September 30
[Taken 16 April 2005 | Long Shadows | Little Ceasar State Park, OH]
Serenity opens tonight.
Yeah, we have tickets.
September 29
[Taken 17 April 2005 | Little turtle, big pond | Dayton, OH]
Ever since I joined the local YMCA a month or so ago, I have become quite attached to the whole concept of the after work workout. I have been going there regularily on Thursdays and Fridays as soon as I get out of work. (Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays are taken up with dance class and fencing.) It is an especially nice ritual on days like today, where it feels really good to work out the stress and frustrations of a long day and long meetings.
My current home improvement project is a small one - the half-bath on the first floor. Because the ceiling in it is a little lower then normal, my plan was to paint it in pale blue and white vertical stripes to give the illusion of a higher ceiling. Trust me, I think it would look good... the white strips will be about 2 inches wide, and the blue stripes will be about six inches wide. Anyway, I was in there this evening marking off the measurements for the stripes and putting up tape to mask the white stripes. I made a mistake with some of the tape (I missed the pencil mark on the wall and it was a bit crooked) and when I pulled it off of the wall to fix it, a chunk of the existant white paint came off with it. D'oh! So now the painting process will take a little longer then I thought. Instead of doing the blue and white stripes all in one go, I will be putting down a couple of coats of the light blue this weekend, and then the white stripes can be painted on over the blue later. I just don't want to leave the bathroom with white walls, the way it is now. After living so long in apartments with white walls, I want every single room in this house to have some color on the walls.
September 28
[Taken 4 September 2005 | Kayakers on the Huron River | Ann Arbor, MI]
If you are curious, this is one of the shots that I decided to enter in the National Geographic contest that I talked about on Monday.
The Smithsonian Magazine is also sponsoring a photo contest. Fortunatly, I have a little bit more time to work on my entries for this one, since the deadline is not until January 5, 2006.
September 26
[Taken 28 May 2005 | A walk in the park | Centerville, OH ]
I have been going through my image archives the past couple of days, looking for an appropriate one to enter in a National Geographic photo contest. The criteria for the photo are quite simple... almost too simple. Besides the usual stipulations of original artwork, and clear and uncluttered compositions, and no public domain photos, blah blah blah, there is what they are looking for as the general subject matter, which is someone "experiencing the beauty or wonder of nature". Uhh, okay. I think that is vague enough. Still, I have some stuff that I have taken that I think fits the bill and which I am entering. The photo above, is one of the ones that did not quite make the cut. I really like the shot. I think that the composition and the contrast and the textures are great. It is just too much of a stretch to try and make it fit the stated criteria. As John said, "It is a wonderful outdoor composition that just happens to include some people." And I agree with him. It is a great shot, it is just not appropriate in this case. No matter. I have two that I think have a decent chance, and I will be posting them tomorrow and the next day.
Also. It seems as though I need to put in a correction on what I said a few days ago about my visit to Kentucky. This is from an email from my Mom... "And I have to correct one of your claims. Actually you were in Kentucky when you were younger, when we as a family went to the Mammoth Caverns. Remember? The problem was back then you had your nose always in a book and did not notice the gorgeous scenery passing by the car windows. Now that you are driving ( and have not figured out how to safely read and drive a car at the same time) you are able to look around and enjoy what you are viewing through the windshield." Thanks Mom! And you are right... I really did not remember that trip until you reminded me, and even now I only have very vague recollections of it. And for the record, I can "read" and drive at the same time... courtesy of books on tape or books on CD.
September 25
[Taken 8 March 2005 | The well-lit path | Centerville, OH ]
For a while I was on this whole kick of going out at night to some parks near my apartment to take long exposure shots, of which this is one. Now, the whole time I was doing this was during the most bitterly cold months of the year. How many times have I gone out in the balmy summer weather to take night shots? That's right... none. I might want to consider trying standing outside at night with a camera sometime while the weather is still nice enough to make that a pleasant experience.
John and I saw Corpse Bride, Tim Burton's latest clayamtion/animation masterpiece, yesterday. I recommend it. It wasn't quite what I was expecting, but I liked it. And where can you go wrong with a Tim Burton movie anyway?
September 23
[Taken 19 September 2005 | Talon Vinyard | Lexington, KY]
[Taken 20 September 2005 | The porch at the historic Boone Tavern | Berea, KY]
[Taken 21 September 2005 | Rolling hills in the morning mist | Berea, KY]
Just got back from another business trip the other day. Nothing exotic this time… my destination was beautiful Kentucky. To be specific, the University of Kentucky in Lexington, and Berea College in Berea. And I am not being sarcastic here. The countryside in Kentucky is beautiful - miles and miles of rolling hills, bluegrass, and the white painted fences that seem to surround all of the farms. I have to say that the drive down was quite nice.
This was the first time I have ever been to Kentucky, actually. Unless you count going to the Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky airport, which is just over the border, which I sure don't. I only wish that I had had some time to explore the country a little bit. I would have liked to see one on the famous thoroughbred farms. I did get to visit one of the local wineries - Talon Winery - just outside of Lexington. Tasted their current run of wines, chatted with the employee running the tasting center about graphic art for a while after finding out that he had designed most of the wine labels, bought a couple of bottles to take home, and wandered around among the vines for a while... a good time.
Berea, the second town on the itinerary, was very small and very quaint and edging into the foothills of appalachia. Very small, and very quaint. The first night I got in, I ate dinner at the Historic Boone Tavern. When the waitress came around and asked for a drink order, I asked her what was on tap, it being a 'tavern' and all, and I feeling like a little bit of some brew after a longish day. She got a funny look on her face and informed me that the county was dry, and that despite the somewhat misleading name of the establishment at which I was having dinner, I could not, in fact, get anything alcoholic to drink. That kind of drove it home that I was in the heart of the bible-thumping south if a 'tavern' in a (albiet small) college town was dry. So I had sweetened iced tea, and it was good. Actually, the whole meal was excellent. They do take their home-cooking seriously down there.
A note about hotel rooms: I always have trouble sleeping in hotel rooms. I toss and turn… and I usually end up needing to leave on a light and the TV (but with the sound way low) just so that I am able to sleep. I don't know why... that is just the way it is. I also wake up about every other hour to glance at the clock. I think that this is because I have a paranoid fear that I will not get woken up by the crappy little hotel alarm clock, so my body does not let me fall deeply asleep, and instead keeps me on the edge of waking the whole night. Not particularily restful. I was glad to get home at the end of the trip, but I am always glad to get home....
September 17
[Taken 9 September 2005 | Merlin and a grasshopper | Dayton, OH]
It is a gloomy grey day today. a perfect day for puttering around indoors, doing some light chores and then curling up with a book.
Last Friday, John caught a huge grasshopper in the plants on the back porch, and brought it inside for Merlin to play with. She didn't know what to do with it at first, and we had to encourage her to even approach it. Finally, she poked at it lightly with a paw... and then ran behind a chair when it jumped several feet. We let her chase it around the kitchen for about ten minutes, until she got bored witht he game and wandered away. John released the grasshopper into the back yard. It is still there, hiding in the mint, and I see it every time I go out to water. One of these days I will have to bring it back inside so that Merlin can play with it again.
September 16
[Taken 10 September 2005 | Belly Dancer at a performance | Centerville, OH]
So tired.
Am glad that it is Friday.
September 15
[Taken 10 September 2005 | Belly Dancers at a performance | Centerville, OH]
I was up at 5:30am this morning and at work by 6:30 for a 7:00am meeting…. ahhh, gotta love those international conference calls that involve multiple time zones worth of difference. I like being up and active at an hour when other people generally are not. It's relaxing and a great time for some light puttering around and I feel like I am seeing stuff that other people don't get to see, because I am awake and they are not. However, I usually only experience this sort of thing from the other end of the scale, being much more of a night owl then a morning bird.
John and I watched The Daily Show this evening, as is our wont. It was part of their "evolution, smevolution" week. Regarding creationism, and intelligent design, and all of the other religious-based-psuedo-science movements, I have only this to say: in this day and age, I am simply staggered that there are so many f*^@#&$^ing idiots running around out there. Really... aren't we all supposed to be educated in this country? Did those people simply sleep through all science classes from grade school on up through the end of high school? You really have to wonder sometimes.
September 13
[Taken 10 September 2005 | Belly Dancers at a performance | Centerville, OH]
There was a performance this past weekend at the studio where I take dance lessons. I was really impressed by the skill of a lot of the dancers, and there were times that I had to just put down the camera and just watch.
These are two of the photos that I took during the performance. Two. Out of 2G worth of RAW images. That translates to about 225 photos. Naturally, I need to go through them all and weed out the ones that just plain aren't any good. But I still got a lot of really nice shots. (Laws of averages say that I have to have at least a couple, based on the sheer amount that I took.) I have a lot of editing in front of me, and it will be a while before I am done going through this batch.
Almost all of the shots that I took were with the aperture all of the way open and the ISO all of the way up. Yes, I brought a flash with me. (A very nice flash, it was.) And yes, I did use it on about a third of the shots I took. But, honestly, I don't really like the way that shots taken with a flash look. They all just seem kind of washed out. I much prefer to work with whatever available light there is, which in this case was spotlights set up around the stage. Incidently, the spotlights did a pretty good job... I was able to shoot between 160-200 at an ISO of 800-1600. So, not bad. Of course, maybe my whole aversion to using the flash is just me... maybe I don't use the flash well and that is why I am always so dissapointed with how flashed shots come out. Maybe I need more practice.
September 9
[Taken 4 September 2005 | Belly dancer at a street festival | Main Street, Ann Arbor, MI]
I had to crop both of these pretty aggressively, since there was this very annoying person who kept stepping right in front of me as I would take pictures. And the worst thing was that every time they would say something like, "Oopse! I'm sorry!", and then go and step right in front of me again five seconds later. Argh! First, apologizing for something does not make it okay to keep doing it. Second, do you really think I want to have the shoulder of your blue UM t-shirt in every single one of my shots? (That damn blue t-shirt is why I did black and white post-processing on these... it looks less invasive that way.)
I am glad it is Friday. I have a backlog of shots that I want to work on this weekend... plus the usual list of weekend activities.
September 8
[Taken 4 September 2005 | Looking in to Café Félix | Main Street, Ann Arbor, MI]
This may be my favorite of all of the photos I took over Labor Day weekend... I am not sure yet. We were all sitting at one of the sidewalk tables at Café Félix (made necessary by the fact that Erica, who planned to join us, would have a rather large dog in tow) when I took this shot of two girls who were silhouetted in one of the large front windows.
On the light side... this is a funny bit of news. (From the NY Times, of course.)
"I vote for President Mubarak because I could not find any candidate more handsome than Hosni Mubarak," said Mohany Ziad, 48, as he cast his ballot in the Cairo neighborhood of Torah, and then pressed his neighbors to vote the same way.
Okay, maybe the story about the Egyptian elections is not intrinsically funny, but I found the sentiments expressed in this little bit of the article to be highly entertaining. At least the guy is honest about his reasons for voting for Mubarak. And honestly, I think that most of the voters in the US make their decisions based on similar standards. Heh heh. Hurrah democracy!
September 7
[Taken 3 September 2005 | Diners at Palio's | Main Street, Ann Arbor, MI]
Ann Arbor has some good damn restaurants. One of the best things about the restaurants in Ann Arbor is that on Main Street, and within about a two block radius of Main Street, are over a dozen of the best restaurants in town. So if you don't have any reservations, and think that the wait is too long at one restaurant, you can just go next door, to an equally as good a place, and see if the wait is better there. (Hint: just make the reservation, though. It is easier that way.)
Speaking of eating, when I went out to the deli to get some lunch today, there was some freakishly air-raid-esque siren going off when I was coming back to work. I have no idea at all what it meant, but it must not have been heralding anything too dire, since no one was paying any attention to it whatsoever. I think that if there ever is a tornado or anything that touches down around here, and the sirens go off, we may be in big trouble.
And in more news of the bizarre, Merlin (aka the cat) has apparently been stressed out lately. In order to calm her down, John and I are currently experimenting with...aromatherapy. For cats. Yes, I think it sounds a little bit odd too.
September 6
[Taken 3 September 2005 | Buddha | Crazy Wisdom Teahouse, Ann Arbor, MI]
Well, overall, I would say that Labor Day weekend was pleasant. Went up to Ann Arbor with S~, M~, and L~. Did all of the typical Ann Arbor things... had drinks at the Arbor Brewing Company, had drinks at Ashley's, had drinks at La Dolche Vita, had drinks at Cafe Felix, had drinks at Conor O'Neill's... heh. I promise that we did more then just drink our way across town. We also made sure to eat at a couple of the fine restaurants there, wander around downtown, look in some of the cool little shops, and enjoy one of Ann Arbor's many street festivals. In general, as I said, a good time. It was particularily nice to spend some quality time with L~ again, especially since she moved to the too-distant state of Florida (this things we do for our careers) after grad school.
Yes, I got some good photos, which I have only begun to edit.
It is always hard getting back to work after a long weekend, and the fact that my day today was almost solid meetings seemd like it was only adding insult to injury. It is also a little hard to get my mind around the fact that it is actually Tuesday, and not Monday, no matter how Monday-ish today has seemed.
At least the fencing practices for the local SCA group have reverted to the fall schedule, today being the first official practice of the fall semester.
September 2
[Taken 25 August 2005 | Cool Guitar | Columbus, OH]
Happy Labor Day. Rock out, where ever you are.
Work has been so busy and crazy the last couple of weeks that I feel like I really earned this three day weekend. So I am going to go and enjoy it. See y'all on the other side.