Vitriolic Humor

The Alabama Nature Center at Lanark is a 350-acre wildlife preserve that serves as the headquarters of the Alabama Wildlife Federation. It is located between Millbrook, AL and Prattville, AL, just north and east of exit 179 (Cobbs Ford Road) on I-65. The facility is currently only open to the public one weekend a month (the third weekend.)

If you are a nature buff, a photographer, or just like to catch some fresh air, you should take some time out of your weekend to visit and explore the facility. They've got over 5 miles of beautifully-built walking trails organized in 3 loops around the property. They are all marked with interpretive signs about the flora and fauna you'll see around you.

Price is currently $3/adult/day or $5/adult/weekend and $2/child (3-9)/day $3/child/weekend. Kids under 3 are free.

(Every third weekend of the month)
Saturday 8:00 am to 6:00 pm
Sunday 1:00 pm to 6:00 pm

Directions and more information can be found at the following link.

Alabama Nature Center @ Lanark

Photo Gallery >> Lanark
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Tags: photography awf millbrook alabama trails nature prattville lanark alabama wildlife federation wildlife

Posted by speedeep at 1:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I got a Canon Rebel XTi (400D) several months back and I'm immensely enjoying expanding my knowledge and horizons. I moved to the XTi from my 3.3MP Sony Mavica MVC-CD300 workhorse point and shoot camera. Despite being quite comfortable with the Sony (and its limitations) I have frequently said that I felt like a complete beginner again when staring through the viewfinder of my Canon.

I was contemplating all the different settings on the XTi that can be chosen for each shot the other day and I decided to toss them in a table:

A little math reveals: 61,749,528,383,550,522,560,348,160,000 combinations! That's 61.8 octillion (a thousand quadrillion or a billion billion billion (those outside the US refer to this to a quadrilliard))! Another way to look at this is 6x10^27, estimates of the number of atoms in the observable universe range in the 10^77 to 10^79 range. Those are some big, big numbers! No wonder I feel like a beginner again. Not all the settings will make a viable or desirable image, but there is the big picture math on the issue.

A typical photographer (me) usually only changes a couple of these at a time and usually through a limited range of the settings for each option, so it's not as impossibly complex as it looks. As with all technology, I look forward to seeing where this technology goes in my lifetime. The Canon Rebel XSi is out next month with even more options...

Tags: photography options dslr canon aperture camera settings shutter exposure configuration

Posted by speedeep at 1:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I was preparing the annual family photo calendar when I bumped into a wall of stupidity that astonished me: The major photo and gift printing sites (Shutterfly, Snapfish, Kodak/Ofoto) have dumbed down their sites to such a low standard that you can't do simple things like put a square-cropped image on a photo calendar page without having their system mangle your image.

To the photo/gift printing sites: Not every photograph is 4:3 or 3:2 aspect ratio rectangle.

I gathered together my 13 images (12 months + cover), adjusted and cropped them in Bibble Pro (an awesome photo workflow and RAW conversion software that runs on Linux, Mac and Windows,) went to upload them to Shutterfly (who I used last year to make the calendar and with whom I successfully used square-cropped images last year) and quickly found that a couple of my square-cropped images (aspect ratio 1:1) were having the top and bottoms automatically chopped off by their system in an effort to force my square image into the rectangle it wanted. I had some wide shots cropped at 16:10 aspect ratio and it did the same thing, chopping off significant portions of the left and right part of my image. Frustrated, I went to Snapfish (despite previous problems with getting photos delivered in a timely fashion during the holiday season.) and found a slightly different interface with the same behavior mangling my photographs. OK, they can't all be the same,right? I went to Ofoto (now Kodak) and had the exact same problem. At this point I had a couple hours into what I thought was going to be a half hour project and was thoroughly frustrated.

I searched Google and came up with a photo and gift printing site I hadn't heard of before. Quite frustrated at this point, I visited Vista Print and was pleasantly surprised. They have standard cropping behavior, but they also provide a simple "Scale to Fit" option that lets you keep the aspect ratio and expand the image to either fit the height or width without cropping your picture. How hard is that? A simple option in the user interface that let's more advanced users creatively build their calendars the ways they want to.

Shutterfly, Snapfish, Kodak/Ofoto, please add some sensible options to your cropping step. Something simple like a hidden "advanced options" dialog, a "no cropping" option, or a "scale to fit" option. This would meet all your users needs without confusing the brain-feeble amongst us.

Next year I probably won't bother with the "big guys". Vista Print meets my needs and the calendars I received from them (very timely delivery) looked great. All the above mentioned sites work fine with Firefox on Ubuntu (Gutsy Gibbon) for the record. Some of the drag-to-web upload functionality (Shutterfly) appears to be Windows-only, but everything else functions fine.

Tags: creativity photo printing linux bibble pro calendar digital on-line bibble labs gift bibble user interface frustration

Posted by speedeep at 9:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is a simple trial of Animoto using a handful of pictures of Colin. Great result. Check out their service.

Posted by speedeep at 10:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

1. It can be hard to make adjustments under fire once the show has started, form your basic game plan before the show starts.
2. Use a tripod, remote trigger if possible
3. I shoot in Tv (exposure time priority) mode. 1 second exposures are a bit too short, 8 second exposures are a bit too long. Shorten exposures as you approach the finale, a lot of light will be entering your shutter.
4. Watch for items sneaking into your shot as you'll be shooting in the dark. You may want to include some context to your shots with a building or structure, but that stray lamp post will distract from your shot.
5. Watch the sky for any distractions, bright stars, planets, moonlight can dramatically impact your photos at night and can distract from otherwise great shots.
6. ISO 100-200 works well for me. At first it seems you'd want to shoot a high ISO, but remember the fireworks are actually quite bright when they do go off.

Photo Gallery >> Fireworks
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Tags: photography fourthofjuly photo technique america event freedom notes independence fireworks

Posted by speedeep at 9:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Photo Gallery >> August 2007
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Posted by speedeep at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Photos: On an Angle

Photo Gallery >> On An Angle
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Posted by speedeep at 2:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Photo Gallery >> Lotus
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Tags: rose hill alabama pond restaurant bloom lotus lake pike road dawson's flower pikeroad

Posted by speedeep at 1:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Photo Gallery >> July 2007
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Posted by speedeep at 4:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Remember this when you are taking a picture of something:

If your subject is the letter "M", the image formed on the imaging sensor or film looks like a "W". The camera flips the image when storing it to a file or displaying it on the preview screen. If you are using a *SLR camera, the pentaprism will translate (through a series of reflections) the image so it appears to your eye as an "M" again. When your eye images the reflection coming out of the viewfinder or preview screen, the image will be projected as a "W" on your retina, your brain will then logically flip the image so that you perceive this image to be the letter "M".

What a combination of technology (natural and artificial) to bring us sight and, by extension, photography...

See also: Camera Obscura

Tags: sight photography lens photograph camera obscura camera optics retina eye perception

Posted by speedeep at 11:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You are free to visit, explore, make a donation if you like, but Jim's got rules you must follow...

www.bishopcastle.org

Tag: jimbishop - bishop - bishopcastle - castle - colorado - building - construction - pueblo - buelah

Posted by speedeep at 11:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by speedeep at 11:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Rail Utility Box (near Taylor Crossing), Mitylene, AL

I found one site that gave a latitude and longitude for Mitylene, AL (32°22'58"N -86°10'27"W). A quick latitude and longitude conversion (32.382777, -86.174166), and mapping on Google Maps showed that location centered at the intersection of Atlanta Highway (US-80) and Taylor road on the east side of Montgomery, AL.

I've found some genealogical records that point to residents of Mitylene, Alabama from the late 1700s and early 1800s, perhaps this is a vestigial remnant of a town that once was.

This is a fairly significant crossroads, but there is no particular infrastructure to indicate that there is (or was) the beginnings of an independent city here.

On a related note, Mytilene, Greece was once the capitol of the Greek island of Lesbos, a nice counterpoint to the religious interests in these parts...

Article on other interesting Central Alabama town names:
Smuteye.Com

I'll update this entry as I find more information.

mitylene -alabama - whereis - whatis -

Posted by speedeep at 11:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

So I've been having a problem with my "Send To Flickr" Bookmarklet functionality on Flickr, and been in a foul mood about it. I finally got to the right person at Flickr who set me in the right direction and give me permission to post the javascript contents for the bookmarklet here.

"Send To Flickr" Bookmarklet Code:

<20050906 Edit>How Do I Use This?

Highlight the text in this box and drag it onto your "Bookmarks Toolbar" (Netscape/Mozilla) or ":Personal Toolbar" (Opera.) Optionally, you can manually make a bookmark. For the 'Location' field (Mozilla) or 'Address' field (Opera) paste in the javascript from above. (It needs to be copy-and-pasted as one line.) Then go load the page with the picture you want to upload to Flickr. Click on the bookmark(let) and it will list all images on that page. Click the image you want to upload. Login to Flickr if it asks you to. Choose "Upload To Flickr" button. Voila! Your file should be uploaded into your account on Flickr.

To make this really useful, add the bookmark to your "Bookmarks Toolbar" (Mozilla) or "Personal Toolbar" (Opera) under View->Toolbars, so you can use your bookmarklet easily while browsing. If at this point, you can't figure it out, please wait for Flickr's new Bookmarklet coming to a browser near you soon.

</20050906 Edit>

I believe this is the exact JavaScript from Flickr (they wrote the code, not me), but I can't guarantee it. It works correctly and YOU can scan through the JavaScript, there doesn't appear to be anything untoward in the code. Flickr is reworking their bookmarklet upload function currently, so keep an eye on their Upload Tools page (you must be logged in to use that link) and be sure to use their new bookmarklet when they post it. (I'll modify this blog entry when they do...)

</20070323 Edit>

I've stopped using YahooFlickr, so I can't verify whether or not this still works. I'll leave it here for history's sake, and in case anyone finds it useful. As before, this code came from Flickr, I do not support it or provide any warranty to it working or working correctly for any of your needs. Your mileage may vary, use at your own risk/benefit.

Tags: sharing photos photography internet bookmarklet uploader web upload flickr code

Posted by speedeep at 6:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

Like fellow Montgomery blogger, Charles Presley (Eating Montgomery, insert witty title here), I was amazed (after it was pointed it out to me) that there is an arrow in the Federal Express (FedEx) logotype. It's been there for over 10 years now and despite seeing this logo thousands of times, I've never noticed it before.

The ugly secret however is that now that I know it's there, my mind purposefully analyzes the logo each time I see it to catch the arrow, burying the brand and meme of FedEx deep in my cranium. Now I'm passing the curse on to you:

Besides being a brilliant use of typography in design and a simple, effective logo it's got the additional hook of the arrow in the negative space between letters. The man who designed this was interviewed by The Sneeze. His name is Lindon Leader and his company is Leader Creative. There, now you know who to bug, don't call me if you can't get "the arrow" out of your head...

Tags: leader fedex logo design graphics typography federalexpress type arrow logotype

Posted by speedeep at 5:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I am currently using a Canon Rebel XTi Sony Mavica MVC-CD300 camera that records onto Compact Flash media. 8cm CD-RW discs. I'm primarily interested in filing, categorizing and annotating my image files. Post-processing (raw conversion, adjustments, etc.) is usually minimal unless I really messed up my settings or am working commercially.

1. Transfer the images, as taken, to fileserver in a working directory. This is done via USB-connected Compact Flash reader attached to my fileserver (I'm considering adding a built-in card reader if my motherboard provides USB connections internally, need to investigate.) The files are written to a dedicated RAID 1 share on my Fedora Core 6 (currently) Linux fileserver.
2. Set the Compact Flash card aside, just in case...
3. From Unix shell, check that the file ownership and permissions are set correctly on the copied files. File permissions are all changed to 0544 for my purposes, so the files are read-only, but my automated system can access the files.
4. If necessary, renumber (rename) files. Canon stores 10,000 photos per folder, then automatically increments to the next folder. I prefer to append the folder number to the image number to form individual file names like so:
   DCIM/CANON101/IMG_2345.JPG becomes IMG_1012345.JPG. The little shell script I use to rename my files looks like this:

   for i in `ls -1`
         do
         j=`echo $i |sed `s/IMG_/IMG_101/g'`
         mv $i $j
         chmod 0544 $j
      done
   

   I currently keep all my photos in one directory (may rethink this later) so it is important for me to keep filenames unique.
5. Record the filenames of the new files in the work directory, move them to the production directory.
6. Process the photos through raw conversion using Bibble Pro
7. Process the new files (recorded in the previous step) through the script that loads the image records, vital statistics and meta data (EXIF) into the database:
   • sample the image and record the average color in HEX
   • record default values (photographer, photographer e-mail, photographer URL, file directory, filename, url
   • extract EXIF data with jhead and load that data
   • create appropriate .html files which call scripts via SSI and verify new .html file permissions
   • categorize photos where I can by date/time and other extracted information
8. Create test lightbox view of thumbnails
9. Correct any images that need their orientation (rotation) adjusted. Usually this is a rotate operation -90 degrees to counteract the camera being used vertically instead of horizontally.Now done in Bibble Pro, so not an issue.
10. Rebuild thumbnail files for new images. Other than thumbnails, all images are resized on-demand, real-time, and fed as a BLOB from my server to your browser. Neat tricks with Perl, Imagemagick, and Apache.
11. Rebuild category files to account for new files assigned to categories.
12. Verify that everything works correctly and looks sane/sober/kosher.
Format Compact Flash media.

I'm in a constant development process with this project, right now. The to-do list is long. Here are some details of the current implementation.

All photos have appropriate copyright notation and all rights are reserved. All photos are available for licensing. All photos are available in their original, unmodified resolution and format. Please contact me for specific information about licensing.

Tags: photography images photograph process image database photographer workflow digital gallery

Posted by speedeep at 8:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Photo Gallery >> 2006 Mayfly hatching on the Mississippi River

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Tags: ephemeroptera photography la crosse iowa exopterygota lacrosse aquatic hatching wisconsin life-cycle bug river mayflies insect swarm picture lacross east dubuque mississippi mississippi river midwest underwater mayfly insects illinois dubuque pictures

Posted by speedeep at 6:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My online photos that I took in January 2006:

Photo Gallery >> January 2006
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Posted by speedeep at 11:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

On a recent road trip, we took a short detour to check out this museum in Anamosa, Iowa (about 30 minutes ENE from Cedar Rapids, very close to Wapsipinicon State Park):

Photo Gallery >> National Motorcycle Museum
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If you are interested in Motorcycle Museums, be sure to check out Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum in Birmingham, Alabama as well. My photos of the Barber Museum. My blog entry about the Barber museum.

Posted by speedeep at 2:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My online photos that I've taken in December 2005:

Photo Gallery >> December 2005
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Posted by speedeep at 11:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Photo originally posted on Flickr, used with
permission of the photographer, Niznoz.

Recent news articles indicate that the wrecking ball of change has started swinging to bring the chimneys down. The stated goal is to demolish the chimneys (citing structural instability) and then rebuild them. In order to understand the entire issue, it should be noted that the developer, Parkview International, is based in the British Virgin Islands and is outside the reach of the Wandsworth Council should there be needs for legal recourse during the renovation. This means that the plans to demolish the chimneys as they exist now and rebuild them could very well stop with their demolition and nothing could be done to force the developer to rebuild. Some are suggesting that demolishing the chimneys is the first step in demolishing the entire structure, preparing the site for luxury condos the developer plans to build.

There are a couple community groups who follow the status of the planning on the property. You may want to check out Battersea Power Station Community Group or The Brain-Damage.co.uk Campaign to save Battersea Power Station.

More information on Pink Floyd.

More information on Storm Thorgerson.

Flickr photos tagged with 'battersea' (Most Popular)

If you'd like to keep track of the chimneys' current status you can take a peek via this live cam of London. (Someone post a comment if you notice the chimneys are missing between the London Eye and Big Ben in the background.)

Tags: rockandroll pink battersea pigs thogerson floyd pink floyd powerstation london flying

Posted by speedeep at 11:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My online photos that I've taken in November 2005:

Photo Gallery >> November 2005
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Posted by speedeep at 11:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My online photos that I've taken in October 2005:

Photo Gallery >> October 2005
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Posted by speedeep at 11:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

On Saturday, August 13th, we attended the wedding of our good friends Ariel Carls and Paul Rehovsky at Paul's brother's farm near Cromwell, MN. Everyone had a wonderful time and it was great to see such excellent, obvious soulmates join in marriage.

Photo Gallery >> Ariel and Paul's Wedding: Best Of
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Posted by speedeep at 2:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is an random sampling from my photo gallery of sunflower pictures.

Tags: sunflower - sunflowers - flower - flora - photoblog - photo - digital - album - gallery

Posted by speedeep at 7:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've had a Sony Mavica MVC-CD300 digital camera for several years now. I love the camera in general. I've taken just over 10,000 photos with the camera in the last four and a half years (many are available for viewing online.) It's like a good old friend at this point.

It's a 3.3 mega pixel camera, Carl Zeiss lens with 3x optical zoom, writes to 8cm mini-CD/RW discs, a nice all-around camera.

Recently my old friend pulled a new trick on me.

Sony chose to name the photo files on the CD in the form DSC#####.JPG on the discs. My very first picture was DSC00001.JPG and my 9999th picture was DSC09999.JPG. I expected the picture after that would be DSC10000.JPG (since there are 5 digits available.) No, it rolled over and started at DSC00001.JPG again. Since I use the original filenames of my pictures when filing them, this causes a bit of a problem now as I'm potentially trying to store multiple files with the same filenames into my photo repository. Not a very nice implementation, Sony. You've got five digits, why not use them?

As part of my workflow, I load my photos into a 'working' directory and change their owner and permissions (this is in Linux) so they are owned by me and are 'a-w' (actually 0544) on their permissions. This makes it so the file will usually not be overwritten, or at least I'll see a warning message if I try to overwrite or delete the file. I've since added another step to my workflow, I run the following short bash/ksh script on all files in my 'working' directory now that I've passed the 10,000 mark:

for i in `ls -1 DSC0*.JPG`
do
   j=`echo $i | sed 's/SC0/SC1/g'`
   mv -i $i $j
done

It will rename any 'SC0' pattern to 'SC1', effectively renaming all my newer DSC0####.JPG files to DSC1####.JPG, as Sony should have done in the first place. I have listed the Unix 'mv' command with the '-i' interactive switch so you'll have to confirm each rename. Once you are comfortable with the script (try it on ONE file first) you can remove the '-i' script and it will rename all DSC0*.JPG files in the current directory. I'll still have to update my script once every 10,000 photos, but at four and a half years per update, I think I can manage.

Do all Sony Mavica cameras do this? Is this a function of the naming standard (DSC* seems to be vendor-independent)?

I'll post more on my workflow in a separate entry.

Continue reading "Sony Mavica File-Naming Complaint/Work-Around" »

Posted by speedeep at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is an random sampling from my photo gallery from my October 2004 trip to the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Annex to the National Air & Space Museum at Dulles (IAD) in Chantilly, VA.

Tags: smithsonian - airandspace - museum - national - dulles - dc - chantilly - virginia - districtofcolumbia - photo - enola gay - concorde - sr71 - gallery

Posted by speedeep at 5:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I was out early this morning (6:30am, sun had risen), snapping pictures of whatever caught my eye. Nicer part of town, nice homes, click, snap, click, snap, when this lady approaches me:

"What are you taking pictures for?"

I thought of several great smart ass retorts along the lines of "because I want to, toss off!", "so I can remember this god-forsaken city when I leave it", "I'm casing your house", "What are you asking me questions for?". I decided to be polite (just this once!) and explain to her that I'm a photographer and I was taking pictures of the architectural details that caught my attention. I do that now and again. She smiled and moved along.

Now I don't fault her for her "Neighborhood Watch"-sytle due diligence, but more and more these days, I feel like an accused criminal taking pictures. Everybody wants to know what I'm doing, why, who am I taking pictures for, how will they be used, etc. I know we're post-9/11, I know we're all on high alert, but everywhere I go it seems I questioned for taking pictures. I'm not that suspicious, I don't photograph surreptitiously, I make absolutely no bones about what I'm doing.

I think I'm going to have a set of cards printed out that say:

It may be the only way I can politely deal with inquiries. One of these days I won't be able to suppress my inner smart ass, and I'll get myself in trouble...

[Edit, April 12, 2005]
I think I've come up with a new approach to handling this subject: If someone interrupts my photography, I'm not going to interrupt my flow, I'll just take a picture of them and post it on-line. Boy I can't wait to see the next person's response...
[End Edit]

For those unfamiliar with my photography, please visit:

My personal website, with 4500+ of my photos online:
http://www.transmit.net/gallery/

And on flickr.com:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/speedeep/archives/date-taken/2005/detail/

photography pain criminial photo projects crime 911 civil rights photographer's rights photographer curious travel problems life politics difficulty anger art query work inquisitive photoblog digital