Corporate Green Space
The Quaker Oats company has a roof-top garden area on top of part of their building here in Chicago. It's only the second floor but it's open to the public and is a nice space. They didn't have to open it to the public, but they did.
They didn't have to hire a reggae band, but today they did.
They didn't have to provide free ice cream, but today they did.
It was mostly Quaker Oats employees there but there were others, such as my self, who just wandered over and were happy to find live music.
It's a little thing, it's not some big PR thing. There were not thousands of people there; there was no "sponsored by the Quaker Oats company" signs or flyers or anything. It wasn't even publicized (that I saw; maybe I missed it). A little corporate "here, have a nice lunch" to their employees that took place in a place they own but allow the public to use.
This is not something I could ever see my company doing. Since I started in 1999, the corporate culture has changed here dramatically. Fun is out; good will is out. Do your job, be thankful you have it, and don't make waves, replaced it. My company would never own green space let alone provide the public access to it.
So, cudos to the Quaker Oats company for providing me with a decent spot to eat my lunch. The music was a very nice bonus.
little one
Be my friend
Hold me, wrap me up
Unfold me
I am small
I'm needy
Warm me up
And breathe me
Sia, "Breathe Me" - 2004
Catching Up – Wisconsin Weekend Photos
The photos have been up for a while, but never captioned.
2 seconds less
A happy (belated) Summer Solstice to everyone. The day started out cloudy and rainy but ended cloud-free with a gloriously orange and pink sunset.
helloheather and I sat outside on our patio, drinking water and relaxing, until the bugs found us.
Today will be a few seconds shorter than yesterday and tomorrow a few seconds shorter than today and on and on. It's strange to think that the start of summer is really the beginning of the decline of available light. This season is, in some ways, defined by memories of long summer evenings, where the sun seemed to hover above the horizon for hours. Our preceptions of time can change so radically as we age.
Happy Summer everyone. I hope it's a good one.
Picasa Web Gallery
Google was kind enough to give me an account on the new Picasa Web Gallery (a Flickr-type solution) and so I decided to try it out:
http://picasaweb.google.com/rbernhard/
I've only created one album so far, but as a part of my test, I'll probably create another one.
It's an interesting product for a Beta. Its integration with Picasa is fairly complete but could use some tweaking. Right now there's a 250MB storage limit on free accounts but for $25/year you get 6GB of storage.
edit/update:
Apparently you can't hotlink to Picasa Web images. I did not realize that.
The danger of information
All I want to be able to do is to take good photos of my newborn child. That's all.
Really, really, good photos.
The kind I'm not realistically going to be able to take because I lack experience, understanding, and skill. But that's another issue...
My brain, however, has chosen to manifest this desire (and fear) in another, altogether more predictable, way: "I need better camera equipment."
And so last night, I tried my hand at a lens test. I took the 50mm f/1.8 (the lens I'm planning on having at the hospital) and turned on Mirror Lock-Up, set it on a tripod, and took a dozen pictures of the back of my house (decreasing the aperture with each shot). Why? To test lens sharpness.
See, this lens took a bit of a tumble when helloheather and I were in the Grand Tetons. I left the camera bag open and when we took it out of the car, this lens fell from the bag onto the parking lot. The filter I had placed on the front shattered, but the lens seemed to have survived.
Then the other day I took some pictures in the back yard and noticed some serious problems with the corners of the images: soft and blurry. Now, at full aperture (f/1.8) I cannot expect this lens to perform like its $350 counter-part, the 50mm f/1.4. (This is a $75 lens, albeit a much heralded one for its low cost vs speed and sharpness.)
So, I was concerned that, in reality, there had been some damage to the lens. I don't normally shoot at f/1.8 but I was planning on needing this aperture in the low indoor light of the hospital. It's not like I can bring in flood lamps, reflectors, and 4 or 5 flash units (right? right?) in order to shoot at f/8...
However, here's where we start seeing the effects of too much information. First, am I performing the test properly? Are the problems I see in the test images a result of damage to the lens or are they being introduced through some fault of my testing procedure? Second, is there any benefit to looking at 100% zoom views of images? What does that really tell me about my lens? Should I print the least sharp and most sharp of the test images at various sizes to see more "true" results?
Has my pixel-peeping simply set me up to be disappointed? Would I have been better with film where I wouldn't see any corner sharpness problems until I printed an 11x17 image?
Or should I try really hard to ignore the whole thing and just take pictures?
Solaris
I recently watched Steven Soderberg's remake of the 1972 Russian film "Solyaris" which itself is an adaptation of Stanislaw Lem's novel of the same name. (And, as usual, as soon as I find out about an interesting author, I also find out he or she has recently passed away. In this case, Lem died March 27th, 2006)
Andre Tarkovsky's original film is said to be a stunning masterpiece of a movie. I've not yet seen it, but it must be something because Soderberg's version is really quite amazing. Essentially there are 5 people in the entire film. Very little is said, but there is a lot of emotion. Many questions are asked and left unanswered and time flows in mysterious ways. Voiceovers do not always match the scenes being show which, for this film, is a really good effect. It's a very slow paced film, but so full of tension that there's really no other way this would have worked.
And to top it all off, Cliff Martinez' score for the film is powerful. It's almost another character in the film.
The movie I watched right after this was the low-rated "Red Planet" (Carrie-Anne Moss, Val Kilmer). Certainly not high-art, simply a bit of entertainment fodder. But I was rather surprised at how "Solaris" threw its short-comings into such sharp relief. "Solaris" forced me to focus on the film, on the characters, and on the story. But watching "Red Planet" I could drift in and out without really caring. (Indeed, I finished watching the movie while assembling the crib.)
Anyway, go rent "Solaris."
Three
And so we find ourselves at the third anniversary. In some ways these three years have gone too quickly and in other ways I'm amazed at what we have accomplished and where we have gone. A house sold, a house purchased, a baby grown, adventures from the cool of the Pacific NW to the heat of Miami...
It's sort of mind-boggling actually. A lot has changed in three years. I'm very blessed to have found someone to share with me these and many, many more experiences.
Sony releases its first DSLR
Sony has officially released specs on it's new Digital SLR. Having purchased the rights to the Konica-Minolta system last year, Sony's entry into the market has been highly anticipated.
http://lnk.nu/sonystyle.com/9sh
As suspected, Sony is not going after the professional market, at least not right off the bat. Their first camera, the Alpha ( α ) A100, is directed right at the consumer market. The same space currently occupied by the Canon 350D and 30D, the Nikon D50 and D70s, the Pentax K100 and K110, and the Olympus E-330 and E-500. At $1000 for the body plus a kit lens, it is more expensive than the low-end from other manufacturers, but then again, when have you ever seen a Sony product at or below market prices?
While this may seem like a crowded market already, I'm pretty sure that Sony will make decent money with their camera. First, because Konica-Minolta lens owners will have an upgrade path from either their film SLRs or their KM DSLRs. Second, because Sony went with a 10MP sensor they are playing the MegaPixel game for digital point and shoot owners wanting to move into the world of the SLR. Nikon and Pentax offer 6MP models where Olympus and Canon offer 8MP models. By offering a camera with a 10MP sensor the "bigger number must be better" crowd will certainly be satisfied.
But really, the neat stuff is this:
1) Sony is using the "anti-shake" or image stabilization technology it purchased from KM. This involves moving the sensor inside the body to compensate for camera movements. It also means that every lens you own or buy, from the oldest to the newest, "becomes" an image stabilized lens. And while not as effective as floating lens elements within the lens itself, it's certainly a wonderful option.
2) Prior to this Sony DSLR, no other camera company offered what Olympus has offered for keeping the sensor clean. Dust is a problem with the DSLR. Dust sitting on top of the sensor (or really, on top of the glass layer that's bonded to the top of the sensor) can cause dark spots on your images. Image sensors need to be cleaned and only Olympus was able to patent a solution: vibrate the sensor at very high frequency and shake the dust off. A very neat idea and one that seems to work very well. Now, I don't know if Sony licensed this technology from Olympus (I don't see Olympus doing this for fear of losing market share) or if they've developed something that skirts the existing patents on sensor cleaning. Regardless, this is something that /every/ camera manufacturer should offer. Manually cleaning the sensor, as I've found out, is a pain and is fraught with potential disaster.
So, Sony's now in the market and hopefully with long-term goals in mind. While I'm certainly not going to be switching away from Canon, I'm glad to see more competition which will hopefully mean more innovation on the part of other manufacturers.
edit/update: http://www.dpreview.com/articles/sonydslra100/ dpreview.com has a hands-on preview of the camera.
MAM
The Milwaukee Art Museum, designed by Santiago Calatrava is an amazing space. The intersection of curves and straight lines, the light, the starkness of the white and the cool of the blue sky - it works very very well together.
The above shot was deliberately over-exposed to achieve a "high-key" effect. I did this with the desire to focus, less on the contrast that results in the noon-day sun streaming through the windows, and more on the shape and form of the building. The people put some perspective on the size of the space and their colored shirts really enhance the high-key nature of the image.
uneasy happiness
Every spring I get an uneasy feeling that I'm missing something, or have left something behind. What is it? My coat.
Transitioning from heavy winter coats to lighter jackets is fairly easy, because I still feel a weight on my person. But the change from jacket to no-jacket often leaves me feeling uneasy. I feel like I'm forgetting something or that I've missed some sort of deadline.
I'm not "complaining" mind you, I love spring and the pleasant tempertures and rain/storms it usually brings, but it is something I notice.