Art, Found in Motion

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MotionArt

The only photography that I've had the opportunity to do, recently has been family photography and a Dance Recital.    My daughter is a member of this dance studio owned by two very good friends of ours.    Being only six, she decided last year that she was going to bail out of dance classes.  

Midway through the season, she decided she'd like to join but that that point, it really was too late.  Kids.

Since I'd been the pet, parent-photographer for the dance studio in years past, I was asked to shoot action shots for the dance recital.  The proceeds of which, go to the benefit of the studio.   I'm always happy to oblige, though this year it was a challenge.    A few days from closing on the sale of my house with several rooms still to pack, behind @ work, behind on emails and behind on voicemails, I unplugged on the appointed Saturday morning on Mother's Day weekend for a full -- very long - day of dance photography.

I set up a perch at an eye-level, opportune location and wandered around.    I'd liked to have rented a better lens or even a D3S but for free-work, hard to justify equipment rental.

I've never considered myself a very high-brow entertainment-type person.   I like slapstick, national lampoon's-style comedy, dark craft beer and mexican food.  So, a dance connoisseur I am not.   Still, as I watched these young people dance, number after number, costume change after costume change, it struck me that I was fatigued just from walking around between my tripod perch and side-stage locations, snapping photos.  How must they feel?

it also occurred to me that… with the level of skill, grace, dexterity and stamina that these kids showed, they are still not necessarily considered "professionals." 

Clearly, being marked a professional-is overrated.   I believe people would happily pay to see these athletes perform their art.   Aside from the stress of life -- I had a good time.  

That was, until it came time to short the some 6,000 photos taken from three of us whose camera-clocks were out of sync. (sigh).

Back to the point though, this particular Ballet representation of sleeping beauty, I found to be very well done and well deserving of the standing ovation they received.    As were all the dancers that evening.

Windows

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Windows
As someone with an unapologetic history of being a Microsoft Fanboy.  I have to say, I enjoy Windows Less and Less, these days.   

Maybe it was the perfect, Apple Trojan Horse scenario.

First, I got an iPhone.  I liked it.   Decided to develop apps for it and bought a Mac notebook.
Within a year, I was fulltime on that Mac notebook for email, web browsing, document creation.  The only time I used Windows was for development of apps. (C#, etc)

Now I have a couple macs.  Even my PC is a mac.

After dedicating a good amount of thought as to what Microsoft's problem is, in this area.   I've come to the conclusion that Microsoft's problem is that they are run by "smart" people, not "pretty" people.
Apple, with its design focus, is a far friendlier experience - which appeals to the dumb-masses - myself included.

Windows, on the other hand, Is like a hospital with a pretty paint job.   
Sure, it looks nice and the colors are great but people still go there to die.

Not, that Apple people are "dumber" by any means.  I know Apple's attracted some of the greatest engineering talent available and that plenty of bright people use Apple hardware.  For me, it's about build quality.
Microsoft... takes design principles like "ribbon" -- which saves screen real estate and declutters the UI but makes the apps more cumbersome to use.   

Microsoft, you need more dumb people in charge.  These smart folks, with their crazy puzzle-solving skills, uncanny knowledge of the number of manhole covers in Manhattan and strong engineering-logic focus, are killing you in the consumer market full of, mostly-braindead dancing-with-the-stars fans and average joe - the plumber- types.

More pretty, more ease of use, less engineering is the key to consumer adoption.

As an engineer.. well.. I need a beer.

MayDay

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MayDay

 ... On this May 1st, I thought it would be good to research the origins of the distress call, Mayday. 

Mayday is an emergency procedure word used internationally as a distress signal in voice procedure radio communications. It derives from the French venez m'aider, meaning "come help me". 

Inside the Lightbulb

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InsideTheLightbulb

This is inside the Pensacola Lighthouse. Handheld HDR, 5 exposures -2 to +2, stepped at 1ev. 
Double tonemapped and then contrastified...

For anyone out there with more money than sense, I heard today that the "L" bulb is now available for sale. 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/23/philips-twenty-20-year-led-lightbulb-prize-department-of-energy_n_1445780.html

Only $50 per bulb. It is the perfect holiday gift idea for the loved one in your life that already has everything. I would write more about it but I need to go clean up the mercury from one of those old school CFLs that my son just broke. (/grin/)

The All-American Photo Souvenir

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AllAmericanPhotoSouvenir

We all do it.   "Hey, honey, let's stand in front of Cinderella's Castle and have these nice strangers take our picture.  Here's my phone, sir, push right here to take the shot!"

When I talk to people, it seems like almost everyone have really positive things to say about the cameras on their phone.    My iPad takes pretty good pictures, though slightly less good as compared to the iPhone 4GS.   Certainly, the upcoming iPhone 5 will have an epic camera upgrade.

(My Galaxy Nexus is a fantastic productivity device and phone.   A miserable camera.  My old iPhone was a great web surfer, bad phone and pretty decent video camera)

The move towards camera phones for capturing family moments, sort of makes me sad.   So many apps out there are geared to turning your phone camera into a real photography tool.   So many real artists are using it for just that and coming up with some great results.   Some of the [photography - meets - social] leaders seem to embrace and promote this idea of using the camera phone as an artistic tool.  Many sell apps to this point.

I suppose I'm a little more bullish on the idea.   While, i respect the works of those photographers who have turned their phones into real photography tools, I can't help to think how many of us have 1,000's of crappy throw away, low resolution, high noise and poorly metered shots from our camera phones.

There is a good side to all these camera-phone-instagram junkies filling the inter-tubes with their collective camera rolls.   The populace is getting acclimated to noisy, semi-blurry pictures from crappy camera phones. If someone comes along with a decent shot from decent little camera with good optics and a fair sensor - people will go batty thinking it's a masterpiece! :)   I for one, will not be trusting my cameraphone anytime soon for capturing irreplaceable memories of my little ones.  

The Nikon J1 performed admirably on this trip..

Ain't for Sale

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AintForSale

 Upstairs inside the National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, Florida -- there is a section made up in a very Disney-fake-but-cool fashion, to be like 1950's America.    Outside an old shoppe, across from a model of the 1950's home, an older couple hang out and discuss with visitors what things were like in the 1950s.


I stopped and talked to the couple for awhile.  The typical conversation where a more "seasoned" participant pontificates on America's current state as a superpower, the price of Oil, the location in which our clothes are manufactured and the polarization of the economy.   

I didn't have the heart to tell the fella, I was just looking for somewhere to buy a fountain drink for a nickel. :)
So, this Harley is all original, except for the leather seat.  Still runs.   Sorry, American Pickers, it is not for sale.  

I'm not sure the year.   '54?

The Many Faces of Value

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DSC_3504

How do you determine the value of something?

We recently sold our house.   The buyer, I think got a good deal and we see value in the freedom to move elsewhere. 

That process of determining value in a sell or buy transaction has been the topic of many cycles of idle thought for me in the last few months.

I suppose your friendly neighborhood free-market-economist accountant would say that the value of something is the relative amount it would fetch in an open transaction.  "Something is only worth what someone will pay for it."

I suppose a philosopher would argue with that stance and say that in order for that assertion to be true no thing would hold value until the time it is sold.   What of human life?  Has no human life held value since slavery?

Does value have to be measured in terms of currency?  What of emotion?

Certainly many of the universe-denting products we all enjoy, like the iPod, enjoy some blend of emotion and value.   Apple fans LOVE their Mac.   Honda fans LOVE their Accord.   (Country music singers call them both yuppies.)

We aren't in any particular hurry to get under another mortgage but we did find a home we LIKED that week.   What a dangerous concept: allowing emotion in a transaction like a house.

I've always found a way to look at the things that I don't love about a negotiably priced item versus those things I do.  If you come to the bargaining table willing to not buy the item at all, it seems to be a much stronger stance than being all googly-eyed and desperate.  But, you have to be willing to walk away.

Take, this house.   Six months ago someone offered $60k more than we did.  

Yet, they aren't in it - now, are they?

Still, as a seller, it would be easier to sit back and say "well, it was worth this amount to one person, I FEEL someone else will come along." 

But as a buyer, I had to remind myself today that a property is only worth what it is worth TO ME - as it sits.. We see homes with tremendous potential, plenty of them.  But, you shouldn't pay for potential and when trading money for any item, it is probably a valuable lesson to keep that things are only worth the sum of their parts in the state they are in.  Irregardless of their cost or your own emotion regarding it. "I FEEL this is worth ..."

I write all this because I found a tremendous amount of liberation in the idea of offering for something what I'm willing to pay for it and not feeling the pressures of comparables and what is deemed fair.  I'm sure I come across on the other side of this like a complete butt or a flake.  The people will likely turn down the offer we sent them. I can live with that.    In the off chance they accept it, I can live with that, too.

Either way, I just gave you the secret to stress-free home-or-car shopping.  That's gotta be worth something, right?

:)

into the... blue?

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..into the.. blue?
Yesterday, we did a trip to the Pensacola Lighthouse to watch the Blue Angels practice.   My buddy, Brody, called it vertical hiking -- I like that.  :)

We traversed a billion or so steps and noticed ominous stress cracks and other such anomalies, for a trip to the top of the lighthouse to watch the Blues practice.  I think everyone that attended had a great time -- I know that I did.     

I wanted to share this shot from the event because I find it odd.   The sky, was blue in most places.   I didn't do anything in post to de-color the sky in this shot.  In fact, all that I did was boost the contrast and crop in a bit, yet the sky looks grey.     I thought that was kind of interesting. 

I don't remember the exact atmospheric condition when I clicked the shutter button.  The tour guide (who, my brother in law and I are convinced is there only to keep people from throwing things (or themselves) from the top yelled out, "Hey look here they come" and wagged a finger towards the south.   I turned around, zoomed in and clickety, clickety click, this is what I got.

I'm sure some photography wizard out there can justify the grey appearance in terms of some mathematical algorithm of light intensity divided by focal length divided by the wavelength of blue in the UV spektrum, times pi over the price of eggs in Hawaii.  

meh.  I just thought it was interesting and wanted to share the shot.. ;) 

 

"Experiences"

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Experiences
I had a fantastic time this morning at the Pensacola Lighthouse with my friends from the Eastern Shore Camera Club.   I hope everyone had a great time!
I
called this shot "experiences" because that's sort of what photography is for me.  It isn't about print sales, model releases and commissioned jobs.   I don't consider myself a real photographer.    Photography is like a visual scavenger hunt for treasure left out in the open.  :)

I took this shot on the beach, this morning, after the Blue Angels practice.