Graveyard

Had the distinct pleasure of being invited to visit a motorcycle graveyard this weekend for a photography shoot. I spent many hours there, shooting both in digital and medium format B/W (with my trusty Yashica A) and wished I could have stayed for many more.

I am currently in the process of selecting the best pictures for show, but for starters, here is one of my favourites.

Seasons

I'm learning photography in a more formal structured way. I first picked up a camera when I was a building inspector, to document the things I saw. It just a functional tool, used as needed. When I left that field, I gave away the camera, or sold it, I don't remember.

Picking it back up again to use as an artistic medium, I have kept most of the things I've made with it, if for no other reason than to show the progress I've made from the early days.

Never one for cold weather, I am looking forward to Spring, when it will be warm enough to venture out and photograph the awakening of Nature. So there will be more pictures forthcoming.

Stay tuned!

Movies

I saw a few movies the other day. Movies, as opposed to "films". The word "film" conjures (to my mind anyway) up facy arty french things. Movies, on the other hand, are less pretentious.

Semantics aside, the movies were Outpost and Night Junkies. Outpost was about the ghosts of german soldiers defending their home, and Night Junkies was a vampire love story.

Outpost was one of those movies where the description on the back of the box didn't have anything to do with the movie inside. It was a fantastic film and anyone into ghost stories needs to see this. It's British, and very well done. The use of lighting and colours was exceptional.

Night Junkies (also British), I was not prepared for. Yes it's a vampire flick, and once again a writer has attempted to redefine what a vampire is. The results are actually very good, and it was a very sad film. Vampires are monsters. They are not trendy forever-young anti-heros bemoaning the loss of their humanity. They are monsters, terrifying and inhuman. The movie portrayed two lovers and their attempts to fit back into society. The results are predictable, but at the end of the film, I was left with a great sadness. Like a slow-motion train wreck, you know where it's going to end up, yet you can't turn away. Well worth checking out.

Photography

Well here is another picture. This one has been edited, using a dynamic range tonality package. Basically, you take multiple pics of the same subject, using differing f.stops, and the software integrates all the tonal ranges, resulting in deep, rich pictures. That's the theory anyway.

I'm of two minds regarding "photo-manipulation." On one hand, I think it's cheating. You are not showing what you see, but rather what you wish to see. That falls dangerously close to painting, and not photography, in my book. The whole point of photography, in my point of view, is to capture the beauty of the surroundings. If we start "adjusting" the pics, then it's not really what was there now is it?

On the other hand (besides having different fingers) it is a way to being artistic. In other words, starting with a blank canvas (the picture) and creating spark, flare, richness (the end result.)

As a result of my internal struggle between the purist in me and the artist in me, I'm making adjustments, but slowly and slightly.

Work

So I have a telephone interview set up with Northrop Grumman for sysadmin work. Supposedly the interview process is three phases. The first phase is the telephone interview with one or more people. I have no idea who these people are, they could be the janitors for all I know. Well the interview starts off pleasantly enoough with a fellow, who asks me some general info. He then introduces me to the other person there, a ladt and I gather, his boss, or at least his superior. That's when the interview went straight to hell. She was seven layers of hacked off that my resume wasn't customized for the position. I don't know about you, but tailoring a resume to fit a particular job, I find to be cheating. She spent the entire hour on the phone berating me for this oversight.

A day or so later I bring this issue up with a friend of mine who works there. He spent way too much time telling me how the hiring process goes, and that tailoring your resume is not only par for the course, but expected, and the reason the woman was so pissed is that the HR monkey who had fouond my resume had immediately set up the interview, without telling me what was expected. So basically, the woman had wasted an hour of her vaulable time talking to some unprepared idiot.

As it so happens, I would have been a pretty good fit for the job, but if I have to jump through such odd hoops, I'll pass. There are advantages to working for small companies after all.

Dreams

I admit, my dreams are pretty weird. Not weird in a "I dreamt I went to work in a dress" kind of way, but more like "I dreamt a zombie holocaust occured and all I had to fight them with were live chickens."

So the other night, I dreamt I was going to play miniature golf and ended up in a professional golf tournament with Fred Couples. For the record, I don't golf and don't event like golf. But more than just that, Fred was totally crazy. He'd tee off as normal, but as the golf ball landed on the putting green and near the hole, he'd remove his clothes, lay down on the green, and try and visualize how the ball might like to be. Then he'd balance a hard-boiled egg (minus the shell) on top of the ball, watch which way it fell off, and this somehow determined which club he should use to sink the ball.

Then the dream got weird. I've never met Fred Couples before, and should he ever read this comment, I hope he doesn't take it the wrong way. Nonetheless, his golf game did improve, and should he decide to use the knowledge he has gleaned from here, I wish him the best.

Spam

So sometime last night, I finished by brief comments on orchids. About fifteen minutes later, I get an e.mail stating someone has commented on it.

"That's odd", I thought to myself, I didn't figure I'd already have a fanbase so soon. Well, I had enabled comments by anyone, for guests and whatnot, but I did enable moderation (wish to keep this page family friendly) and low and behold, it's an auto-generated spam comment.

Well, at least the spambots have found me. For the time being I'll leave the open comment system in place, but with moderation, and we'll see how this works out. If too much time is taken up deleting the spam, I may just kill it entirely. Stay tuned...

Orchids

Absolutely stunning plants. Can't decide if they are as fragile as they are beautiful or not. Some even smell like chocolate. I want a room full of them, but knowing my luck with plants, they'll be dead inside of a day.

Drivers

Okay, so in any big city you are going to have a fair share of bad drivers. This I understand. But bleedin' heck, why do they all have to hit me?

I came this > < close today to getting hit by another one. I have the right of way, heck, it's a two lane (each way), treeless, so it's not like your vision is obscured, road. Bright sunny day. My car is electric blue, damned difficult to miss. And yet somehow....

..good thing the brakes are oversized. But of course, with the current laws of motion and force, all the stuff in my passenger's seat (including my newly acquired and already beloved Yashica-A TLR) goes zipping with much force into the footwell.

Much cursing aside, no damage was done, and the driver did apologize, which was a surprise, but I can't count the number of nice cars I've lost to inattentive drivers.

Well it's supposed to be about photography right?

So, here's one. My city, by night. I like the night photography as it hides the decay. A local car dealer next to where I live specializes in Mercedes Benz, and with all the garish neon he has surrounding his lot, it cheapens the rather nice cars he has. Nonetheless, with a macro lens in use, the neon adds to the picture, rather then detracting from it.

Homage

Or possibly a rip-off. In any case, if you recognize the title of this site, then you'll know what kind of music I like.

They say you only get one chance to make a good first impression, and so I spent far too long deciding what to call this site. And ultimately it probably matters not one bit.

So, welcome and all that. I plan on posting pics here I've taken with very old equipment. For reasons I couldn't go into if I wanted to, I'm a huge fan of old stuff. Whether it's Italian sports cars, or camera gear, I like it. This doesn't hold true, obviously, for computers, but there's an exception to every rule.

Right, enough with the dire thoughts. See ya next time.