Vancouver 2010
Nate and 
helloheather and I have been having fun in the evenings watching the Olympics coverage.
I was catching up on my RSS feeds and came across this "Big Picture" post from Boston.com
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/02/vancouver_2010_part_1_of_2.html
Absolutely stunning images.
familial update
We received very little of the big snow fall that came through the Chicago area. In part because a lot of it was due to lake effect and in part because the storm seems to have tracked further south. But even so, people on the south side of Crystal Lake got more snow than we did, so we must have been right on the edge of a snowy band.
Nate went through a growth spurt not too long ago, where he grew over an inch in just 2.5 weeks. He was hungry all the time (no wonder) but now the appetite is more normal, so I think things have slowed.
I made a ha-ha-lame joke last night about how it's better to be European than Europoopin' and then had to explain the joke to Nate. He loved it and I'm just such a great dad, right? (You should have seen the look helloheather gave me...)
Nate's time at his new preschool seems to be going very well. A small class of kids more his age was definitely a good change. Our school-art-on-display collection is growing again, which I love. Having stuff on the cabinets, doors, etc. is so cool. When helloheather cleaned house (we had completely run out of space to display stuff) it felt so empty and naked in the kitchen.
Child number two is rapidly approaching his or her birthday. We've changed doctors (yes, somewhat late in the game) but we're both very glad we have. The previous practice was not being supportive or informative. The new doctor also delivers at the hospital 5 minutes from our house rather than the one 25 minutes away. An added bonus.
My parents (and paternal grandfather) felt the 3.8 earthquake we had in northern Illinois on February 10th. They were only 5 miles away from the epicenter though. People as far away as Madison, WI felt the quake actually, but neither helloheather or I woke up.
We did have an addition to our family, photographically speaking, at Christmas. Thanks to a generous gift, we're now the owners of a Canon T1i Digital Rebel. It's a very good upgrade to the Rebel XT that we've been using since 2006. The auto-focus is faster, the ISO range expanded, a bigger and brighter viewfinder, the shutter is quieter, and it has a big and detailed LCD. Exciting stuff.
Gallery software upgrade
Though we've not really been using it that much over the past year, I finally decided it was time to upgrade our online photo gallery software.
http://bernhard.us/photos/main.php
The previous version of the software was not tied to a database and had almost zero anti-spam tools. It was something of a mess.
The new version is much easier to manage, seems to be faster, and certainly offers more features. It took a while for me to migrate everything over from the old gallery install but I believe I've done it without losing anything. I've even managed to figure out how to get redirects to work so all the old url's automatically forward to the correct album in the new install.
Now, I just need to get back into the habit of uploading albums starting with the backlog of family photos. That task is only slightly daunting.
Chicago Photography Project – 4 years
Well, I'm nearly two months late in celebrating this, but at least I'm recognizing it in 2009!
October 26th was the 4th anniversary of my lunch hour photography/exercise project. Not much has changed since last year. The map has grown only slightly, as I increasingly have to rely on either the El or the bus system to get me to unexplored locations.
I continue to submit photos to Chicago Public Radio and to Gapers Block for inclusion on their respective websites. Some I've been very happy with have made it, which is encouraging.
As with previous updates, no photobook is yet forthcoming. I find it increasingly difficult to come to any sort of definitive "theme" that would work well in a book. My latest thought was perhaps I simply select photos based on cardinal directions. There are just so many photos to go through...so many that I think are great but probably, as they say, won't play in Peoria. So, I continue to mull...
With respect to the walks, I'm certainly still getting in quite a few every week. I have been able to clock in some rather long treks (anything over 3 miles is pretty good in my book) in an hour to slightly-more-than-an-hour time period. Good stuff. My plan to do a half-day trip with swanksalot to visit Hot Doug's was thwarted by both weather and schedules. But mark my word, it will happen in 2010! 
Into The Night
Check out this great time-lapsed video of Chicago along Lake Shore Drive.
Into the Night from kris.wm on Vimeo.
Another hit to (our) film photography
Whenever I shot film (which was quite a bit this summer, at least a dozen rolls) I would use our local Target store for developing. Their next-day service: develop the film and scan the negatives to CD all for about $3.70 including tax. This was great and let me populate my photoblog with some nice photos.
Recently I've given Nate one of my film cameras, an Olympic Stylus Epic, and set him up with a couple of rolls of black and white film. He's prefectly happy to just press and press and press the shutter button photographing nothing or photographing us. He was having a ton of fun and I was planning on freeing up some space in my film/beer storage fridge.
This weekend helloheather went to Target to shop and to drop off his first roll of Ilford XP2 only to discover that our Target store is no longer developing film. Now they only have a send out service and it takes 7-10 days. My experience with send-out services has been...less than pleasant. I'm expecting the scans to be pretty bad. I'm expecting the negatives to look like they've been walked over by a dozen people.
For better or worse, the world of film is certainly not doing well... I enjoyed using it this summer as it, once again, forced me to slow down a bit and consider the shot. It helped too that I was limiting myself to a single focal length (50mm). I enjoyed the color palette I was getting from (expired) Kodak UC 400. And yeah, I cleared out a little more space in that fridge. But I especially enjoyed the 1-day turn-around CD's for so little money at a location that was right on my route home from the train.
I guess if we want to shoot any more film we're going to have to go just a little bit further and pay a little bit more.
11 years
If for no other reason than for me to try and gain momentum on posting to the blog, I present:
I managed to catch my odometer rolling over 111111.1 miles. My Chevy Cavalier has been with me since Easter before graduating college. I put quite a few miles on it those first couple years (trips out east, down to the Carolina's, back and forth between Indy and Crystal Lake) but a majority of its life has been quite mundane: It travels between home and the train station and around town.
change
Film making is changing. This is no secret. But the acceleration of this change is rather profound.
Footage shot with 3 cameras: Red One, Canon 5D Mark II, and the Panasonic GH1. The latter is ~$1500 US with kit lens.
Amazing. Certainly worth watching large and in HD on Vimeo.com (click the link below the embedded file)
random webness
Photographer Mike Stimpson re-creates famous photos in Lego
A few minutes at Kuroshio Aquarium in Japan. Shot in HD with a Digital SLR (Canon 5D Mark II). Click though to Vimeo to see it in HD.
Kuroshio Sea - 2nd largest aquarium tank in the world - (song is Please don't go by Barcelona) from Jon Rawlinson on Vimeo.
edit: links fixed.
78 rules of photography
Ivars Gravlejs wrote up, and gave examples of, 78 right and wrong ways to shoot a photo.
http://gawno.com/2009/05/78-photography-rules/
For example:
When you take a picture of a sausage, try to use a diagonal composition. It is important to show the cut which is made in 45 degree angle.
compromises and photography
Photography is always about compromises. Trade-off's such as image quality vs cost vs operational speed vs weight vs size vs etc... are always taking place.
I like our digital point and shoot, especially the rotating screen. It can travel all over with us, uses AA-sized batteries, and has lots of manual control But, because of its design, it's not able to produce the images that I really want to produce right now: those with shallow depth of field.
I want images where the subject is clearly separated from the background and with a digital point and shoot, due to its small sensor and the subsequent wide angle lens (not to be confused with field of view) this is rarely possible (unless the subject is very close to the lens and the background is very far away).
The above is an example of what shallow depth of field can do for a subject. Had I shot this with the point and shoot, everything in the background would have been far more in focus and very distracting.
In the world of photography though, a digital point and shoot that can do this is as rare. And to do so with little expense is non-existent. In part, the lack of such a camera has been with physics. Until someone invents silicone (or a different type of sensor) that can flex and bend, light incident to the sensor needs to be as perpendicular as possible (or exotic designs like off-set micro-lenses above the sensors need to be employed which drives the costs way up). When using a large sensor you also need to use larger lenses (compromising on camera size) or with lenses that have smaller base apertures (compromising on functionality).
The other problem, of course, is that such a camera, even when made, is a boutique item. 99% of consumers couldn't care less about DoF (in fact, shallow DoF runs contrary to the entire direction of the point and shoot market of the past 25 years). So such a camera is immediately more expensive.
To date, only two companies have tried to go after this market:
Sigma released, first, the DP1 and recently the DP2. The DP1 had, by all reports, a stellar lens (albeit at a fixed 24mm-equiv wide) but that the operation was rather slow. The DP2 (I've yet to see a review) has a better field of view for my needs (40mm equiv, still fixed focal length) and may or may not be as slow. This may be fine for some people (and may be fine for me even) but there's nowhere for me to test such a camera and at $550 for the DP1 and $650 for the DP2 I will not be buying one.
Olympus and Panasonic announced (last year)the development of a format called "Micro 4/3rds." It was a rather exciting move as the removal of the mirror box could greatly reduce the size of the camera and yet it could still use interchangeable lenses. [Indeed the shortened registration between mount and sensor has allowed many, many other types of lenses to be adapted to be used on these cameras.] Panasonic released the G1 and most recently the GH1 (expected in June) that are essentially mini-SLR looking cameras. (Olympus has yet to release a product.) While that is fine (they are quite small and handy), the cost of these cameras is really amazing: $700 for the G1 and $1500 (estimated) for the GH1!
Clearly these are not cameras that are built-for or priced-for the consumer. So, for me, for the foreseeable future, if I want a digital camera I can stick in my jacket pocket, I'll be (happily, to be sure) shooting with our A650 and simply dreaming of a day when a point and shoot built just for me comes out.
13 Wolf and Ritz stores closing in IL
I missed this recent announcement, but Wolf/Ritz announced which 300 of their stores they're going to close.
http://lnk.nu/businesswire.com/udl/
13 in Illinois are going away, though it's odd as the one next to where I were I work is not mentioned and has been closed for a couple of weeks.
Link to the PDF from businesswire.com is here.
I'm glad to see that the one in Crystal Lake, where we have all of our prints done, is not on the list. They have a knowledgeable staff and have always been accommodating. It would be a shame to lose them.
reconstituted
Thanks to efforts by moonwick the missing images from cetan.org have been restored and the blog is complete again.
From the first image to today's.
It feels good to be fully restored.
As an aside, when I restored the software portion of the site, I enabled some extra features I had not been using. Specifically, the "Archive" page now shows only 25 images at a time and allows you to scroll backwards a page at a time. Previously it was loading all the thumbnails on one page, which was really annoying. You can also browse by various categories and by month (again at 25 images-per page). Check it out by clicking on "Archive." The category options are currently at the bottom of the page.
carrying that camera
Here's a rather clever idea:
http://www.blackrapid.com/video/intro.php
I've been carrying around a SLR a lot during my lunch hour walks and have had some concerns with both stability and security. In fact, the other day the strap slipped off my shoulder without me even noticing. The only thing that saved the camera from hitting the ground was that it fell onto the top of my work bag (which is flat and flexible) which was also over my shoulder at the time.
I don't really like carrying the camera around my neck either for two reasons. First, it usually ends up rubbing a raw spot and second, it's difficult to walk without the camera either bouncing around or swinging out into something when I bend over. Even over the shoulder this happens (as demonstrated this weekend when, in an attempt to keep Nate from being close-lined by a dog lease, I ended up clunking him in the head with my camera.)
Using a standard strap across the chest is very unwieldy but is my current solution. It just takes a little bit longer to get set up for a shot (which is fine for 99% of my subject). I just like knowing there's a better way (albeit a $50 one).