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This little boy was the prize for Camille's Anniversary campaign and now lives with Vi.
He might look innocent but there's mischief in his eyes, I can tell you. ;P
It was lots of fun working on him and finally have another blue Camille other than our very own redhead VI (Six, that spells "vi" in Roman numbers, what a coincidence, huh? ^^).
Hope you like him!
This Red-shouldered Hawk was photographed in Beverly Shores, Porter County, Indiana on February 7, 2009
This was done by my iphone using Brushes app. I think this app is the most genius invention of all time!
This ball seemed to follow us everywhere. It was good in theory, but because of the rain, super messy in practice.
This class is Bios 340 (Animal Behavior). It is an elective class for the Biology major.
This lab was a simulation on the evolution of honest signaling. When animals are involved in contests with a rival, the winner is usually the one who has a better overall physical condition or is more experience in such contests. This phenomenon is known as Resource Holding Potential.
To model this in the lab, students first competed against each other with bags of cotton swabs. They didn’t know how many cotton swabs the other rival had as they competed for a territory (shoebox) of varying qualities (A, B, C –with A being the best). The game was if a territory was challenged, the rival had to in sequential order place out a cotton swab on the table with the territory holder. Each had to assess how long they wanted to stay in the game based on what they had in their bags. If one felt that s/he was going to lose (run out of cotton swabs), then they would leave the table and the other individual would “win” the territory.
In the second version of this game, the students had bags of coins that they would shake at each other. This way the opponent could ‘size’ up the rival to see if it was worth it to “fight” for that territory.
Goals of this game:
1) To recognize the potential ultimate benefits of signaling competitive ability to prospective rivals in contests over resources.
2) To realize that strategies for winning become even more important as one can honestly “size up” an opponent. This is what happens in nature all the time.
In this game, students naturally adapt their own strategies for winning—especially when they use coins to signal “strength” for territories. For examples, some students will put keys in their bags to add “noise” while others will shake the bags slightly (to throw off rivals as to how much is actually in their bags). Some students do the waiting game and will swoop into a territory after a recent contest to try to deplete the resources of the current territory owner.
Professor Catherine Mossman held this lab in her classroom on May 5th, 2016.
Vanessa took Simon and I on an amazing pilgrimage today to see Hiromi's installation in Redfern. It was so lovely, I had an awful week. It was so art that was full of love and meaning, and inspired us all to push on. Vanessa sent me an email yesterday telling me of her discovery of this window and of Hiromi, and it was so mysterious and wonderful. It's nice when life is like a Banana Yoshimoto novel.
Venturing ever further south, we spend five days in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, barely 100 miles away from the equator. It's quite hot, difficult to navigate, but intensely fascinating as one of the first Muslim cities we've visited.
Follow us on www.circumnavacation.com!
This is the 7th tank MOC I've made. It's called the Mark 7 “Athena”. The Mark 7 has quite a few functions like: lights, Christie suspension, gun elevation and turret rotation, an actually shooting and autoloading gun with a six shots magazine, and finally a self-stabilizing gun thanks to the EV3 and a gyro sensor.
You can find a video of this MOC at: youtu.be/HQ_QMChM_5Q
This was taken on Saturday- Jan. 13, 2007. I was facing North. This picture shows the Santa Monica mountains in the background.
It's now become part of our travelling calendar - we go on a city break for Jayne’s birthday in January - no presents for birthday's and Christmas, we travel instead. This year it was Seville. We had to drive 180 miles south to Stansted to fly there though, Friday afternoon on the A1, such fun... It was a really good drive down in actual fact, the best day for months, glorious blue sky and a fantastic sunset- and I was in a car. We got stung for tea and drinks in the Radison Blu but we were overnighting and leaving the car so we didn't have much choice. Ryanair aagh! Again no choice. To be fair to the abrasive Irish man O Leary things are better than they used to be and it was an acceptable flight.
We were hoping for better weather than we got- don't you always? It was. cold, windy and after some initial beautiful sun on our first afternoon, it was mostly grey. The wind died but so did the sun. The other little problem was that it was my turn for the awful cold that Jayne had been trying to get over. I was under the weather in more ways than one all week, it was only a cold but it was the worst I've had for ages and it didn't help my mood, particularly when the sun was absent. We had a few hours of really nice light here and there and I made the most of it - I think!
Seville has miles and miles of narrow cobbled streets, they seem to go on for ever. They are almost random in layout and it is extremely difficult to find your way around, it's easier to just keep walking and see what you find. So we did! The architecture is stunning and the history is fascinating. Aside from the ancient history the two events that seem to have had a massive recent influence are the Expo's of 1929 and 1992. The incredible buildings or 'Pavilions' that were built for a one off event are now part of the reason that people visit the city. The 1929 pavilions are fantastic, each one is a story in itself and a destination in its own right but there are a lot of them in Parque Maria Luisa. Plaza Espana, built by the hosts of course, is the biggest and I would imagine that you could make a project out of photographing the individual ceramic tile displays around it on their own. These incredible buildings really need the light to be right to get images that people want to see, flat bright light from bright grey skies is good for certain things but dramatic architecture deserves better - or maybe I'm looking for the easy way option. The other discovery that we made, we found just down the road from the hotel, about an hour into the trip – The Metropol Parasol. A giant lattice work parasol, apparently called ‘The Mushrooms’ locally and apparently the world’s largest wooden structure. You have to look twice, having discovered that it is wood. Only later did we discover that we could get to the top and there is an extensive walkway around the top of it. It is built on top of ancient ruins, ( still intact and viewable) a food market and bars etc. and has a plaza around it and on it, that is buzzing on weekend evenings. Walking around the top, the first people up it one day and being back to watch the sunset later was one of the highlights of the trip for me.
The 1992 Expo also covered a massive area but left behind lots of modern - and some very strange - buildings and arenas. Some are of a temporary nature and get dismantled others find a new use. The land used was on an island between two branches of the River Guadalquivir – Isla de la Cartuja. The branch that goes through the city is now a canal, blocked at its northern end by a barrier with a motorway on it, and is used extensively for water sports, mainly rowing. Many of the buildings are now used by private companies as headquarters , others have a very derelict look. The whole area- even though it is home to the theme park- which was shut for the winter, has a neglected air about it. There are weeds growing everywhere but fountains are switched on, which seemed odd. Unlike the city a short distance away, there are no cafes or bars or other people around for that matter, just us meandering through. The car park that was created for the event is massive, it stretches for miles, and I really mean miles. Totally derelict, just the odd person or dog walker around. There is even a railway line terminating here, in the middle of nowhere a modern and apparently unmanned station, like a ghost station. At this point, across the river proper is open countryside, much flatter than I expected and very easy for local walkers and cyclists to get to - also very calm and quiet, a place to linger and enjoy the peace.
As usual I researched and discovered as we walked, we averaged around 13 miles a day and tried to get off the beaten track. We were out around 8.15, before sunrise, and had orange juice, coffee and Tostada with the locals for breakfast. The trouble is that there are many miles of walking in a relatively small area, some streets are only a few feet wide so there are a lot of them to explore. Incredible ancient churches and squares are around every corner- it's a very religious place - Catholicism rules in Spain. Unfortunately many are only a few feet away from the building next to it and it is difficult to get a decent shot of them. Seville is also famous, historically, as a producer of ceramic tiles. A building isn’t complete without a tile display of some sort and it would be very easy to make a project out of tiles alone. It may be a little boring for any companions though!
We walked the length of the embankment a couple of times, it has graffiti from end to end, several miles of massive concrete walls covered in everything imaginable, from marker pen scribbling to works of art. It was suggested to me that allowing people to paint here might prevent them from daubing property and monuments in the city- it hasn't! Most alleyways and shutters have been attacked to a greater or lesser degree. Spain has very high youth unemployment and maybe this plays a role. To be truthful though we haven't seen a city that's free of graffiti. The other problem is dogs- or what they produce, it's everywhere, absolutely everywhere, in a week we saw only one person remove his dogs mess. Fortunately the city streets are cleaned exceptionally well, some of the cleanest we have come across, men (and a lot of women) and machines are washing and sweeping endlessly.
Having had the wettest winter on record at home - almost three months of rain - we didn't want more rain but we got it. The upside was the water and the reflections that it created made photography on the cobbled streets more interesting, particularly at night. I usually find that it takes me a while to get into the groove on a trip and this one was no different, I didn't start shooting with total disregard - street shots- for a couple of days. Whilst the locals wore quilted jackets and scarves we got down to tee shirts at times, the warmer afternoons would be welcome in summer, never mind January, in Huddersfield. I envied the cyclists, being able to train in temperatures like this in winter - I wish! You need a lot less willpower to get out there and train hard in pleasant weather.
From a photography point of view I had a frustrating time, I never felt to get to grips with the place- other than on the streets at night. Writing this on my phone on the flight home, I haven't a clue what I've got to work with when I get back. I usually edit first and write later. Generally I have a first look, I'm disillusioned, I then revisit and see things differently- thankfully! Architectural shots with a grey sky could be destined for the monochrome treatment, we'll soon see. I'm still editing stuff from our London trip before Christmas, it's getting decent views in black and white and I quite enjoy looking at them myself.
We visited most of the notable tourist destinations, and went up anything that we could. Seville doesn't have a high point-it's flat! Nothing really stands head and shoulders above the city. The Cathedral tower is over 300 feet but the Cathedral itself fills a lot of the view on some aspects. Being square and having to look through bars in recesses you don't really get a completely open aspect. A new 600 foot tower is close to being finished, it's an office block and I couldn't find any mention of it being a viewing point in the future.
Oranges were the last thing on my mind when I suggested going to Seville. There are 25000 orange trees in Seville and now is the time that they are laden with big-and sour- Seville oranges, they are everywhere, apparently they are the property of the city authorities and will be harvested and sent to the UK to be made in to marmalade at some point in the near future. These trees will soon be covered in fragrant blossom, the city will smell beautiful for a couple of months. Studying the surrounding area it would be good to tour in March or April I would think, the scents, longer days and better weather would make for a fantastic trip. One for the future. The sunrise on our final morning was the best of the week, this was what we had looked forward to, we had to leave for the airport at 9.00...... Needless to say it was raining hard as we drove the last twenty miles home. Nothing new there then.
As usual I have aimed to present a pretty extensive collection of photographs of our chosen destination, some, at first glance will be pretty mundane shots of everyday life on the streets, often though, close inspection will reveal something humorous, something that needs a bit of thought. Others are definitely just people going about their holiday or work. Travelling with someone else it wouldn’t be fair to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to nail the perfect long exposure or HDR image of a cathedral or similar in perfect light – the one stunning shot to add to the portfolio- it’s not really my thing, I go for an overview of the place in the time available. Looking at the postcards locally it becomes obvious that stunning shots of some of these buildings are hard to come by. Heavily corrected converging verticals were quite obvious – and most likely will be in my own shots. As the owner of tilt and shift lenses I never travel with one – ever! My knees are already creaking from the weight of the bag.
This one's actually a digitally-stitched panorama from two shots on my Mamiya C220.
It's an old power station being overtaken by vines.
This was my first (and long awaited) shoot with the lovely, leggy, and incredibly awesome Stasia. She was definitely worth the wait. In a 1:1 shoot I usually estimate about one hour. With Stasia it pushed closer to three, and we still didn't get everything done that we wanted. She is a complete model - prompt, respectful, adventurous, gorgeous, and just plain fun to be around.
We already have more plans for the future - I can't wait! We did this shoot in mid-October at the campus of a local business. Praise be to the photography gods for giving us such a great day (and model) to shoot with!
This is a five minute exposure with coloured gel flash. This has had virtually no photoshop editing, the image is of an abaandoned factory building.
This tree is in my neighbor Alan's back yard.. I thought it was a crabapple but was informed that it was a Japanese Pear... My KaCey would get the dead fall and chew on them and carry them all over the yard...
This the first color negative film made with my Praktica VLC3 and its normal Pentacon electric Multi-Coated 1:1.8 f=50 mm.
After almost one year of complete shortage of Fuji C200 films (made in Japan) in France, we saw recently arriving the "Fujicolor 200" made in USA. This film, although branded Fujifilm, is given with exactly the same technical data as the Kodak Gold 200... The data printed on the film sides are also similar to Kodak ones. The real interest of the film was a price around 7 €, while it is pretty easy to find a Gold 200 at 16 €. The film market is clearly unstable as the rest of the world economy!
The 36-exposure film was exposed for 200 ISO following the readings of the Praktica camera or a Minolta Autometer III fitted with a 10° finder privileging the shadow zones. I had to wait about 10 days after the film exposure because my local lab service out of C-41 chemicals also difficult to deliver...
Place du Lieutenant Morel, September 17, 2022
69001 Lyon
France
After process, the film was digitalized using a Sony A7 body and a Minolta Slide Duplicator with a Minolta Auto Bellows III with a lens Minolta Bellow Macro Rokkor 50mm f/3.5.
About the camera :
The Praktica VLC is of the 3rd generation (VLC3, 1978-1981) and was manufactured by "VEB Pentacon" (formally Zeiss-Ikon) in Dresden, Germany. It came with orignal Pentacon accessories including, a shade hood for its normal lens Pentacon "electric Multi-coated" 1:1,8 f=50mm, a waist finder, a straight magnification finder, and the regular pentaprism. There are also 6 different focusing screens, the Pentacon hot shoe for a flash, lens and body caps, and a Praktica ever-ready case.
The camera has a CdS photometric circuitry powered by an unusual 4.5V battery that I replaced by a set of 3 LR44 alkaline batteries in series. As the ASAHI PENTAX Spomatic SP, the bridge circuit is insensitive to the voltage difference. To be independent of the finders, the cell is functioning behind the mirror as in the Topcon Super D or the Miranda Auto Sensorex EE.
This Praktica operates at full aperture using an electrical transmission of the aperture using 3 contacts on the M42 lens mount. It could however operates any non electric M42 lenses at real aperture too by acting on the rotary switch at the top left. As for the other Praktica of the L series the shutter is made of vertical steel curtains making the X-flash synchro at about 1/125 s.
Overall Pentacon produced 85 000 Praktica VLC between 1974 and 1981 among about 3 millions of Praktica "L" (LLC MTL TL L etc).
This first dragonfly shot of the year is of a new dragonfly for me. It appears to be either a Midland Clubtail, or a Plains Clubtail. If anyone has a better ID, let me know.
Shot this one near the owl canyon parking lot at Starved Rock State Park a few weeks ago. It was later in the morning, and the light was pretty harsh, so I used a diffuser to soften the sun's light on the dragonfly.
this is not my work...I am just a photographer taking hdr graff pictures.
LEGAL DISCLAIMER: I Do Not Condone Any Acts Of Vandalism Nor Do I Participate In Such Criminal Activity. I Am Simply An Observant and Take Photos Of This Graffiti You Have Come Across. ALSO I Will Not Condone Any Usage Of My Photos To Support Any Legal Matter Involving These Acts Of Vandalism Therefore YOU ARE NOT WELCOME TO VIEW OR TAKE THIS MATERIAL For ANY Purpose...