Schierer Space

Nate has been keeping us entertained lately with a few new tricks.

Drinking from a straw (the only way to drink milk apparently):

Carrying things by balancing them on his hand:

Making “piggy noses”^[1] on the glass:

1. This is K’s term. [↩]

I found this large moth outside in the backyard. It looked like a pretty ordinary, well camoflaged moth until I disturbed it. It’s hind wings were bright red with stripes. This identifies it as a member of the Catocala (meaning “Underwings”) genus. I didn’t bother trying to identify the specific species because there are SO MANY similar looking moths. Take a look at this plate of Catocala.

As I mentioned previously, I was welcomed into one of the many back-rooms of Dragon*Con by the very friendly Daily Dragon staff.

Thanks to Director/Editor Eugie Foster (pictured), Assistant Director Paul J.
Iutzi (who shot the pic) and all of the other excited folks I met that night.

Of the 400 something pictures I took this weekend, I’ve uploaded over 100 of them into the Dragon*Con 2008 gallery. There are sub-albums for each day Friday through Sunday, with the majority of the pictures on Saturday because of the parade.

Here are my top 10 in no particular order, except for this first picture, which I think is the best I took all weekend.

The subject is wearing a fantastic costume and is well posed and balanced in the shot. I didn’t get her name, but thanks for being so cooperative. I like the steam-punk look, I could definitely have some fun with that, but I’m not sure how I would distinguish myself amongst the crowd.

I’ve started to collect links in this ultimate narcissistic use of the personal blog. Yes, links to pictures of ME.

• Flickr Image (Thanks Bill.)
• Flickr Video (Video of yip-yip as fire hazard.)
• Flickr Image
• Flickr Image
• Flickr Image
• Flickr Image
• Flickr Image
• Flickr Image
• Flickr Image
• Flickr Image
• You-Tube video of Master’s level winning act and awards presentation (I’m on stage in the background and got to hang with these ladies after the show… )
• Flickr Image
• Flickr Image(Same person as 1st video)
• Flickr Image(Same person as 1st video)
• Flickr Image(With Bad Astronomer’s New Book: Death from the Skies)
• Flickr Image(Official Dragon*Con Hallway Costume Contest Entry)
• Flickr Image
• Flickr Image
• Flickr Image
• Flickr Image

I saw this bugger traipsing about in the backyard so I hit him with the deer spotter while Martha got this picture. We’re gonna sell it to one of them grocery store magazines!

Seriously though…. Dragon*Con is ON!!!

Yip - yip - yip.

PS: Yes, our house is officially covered in pink fuzz.

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.