New Junk

I've relaunched my A Thousand Words feature over there on the right nav, but this time I'm using the new Flash-based Flickr badge. Once I upload more photos to Flickr (I only have 12 there at the moment), you won't see the same photo duplicated several times in the badge, but for now that's all I've got.

Shake Your Groove Thang

My apologies for this video being so dark, but Huggy only does this particular thing at night.

(Yes, the bird's name is HUGGY. It's short for "Huggy Bear." He makes a siren noise - which he is currently making RIGHT NOW and it's driving me INSANE - so I wanted to name him something related to a cop show. Thus, HUGGY BEAR.)

Anyway, Huggy's been doing this weird movement/noise for months now and for a long time it kind of freaked me out. But I recently figured out what it's all about.

Audioblog + Microphone = Hear Me!

Test of the Audioblog audio recording function, using my microphone.

I sound tired because I am tired.

EDIT: I also sound like I'm channeling William Shatner. Heh.

Caygeon Finds a Lens Cap

My cat Caygeon discovers that dangling lens caps are fun to play with.

This is a test of Audioblog's video capabilities.

Infrared Photography

For Christmas I received one of the coolest things EVER - a Hoya R72 infrared filter for my Canon G6 camera!

Yes, I am a photogeek.

Anyway, I took some shots on my way home from my mom's house this afternoon. This one is of a palm tree alongside Edgewater Drive in Dunedin:

This shot was taken handheld; I definitely need to use a tripod/monopod to achieve better (i.e. sharper) results. But it's not bad for my first attempt.

For reference, I'm including a full-color shot of the palm trees in the area.

Merry Christmas!

Kodachrome

Photography is so cool. Here is an excerpt (photos after the description) from a current exhibition at the Library of Congress:

All photos are credited to the Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA-OWI Collection and reproduced with permission. Click each photo for a high-resolution version.

John Vachon Negro boy near Cincinnati, Ohio 1942 or 1943 LC-DIG-fsac-1a34281 DLC Howard R. Hollem Painting the American insignia on airplane wings is a job that Mrs. Irma Lee McElroy, a former office worker, does with precision and patriotic zeal. Mrs. McElroy is a civil service employee at the Naval Air Base, Corpus Christi, Texas. Her husband is a flight instructor. August 1942 LC-DIG-fsac-1a34899 DLC Alfred T. Palmer M-4 tank crews of the United States, Ft. Knox, Ky. June 1942 LC-DIG-fsac-1a35210 DLC Alfred T. Palmer Operating a hand drill at Vultee-Nashville, woman is working on a "Vengeance" dive bomber, Tennessee February 1943 LC-DIG-fsac-1a35371 DLC Alfred T. Palmer A good job in the air cleaner of an army truck, Fort Knox, Ky. June 1942 LC-DIG-fsac-1a35222 DLC Alfred T. Palmer Here's our mission - A combat crew receives final instructions just before taking off in a mighty YB-17 bomber from a bombardment squadron base at the field, Langley Field, Va. May 1942 LC-DIG-fsac-1a35094 DLC Marion Post Wolcott A cross roads store, bar, "juke joint," and gas station in the cotton plantation area, Melrose, La. June 1940 LC-DIG-fsac-1a34361 DLC John Vachon Rural school children, San Augustine County, Texas April 1943 LC-DIG-fsac-1a35425 DLC

Photo Requests

I am stealing this from Rappy, who in turn stole it from someone else:

What three things about my life would you like me to photograph?

(And don't be crass.)

Back In the Saddle

I'm starting up my photography website again.

In the RAW

I'm doing two things here - testing the ability of the Image:Magick plugin to create a thumbnail from a full-size photo, and posting a photo that I took using the RAW format and converting it, post-production, to JPG.

This is the view out the back of my apartment.

Caterpillar Girl

I've been trying to take a decent photo of these weird caterpillars we have around here, and this is the best I've been able to do so far. It's not as in focus as I wanted, but I was operating on SUPERMACRO with no flash.

Spoons, Man

More proof that Eric and I are cosmically connected:

Unbeknownst to the other, we both enjoy taking photos of cutlery. We even chose our subjects along gender lines – I took shots of a spoon (curvy, rounded), while Eric chose a fork (elongated, pointed).

Incidentally, I am totally in love with my Canon G6. Now that I'm learning how to work with all the functions, I'm taking some very nice shots.

Turanga Leela

I got sick of all the blonde highlights in my hair. So now I don't have them any more:

The longer I look at this photo, the weirder it seems. But maybe I've just been watching too much Futurama this weekend.

And then, of course, I couldn't stop myself from screwing around with the picture in Photoshop CS's Filter Gallery (click the thumbnail for a bigger image):

Experimenting With the G666

It's going to take awhile before I get the hang of maximizing the features on my new Canon G6. I took my nephew Alex out to the Suncoast Seabird Sanctuary down on Indian Shores on Sunday, and used the excursion as an excuse to play around with all the different camera settings.

Mostly I was experimenting with the difference in photographs of subjects shot on Auto and either Aperature or Shutter Priority. I took about 100 shots and the bottom line is - I still have no idea what I'm doing.

Before we went down to the beach, Alex and I hung out in my mom's pool:

Alex taunts me from the safety of the water (15MB)

And now, the photos!

Full | Detail

Alex swimming, shot on shutter priority to try and get the detail of the splashing water. The camera has a high enough resolution to record individual water bubbles against Alex's cheek.

Full | Detail

This would have been a nice shot if I hadn't cut off both of my nephew's arms. I love how the G6 captures enough detail to make out individual droplets of water flying through the air.

Full | Detail

This was shot using Portrait mode. Notice the difference in the background between this shot and the next one; in this version, Portrait mode blurs the background to make the subject "pop" in the foreground.

Full | Detail

This shot was taken on Auto, which explains the increased depth of field behind Alex - the background is not blurred at all.

Full | Detail

My brother lives next door to my mom; this is a shot of the cypress tree in his backyard, taken from the opposite edge of my mom's backyard. The detail shot shows that the G6 picks up details in the leaves and bark of the tree even though I am about 50 feet away.

Full | Detail

Here's Joe, an egret that hangs out around my mom's house looking for food. His preferred meal is hot dogs.

Full | Detail

This is the view from the entryway to the beach at Indian Shores, looking back up the pathway into the Suncoast Seabird Sanctuary. Alex is visible on the right side of the photo; in the Detail shot you can see how much of the wood grain the camera picked up, even though that section of the shot was not the focal point.

Full | Detail

This is the end of the pathway to looking out at the beach. I liked the lead-in lines of the wood railing that take your eye from the lower left corner into the middle of the photo. The Detail shows two people (in between the bushes) who are barely visible in the full size shot.

Full | Detail

All of the birds at the sanctuary are injured or otherwise unable to be let back into the wild. Brown pelicans are plentiful; this one was sitting by the fence, so I carefully stuck my camera lens through one of the openings to shoot the little guy. I like how the Detail shot shows the identification on the bird's metal ankle cuff.

Full | Detail

Another brown pelican; this one was standing on the edge of a wading pool that the birds use both for water and to scoop fish out from.

Full | Detail

White pelicans can also be found at the sanctuary; some of these guys were kinda ugly, because they had weird growths on the top of their bills.

Full | Detail

I don't really like the colors in this shot of the sunset on Indian Rocks Beach; what I like is the silhouettes of the three kids running through the foreground. I love how the kids just happen to be lined up by height, and the lead kid is holding a ball above her head.

Full | Detail

The horizon on Indian Rocks Beach at sunset. I used Canon Photostitch to merge three photos to create this panorama.

MOO-vie

I got my lovely new Canon G6 camera last night. This morning I recruited one of my coworkers to help me test the movie mode (which I will upload when I go home for lunch). Let me just say that movie mode? Is freakin' COOL. I'm going to be taking movies of all sorts of stuff in the future, I can feel it.

ANOTHER EDIT: Want to see my cats, Dawsey and Caygeon? (11 MB)

EDIT: Here is the 14-second movie that I shot earlier of my coworker (it's a 4.7 MB AVI, which will probably play with either QuickTime of Real Player on your system).

Also expect an onslaught of photos to be posted here as I play with my new toy.

Another New Toy

Here in all its sad little glory, is ...

My first podcast (1.8 MB, right click to save)

This might be entirely too fun. There are two vocal tracks with music in between. Oh, and the background song is a cover of Puddle of Mudd's "She Hates Me" by Richard Cheese. The selection is an homage to Eric, who introduced me to the wonder that is ... Dick Cheese.

The way I say "podcast" at the :08 mark cracks me up. Sooooo smoove.

Fun With Photoshop CS

So. The bestest person in the whole wide world bestowed a copy of Photoshop Creative Studio 8 upon me. I could very well lose an entire weekend to this program, but so far I've just been playing around with all the various photo filters.

To wit, this before and after example of a sunset photo I took on 12/31/2004 (click the photo for a bigger version):

BEFORE

AFTER

Basically, I tweaked the saturation, contrast, applied a warming filter and a shadow/highlight filter, etc.

Oh, and today I bought a Canon G6.

Anonymous Birthday Gifting

Someone sent me two books on Ireland and an Irish music DVD from Overstock.com, which arrived today. Only thing is, there's nothing on the shipping invoice that reveals who sent me such wonderful presents.

So whomever did so, please step forward for the thanking you deserve.

Also, another Audioblog! This one was recorded yesterday (only took 24 hours to post!) on my cell phone, while in Jake's car. Notable for my panicked scream when Jake nearly ran us off the road avoiding a box, and my Joey Lawrence impression in the waning second.

I haven't gotten tired of this Audioblogger thing yet. Maybe soon, though.

Fun With Jake

Heh, well, I just got done complaining over on Ben's blog that my Audioblogger stuff from yesterday hadn't posted yet, but uh ... it had. So here are the two recordings I made with Jake.

BE WARNED - Jake is profane. And really all you can hear from me is laughing. Lots and lots of laughing.

First attempt:    

I thought I gorked the first try, so then we did ...

Second attempt:  

Audioblogger Test

Just testing to see what the proper code is for displaying Audioblogger junk over here, should I ever want to do so.

A Bit of the Old Ultraviolence

I asked Jake to do something to cheer me up, because I was sad about Jerry Orbach's death, so he made this:

Now, I'm smiling.