View allAll Photos Tagged secondamendment
Taken at the October 24th, 2012 campaign event of Governor Mitt Romney at Reno, Nevada.
It was very challenging to get decent shots of the event. A dark arena, long distance to subject requiring a long (shaky) slow lens and then a heavy crop, plus crazy mixed white balance lighting conspired to keep me on my toes.
It was amusing to watch the iPhone/Android crowd attempt to grab pics and video of their guy. Most of their shots were VERY blurry and had disturbing colors, like an impressionist painting of a bad LSD trip (oh, wait, I just remembered where we were...)
Rusty 1955 Steelcraft school bus, built with a Carpenter body model D on what I believe is a 1954 GMC chassis. Date of delivery 11/54.
This 7-window (28 adult passengers or 42 wee ones).
The transmission is a four-speed manual. Brakes are power assisted drums, but steering is manual (unassisted).
The inline six-cylinder gasoline (petrol) engine develops all of a wimpy 115 horsepower (86 kilowatts).
Displacement is 270 cubic inch (4.4 liter).
GVWR is 14,500 pounds (6,577 Kilograms).
Driving it over the mountains will be a chore, to be sure (I think I can!, I think I can!).
A previous owner converted it into a motorhome / RV, complete with propane cylinders, refrigerator, sink, toilet, etc.
It is for sale, at the right price. We'll just have to see how attached to it we've become, depending on offers.
Or, we may get it running some day and drive it 170 miles over the hill to Burning Man, where it will be well suited as a camper / party bus.
The rocket hood ornament is a rare factory option.
ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ is a classic cry of defiance to anyone who attempts to disarm us. The expression on my partner's shirt has potent implications except that, being in Greek, its significance is obscure. Even people who remember the movie 300, may not recognize ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ is "Come and get them" after the Persian king demands that King Leonidas surrender --(Near the end of this 50 second clip . . .
www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpUVQ_z6Zcs.
As wes posted, putting the Greek words into lower case, "μολὼν λαβΠ= "Come and take it", if you can!".
A 770-millisecond exposure of the April 14th, 2014 lunar eclipse, as seen from Big Valley, California, just a few feet from our hot well-fed outdoor tubs.
The bright star to the right is Spica, the brightest star in the constellation Virgo, and the 15th brightest star in the night sky. It is a blue giant and a variable star of the Beta Cephei type located 260 light years from Earth. Apparent magnitude is +1.04
As you can see on the Moon, there are plenty of jpg artifacts. They are not seen in the original .NEF ("RAW") image.
I have some HDR sets of various stages of the eclipse, but have not yet been able to align and stack them properly with the software I have.
I used a very cheap 650-1300mm "telephoto" lens on my Nikon D600. The very heavy rig was mounted on a too-light carbon fiber tripod, run all the way up so I could see the viewfinder and LCD while keeping my 6'6" frame from creaking under a back-bending load.
I had to keep the tripod out on the lawn, further wiggling things up, due to the risk of one of my slightly tipsy naked companions tripping on the obstruction in the dark, should I have left it on the concrete slab with the tubs.
Next time, I hope to have my massive concrete foundation and pier completed, which should be steady as a rock, relatively speaking.
In what would have been mind-boggling to our founding fathers, the rifles at the outset of the Civil War could be muzzle loaded and fired by a chemical reaction in the percussion cap at a speed of three rounds per minute by a skilled soldier. Its bullets could hit a man up to 300 yards away, 500 if shot by a really skilled sharp shooter. A revolution in manufacturing technology allowed such arms to be made dirt cheap compared to their sky-high cost to buy and maintain around Revolutionary War times. Few Americans in those years could afford or even want those innacurate bang sticks. But at the outset of the Civil War, the prices of rifles tumbled as America's Second Industrial Revolution approached. For example, the cost of a Springfield Model 1861 was an amazingly affordable $20 in 1862, equivalent to $530 today. Ammunition prices tumbled too. Compared to the scarcity of arms in the beginning days of this country, guns could now become ubiquitous.
But soon there would come a weapon from another dimension that really boggled the mind.
The repeating rifle.
This nest was built in the rafters of our steel carport. Mama was quite wary of me, but a very cheap infrared remote for the tripod-mounted camera, and a less obtrusive place for me to sit helped greatly.
Nikon D600
Sigma 70-300mm macro lens with internal focus motor
Nikon SB-600 flash (on camera)
Bogen/Manfrotto carbon fiber tripod with pistol-grip ballhead
Rusty 1955 Steelcraft school bus, built with a Carpenter body model D on what I believe is a 1954 GMC chassis. Date of delivery 11/54.
This 7-window (28 adult passengers or 42 wee ones).
The transmission is a four-speed manual. Brakes are power assisted drums, but steering is manual (unassisted).
The inline six-cylinder gasoline (petrol) engine develops all of a wimpy 115 horsepower (86 kilowatts).
Displacement is 270 cubic inch (4.4 liter).
GVWR is 14,500 pounds (6,577 Kilograms).
Driving it over the mountains will be a chore, to be sure (I think I can!, I think I can!).
A previous owner converted it into a motorhome / RV, complete with propane cylinders, refrigerator, sink, toilet, etc.
It is for sale, at the right price. We'll just have to see how attached to it we've become, depending on offers.
Or, we may get it running some day and drive it 170 miles over the hill to Burning Man, where it will be well suited as a camper / party bus.
The rocket hood ornament is a rare factory option.
Beretta 96fs (.40 S&W), cocked. I have over put over 7000 rounds of cheap ammo through this and not one malfunction.
More at www.kevitivity.com
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Washington DC, Saturday March 24, 2018. Hundreds of thousands gathered here today to protest the ever more frequent gun massacres that have sadly become one of the defining features of life in the USA over the past thirty years. The shootings have evolved into increasingly more deadly events because of the ease of obtaining semi-automatic rifles, high capacity ammo magazines and other weapons of war. Organizations like the National Rifle Associations have successfully bribed our national legislators to beat back most attempts to enact sane gun laws that would ban civilian sales of these military munitions. In the wake of the Parkland, Florida high school mass shooting a youth led movement* has become energized and is pushing back against the gun lobby status quo and, it has to be noted, against the entire immoral agenda of Trumpism and 21st Century Republicanism. President Trump spent today at his golf resort in Mar a Lago, Florida. Again.
*There has been an active black led movement against gun violence and other forms of vigilante and police violence in America for many decades but it has been ignored or unfairly reported on by corporate media and actively harassed by police wherever it appeared. The most recent example is the Black Lives Matter movement.
This is a composite image, "stacked" from many sequential exposures. Each exposure was 30 seconds long (the longest my camera can do without using "bulb" mode). Lens was a 35mm Nikon at F/1.8. ISO was set at 400 to boost the brightness of the stars, and capture fainter ones, too. The trees are a bit "soft", due to the shallow depth of field of the fast lens, which was focused at infinity.
I would have made more exposures, but the fully charged (and old) battery died after 189 exposures. I had the camera in repeat mode, and simply rubber banded the shutter button down to enable instant repeats after each 30-second exposure.
I used StarStax, a free and very good program.
I created a timelapse video of this same stack. It can be seen here.
Strobist: AB800 open behind panel of white faux suede. AB800 with HOBD-W @ 1/4 power camera left. Reflector at 6:00. Triggered by Cybersync.
Rusty 1955 Steelcraft school bus, built with a Carpenter body model D on what I believe is a 1954 GMC chassis. Date of delivery 11/54.
This 7-window (28 adult passengers or 42 wee ones).
The transmission is a four-speed manual. Brakes are power assisted drums, but steering is manual (unassisted).
The inline six-cylinder gasoline (petrol) engine develops all of a wimpy 115 horsepower (86 kilowatts).
Displacement is 270 cubic inch (4.4 liter).
GVWR is 14,500 pounds (6,577 Kilograms).
Driving it over the mountains will be a chore, to be sure (I think I can!, I think I can!).
A previous owner converted it into a motorhome / RV, complete with propane cylinders, refrigerator, sink, toilet, etc.
It is for sale, at the right price. We'll just have to see how attached to it we've become, depending on offers.
Or, we may get it running some day and drive it 170 miles over the hill to Burning Man, where it will be well suited as a camper / party bus.
The photos in this album are of the property, possessions and projects of a fine older gentleman named Willie Shepherd.
He owns a LARGE property in Lookout, California. It is full of old tractors, cars, trucks, bulldozers and vehicles of varied and sundry description. My girlfriend Zoe bought a 1955 Carpenter (1954 GMC based) school bus from him, and he towed it the 17 miles to our Ranch with his old tractor on public roads:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=vihuX5mIFSA
Photos of the bus can be seen in another set of mine:
www.flickr.com/photos/darronb/sets/72157635098965316/
Willie also renovates and runs old steam engines. For years Willie has been showing and demonstrating his equipment for anyone interested.
Many of the images in this set were 3-exp HDRs, processed with Photomatix. The camera was a Nikon D600.
This little guy came from the drainage of a hot spring in Lassen County, California. The white fuzzy stuff he is resting on is a "Q-Tip", or an equivalent generic brand of swab.
I created this image with my old Nikon D50 DSLR. I used an inexpensive 10X microscope finite objective lens (160mm focal length), mounted on a stack of extension tubes with a Nikon to RMS adapter on the front end of the tube stack. There was no other lens- just the microscope objective- projecting an image directly onto the camera's 23.7 x 15.5mm image sensor.
I used Zerene Stacker to stack together 67 photos, combining them into the one you see here.
Each image was taken with the subject progressively farther from the lens. I used a micrometer stage from an old optical comparator to move the subject a smidgen before each new frame. Each smidgen was calibrated to allow some slight overlap for the depth of field, to prevent banding in the final image.
This allows the extremely shallow (about 12 microns, or 0.00047 inches) DOF to be compensated for, with special software than can "glue together" the individual 12-micron slices of sharp focus into a usable complete image.
The image as seen here was the complete frame from the camera (uncropped). At the 10X magnification of the microscope lens, that means that the subject fits into a frame that is 2.4mm across. So the critter is a hair under 2mm long, in "real life".
Lighting was provided exclusively by a 33-watt compact-fluorescent "circline" bulb in the ceiling of the kitchen where this image was created. Exposure time per frame was 2 seconds.
Click here to read the Wikipedia entry about Springtails.
Magnitude was 1.1 when it appeared at the horizon on the left, increasing to a peak of -4.2 before it faded out at the right. Visible pass time was 6 minutes, 49 seconds.
The fainter red lines are airplanes.
My camera was eager to go out and shoot something today, chomping at the bit, in fact.
I couldn't go out, so I assembled this rig just to keep the camera distracted. It's been trying to find focus ever since, and has forgotten all about the Autumn foliage....
From left to right, the components are:
Nikon D50 DSLR
11mm "PRO" brand auto extension tube (Pre AI)
"PRO" brand bellows at full extension
18mm "PRO" brand auto extension tube (Pre AI)
36mm "PRO" brand auto extension tube (Pre AI)
128mm stack of cheap eBay threaded extension tubes
17mm stack of eBay extension tube male and female lens sockets, screwed directly together
14mm Nikon Extension Ring E2 (Pre AI)
Nikon 70-300mm G lens (at full schwing zoom and focus extension)
Nikon HB-26 lens hood
This large and ancient metal lathe is located in Lookout, California, in Lassen County, Big Valley. This is in the boonies of Northern CA.
The label reads:
The Muller Lathe
Built by
The Bradford Mill Co.
Cincinatti, Ohio
USA
The size is as follows, roughly measured:
Swing over bed: 20"
Swing over carriage: unknown
Four-jaw chuck diameter: 18"
Bed length: 12 feet
Bed width, center to center across the outer two ways: 16”
Maximum workpiece length, center to center: 8 feet
It may have been built in the 1886-1901 era, from what I've learned so far.
It is owned by a fine older gentleman named Willie. He owns a LARGE property full of old tractors, cars, trucks, bulldozers and vehicles of varied and sundry description. My girlfriend Zoe bought a 1955 Carpenter (1954 GMC based) school bus from him, and he towed it the 17 miles to our Ranch with his old tractor on public roads:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=vihuX5mIFSA
Photos of the bus can be seen in another set of mine:
www.flickr.com/photos/darronb/sets/72157635098965316/
Willie also renovates and runs old steam engines. His tools are basic and in, umm, often less than pretty condition.
I believe he told me that despite its condition, having been outside for many years, this lathe was still in occasional use, wonder of wonders. I expect that it could be restored to its former glory by a man willing and able to put a LOT of time and/or money into it. I plan to list it for sale soon, online. If nothing else, it makes a magnificent lawn ornament.
Almost all of the images in this set were 3-exp HDRs, processed with Photomatix. The camera was a Nikon D50.
More info on Bradford lathes:
Guns on display at anti-Islam rally in Phoenix. Protesters brought plenty of firepower to a protest against Islamic terrorism and Islam itself on October 10. Police separated them a smaller group of counter-protesters. Held in front of the Islamic Community Center, the event was part of a broader "Global Rally for Humanity," with similar protests scheduled in other cities that day.
Nikon D600 on Bogen/Manfrotto carbon fiber tripod.
Rokinon/Samyang 8mm f/3.5mm fisheye lens, "shaved" for maximum field on the D600's full-frame sensor.
Built-in interval timer (I messed up the difficult time settings, thus the gaps in the trails, which I've now convinced myself are nice ;-) )
Exposures:
107 exposures of 30 seconds each
Unintentional time gaps between each set of 9 exposures
f/3.5
ISO1600
The exposures were all "stitched" with StarStaX by Marcus Enzweiler, a wonderful free program (give him a little money if you can):
www.markus-enzweiler.de/software/software.html
I then post-processed in Nikon ViewNX 2, a free and decent program for basic image enhancement.
Municipal Auditorium - Downtown Nashville, Tennessee
When President Donald Trump visited Nashville, I documented his visit. It was a cold sunny day in March, but I had a great time capturing the excitement and the protest surrounding his arrival. You can read about that day and see more pictures on my blog: 45 Visits Music City.
Olympus OM1
Olympus OM Zuiko 50mm f1.8
Kodak TRI-X 400
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