A Golden Gate

I stopped by the bridge today at sunset for a few photos. There weren't any clouds, but it was still pretty nice. Check it out:

Classic View from a Classic Camera

One of Lori's friends has a custom dining room lamp with a silver spoon shade. Basically, it is a wooden lamp structure about 2.5 feet long with silver spoons hanging around the lights. They had the light custom made in France, so it probably cost more than my truck is worth.

Anyway, we thought the lamp was interesting and would be pretty easy to make. Of course, we didn't want to just copy the idea, so we came up with our own idea that was a bit more personalized: We thought it would be cool to create a shade that uses photographic slides from our own travels.

This poses some problems for us in the digital age. First, we didn't have a film camera. Second, we thought that 35mm slides would be too small. After a little looking around, I found that twin lens reflex (TLR), medium format cameras are pretty cheap on ebay. I picked up a Mamiya C33 with three lenses for $150.

The camera is about 45 years old, but it is in excellent condition. It makes slides that are 2.25" x 2.25", which is actually large enough to see the images from a few feet away. My thought was that we would take a bunch of pictures and then I would re-sell the camera.

Going back to film with a fully manual camera (it doesn't even have a battery or on/off switch), was a big change. No more chimping your shots to see if they turned out the way you hoped. Nope, now I have to actually think about everything from focus to film speed to exposure before I push the button. It's a much slower, more thoughtful approach; and it got me hooked on film again. Film has other interesting quirks too, like developing and scanning the film. (In this modern age, I can't see actually printing photos using an enlarger. Just scan and print etc.)

So, the picture above was taken at 12,000 feet at Kite Lake in Colorado this past August. You can see it was cold, windy, and stormy. The next day it snowed on Pikes Peak, so I'm sure it snowed here too. Very beautiful isn't it? Not to mention the cute models...

Huh? You talkin' to me?

This afternoon I was practicing lighting ideas. Then a political impersonation slipped out.



In general, I'm not one to make a big deal about my political views, or to make general political commentary. (That's your warning.) Though if you have talked politics with me, you know that I've been very disappointed with the direction our country's leadership has taken us in the last 5+ years. Well, I say leadership, but I think what I'm really saying is leadership in the wrong direction and then lack of leadership to adjust our course. Anyway, the cost for going to war has been terrible in the lives lost or destroyed, and in the economic impact of spending billions weekly to feed our unilateral war machine -- ahh, there's more but I'll stop now while I can!

Hey, so anyway, I was playing around with lighting. I was trying to figure out how to light the hat all the way around and not make myself look too crazy in the process. Chimping the pictures on the camera, I realized that I was dressed just right to impersonate our Commander in Chief. So, I started with his characteristic point, and ended with this classic shrug:




Something weird happened to the color space when I uploaded this, and it got a bit washed out. That seemed to fit the political statement perfectly.

Well, I know that some of you that read this will disagree with me. If you know me well, you know you will have a hard time convincing me I am wrong. I'm a bit stubborn. It's my mountain trail after all. Anyway, if we all agreed on everything, life would be much less interesting.

I hope your weekend has started out well because the week was a doozy!

Bye, bye 'til next time!

Ride the Mountain

During our trip to Colorado this summer my Intense Spider mountain bike fell off the bike rack on the back of the camper while driving on a very rough Forest Service road. It was a total loss. After much effort, my insurance company covered most of the loss, so that was good. I ended up buying the bike that I had before the Spider back from the person who bought it from me. He was injured, and figured he wouldn't be able to ride for quite a while. Besides, he wanted to upgrade. Anyway, he had taken good care of the bike and I was happy to have it back.

Today I went for a ride after work. I schlepped along the Instamatic (aka Canon 5D) and took a couple of photos. The one above is of an oak tree healing over from a long ago trimming. And the one below is of Railroad trail looking back towards the city.




You can see it was a beautiful day. And, it was fun to be back on a mountain bike...

C U l8tr!

Hiking my Favorite Mountain Trail

On Thursday I didn't feel like running, so I decided to go for a hike with some cameras. The clouds and fog looked very dramatic from 101 as I drove home, so I thought there were some potentially nice photos to be taken if the clouds broke on the Mountain. Unfortunately, it didn't turn out quite as good as I would have liked, and the best photo opportunities were taken with the Hasselblad. That means I don't have anything to show from those pictures yet. However, I did take some pictures with my Canon.

Old Mine trail is one of my favorite trails. These pictures are from a part of the trail that I rarely slow down to enjoy when I am running, so it was nice to hike through here. Here is the trail:




Shortly after this shot, I saw movement on the trail in front of me. This little guy popped out of the next turn. He/she slowed down long enough for me to snap a couple of pictures:




Very cute. I told Cookie about the encounter and she wasn't surprised. Apparently she had an SMS from the little deer saying she had seen me. Kids these days are so well connected.

Finally, the whole point of hiking up Old Mine was to see if we could see the city. It turned out to be mostly just a dream...

Greenland is White

Here are two photos from my flight back from Frankfurt to San Francisco. I made them black and white, but really the only other color that was actually visible was blue sky. I looked for the green land, but couldn't find it.

My Mountain Trail Leads Home

Home at last. I arrived at SFO around Noon yesterday to find Lori and Cookie waiting for me. It's hard to beat coming home to your dog wiggling out in the airport and your beautiful fiance!

It ended up taking 36 hours door-to-door to get home. I didn't sleep too much because I wanted to be able to sleep and get back on California time as soon as possible.

I was able to get a run in yesterday afternoon with Cookie. It's very nice to be home.

Last night I got eight hours of sleep and woke up this morning at 6:00 a.m. That was great! This morning I am back on the foggy mountain. It looks something like this:




Though this photo was taken before I left for Africa. This is on Hoo-Koo-E-Koo trail, taken with the Hassy.

On the trip home I took some pinhole photos of the airports in Gaborone and Johannesburg. Here's Gabs:



And here is Johannesburg:


I shot the pinhole shots because I realized that I hadn't taken a single pinhole photo in Africa. That just didn't seem right; you know what I mean?

I also got some pictures of Greenland on the way home from Frankfurt. I'll try and post a couple of those in the next few days.

Cheers!