When it Rains in Paradise (It is still paradise)
/
Our regularly scheduled fun in the sun will resume in 15 minutes. First, a quick rainshower.
On Holiday
/
Well, as of this moment, I've off work for a week + a few days for some much needed R&R. I'll try to post mid-next week when I'm back in the range of the inter-tubes once again...
This was the setup for this shot..
..I show it because I thought the closeness to the beach chair was really interesting.
The first set, I shot sweeping from left to right with the camera in "portrait" orientation. My thought was that a super-huge panoramic would be nice. I may go back and try it again later but the natural single-frame, non-stitched shot looked better than the stitched panoramic. Much less obvious distortion, anyway.
I've been experimenting with this Lens (Nikkor 14-24) and a Sony 10-18. Looking forward to getting to put them both to work this week on vacation!
Have a great Memorial Day Weekend
The Beach Chairs @ the Apocalypse
/
For some reason, every time I see these beach chairs (which were Eagle Scout projects along the Eastern Shore) I'm reminded of this:
Which, were these VIP observers of a Nuclear Bomb test during Operation Greenhouse at Enewetak Atoll in 1951.
I've even considered photoshopping in a mushroom cloud but it seems like that crosses a line. The good news is, the guy in the front, in shorts is finally going to get a tan on those legs.
.. I'm also reminded of the movie Deep Impact. I know it has Morgan Freeman and a bunch of other actors that didn't burn brightly enough to be exposed on the often dull photographic plate of my memory.
There was this scene where one of the main actresses, a skinny blond lady with the hint of a dutch accent and a strange tendency to to bite her lip while remembering her lines and her previously estranged bio-dad who strangely had some ukranian accent, hold onto each other in reconciliation as a tidal wave crushes them.
It was meant to be a touching moment, nerfed somehow by the hollow acting - just my opinion.
At any rate.. So here's the setup. The end is nigh and you can't escape it. You know it's coming, you know when. Be it an asteroid, a sunspot or any of the innumerable Hollywood envisioned horrors doled out by Earth to we, the poor stewards of this planet.. You have on your iCal/outlook calendar , The End of the World at some specific time. How do you spend it?
For me, I like the idea of the unbelievable dad and daughter on the beach from Deep Impact. Go get good seats for the end. Though, in practicality (being responsible for two school aged kids that need not know of such horrors) I would probably just hang at the house and distract the kids from the news by playing Mario and keeping them and their mom close. The last meal would be a steak cooked on my trusty ol' grill, grilled mushroom, onions and pan butter-fried potatos from Dad's recipe. A Jazillion calories! A nice Zinfandel or Cab/Sav in the glass.
But, if you are by yourself... I can think of worse ways to go out than sitting in one of these Eagle Scout project chairs on Mobile Bay, front row seats to Nature's show.
Grey and Blue
/
Daphne, Alabama at Lake Forest Yacht Club. According to the signs, I was trespassing again.
This Weekend, in 2010
/
It was Memorial Day weekend in 2010. I reference it as the beginning of this photography adventure for me.
That April, I had renewed my interest in photography, following the Deepwater Horizon Explosion and subsequent spill. I spent many mornings and afternoons (before work, at lunch from work or after work) on the beaches of Gulf Shores & Orange Beach, just shooting the oil spill cleanup.
It reminded me of that brief time in my life where I wanted to be a photo journalist. Columbia University didn't like my grades nor my parents' checkbook, so I did this computer thing, instead.
The Memorial Day weekend following the spill, we spent along the Gulf Islands National Seashore with out of town in-laws, riding jetskis, dodging lightning and drinking copious amounts of beer. I found some time alone to walk the beaches and shoot. See, I'd just released an iPhone app to allow people to share photography (it's down now, sorry) and these content contributors that I hired had submitted all of these amazing - looking HDR photos from several well known photobloggers , I was admittedly starry eyed. So, I can shoot a picture of this walkway, process it with some filters and it is.. ART?
That's amazing! Being someone that can't draw, paint or play an instrument very well, my robot brain has been super impressed by these people around me that can draw some seemingly original piece of art on the palm of their hand, play music by ear, paint or sculpt. Creativity is amazing.
So, I ran around with my camera and willy-nilly snapped photo after photo of boardwalks, piers and beaches. (Usually at high noon, :| ) It's Art! (Right?) Somehow I'd gone from just running around to capture content to seed my iPhone app, to being a full on "artEEST!". (or as Dina calls it, Artsy Fartsy) I say this tongue-in-cheek of course.
The bottom few images on this page: http://smu.gs/12UCN29 contain the fruit of those outings.
I was just excited to be out taking pictures again. I'm not sure where I thought it would take me but I think the idea of being a traveling photographer type was very romantic. Go see some parts of the world.. Get good enough and you get paid for it (somehow?).
I remember this because of this shot. I've stood in this spot a dozen times and taken this shot a dozen times. With different gear, while listening to different music, walking with friends, walking with coworkers.
Each photo.. amazingly.. is different.
That, I think is fascinating. I'm still not sure if it's art, observational experimentation or just obsession. But that's the great part. I just don't care. I'll keep right on doing it. :)
On the travel thing.. Headed to The Bahamas for a couple days, then Disney for a few more. Not as a jetsetting photoblogger but as a Dad, Husband and generally tired Programmer-guy in need of a break. Hopefully some good shots will come my way to share with you when I return.
PS. If you are a bad guy reading this and thinking "Great, I can go rob him blind, he'll be away..." I gotcha covered bubba. Do yourself a favor and sit this one out.
The Waves of Change
/
Last week, Google Plus sprung a new site layout on us. I know some folks that aren't pleased with it, to the point of abandoning the service. At first I was resistant but I find it is more conducive to consuming photos.
Today, Flickr followed up with their new layout that seems to have caused quite a stir. I'm still getting used to it but I think I like it. Same reason, I think I'm seeing more of peoples' stuff than I usually did - so that will be a good thing. There are bugs that need to be worked out, it would seem.
I hopped over to the Flickr Forums, related to bugs with the new site in order to report a bug. (Chrome on a Mac, the 'k' button doesn't work in comments.. Wierd huh?) Wowzers there were some ticked off people in that forum.
One thing's for sure. As a developer, I feel for the dev teams working on these things, just doing their job. "Put it back." is pretty harsh, given the hours they've most likely put into it.
What do you think of the new layout?
The Gulf
/
You should know that I'm generally almost entirely uneffected by advertisements, marketing, gimmicks and other corporate tomfoolery. It's my x-gene. I can stare at a website and the advertisements completely get blocked out by the content. I just don't see them. The second my mind detects someone - or something - trying to sell me something, the firewall goes up and very little gets through.
So, when a friend Mike txt'd me during his vacation about this restaurant called "The Gulf" and said I had to go check it out, I will admit I was skeptical. I know my friend wouldn't try to overtly sell me something and I trust his judgement but I just concluded in my mind that: yeah, yeah, yet another tourist trap gulf coast seafood place with a great view. They are dime a dozen, most serve frozen seafood and have mediocre food to accompany their great views.
His major selling point was, "they have these chairs, sitting right out on the beach!"
While beach chairs are among my favorite things to photograph because they generally stay still and seldom resist being photographed, I thought - Hey -- let's go check this place out, maybe it'll be worth a few pictures.
Boy was I in for a pleasant surprise. Finally, something different. Whether it was the wicker-covered furniture right out on the Gulf, the construction made of shipping containers or the salt air, this place definitely left an impression. It is strange that they've managed to take these elements of old furniture, metal trimmings, stark white furniture and shipping containers and managed to create an up-scale feeling, right on The Gulf. Maybe upscale isn't the right word. Hipster.. Maybe Yuppie.. Heck I don't know the difference but with lunch for two (ringing in at $40), this is typical tourist trap prices with unchararistically good food with a unique delivery.
The cheeseburger with swiss, pita chips and hummice was quite epic.
As for the hipster aspect, I used by best hipster-inspired instagram-knockoff filter so that from the comfort of your chair you can hear the vinyl spinning "Louis Armstrong Hello Dolly", smell the firepit and taste the salt air.
If the storms don't decimate this restaurant over the summer, I look forward to returning during the off season in better light for some interesting shots..
Oh, and to the super-impatient spaz lady behind us in line bitching that someone might have cut in line in front of us : You totally miss the point of a place like this. You gotsta chill. Go black friday shopping to relieve some angst, sheesh. :/
"A PIER"
/
AIR QUOTES!
Well, I suppose the Social Media photo sharing rulebook states you should space out your posts from a given outing but I thought the last post would serve as a good segue for this one, since they were essentially consecutive.
As I stood there, to my left, a shirtless man in his mid twenties practiced forms from an un-named martial art. Another mid twenties man walked past me muttering something about my tripod and then pointing to other man and saying to his comrade, (rudely, loudly) "Hey Look, it's the Black Ninja Master!!"
The martial artist looked their way but continued his forms. He looked at me next, expectedly, ostensibly to take a picture of him. I smiled back, wrong lens for portraiture, anyway.. turned the headphones up and got to the business of shutter clickity clickity click.
A young couple in their thirties sat on the beach with a blanket with their adopted child. Mei Zhen, I believe her name was. Just chilling out - watching the sunset with their 4 year old.
All the while the atmoshphere painted these Air Quotes over the pier, as if to saying "A Pier".
The Light at the End of the Tunnel
/
Something about these wooded pathway shots, I always have to add a touch of an Orton effect. I know the leading portion of the path is pretty dark. That's just the way it was in my mind..:)
For Saturday, Something Soft.
/
My little girl picked these roses out for her mother, last weekend for Mother's Day. I thought she did great. At 7 she seemed to have this natural ability to pick out roses with good uniformity and minimal disoloration and damage on the outer petals. Which makes me wonder, "How did she know to do that?"
Is that nature, is it an instinct? If so, why don't my son and I have that instinct?
I go to pick flowers by quantity, by price (more is better, right?) or by some hidden misunderstood map legend in my mind that equates certain colors with certain conveyances.. (Red is passion / Love, White is friendship.. )
That's the extent we dumb guys get things and even that is a stretch for us.
Yet, as Jena looked through the flowers, she seemed to immediately recognize the attribute of each flower and in her mind score the collection in some Eidetic way as compared to the others. She just sort of waved her hand over them and said "these" with the same level of assurance that I would imagine a florist would have.
In fact, the extent of my analysis ended at the recognition that the concentric circle seems to recur in nature. Orbital patterns, the cross-section of the mantles of earth, the many layers of the atmosphere, the age rings at the cross-section of a tree trunk. Gobstoppers in nature.
Anyway, good job to Jena. Her mom liked the floweers and they lasted even til today, over a week later.
The Sky Bridge to Helios (plus, a big site update!)
/
If you couldn't already tell, I've been working recently to come up with a more consolidated approach to my web-publishing activities. Typically, I build up photos and upload them to SmugMug via Lightroom over the weekend and then set up any posts for the week.
I have those scheduled to go out through the week to the Blog, Flickr, G+. But, Facebook and Pinterest have been a little more difficult for me to schedule up and required some on-hands work.
Now, I have a pretty good system for publishing across all (Smugmug, this SquareSpace Blog, Flickr, Google+, Facebook & Pinterest) so that I can do a better job of keeping them at parity whilst not getting in trouble at work for jacking around on the internet during the week. :/
Part of this, I've been working to consolidate my domains. Gulfcommunity, Gulf-Technology, Graffitilogic, Graffitivisuals are alot to maintain for one person. GulfCommunity is on autopilot and has been for years, now. So, I'm not so worried about that. But, Gulf-Technology & Graffitilogic both represented essentially the same thing: Software Development for Hire. I decided / hey -- why not just put it all here? So that's what I'm doing.
Part of this site revamp is larger pictures, a new site skin and some page updates.
The whole look and feel is meant to optimize for display of images and black background seems to work well for that.
I'd love to get your feedback on the changes, though!
Also, jump on over to: /prints-licenses/ some pretty big changes to my image-use guidelines. I feel this far- less - restrictive approach is more aligned with the spirit of what my photography is about.
As always, thanks for checking in! Stay tuned, I have some neat stuff planned for the summer, including a Canvas Give-awayl
I Paid a Visit to the Tree of Coastal Wisdom
/
I paid a visit to the Tree of Coastal Wisdom (and all I got was this stupid shirt)..
.. and about 300 frames of photos to sort through, of which 10-12 will be pretty cool. :)
My Bionic Eye Looks On
/
We had some really interesting atmosphere on the Bay this evening. Looking forward to going through these images -- always neat to see how the skies and the water play off of one another for an image..
The Piers Gathered to Watch..
/
Admittedly, I got alot of mileage out of this sunset.. :)
Sitting By the Bay
/
Turned out to not be a very good night to capture starfields...
Did I mention the sandfleas are really bad this time of year?
Walk thee Plank!
/
Walking down in this wierd little half pier on the property edge of May Day Park in Daphne, Alabama is usually a sketchy proposition, especially at higher tides. As you walk, the water vibrations push back out into the surf, even against the onslaught of waves. Which make you wonder, "Is this thing even attached to anything or just floating?"
As I stood at the end with this camera and tripod, the shutter actuactions would transfer through the tripod legs and into the boards of of the pier. I know this because I could feel the shutter clicks in my toes, through my shoes, 4 planks away.
One of these days I'll probably fall right through. But... not this time.
minimal
/
"Daddy, what's miniamism?"
"I believe you mean minimalism, honey."
"Okay. What it is.."
"Well, uh... it's uhh... "
"Well..it's the ability to describe something in fewer words than I just did."
Coastal Reflections
/
Being a fan of over-the-top reflect-y things, I really liked how this turned out. Even made a canvas print of it, already, now hanging in my office :) (Until I find it a new home through donation)
I was amazed as I sat near this little pool of water how the reflections kept changing as the storm clouds began to pass away and clear. I sat and snapped dozens of photos here.
(and was partially eaten by sand fleas in the process)
The Last Days of Life on Mars
/
During the final days of life on Mars, the indigenous ecosystems had all but crumbled. Relics stood as a reminder of the societies that once thrived here, now extinct.
They had watched helplessly in those final months as it approached their small planet. While they possessed the technological base, they lacked the social competencies to come together and stop the meteor from devastating their planet.
Those that survived the blast watched hopefully as a lifeboat of scientists, historians and a wealthy few blasted towards the stars to find a new home for their people.
They never returned.
The famine, plague and sickness eventually wiped out their population. As the atmosphere began to dissipate, the days grew hotter and the nights, even colder. The remaining vegetation died off, as did the fish and smaller wildlife.
I stood here now, as a visitor from a neighboring world, 18 million years later. From the precipice of the valley, I looked down into a sea of rock and sand and thought that this could have been the beach of some ancient Gulf.
As the sun would set, the landscape would go from an arid, burning heat to a frozen, ceaseless cold.
In the moments between these extremes, I could see how life here once was and possibly would be again.
Some day.