Archive for June, 2006

  • More on HDR Image Processing - June 30th, 2006
  • Earlier in the week, I was rambling about HDR image processing. Today, I located this article at the Cambridge in Color site. If you’re photographer, and you’ve not visited Sean’s site, you really owe it to yourself and your photography to do so. The site is a treasure trove of information on all aspects of [...]

  • Happy Belated National Camera Day - June 30th, 2006
  • As it turns out, yesterday, June 29, was National Camera Day. It seems rather apropos that I bought a new lens yesterday.
    Well, now I’m told that July 17 is No Camera Day. Apparantly, this idea is being promoted by … a professional photographer. The point, it seems, is that photographers may miss out on life’s [...]

  • Termination of Ponderance - June 29th, 2006
  • After a great deal of thought over the course of the day, and a little bit of “hands-on” at Penn Camera this evening, I came to a conclusion regarding the choice between the RB67 w/50mm lens, and the superwide zoom lens for the Nikon.
    The logical choice was the Tokina 12-24mm F4 zoom to put on [...]

  • Tweak! - June 29th, 2006
  • As you can see, I’ve been doing a little tweaking of the site. Nothing major — putting variants of a few “lost” items back, and a little CSS modification. There will be more, as I get or make time.
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  • Torn - June 29th, 2006
  • I’m torn. I’ve been pretty hyped up about buying a Mamiya RB67 medium format film camera, and a 50mm lens for it (about the widest they made, equivalent to about a 24mm lens for a 35mm camera). That 6×7cm image would yield, with my current scanner, about a 36megapixel image to play with. I can [...]

  • CMPG Meeting Commentary - June 29th, 2006
  • I usually don’t comment much here about the CMPG meetings. Last night was a critique night, and we had a great turnout and a large number of prints to review. I must say that there was some truly excellent photography displayed last night.
    The “assignment” theme was pretty open-ended — Outdoor/Action — on purpose. Part of [...]

  • CMPG Meeting - June 28th, 2006
  • Regular CMPG meeting. See http://www.cmpg.org for details.
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  • HDR Image Processing - June 28th, 2006
  • HDR, or High Dynamic Range Image Processing is an interesting technique for reproducing images that would otherwise be impossible, specifically those that can’t be captured normally because the dynamic range is too wide for the recording media — be it film or digital capture.
    — from cblee - (?)
    The basic idea of the technique is [...]

  • The Problem With Inkjets - June 26th, 2006
  • There’s an inherant problem with inkjet printers, aside from all those discussions of permanence and reduced gamut a pigments v. dyes and what not. It’s a simple problem. If you don’t print with them a lot (meaning several prints a day), you run the risk of ink drying in the printhead and clogging the thing [...]

  • RAW v. JPEG: Which is Better? - June 26th, 2006
  • In the D70 users’ forum on flickr, the question of shooting RAW v. JPEG came up — again. This was my response:
    What a debate this is, and it occurs over and over and over again — and not just for Nikon shooters. While it is true that RAW may offer better color depth at capture, [...]

  • If it’s not one thing … - June 25th, 2006
  • it’s another. Of course. Somehow, I managed to break one of the “static pages” that’s made up of PHP and HTML code. Seems that the version of the plug-in that allows PHP code to be executed on a page was not quite up to par with the latest version of WordPress. So, I’ve updated the [...]

  • Emorate Flickr Photo Comment Tool - June 24th, 2006
  • — from gerenm - (?)
    The Emorate Flickr Photo Comment Tool is a very cool bookmark tool that automatically generates code to insert flickr images into comments or blog entries. You can choose from several image sizes from a 75×75 thumbnail, all the way up to the original size. It’s especially useful for forum discussions [...]

  • Largely Painless - June 23rd, 2006
  • Well, the backend is upgraded to WordPress 2.0.3, and it was mostly painless. There’s still the issue of the older posts not being easily accessible. But, I figure I’ll get that licked eventually. Otherwise, things appear to be functioning reasonably well. If you notice any weirdness, there’s always the comments page …
    Post Revisions:There are no [...]

  • PLEASE STAND BY - June 23rd, 2006
  • I have decided that I have some time this morning to begin the upgrade to WordPress 2.0.3. Things will be broken. Please stand by….
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  • Uh, Where Have All The Posts Gone? - June 23rd, 2006
  • Last night and this morning, I discovered that a lot of early posts are missing from the site. I was trying to reference one of my old posts in a discussion thread on another site. Now, I find that if I know something specific about that post, I can search for it, but it’s not [...]

  • Dave Black Photography - June 22nd, 2006
  • Through a link on flickr, I happened across this site tonight: Dave Black Photography. Dave’s site is a wealth of information and inspiration for photographers at all skill levels. I urge you to check it out, particularly his “Workshop at the Ranch” series.
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  • I Give You Pictures at an Exhibition … - June 21st, 2006
  • Yeah, I had to go there, didn’t I. What can you expect. I’m cooked!
    I had a really great entry penned here, but for some reason, my session timed out on me. Not sure what that’s all about. I’ll break it down for you.
    Pictures are here. That’s the really important part, anyway.
    The show was awesome. Keith, [...]

  • Emo Preview … - June 21st, 2006
  • Emo Preview …

    Originally uploaded by gerenm.

    Welcome back my friends
    To the show that never ends
    We’re so glad you could attend
    Come inside, come inside!
    This is as cool as it gets, friends. That’s me on the left. And the real Keith Emerson on the right.
    More pics when I wake up, but I just had to share this one [...]

  • No Interim - June 20th, 2006
  • Donna and I have decided that we both like the overall look of this “interim” site design. So, instead of going through all of the hassles and hoops to do a complete site redesign (in my copious spare time), we”ve decided that I’ll just personalize this theme to our preferences. So, welcome to our new, [...]

  • Keith Emerson at Ramshead Tavern! - June 20th, 2006
  • We’ll be going to see the absolute GOD of the keyboard, Keith Emerson, at the Ramshead Tavern in Annapolis. Very cool!
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  • More Bullshit from our Federal Government - June 19th, 2006
  • [via Taking your Camera on the Road]
    It seems that our National Parks want to charge wedding photographers hefty fees and permit charges to use certain parks for group and portrait work. It also seems that this would include nature and wildlife photographers who use certain “props” in their work. One item considered to be a [...]

  • One Year Ago … - June 18th, 2006
  • One Year Ago Today …
    On this date last year, Donna and I got married. Yay! Today, our first anniversary, was not exactly your ordinary wedding annivesary.
    We started out at church, it being Sunday, and our usual breakfast at … McDonalds.
    Then, off to Staples and Target for photo paper, printer ink, ImmodiumAD, and root [...]

  • Baseball! - June 17th, 2006
  • Baseball!
    Uploaded by gerenm.

    Well, now, this was fun!
    Donna and I went out for a Sunday drive this Saturday afternoon, and happened upon this baseball game. I haven’t shot any sports stuff in over 20 years!
    All of the shots in this album were taken with the D70s, and my cheapo Quantaray/Sigma 70-300mm [...]

  • Interim - June 16th, 2006
  • As I reported earlier in the day, something corrupted the style sheet for the site, and really messed a lot of things up. Of course, I didn’t have a copy of the most recent version any where. And, I was planning to completely change the site, anyway. So, in the interim, you’ll be looking at [...]

  • BROKEN! - June 16th, 2006
  • Well, it appears that something corrupted the style sheet for the site. I had planned on redesigning this thing over the coming weeks, and now it appears it will happen sooner. Please bear with the mess until I get it fixed.
    Bah!
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  • AUTOMOTIVE:Edsel - June 16th, 2006
  • .flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }
    .flickr-yourcomment { }
    .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }
    .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }

    AUTOMOTIVE:Edsel, originally uploaded by gerenm.

    Today’s Photo Friday theme is Automotive.
    I found this old Edsel, alongside a couple of other cars, in a self-storage facility in rural Montana.
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  • Wearing of Extraneous Jewelery Leads to Aberrant Behavior - June 14th, 2006
  • .flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }
    .flickr-yourcomment { }
    .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }
    .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }

    Wearing of Extraneous Jewelery Leads to Aberrant Behavior, originally uploaded by gerenm.

    It all starts with a single, simple ring, experts say, and from there, can mushroom into strange behaviours and fetishes. Gollum, seen here, was [...]

  • Google Browser Sync - June 13th, 2006
  • Okay, Firefox users. This little tool from Google is really slick. The Google Browser Sync plug-in for Firefox allows you to automagically synchronize your browsing experience, no matter what computer you’re using — so long as you’re running Firefox as your web browser.
    No more copying favorites around, or loosing track of where you were, just [...]

  • Legislate my Soda?!? - June 13th, 2006
  • This really takes it:
    The most recent battle against soda was a bill (SB 1520) penned by California Sen. Deborah Ortiz, D-Sacramento. Originally, the bill would have taxed soda (excluding diet versions) 2 cents a can…
    How dare the Senate tax me because I think that diet sodas taste vile. How dare the Senate tax people who [...]

  • i just don’t feel like it… - June 12th, 2006
  • should have gotten some laundry going and left for the grocery store an hour ago.
    but i just don’t feel like it!
    rats!
    UPDATE: Got the shopping done & got back home around 10. Yay! Now for more laundry…
    Hey — Did you know…that the Safeway deli is open until 10pm? We got really tired [...]

  • - June 11th, 2006
  • Today was “Dog Days” in Ellicott City. There was a parade, there were contests for the pooches and humans — and just generally lots of doggy mayhem! It was a very fun day!
    BE SURE TO SCROLL DOWN TO SEE GEREN’S POST & PICTURES!

    The bubble guy was doing his thing…this [...]

  • Cracking the Egg - June 11th, 2006
  • A photographer friend of ours tells a story about taking a photo course while in college. Throughout the semester, the subject for all of the assignments was eggs. By the end of the course, he was at his wits end. He just couldn’t shoot another egg. He went to the professor, and explained that he [...]

  • More on Nikon’s Creative Lighting System - June 9th, 2006
  • I’ve mentioned recently that the new Nikon CLS flash system is pretty cool. And, now that Donna’s got her D70s and an SB-600, I was able to really experiment with the system (using the on-camera Speedlight as the master control flash, and our two SB-600s).
    The setup for the three shots of Donna is pretty [...]

  • Oleg on Lighting - June 8th, 2006
  • Oleg Novikov has written this nice introductory article on Nikon’s Creative Lighting System.
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  • And, In The Utter Bullshit Department - June 7th, 2006
  • What a crock. Why shouldn’t parents be responsible for deciding what their kids can watch on television. That’s what the [now required in all television sets and cable tuners] v-chip is for. But, no. That would require that parents actually give enough of a shit to take part in the life of their spawn, aside [...]

  • And, As If That Weren’t Enough … - June 7th, 2006
  • Here’s what the NSA is really up to ….
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  • Really, Really Bad News - June 7th, 2006
  • This is important. Read this entire article. Then, do something about it and follow the instructions at the end of the article.
    Cambridge Planning Commission Votes to Allow Blackwater Development
    Last night, the Cambridge Planning and Zoning (P & Z) Commission voted to allow the Blackwater Resort Communities development to go forward.
    This is not over. The [...]

  • Smokey-bear - June 6th, 2006
  • Here’s our big guy, in his favorite drinking posture — lying down, of course:

    (remind you of any college students?)
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  • Photo Gear for Sale - June 5th, 2006
  • For those interested, I have a few bits of photo gear for sale, namely, the Minolta DiMage A1 camera, the DiMage A2 camera, the Minolta 3600HS(D) flash and a cable release that will work on either camera. I also have for sale a Promaster FTD7000 flash for use with most modern Nikon film cameras. All [...]

  • And, the Mystery is Solved! - June 1st, 2006
  • After much question and uncertainty, I have finally discovered exactly what [kind of cat] Darjha is: Balinese (sometimes referred to as “Silky-haired Siamese”! The folks at the animal shelter had him labeled as a “Sealpoint Himalayan,” but the face and body shapes were all wrong. We are very excited to finally know what we’re dealing [...]

  • Welcome, Donna, to The Fold - June 1st, 2006
  • Two silver-and-red bags, holding two golden boxes later, and Donna is now the proud owner of a spanking-new Nikon D70s (w/18-70mm lens), a Nikon SB-600 flash, and most of the assorted gizmos to go with them! In the next couple of weeks, I too will probably be picking up one of the 18-70mm lenses — [...]

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