also because they have a certain allure. A fence is very mysterious - I wonder what's on the other side.

In this case the shot is less about the fence and more about the barb. Ouch. Pointy.

UPDATE: I just noticed, this is the second close-up in a row. Maybe I should consider a macro lens. Just a thought.

Pegs

2006-02-04T23:48:00.000-05:00

You may have noticed a bit of a slow-down in my posting regularity. The truth is I haven't been to busy - to the contrary. I've been close to posting several photos but I keep changing my mind. I've spent some time thinking and decided that the reason I'm having a hard time is that I really like my most recent post and I feel like my next post really has to be on the same level. I actually didn't see that effect coming. I'm not sure if its good or bad. We shall see.

I really intended to go outside today and shoot some more, but after a beautiful morning spent looking at real estate the weather fell apart on me. Blah. Later on at Jeannie's house I managed to sneak off while the others were watching a "legally Blonde". I got some indoor shots.

This is a close-up on the pitch-bending pegs on a pedal harp. I like the color of the pegs, and the lighting in general. In this case the light is cast from a low-wattage, shaded incandescent lamp. I quite like it.

Alex the pigeon

2006-01-31T13:00:00.000-05:00

On Sunday I returned from Long Island via the Bridgeport/Port Jefferson Ferry. As I was getting on the ferry in L.I. I noticed some pretty cool tug-boats and stopped to take some pictures. This, of course, was in flagrant disregard for their No-Photography policy. Apparently terrorists will only attack a target if they can first get their picture taken next to a tug-boat. One of the ground crewmen asked me to stop. I did. But not before getting a few pictures of Alex.

Note: In this picture Alex is the name of the tug-boat. Not the name of the pigeon. However. I like calling the pigeon Alex - and I'm the one who gets to decide.

So here we have a picture of a shiny pigeon sitting on a tire on the bow of a tug-boat. Hooray for interesting subjects. Boo for boring lighting. I wasn't at all pleased with the way most of these shots came out. The day was quite a dreary one and the grey sky didn't provide much of a contrast against the grey water.

Yesterday I did some reading on the Lomo effect and, more specifically, faking it in post. This was my first time using a script written by someone else on my photos. It did a lot of the things I typically do: Contrast, Saturation, Shadows. But it also added some gradient filter effects which came out quite nicely. I will have to spend more time playing in the future.

Delicate

2006-01-29T22:54:00.000-05:00

I could hardly wait to post another picture from this weekend's shooting. Although, frankly, I'm not sure why I should be tempted to wait - something about pacing. I don't know.

Walking through the woods outside Kate and Dylan's place I found a broken piece of mirror lying among the leaves. I got two nice pictures, but this one is my favorite of the two.

The thing I like about this shot is the delicate way in which the leaves seem to lay on the mirror. The color the sun adds to the leaves further builds the contrast against the sky - reflected in the mirror.