Schierer Space

As promised I’ve posted the best of the Niagara Falls images. (Technically, they are still uploading to the gallery.)

Overall conclusion, misty air around the falls makes for pretty blah photography in general. My favorites out of this set are definitely the macro shots of the flowers. There are a few interesting angles thrown in from when I was able to snap a quick shot between attempts to quickly remove the water from the lens filters.

Also, I’m noticing that the crud on my imager is finally reaching intolerable levels. I’ve been avoiding buying another bottle of Eclipse because it’s such a ripoff to pay $9 shipping on an $9 2-ounce bottle of methanol (half of which will evaporate between uses). Unfortunately, methanol is considered a controlled substance from a shipping to random civilians point of view. Otherwise I could buy very high purity stuff directly from a chem supply house for a fraction of the unit cost.

No time to comment as I’ve already missed too much sleep tonight trying to get stuff wrapped up before the Dragon*Con trek.

I have just added Vincent Laforet’s blog to the links below because I have so enjoyed reading the Olympics photography blog he has produced with Newsweek.

If you have interest in photography, or the impact of new media on traditional media (newspaper, magazines), you’ll find his blog interesting. He’s just getting started as a blogger, but it looks like he’s on the right track to explore an interesting niche. He seems to recognize that while opportunities seem to be fading for the traditional ’staff photographer’, considerably more freedom and opportunity is available working directly for your audience (us!).

To share one tidbit, in a posting after his return from Beijing he posts:

In Beijing, with a total of 6 cameras, I shot: 28,444 files for a total of a whopping 480 Gigabytes of Images! That’s INSANE! Even I am shocked.

I thought my photography archive was getting out of control. I’m just pushing that many images in my entire career at a third of the storage space.

Wow.

After our trip to Canada over the weekend to see Niagara Falls and other sights (pictures to follow in a later posting), we had the joy of experiencing the new and improved US border.

It took us about 2 hours to wait in line with the other cars for about 60 seconds with the border agent. What are we doing with all of the delay if the search is so cursory? I can only assume that somebody is getting the nth degree. The question, of course, is: Is it the right somebody?

Anyway, this sign says it all:

K made some really yummy oatmeal chocolate chip cookies the other day. The word got out.

No, I didn’t forget my Grandma’s birthday, this is just another set of pictures that have suffered from a busy summertime. I’ve finally gotten a chance to do some quick touch-ups and post these to the gallery.

There are, as always, a lot more pictures than I’ve posted, but I think these are the highlights. In general, the pictures didn’t come out as well as I hoped. The hall was a typical tile drop ceiling with sparse florescent lighting. This makes for high ISOs, slow shutter speeds and weird color casts.

Anyhow, we did a series of family shots of the various guests, so I’ll close with those.

If you haven’t been following the adventures of Newsweek photographers Vincent Laforet, Donald Miralle ad Mike Powell at the Olympics, you’re missing a great opportunity. As all of you readers know, I’m an amateur photographer with aspirations for a few great shots. These guys are the best in the world shooting in a two week marathon of photography moments. They talk about the technical, physical and emotional challenges involved in capturing emotionally and literally dynamic events in still frames.
I posted about Vincent’s packing exploits to start off the series, but I think the posts have gotten even better as we’ve gone along.
They’re sharing a unique perspective on what it takes to get unique perspectives on this media circus of a sporting event: the technically strategic challenge of being in the right place (or several places) at the right time after hours (days!) of planning the perfect shot, the emotion of ‘discovering’ a new sport, the catharsis of introspection… it’s just been a great ride so far.

Keep it up guys!!

These pics are from the end of June, but for some reason I haven’t gotten around to posting them. K’s folks were out visting so we took Nate to the zoo with them. He was a bit more interested this time, or at least Grammy was able to keep him entertained.

In any case, here are some more pics from Rosamond Gifford Zoo.

No I didn’t decide to compete at the last minute, but instead decided it would be fun to shoot the competitors.

Egads! No… with the camera of course.

I’ve put all the pictures that are even halfway decent in the gallery. Many did not come out as well as I hoped, but I got better as I went along. So if you happened to be a slower rider, it’s more likely that your picture came out and made it into the gallery. As best as I could, I included the racer’s number in the image description, so if you’re looking for a particular picture you can search for your number. Of course, as I said, many of the pictures were blurry so make sure to search on reasonable variations on your number. (like 356 => 366 or 365 or maybe even 388).

There were over 400 competitors, and there are only about 170 pictures, so obviously I didn’t get even close to everybody. If you are a racer, or family/friend, etc. and you want a picture, just let me know and I’ll send you a copy without the watermark on it. No charge, I just want credit.

Some of my favorites:

Vincent Laforet, who is shooting the Olympics for Newsweek, is running a blog documenting his experiences. I’m not sure if I will follow this throughout the games, but his post about packing for the trip is pretty interesting.

If you can’t be bothered to read the post, at least flip through the image gallery of his packing.

All I can say is: “Mmmmm….. gear.”

K & I spotted these signs on a local walk some time ago. I had forgotten about it until today.

So if you work for National Grid and you’re wondering what to put in the Orange Collection Containers:

Hmm.