Between a rock and a hard place
May 15th, 2007
The sun did weird things at Big Bend. Here, in blazing hot, bright sun, somehow that warm glow in just this one spot was being created. It looked a lot like the warm glow in a slot canyon up in Utah, but this was on a point of rock out by itself.
I’ve been busy today. Finally broke down and bought a new laptop to replace the 4-year-old one that was getting pretty slow and starting to have failures. So, I’ve been experiencing the wonders of Vista. It seems to work fairly well as an operating system. Most of my programs have loaded up and seem to be running ok. My DVD/CD burning software is the exception and won’t load. Guess I’ll have to spend some more money on that, since burning DVDs of my photos while I’m on the road is one of the main functions of my laptop.
(enter rant mode)…I’m pretty annoyed with the idiots at Microsoft, though. The laptop came with a trial version of MS Office. Most of that I have no use for, but I do use Word. Of course the new Word 2007 that is on here is not compatible with older versions of Word…which is how all my documents are saved. Wonder if I can just load up Word 2003 without screwing something up?
But, to get Word 2007 to work I had to go to the microsoft website and answer a hundred irrelevant questions. It wouldn’t let me leave the name of my company blank and it insisted I tell it the number of employees in my company, worldwide. It also insisted that I provide my title. Dilettante is what I finally put there. After about an hour wasted with Microsoft prying into my personal business I was still not able to find out what the damn software would cost if I actually wanted to buy it and use it beyond the trial period.
Bill Gates may be the richest man in the world, but the company he spawned is full of idiots who can’t even form decent English sentences. I’m really pissed that they wasted so much of my time today for no good purpose. I’ve never seen any computer software that was so poorly presented by the company.
So, that’s why this post is so late in the day…(rant mode off).
In a hole
May 13th, 2007
With so many interesting shapes in the rocks at Three Dike Hill we couldn’t resist shooting in them. Again, the colors of the rocks were washed out by the sun so we really couldn’t appreciate them until I drew them out in PhotoShop.
Another Window
May 11th, 2007
Here’s a window in that fake ruined shack at Three Dike Hill. People told us this location was on a popular drug smuggling route and was heavily monitored. We didn’t see any sign of surveillance cameras, but they assured us they were there and that we were on film somewhere, no doubt bringing a little entertainment to whoever has the task of reviewing the film.
Shack
May 9th, 2007
At the base of those wild rock formations were a couple small ruined shacks. When we first found them we thought they were “ghost town” ruins like those we had seen in Terlingua and at the abandoned mercury mine we’d visited before. They looked pretty much the same from the outside. But when we got close and went inside we saw that these shacks were made from fake plastic sheets with rock texture. Apparently this is also an old movie set of some kind. They still look pretty good, though.
Rock curves
May 7th, 2007
The shapes in the rocks at Two Dike Hill were just amazing. Of course I had to fight the sun to get a photo. In this case I was fighting flare and almost succeeded in eliminating it. If you look critically you can see some flare effects on the left side of the photo, but not so bad as to be a problem. In fact I think the subdued tones caused by the flare help make the form of the model stand out from the background in a good way here.
The Fake Church
May 5th, 2007
Here are both Rose and Niecy at the “church” on the old movie set in the Big Bend area. That Big Bend sun was cooking the front of the church, as it cooked everything in that country. But I think I managed to pull out some of the color and texture of the building and the surroundings. The ladies look pretty good as well.
I’ll be spending all day tomorrow helping a friend sell his photos at an art festival. I hope to learn a bit about how that is done with an eye toward giving it a try next summer if it looks like something that I’d enjoy doing. Tomorrow should be very educational in that regard.
"Church" Window
May 4th, 2007
Here’s a window at the “church” on the movie set in the Big Bend area.
I spent yesterday doing my first real motorcycle ride of the year. My best friend, Ken, and I made a loop around some of the more interesting parts of Ohio on back roads. One of the roads we rode was Rt 550 between Athens and Marietta which is known internationally as one of the finest motorcycle roads in the US. It was a very nice day, just a little cool, so the touring jacket was comfortable for most of the ride.
Last year I didn’t do any riding. Got the bike ready to go and took it out for a short ride, then parked it and never took it out of the garage again. It was one of those years with just too many other things taking my time and attention. This summer should be a bit different, with more time to ride.
The bike didn’t like having missed a year of use. I had prepped it before yesterday, of course, and had it out for a shakedown ride and all seemed fine. But after topping off the tank yesterday it started backfiring and refused to idle. When I pulled over in a small town to check things out it went completely dead, with no electric at all. A quick cleaning of the battery contacts fixed the electric problem, but the backfiring and non-idle continued. I decided it needed to burn out some crud that had gotten into the carbs, so I rode it for the next hour without going above third gear. That’s about 6,200 rpm at road speed…not all that high on an engine that red lines at 10,500. That did the trick. By the time we reached Athens the engine was running fine, no backfires and a perfect idle. Just needed a good workout.
Now I just need to work on striking the right balance between photo expeditions and motorcycle tours. I’ve done both at the same time, but it’s not my favorite way to work.
Back to Big Bend
May 2nd, 2007
Ok…enough with the pinhole photos. Time to get away from the soft grainy pinhole photos and back to the scorching sun of Big Bend.
Here’s Rose in the partial shade of a porch awning woven from cactus branches. I still have a lot more Big Bend photos to go through, then I’ll be editing the photos from the Ozarks and the Houston area. I’m soooo far behind on all this.
Another Pinhole Photo
April 30th, 2007
Here’s another one from yesterday’s pinhole shoot. Dave Rudin is working at my studio again today. This afternoon I take him to the airport so he can return to NYC.
Today’s Pinhole photo
April 29th, 2007
This is one of the shots we did today for Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day. It was shot with a Nikon D200 at 3200 ISO with about a 1/10 sec exposure. I was hoping for more models, but several were unable to come at the last minute, so I had to make do with two beautiful nude women. Not one of the worst problems I’ve ever faced.
