Lewis and Clark, I Presume…

After an 80-mile run through the Virgin River Canyon in Arizona and Mesquite, Nevada, we pulled off I-15 at the junction of Route 93 in the Mojave Desert and were standing between the two Road Stars, drinking water and speculating whether the thermometer would climb over 100 as the exhaust pipes crackled, contracting in the relatively cool air.

Tim nodded his head at something behind me as I took another pull at the water bottle. I turned to see a nondescript dun-colored rental car. The car’s driver was saying something to Tim through the open window past his wife in the rider’s seat. I pulled out my right earplug to hear what he was saying.

“Does this 93 go to Arizona?” He said, pointing north up the road.

“No.” Tim said. “That’s 93 North.”

The driver looked confused. His wife said something to him and held out her “smart” phone so he could see it. “Is there another 93?” He asked.

After a couple minutes of stumbling, dead-ending questions and answers, we finally determined that they were on their way to the Grand Canyon in Arizona. The tiny display screens of the wife’s smart phone and his GPS device were doing them little good. The problem was the on-the-map disappearance of Route 93 between Garnet and Henderson, a distance of over forty miles. The tiny display screens of their digital devices only compounded the problem.

I looked at the devices in their hands, then retrieved a paper map of Nevada from my luggage. We showed them where 93 suddenly reappeared on the map at the southern outskirts of Henderson, then ran southeast over the Hoover Dam into Arizona. It was obvious that they were still a little confused. I retrieved a paper map of Arizona and we showed them how Route 93 continues southeast into Arizona to join up with Interstate 40 at Kingman, then where I-40 intersects with the road to the Grand Canyon at Williams.

It took a few moments to assure them that they should take the maps. It was all they needed and we had no particular use for them, though I habitually carry maps of states I might go through on a long ride.

We watched their car make a U-turn toward the onramp of the Interstate.

“Where do you think?”

“Italy, maybe.” Tim said. “Accent sounded Italian.”

After over forty years of (legally) riding motorcycles on the blacktop roads, I’m still amused at how often I’m asked for directions by people in automobiles. It nearly always happens when I’m a few hundred miles from home. Oddly, I’ve always been able to at least point people in the right direction, and usually show them a map.

The photograph at the top of this post is not just trees, rock formations, road, and parked motorcycles. The parked motorcycles also provide the following symbolic information: Motorcyclist(s) nearby. Accurate directions available.

It is an unwritten rule that if you’re lost or unsure how to get to some destination, ask a motorcyclist for directions…

Heat versus Film

On May 19, 2012, Tim Devantier and I rode from Southern California to Cedar City to shoot the Annular Solar Eclipse on the 20th, then rode back home on the 21st. I clocked 1,172 miles (1,886 kilometers) for the entire trip. It wasn’t a particularly long ride at slightly less than 400 miles per day.

Though I took two cameras, a 35mm SLR and a Micro four thirds digital, I didn’t make a lot of photographs. I shot a single 36-frame roll of film when we toured Cedar Breaks National Monument and Zion National Park during the day on the 20th, then 20 frames of film and 30 digital images during the eclipse that evening. Given the beautiful landscapes in Cedar Breaks and Zion, I expected to see vivid color when the film was developed. But sometimes the best laid plans…

Having shot many rolls in the past, I knew what to expect from the Kodak Gold 100 film; well-balanced color, medium saturation (not over-saturated), classic Kodak color. But when I scanned the film I had something quite different, namely flat colors, low contrast, abnormally high grain, and a definite dropout of the reds.

The two versions of one of the negatives is shown below. This frame was captured in Zion National Park. Left: the degraded film. Right: the same frame color corrected to look (+/-) like it should have (the blue sky is a bit oversaturated, however).

I thought about the degradation of the film for a few minutes and came up with a reasonable explanation. I loaded the roll in the camera the night before leaving on the ride. The rest of the film was in a plastic container (shown below) in an insulated lunch bag , along with frozen “blue ice” to keep it cool across the desert.

The camera bags went in the saddlebags. The cameras would be accessible if I needed to catch a photograph on the ride to Utah. The route up Interstate 15 to Cedar City, Utah, 410 miles from my house crosses the Mojave Desert. Though the SLR was stored in a padded camera bag in a (black) saddlebag, and thus relatively safe from vibration and dust, the outside temperature ranged from 45 Fahrenheit (7.2 Celsius) in the Cajon pass in the early morning to just below 100 F (38 C) across the Mojave in the middle of the day. Since the black leather saddlebag absorbed radiant heat during daylight, the temperature of the film could easily have climbed to 120 F (49 C) during the ride.

I did a small amount of online research to verify my conclusion and turned up the following reason for the degradation of my film.

From Kodak: It is recommended that unexposed film be stored at 55 F (13 C) or lower. For long storage, 32 degrees F (0 degrees C) is recommended. The reason for these recommendations is that heat results in in fogging, which lowers the speed of the film, dulls color, flattens contrast, and adds graininess.

The Fix: Rather than pre-load film in my SLR, I should have kept all of my rolls in the cooled container during the ride across the desert, then loaded the camera after arriving in Cedar City. Since I didn’t remove either of the cameras to make a photograph during the initial ride to Utah, it really was pointless to pre-load the film, anyway…

Annular Solar Eclipse

The Annular Solar Eclipse on May 22, 2012, was an occasion for a motorcycle ride.

Tim Devantier and I rode up to Cedar City, Utah the day before the eclipse and took rooms at the Knight’s Inn on Main Street. An article about the ride itself, Utah Ride, will appear in a few days (in the Motorcycle Rides menu) after I have the negatives developed, then scan them.

We scouted the area early in the day for suitable locations to photograph the eclipse, which would occur just before sundown. The map here shows the location where I chose to photograph, near Old Irontown. The red square marks the approximate spot.

As always, click on the thumbnails to view the larger photographs.

I was using my Panasonic Lumix G1 Micro Four Thirds camera and the Tokina 70-210mm manual focus zoom lens from the late 1970s.

In The Wind

I’ll be off the grid until Tuesday, May 22, (2012). I am going to ride the Road Star up to Cedar City, Utah to photograph the annular solar eclipse. Given my photo equipment, my chance of a good photo of the eclipse may be as high as 50%, but an excuse for a long ride is better than none at all.

New Material  In the meantime, if you are looking for new material, check the Motorcycle Rides and Motorcycles and Gear menus.

NOTE: Comments are closed. I’ve been getting hundreds of spam comments for several months and I’m sick of dealing with them. It is beginning to have a negative effect on my attitude. After all, this is not some social forum and this is not f#@king FaceBook. It is just free (copyrighted) content. If you know me and/or have my email address, please feel free to send me any comments you have. I like real comments.

The Content

There is a considerable amount of content on this blog, though like this photograph, it may be a bit hard to see at first glance, particularly when you are viewing a thumbnail. When you view the thumbnail shown here, you can only see the very top “layer” of the story, the basic information; tree, sky, and earth. There may or may not be an object of interest in the shadow of the tree.

When you click on the thumbnail to view the larger photo, the whole story is revealed. The tree is a “shoe tree”. I’ve lived in the southwest for so long that I think of shoe trees as desert phenomena, though they may well exist in other places and climates. I only see them in the deserts, so I think of them as a clue that a photo was made in a desert. The object in the shadows is a motorcycle. The motorcycle is parked in the shade of the tree, a habit of desert dwellers. There are few trees in the background and the minimal vegetation is primarily sunbleached scrub. The photograph was made in the State of Nevada during a multi-day motorcycle ride in August, 2011.

Viewing this blog for the first time is much like viewing the thumbnail photo above. Most of the information is below the surface layer and to get to it requires a bit of navigation. Though I often write about other things, the primary subject areas of this blog are motorcycling and photography. When people search for information on the Web, and a search engine happens to point them here, the search term used usually falls into the motorcycling or photography arenas.

If you navigate to this blog without using a search engine, it is a bit hard to find particular subjects. That is not unusual. Most blogs are organized in a similar manner, so the item you are interested in may well be buried in a post published several years previously.

I’m trying to make it easier to find subject matter, so new posts are currently being published at a slower rate. The material in older posts is being moved into the menu on the left side of the page, so if you are only looking for landscapes or motorcycle rides, and don’t care much about other things, such as the relationship between beer, writing, and UFO sightings, you can find the material on those subjects easier.

It is a slow process. Last month I added material to the galleries. I’m now engaged in moving the majority of the motorcycle rides to the menu. I expect to be done with that subject area in a few weeks. In the meantime, there will be fewer new posts than usual. Please bear with me…

Super Moon

Taking its closest pass to Earth for the year tonight (May 5, 2012), the moon appeared to be 14% bigger and 30% brighter than a normal full moon. It reached its perigree, the closest part of its eliptical orbit relative to Earth at 8:35 pm.

Tim Devantier phoned to tell me about the Super Moon around 6:00 pm. I hadn’t heard about it. We quickly decided to meet at 7:30, then ride up to Anza Narrows Park and set up the cameras and tripods. The photograph above was taken with the Lumix G1 and the 14-45mm kit lens. Note the reddish tint.

I also took the Nikon N90s/Tokina 70-210mm manual lens and shot a roll of 36 frame color film with that outfit. When that roll is developed and if a frame or two turn out good, I’ll add them to this post in a couple days. I wanted to use the Tokina as a “test” of the accuracy of the infinity focus, since I intend to shoot the annular eclipse with that combination of equipment on the evening of May 20.

After returning home, I walked back outside to look at the moon, and decided to try the Tokina lens with the aid of the Fotodiox Nikon-m4/3 adapter. The photograph shown here was shot with the Tokina mounted on the Lumix G1. Higher in the sky, the view of the moon had taken on a golden tint.

Restructuring

It is a bit hard to see, but behind the scenes here, there is some restructuring in progress. After adding a couple rides to the Motorcycle Rides page recently, I began re-thinking the structure of that page.

The “old” page was a list of brief ride descriptions and links to posts about the rides themselves. It was somewhat cumbersome, requiring additional navigating to view the ride posts. Also cumbersome was the alternative method to view ride posts, that of using the Search function, since that also required some unnecessary navigating. The rides were not easy to get to using either method; the Menu or search function.

It seemed to me that it could be easier to get to those pages, so I began turning the many posts about particular rides and destinations into individual pages that could be quickly accessed directly from the menu. It will likely take me two to four weeks to move all of the existing ride posts over to that menu. I’ve been refining, consolidating, and rewriting many of the posts. In some cases, I’ve added or deleted photos. There is little point in retaining the old posts, since they are hard to find in the archives. After moving the posts to the menu, I’ve been deleting them.

The majority of the rides are in Southern California. Others are of roads and destinations in the American West. I’d like the Motorcycle Rides menu to eventually be a good resource for motorcyclists in the southwest, or for people planning to visit the area, rent a Harley or BMW, and do a little touring.

Though I have hundreds of photographs taken in my favorite mountain area, the San Jacinto Mountains, there are certain gaps that I need to fill to write a good description of riding there. This morning I will fire up the V-Twin and point the front end toward the east, with the idea of making the photos I need to fill those gaps (how is that for an excuse for a ride?).

Mixed Message

This is about the power of a photograph. It is also about the ineptitude of mass media.

Apparently, one cannot completely unsubscribe from The Press-Enterprize, the local newspaper. We canceled our subscription to the paper a couple years ago when a sudden, unjustified rate hike was sprung on subscribers. Our decision to cancel was also influenced by the fact that my wife and I read our news online. Despite our cancellation, we still get a weekly “supplement”. It arrives on our driveway unsolicited. Half of the time I throw it in the recycling bin. The other half of the time I toss it onto the table on the patio, then read it when I’m between books, movies, and blog posts. It could be more useful than it is to me, but I never wrap fish or line the bottom of bird cages, and it has been many decades since I had an urge to create anything out of papier-mache.

However, it is an occasional source of amusement, so I don’t throw the “free” paper in the recycling bin all of the time. For an example of occasional amusement, see Time Travel Compensation.

The latest issue of the “free” weekly paper displayed this article on the front page. It was hard to miss, because of the strong photograph. The article exhibited a clear disconnect between the photograph and the story.

The story was about the local (Inland Empire) education systems patting themselves on the back for a recent decline in teenage pregnancies in the area, due to their efforts aimed at contraception education, etc. That the decline in teenage pregnancy is directly related to recent local education efforts seems quite plausible, though it is only an assumption. Educators like to congratulate themselves. They have to.

The photograph is about the immeasurable joys of parenthood. It is so much stronger than the story it was (apparently intended) to illustrate. It conflicts with the story and effectively cancels it out, if not overrides it. In the end, the message is about the joys of parenthood.

What was the staff at the newspaper thinking? Were they thinking?

Holy Crap, Kodak!

Somewhere deep in the bowels of my “filing system” is an invoice for ten rolls of 35mm color film and two rolls of Kodak BW400CN. The invoice date was some time in March, 2012, less than two months ago. The price of the BW400CN hovered around $5 per 36-frame roll. At least I remembered it as $5, so it was likely within pennies of that price.

I occasionally use that film when I want to shoot black and white. Except for the image above, the photographs in this post were shot with the BW400CN, then scanned to produce digital images.

Though I know that Ilford also makes a similar film, XP-2 Super, I’ve never tried it. The Kodak was always cheaper and the reviews I’ve turned up indicated that the two films were probably close to equal in quality, but the Ilford XP-2 was $6.09 per 36-frame roll for some time, so I just kept buying the Kodak.

Chromogenic black and white film such as the BW400CN and XP-2 Super is developed using the C-41 color film process, so it is relatively convenient to have it developed by a “one hour” photo lab, once one finds one that can be trusted. That is a lot easier than sending film out to a professional lab, and there is no extra time needed for the postal service to ship it to and from a lab.

I could develop my negatives at home. The cost would be minimal after buying the necessary equipment. Since I typically just scan the negatives to get digital files for the Web and don’t often get prints made, I wouldn’t have to invest in an entire darkroom. But I don’t want to invest the time and I don’t want to worry about how to get rid of the spent chemicals.

I’ve occasionally toyed with the idea of shooting a couple rolls of the Ilford XP-2, but always got “cheap” (I prefer to think of it as “thrifty”) when it came time to order more film.

Earlier today I was looking at film prices on my favored supplier’s Website, and for a half-second I thought that my vision had gone south on me when I happened to look at the price of the BW400CN, which is now $6.95 per 36-frame roll! WTF?

Yes, I know that Kodak has had some problems recently. Well actually, for decades. The bottom line is that all of Kodak’s problems are the result of bad management. Here is yet another example of that continuing bad management. Since the XP-2 and the BW400CN are apparently as close to equal as it gets, my days of buying the Kodak flavor of chromogenic black and white are over. My film-buying decision might have a different outcome if the Kodak was vastly superior, but everything I’ve read indicates that it is not. I will test out the Ilford, and if I’m wrong about this, I will report back on it.

I swiftly checked the price of the color print film I’ve been using lately, the Kodak Gold 100. That price is unchanged. Today, anyway. Maybe I should quickly order a hundred roll box…

Links to the following articles on the Kodak price hikes are provided for your exasperation and amusement. From the British Journal of Photography. Kodak Screws the Film Community.

Why We Ride: Preparing For Palomar

Though I took Monday off to celebrate Lisa’s birthday in Palm Springs, and my workweek only spanned 4 days, it was an inordinately long one. The event that elongated it was my discovery that the “master” information that I had been given at the beginning of the project when the month began was wrong. I spent four days adjusting to the differences between the disinformation I had originally been supplied with and the real “master” information. The ground kept shifting under my feet all week. It was a extended struggle to avoid falling over. It was quite unlike the first project I did for this client. Exhausting. In contrast, the first project had very clear, very accurate information to work from and that information did not change throughout the course of the project.

After a few days of that, I’m more than ready to get away and indulge in a favored form of meditation, riding my motorcycle somewhere other than through a city. Luckily, there is a plan to take care of the annoyances and exigencies of the past few days. Tomorrow morning Tim Devantier and I will get on our respective Road Stars, meet at a local fueling station, then head toward Mount Palomar.

The last time I rode up Mount Palomar was with my riding group three years ago. There was still snow on the ground that spring day and the other guys were not particularly amused by the time we reached the summit. There was a lot of talk about how cold it was when we stopped in the parking lot of the Palomar Observatory. Since I had my electric glove liners on, it seemed like a pleasant enough ride to me…

This time, the forecast indicates temperatures in the 80s, so it may well be t-shirt weather. And who knows, there may be a frame or two worth shooting. The photo shown here is of the two cameras I’ll be packing, the 35mm film camera and the Micro four thirds digital camera. The photo was taken with a very old digital point-and-shoot, the Canon Powershot A400.

The Mount Palomar ride can be found here.

New Galleries (April, 2012)

There are now two new galleries on this site.

The Living Desert

The Living Desert is a zoo in Palm Desert, California. The Living Desert has a Web page here with a great deal of information about the attraction. It is a good place to take children, but they are not required for admittance…

Anza Narrows

Anza Narrows is a stretch of the Santa Ana River, Southern California’s largest river.

It has great views to the north, northeast, and east, and is close to my home in the City of Riverside, so I frequently pack one or two cameras into the motorcycle’s saddlebags and ride the short distance to the area.

Scouting the Santa Rosas

For weeks, Mike Harmon and I had been talking about it sporadically. The Spring Wildflower Blooming on the northern edge of the Santa Rosa Mountains, that is. A few years ago it had been brilliant. The hillsides were painted by the violent colors of hundreds of millions of flowers. It was a perfect landscape for photography enthusiasts, and the riding group rode through it at the perfect time. It was the height of the blooming. We returned to the area, specifically Diamond Valley Lake, a week later to make photographs again. Both excursions were photographic successes that year. The map shown here is courtesy of, and Copyright by MapQuest.

We’ve been watching the calendar every year since. We always try to get to the area during the bloom. Unfortunately, in hindsight it appears that that particular year may well have hosted the best blooming in a decade or two. Even knowing that it is unlikely that the correct amount of winter rainfall and the appropriate spring temperatures will occur, we keep trying to see the perfect blooming again, so we planned a group ride for April 14 this year (2012) because it seemed like the right timing.

Not all well laid plans work out, of course, and that was another one that didn’t. By the day before the projected ride, we had lost the rest of the group. They were casualties of various family events that took precedence. The weather forecast for the next day also looked poor for a motorcycle ride; dark overcast skies, low temperatures, uncomfortably high winds, and a vague threat of rain.

On the grey morning of the abandoned ride, we both checked the weather forecast for the following day, then got on the telephone. It looked good; light winds, higher temperatures, and partial cloud cover rather than one uniformly gray blanket thrown over the land. We decided to meet at a local gas station in the morning and see how it went. If nothing else it would be a ride.

We were moving somewhat slowly in the morning, meeting up past nine o’clock, then riding at a leisurely pace over the plateau to the east through the city of Moreno Valley, then turning left onto Gillman Springs Road which runs south along the western shoulder of the Badlands to San Jacinto and Hemet.

Riding with the group, we typically stop for breakfast at Arturo’s, a Mexican restaurant in Hemet. In deference to Mike’s unending search for the perfect hash browns, we took a chance on Millie’s Restaurant. My breakfast was fair. Nothing bad about it. But when I looked at the hash browns on Mike’s plate I knew they had failed the test with flying colors. Pure mush inside the browned skin of shredded potatoes. Just seeing them, I’d rate them at 1 out of 10. Mike took a photo of the food and wrote a few notes. He is an expert on hash browns. I knew that Millie’s was not going to fare well (pun intended) in his pending blog reviews of shredded breakfast potatoes.

Back on the road, we headed south on State Street toward the outskirts of town. As the houses and strip mall stores thinned out I began watching the plants lining the edges of the asphalt. It didn’t look too promising. There were the usual weedy fringes, but they sported very few blooms. On Sage Road, where we found the brilliant blooming a few years ago, it wasn’t any better. It was possibly the poorest showing I’ve seen in that area.

The adobe house on Sage Road shown in this post seems to be deteriorating quickly, since two years ago the back wall was still standing (although the roof was long gone). Because it is so scenic, after Sage Road let out onto Highway 79, we decided to ride the loop through Aguanga, Cahuilla, and Garner Valley in the San Jacintos.

The other photos were taken in Garner Valley. All of the photographs shown here were shot on 35mm film with a Nikon N90s (F90x) and a Nikon 28mm manual focus prime lens. I used Kodak Gold 100 film. I’m trying that film out, since my favorite film, Fuji Superia Reala 100, is no longer made. I don’t care much for the Kodak Gold 200 film, though I can’t quantify why. Maybe it is the speed difference. Though the Kodak 100 is not as saturated as the Fuji, I’m enjoying the results. So far.

I was thinking about trying the Kodak Ektar 100, but read numerous reviews of the Gold 100, and decided to try that first, since it costs about half as much as the Ektar, which is supposed to be more saturated. I like the color balance of the Gold 100, though. It reminds me of the way my old Kodak DC 3400 digital point-and-shoot rendered color. I’m still mourning the demise of that camera, though it was decidedly “low tech” compared to the other digital cameras I now have. I may not try the Ektar for some time…

The Empty Spam Button

Okay, I give up. This will be the last mention of spam comments on this blog. I’ve written several times about the spam problem. The sole purpose of a spam comment is to inject a link in the comment back to the offender’s web site. I’ve repeatedly given notice that it should stop. But people who send spam comments can’t read. Or write, for that matter.

Two days ago I came home to find 244 spam comments waiting for me. I tried to sort through them, but gave up after becoming annoyed by the bad manners of the people* who send these things to this site. The next day I had 86 spam comments. I didn’t bother trying to sort through them. I used the Empty Spam button, instead. My new procedure is to let it pile up, then occasionally, and only when I feel like it, click on the button to delete it all without looking at it.

Real Comments   I like real comments, so don’t stop making those. Real comments don’t seem to go into the spam folder.

*  How did those people attain human form, anyway? Is this only perpetrated by those in their first lifetime?

Yamaha XS750 Triple

The first time I saw photos of Paul Simmons’ current motorcycles, I was captivated by the images of this 1978 Yamaha XS750 Triple, which is one of five running motorcycles he owns. I wanted to go over to his place, fire the bike up, and “test” ride it. A couple hundred miles might satisfy my curiosity. For a day or so…

Unfortunately for me, I live in Southern California and Paul lives in Geneseo, New York, and my teleportation device is not working properly, so I couldn’t just “pop” into his garage with my leathers on and helmet in hand.

The Yamaha Triple was the most technically innovative bike of the time and was proclaimed the “Bike of the Year” for 1977 by the motorcycle press. The 750 had a 120 degree three cylinder crank, dual overhead cams, 3 carburetors, shaft drive, triple disc brakes, and solid alloy wheels.

The Triple is a beauty in my eyes. I’ll let Paul, shown below, talk about it in his words: “I have not yet licensed the 750. I went over it and installed a K&N air filter, changed all the fluids, cleaned, and touched it up. It has a dent in the top of the tank that I need to do something about. It also has a MAC 3-1 exhaust that sounds very nice! I bought it just before I found the FZ, so it got placed on the back burner for a while. I wanted one of those 750s since I worked at a Yamaha shop in ’77-78, so I was glad to find it cheap and nearby.”

Paul is the Workout Center Director at SUNY Geneseo and also works part time as an Athletic Trainer at a local High School. The photos in this post were taken with his phone. He is shown here wrenching on the Yamaha 650 street tracker.

He also owns the FZ1 mentioned above, a restored 1986 Yamaha 600 Radian, a Suzuki DR, and an “old Yamaha 650 twin” that he built as a street tracker. He also has a garage “full of Yamaha 650 twins”, but the street tracker is currently the only “runner”. The photo shown here is of the running bikes and the garage that they are stored in. It looks like they won’t all fit in the garage, but that is the deceptive result of the perspective of the photograph.

In The Works

Though I haven’t posted anything for a week, there are several posts and pages currently in the works; multiple galleries and an article about the venerated Yamaha 750 Triple. None of those articles are likely to be posted today, since I’m loading cameras into the saddlebags with the intent to ride through the Santa Rosa Mountains, but stay tuned…

Red

As always, click on the photo to view the larger version. This one was shot with the Lumix G1 and Tokina 70-210mm manual zoom lens using the Fotodiox Nikon-m 4/3 adapter. Metadata: ISO 100, 1/200 second, f/8.

A Bit of Housekeeping

The comments on various posts in this blog are piling up and I’m having a difficult time keeping up with them. Yesterday, for instance, there were so many comment questions that I spent my “extra” time answering them, rather than writing a post. That doesn’t seem like a good thing to me, since I’d rather spend time developing content, so I’m going to answer a few of the questions that keep popping up in comments.

Comments   Please don’t be offended if I don’t personally answer your comment. I just don’t have the time to keep updating the blog with content AND answer all of the comments and questions. I can do one or the other, but not both. I choose to continue focusing my time on developing content.

Boilerplate Comments   Sometimes I receive large numbers of comments from a single source. They appear to be from different people but use the same poorly constructed text. They are automatically placed in the Spam folder by WordPress. I delete them.

The Blog Layout   Though I write HTML code, I didn’t develop the look and feel of this blog manually. There is a a great deal of flexibility when one develops a Web site with manual HTML code, but it is very time-consuming. When I moved the blog from Blogger to WordPress nearly a year ago in 2011, I looked through the WordPress “Themes” (templates) and chose this one, Oulipo, since it had the look and feel that I wanted. Because the photographs are displayed against a white background, they are presented in a “neutral” setting. The background has a minimal visual impact on the photographs.

Guest Writers   I don’t have Guest Writers. Having guest writers contribute content would be an excellent way to make a lot of other writers angry. I have explained why they would be angry on the About page. I like other writers, though I’m sometimes appalled by their writing mistakes. Some of the most popular Web sites have writers who don’t adequately proofread their writing before publishing it. I’m not interested in pointing out every single thing that is wrong with a guest writer’s product, and I would be compelled to do just that if I had guests.

Receiving New Posts via Email   To receive new Crossings posts by email, click on the Email Subscription link, then follow the instructions below the link.

Pingbacks   Pingbacks may well be a good thing, but I don’t fully understand what their purpose is or how they work, even after considerable research, including questioning several IT experts on the technology contracts I engage in during my day gig as a Technical Writer. I delete them because of my lack of knowledge on the subject. If anyone has accurate information on why they are a good thing, I’d like to hear the explanation.

Multiple Comment Notifications   One reader reported that he signed up to be notified whenever there were new comments on certain posts, but he receives three notifications for each new comment. Again, this is a back end WordPress function that I have no control over. I can only suggest that anyone with this problem mark the notifications as “spam” in their email program, then check the Trash before emptying it, in case they want to read the new comments.

Browser Compatibility Issues   I use Google Chrome to write and produce the blog. It is a matter of personal taste. My wife uses Internet Explorer. We have two desktop PCs at home and both are set up with the two browsers, so I periodically “test” the blog site with IE. I don’t see (or haven’t yet seen) the compatibility problems that some readers are experiencing with IE on my two home PCs. I don’t see them when using IE on the machines I use on various contract IT projects. The back end operations of the WordPress site (which is what delivers the content over the Internet) is out of my hands. I merely produce content. It is free content.

Any compatibility issues that anyone is experiencing are beyond my ability to “fix” (I can’t fix the problems of an entire world-wide industry). In any event, no one has offered to pay me to fix those alleged problems. A team of 500 Web developers might be able to make a small dent in the Internet- wide compatibility problems in a year. That Team will cost roughly $72,800,000 for a year’s wages (that is a conservative estimate – I am not joking). If it is that important to you, please have at it.

It is notable that all of the compatibility issues that have been reported to me are caused by Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Other browsers such as Google Chrome, FireFox, Safari, and Opera don’t seem to have the issues. Compatibility problems can also be prevalent on many of the mobile devices that are now used to view the Web, such as phones, tablets, and iPads. The only realistic solution I can offer is to advise anyone experiencing issues to try a different browser. If you have problems viewing this blog with IE, you will probably also have problems viewing other Web sites.

Again, it is no consolation, but there have always been browser compatibility problems on the Web. And there have always been problems with Microsoft products. I’ve used and Beta Tested MS products since the DOS and Windows 3.0 era. Sometimes they just don’t work properly until Microsoft gets around to fixing the bugs. Microsoft traditionally does considerably less testing than it should before releasing products to the public (for example, Windows Vista was a somewhat long free Beta Test that led to the development of Windows 7). When the public discovers a problem and makes a lot of noise about it, the company fixes the problem, then pushes out an update to bring the product to the state that it should have been when it was first released. Using that methodology, Microsoft releases products sooner (and makes more money quicker) and the company avoids a large chunk of testing costs by having the customers “field test” the product for free (and makes more money quicker).

Old Motorcycles, Young Rider

This post will date me, but it doesn’t much matter, since it sometimes seems to me that I’ve been here forever. I recently got back in contact with an old friend from Bellona, New York, Paul Simmons. Paul currently owns five motorcycles including a beautiful old Yamaha 750. His photos prompted me to think about motorcycles I owned decades ago.

I’ve been going through a large box of prints that span several decades. Some of the prints appear to be from 1949 or so – at least before I was born this time around the wheel. All of the photos in this post were taken by someone else, but in a couple cases I’m no longer certain who pressed the shutter.

Though not a motorcycle, this photo is of my “first ride”. I remember the tractor well. I thought it was a wonderful thing. It was an “all terrain” vehicle that spent most of the time being pedaled through the yard.

The photo was taken by my mother. On the back of the  print there is a note in her hand that indicates that I was 2 years old, so it must have been about 1953.

The photos below were taken in Coral Gables, Florida in 1972, on the day that I bought my first big road bike, a Harley Davidson Sportster. I bought the bike at the Harley dealer in Fort Lauderdale, then rode it back to Coral Gables to Christine Anderson’s apartment.

From left to right: Newly ex-girlfriend Tish and I starting off on a short ride. Robert and Chris setting off on a “test” ride on the new motorcycle (note Robert’s Triumph Bonneville in the background). Chris and I at her apartment (which has nothing to do with motorcycles – I simply like the photo). All three photos were taken with Chris’s camera.

This photo was taken by my mother three years later in 1975 when I returned to New York State from Southern California for a short time. The bike is my 1974 “74″, a 74 cu.in. (1,200 cc) Harley Superglide. I had a hard time a year later and ended up selling the bike to Paul Simmons’ brother, Farrell. It was hard to part with it, but at least it went to a friend.

There is some uncertainty about this photo. It appears to have been taken when Lisa and I lived on Delano Avenue in Riverside, CA around 1982. The bike is a 1978 Kawasaki KZ 650. The KZ was a fine bike, though it sounded “wrong” to my ear, since it was an inline four, rather than a V-Twin.

I rode the KZ 650 until it no longer made any sense to repair it. Looking at the photo, it seems a bit odd to me that it was taken thirty years ago by my brother Joe (who owned the silver version of the same motorcycle). That was half a lifetime ago (so far)…

Featured Comment From Dave Gullo:

Haven’t thought about the Simmons brothers or Bellona for quite some time. Farrell was my age, Paul a lttle older. Very cool guys in my opinion; had some good records. I remember borrowing Blonde on Blonde around 1967 from one of them and we spent a fair amount of time hanging out. When we were about 16 we thought we had discovered a bumper pot of marijuana in one of their fields, harvested and dried large bags full, only to realize it was some sort of hemp. Sure looked like the pictures of pot we had seen.

Two Deserts

Up as usual at 4:00 am this morning, I had a sudden desire to see if the Ocotillo in Joshua Tree was in bloom, since we had considerable rain (for a desert) two weeks ago. The plant puts out leaves shortly after any appreciable rainfall.

Joshua Tree National Park contains the edges of two deserts, the Mojave to the north, and the Lower Colorado to the south. The map shown here is a crop of the map supplied by the National Park Service at the gates to the park. I added a bit of text and arrows and labeled the two deserts. The transition zone between the two deserts appears a bit faintly on the map as a line several dots wide. It is easiest to make it out on the edge of Pinto Basin. Though I shot several frames in the Mojave zone, all of the photos in this post are from the Pinto Basin, in the Lower Colorado Desert.

I quickly showered then loaded the cameras into the car and left the house at 4:30. I stopped shortly after 6:00 am in the northern part of the park to shoot the sunrise, then at various locations in the Mojave, then drove on toward the basin where the Ocotillo groves are. I’ve never noticed Ocotillo in the Mojave section of the park, but it is possible that they are there and I’ve simply missed them multiple times.

I stopped at the area marked on the map as the Cholla Cactus Garden. Before walking among the Cholla, I spotted three Rangers standing around at the rear end of a Forest Service vehicle. I walked toward them, wondering about the state of the Ocotillo that I knew I’d find to the south.

“Do you know if the Ocotillo is in bloom?” I asked.

One of the two women answered. “I’m not sure.” She said. “I noticed the leaves were sprouting a few days ago, but I don’t remember seeing any blooms.” The other woman and the man shook their heads. They hadn’t noticed, either.

I nodded. It was understandable that they might miss it, since they saw it every day, and were probably thinking about other things that had nothing to do with what was going on in the park. “I thought it might be blooming after the rain we had.” I said. “I’ll see it down the road, anyway.”

As it turned out, the plant was in bloom, as can be seen in the photo shown here. I’ve seen it with the green shoots of leaves out, but no blooms several times. To my eye, the red makes creates a pleasing contrast with the surrounding terrain.

Below are crops of Ocotillo photos. From left to right, leaves sprouting from the trunk (a “cane”), a cane with blossoms, and a closeup of the same blossoms. The unopened flowers look like tiny lipsticks to me.

Other plants in the Pinto Basin that benefited from the recent rain included the yellow-blooming Bladder Pod. Bladder Pod is an unfortunate name for the plant. It seems to me that it would be better to attach a name like “Desert Pea”, because the pods look much like pea pods.

Another plant blooming in profusion in the basin was the Scorpion Weed. At least that is what I believe the vibrant blue bloom is. My closest guess. It may well be something else. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time I was wrong about something.

I took my time making my way through the park, stopping whenever I felt like it, but still made it back home at 11:00 am with 240 miles on the car’s trip meter and a half-empty gasoline tank. Except for the gasoline, my wallet was only $15 lighter from the park entrance fee for an automobile. One can hardly get a reasonable breakfast for that amount of money, anymore…

Box Springs Mountain

I took this one on January 23, 2012, at 6:30 am. The view is east from Mount Rubidoux over the north end of the City of Riverside toward Box Springs Mountain. Box Springs is the ridge in the left distance.

The cloud cover was quite thick that morning, but you can see a bit of red light from the sunrise breaking through the clouds over Moreno Valley in the right distance. I like nightscapes of the city, particularly because of the orange-tinted streetlamps, which bounce a great deal of light around, faintly tinting the clouds .

Metadata: Nikon D200, Nikon 18-105mm VR lens, 1/3 second, f/3.5, ISO 250.

Tahquitz Canyon

I went in for a haircut a few days after publishing the Morning in Joshua Tree and Desert Wildlife posts. The woman who cuts my hair, Carole Engleking, mentioned reading those posts, then said that I should go to Tahquitz Canyon, that it is an excellent place to hike and take photographs.

Carole gave me such a vivid description of the canyon and falls, that I went home and did some research on the Tahquitz Canyon site. In the photo to the left, Mike Harmon (in red shirt) moves in close for a macro photo.

The canyon is on the edge of both the San Jacinto Mountains and Palm Springs. Though I did extensive backpacking in the San Jacinto Mountains during my 30s and 40s, I had never been to that canyon. In this photo red Chuparosa blossoms color the area below boulders.

Tahquitz, like the other Indian Canyons, is on Agua Caliente Cahuilla (Kaw-we-ah) land and administered by the tribe. To the left are yellow Mormon Tea blossoms above Chuparosa.

The photos in this article are from the hike that four of us made on March 24, 2012. All photos were made on 35mm film, then scanned and resized to fit the Web.

The 2-mile “loop” of hiking trail from the mouth of the canyon to Tahquitz Falls actually contains a double loop, so there is abundant opportunity to wander through various areas of the canyon.

Admittance is $12.50 for adults and $6.00 for children as of March, 2012.

 I lucked out on the scene to the left, the sixty-foot tall Tahquitz Falls. The area in front of the pool is somewhat small and a dozen or so people were standing at the edge of the  pool when I walked up to it. Though not by design, they shifted their relative positions just long enough for me to squeeze off seven frames. Five of the frames didn’t have anyone walking in front of my lens.

Workflow Choice

This morning I had to choose between shooting film or digital. A few of the guys in my riding group will be traveling to Tahquitz Canyon on the Cahuilla Reservation. We plan on taking the 2-mile hike into the canyon to shoot Tahquitz Falls, among other natural formations.

I sometimes carry two cameras, the N90s 35mm film camera and one of the two DSLRs. That way I can shoot in both formats and end up with digital frames I can (relatively) quickly post on this blog and still have selected versions of the same scenes in full frame (35mm) format.

Carrying two cameras is a bit of a bother, as far as I’m concerned. It splits my attention between two different approaches to photography and I have to be twice as careful to avoid damaging equipment by banging it into boulders and trees, dropping it into water, etc.

Though shooting film definitely creates a longer workflow, and costs more per frame shot, that cost is mitigated to a great extent by the original cost of the equipment. I can shoot full frame with film with my basic $160 outfit (and a $190 scanner). I’d have to lay out around $4,000 to get the full frame equivalent DSLR.

As always, click on the image below to see the full size version.

I like shooting film and I’m considerably more deliberate when film is in the camera, rather than a memory card. I get more “keepers”. Perhaps equally important, though it is not rational, I like the tactile feel of loading film and feeling the camera move the film forward one frame after I press the shutter. It simply feels right. I’ll be taking a single camera today, the N90s.

Smoke Tree

This photo was made in June 2010 in Joshua Tree National Park with the Nikon N90s. The N90s is the same camera that Nikon sold as the F90x everywhere in the world except the United States. I don’t know what the reason, or lack thereof, for a US-specific name was, but assume that it was the Marketing Department that pushed that one through the company. It doesn’t have to make any sense, I suppose.

I was shooting Kodak BW400CN, a monochrome film that is developed by the C-41 color process, so it can be developed at any photo lab that develops 35mm color film. I like the look of this film, and Costco is very consistent with the developing process, so I don’t have to send it to a pro lab for processing. I’ve shot several rolls of it over the past three years, most notably for a friend’s wedding. Ilford also makes a chromogenic black and white film, XP-2 Super, which is ISO 400, like the Kodak. I haven’t tried the Ilford film, yet.

After being unavailable for several months, possibly due to last year’s disasters in Asia, I received a flatbed film scanner, the Epson V600, yesterday. This is one of the handful of scans I made today while getting acquainted with the machine. The results I’ve had so far are encouraging. The biggest problem seems to be dust, which makes a certain amount of sense, since I live on the edge of the Mojave Desert. The built-in Digital ICE seems to do a fair job with the dust, and wiping the negatives I recently received from Walmart (which seemed to have a fine layer of dust and fiber deliberately applied) with a microfiber cloth also helped.

Brewing Tea the Convoluted Way

Don’t let the title of this mislead you. Don’t think, even for a second, that I’m some kind of tea connoisseur. In fact, though I get paid to be a writer in my day gig, I can barely spell “connoisseur”, since I nearly always have trouble spelling anything with a Frankish root word. Despite my fondness for French films, it seems extremely unlikely that I was French in any former lifetime.

If you want more esoteric or exotic information about tea, you’ll be well served to navigate to the Online Photographer, then look up Ctein’s posts about tea, such as the one titled “OT: The Art of Tea (For Two) Pu Erhs“.

After a reasonable volume of rain yesterday and last night, the sky cleared slightly this morning then moved toward partly cloudy, with sunlight streaming through the clear spaces between well-defined clouds, and alternate patches of bright sunlight and shade. Early in the afternoon I checked the limited horizons in my neighborhood and thought that I should go somewhere nearby with a good long view to photograph.

Back in the house, I began to check the cameras. I needed to load film into the Nikon N90s and format the SD card on the Lumix G1, so there wasn’t much prep work to be done. As I thought about packing the motorcycle’s saddlebags, the phone rang. My wife Lisa said that where she was (driving back from Long Beach after dropping off family members at a cruise ship), the sky looked good. That I should get up to a higher elevation with a camera. I agreed.

It was also a good time to “test” the new backpack I’d bought in the morning. After using a small $14 pack to carry the cameras for nearly seven years, the interior had begun to shed small blue particles which I had to constantly clean off the cameras.

I’m a bit frugal. Perhaps it is my Scottish bloodline, but I don’t like the idea of paying a 500% upcharge for a pack simply because it is called a “photographer’s” backpack.

I went out and found a $20 pack designed for carrying a laptop computer. The largest compartment is padded so I figured it would be good for the Nikon SLR or DSLR. There are several other handy compartments which will hold the smaller G1 (isolated from the larger camera by padding) and many other items. There are two exterior mesh pockets and straps above each, which will work well to secure my Manfrotto tripod and thermos or water bottle. The pack doesn’t leave much to be desired. In fact, I can’t think of any feature that is missing for my purpose.

I loaded the pack up with the SLR, an extra roll of film, the G1, filters, and other odds and ends. There was no small water bottle to take with me, so I filled the thermos with hot water, threw in a bag of black tea, then secured it in one of the mesh pocket/strap combinations on the side of the pack.

The quickest way to get some elevation was to hike up the side of Mount Rubidoux, so I rode the bike to the parking area, then ascended the shoulder of the ridge by cutting between arms of the long, winding asphalt trail, climbing straight up the side. The view was certainly worth the minimal trouble in spite of the cold wind that was building strength. I spent about an hour on the mountain shooting.

On top of the southern end of the mountain, I sat for twenty minutes watching the clouds scudding quickly above the landscape. Newly arriving clouds became progressively darker, so I walked back down to the motorcycle. As I stowed the pack in the saddlebag, I felt a drop of rain on my face, then noticed droplets beginning to land on the seat and fuel tank. My timing couldn’t have been much better.

Though I had hauled the SLR up the mountain, I never took it out and shot any film. I hadn’t touched the thermos, either. But the black tea was brewed just right when I got home…

100%

Though the weather forecast for today called for a 100% chance of rain, when I woke at 4:00am there was no sound of falling water outside the bedroom window. I walked out onto the patio to check the sky and saw breaks in the cloud cover to the east. There was no hint of rain in the air, so I packed the motorcycle’s saddlebags with cameras and tripods and rode to Anza Narrows.

The clouds were not quite right for spectacular color when the sun rose, but this view to the north was interesting in a more subdued way.

The weather forecast was a bit amusing, since it was yet another example of the perfect slacker’s job, that of a meterologist. In what other profession can one be wrong 85% of the time without worrying about getting fired? To be fair, it may rain later today, but this morning’s weather was not at all what I expected…

Film Deplorium

I like to test things myself, so when I shot 60 frames of 35mm Fuji Superia Reala in Joshua Tree, as I mentioned in the Waiting For Film post, I tried the only “One Hour” film processor in the city that I hadn’t tried before. Only a few years ago there were a handful of professional labs in my city, places that could be trusted to develop film. But those days are gone.

I’ve tried all of the other quick processors, so I thought I’d test the last one, Walmart. But being somewhat skittish about the test I first called my brother-in-law, who works in the film department of the same chain, though in a different city. He assured me that the company’s Fuji development and processing machines were maintained to higher standards than the Fuji processors who do all of the mail-in processing for other companies that don’t have their own machines.

I wasn’t particularly satisfied with the answers that the twenty-year-old clerk (and I’m using the term “clerk” lightly) gave me when I dropped off the film. I asked a series of questions. It was quickly apparent that her knowledge of photography was limited to “we put it in this end of the machine and it comes out that end”.

I ordered film development and scans of the negatives. In the worst case, I figured if what I’d been told about the maintenance of the Fuji machines was true, at least the negatives would turn out alright.

When I picked up the negatives and disk with the scans, there were two people in line in front of me, but it took nearly twenty minutes to get them in my hand due to the inefficiency of a different clerk. When I got home it became apparent that the test was successful, since I now know I never want to hand my film over to that company again.

The scans were deplorable. Washed out. They looked like unadjusted scans of faded 40-year-old prints. The negatives looked alright, except for the dust and fibers liberally attached to them. I think the negs were hung in the open air out by the loading dock for drying. They were cut into 4-frame sections, though 6-frame sections of 35mm film has been the standard since before I was born (a long time ago). Also unfortunately, the first five frames were missing and no explanation was forthcoming. Being digitally printed from the bad scans, the miniscule thumbnails on the contact sheets were also washed out.

I’ve shot with this camera, a Nikon N90s, and with the same film, the Fuji Superia Reala 100 so many times that I know what the output should look like, and there is nothing washed out about the combination. It is possible that the negatives are alright, though. I’ll have to scan them in the near future to be sure.

To be fair, I should have known better than to take my film there. I haven’t entered a Walmart in over ten years because I don’t like the way that the company treats employees or the way that the company has undercut and destroyed so many good, honest businesses across the country.

Napoleon was right when he said, “Morale is to firepower as three is to one.” If one is in business, the best way to “win” is to treat the employees well and pay them better than reasonable living wages. When your company “goes into battle” your chances of winning will be greatly magnified because your organization will have very high morale.

Walmart provides the opposite example. The company cares nothing for the employees (or the customers, for that matter), pays them very poorly, and as a result their morale is abysmally low, so they don’t care about what they are doing. It shows. If forced by strange circumstance, I may have to walk in that store again in another ten years. If we’re all lucky, the company will continue to destroy itself from within and won’t be around in twenty years.

I’ll be going back to Costco for film development. The clerks there speak photography. No more experimenting. I recent years I’ve had quite a bit of film developed at Costco, and the negatives all look uniformly good. The prints are acceptable, not washed out. The scans leave something to be desired, but they can be adjusted with software for use on the Web. In any event I probably won’t be getting prints or scans there in the future, since a film and negative scanner is due to arrive at my doorstep sometime next week. I only need the uniformly good negatives…

Season Pivot

I’m nearly two pivots behind with these photographs. These were made around the pivot, around the hinge between Summer and Fall. Now we’re only days away from the border between Winter and Spring.

I’ve been occasionally looking at this pair of landscapes for nearly six months. Despite the differences in light and color, to my eye they are quite similar in form.

Both photos were made with the same digital sensor of my Micro Four Thirds camera. Both have three layers under the sky. Both are a bit dark due to being made during the lingering darkness just after sunrise. The light is all indirect, reflected from the sky, since the sun couldn’t yet be seen above the mountains in the east.

Using software, I could have added fill light to show more detail in the trees in the foreground, but that is not what the sensor “saw”.

More importantly to me, that is not what I saw when I captured them, and the addition of fill light would change them, render the scenes differently than what attracted me to them in the first place.

Patio View

This one was made at 8:45 am on a morning in February, 2012 with my Lumix G1 Micro 4/3 camera. I was standing on our patio, drinking a cup of black tea, and wondering if I’d hear from a particular IT (Information Technology) recruiting agency about a writing contract that morning. In short, I was waiting. Waiting for the next contract job to present itself, a pastime that contract IT workers periodically find themselves engaged in.

It is harder work than the actual contracts themselves. But after 17 years as a technical writer I’d finally lost 99% of the panic that comes from wondering where the next project will come from and when it will start.

Anyway, I was thinking about contract work, which I can only sustain for a few hours each day, which amounts to making sure I’ve contacted everyone who has a new contract open that day. A new project that fits, that is. There is little point in forwarding a resume for some project that has nothing much to do with me, like a gig in some Marketing Department*. And my mind began to wander.

I started thinking about the way the early sunlight was falling on the tree in my back yard, as seen through the lattice of the patio cover. I liked the juxtaposition of the organic form against the regimented man-made lattice.

* Whenever possible, I avoid working with the personnel in Marketing Departments. In this country at least, they use the same language (North American English), but seem to think that the individual words mean different things than the other 99.999% of the population. In my experience, it is extremely difficult to have a conversation with them and they only seem to communicate well with other people in Marketing. Also (and I can’t really tell because they always wear shoes at work), it appears that as a group they have inordinately long toes, since it is so easy to step on them.

Desert Wildlife

These photos were made on Saturday, March 3, 2012, During an early morning photo shoot in the Joshua Tree National Park, in California. See Morning In Joshua Tree, the previous post.

Joshua Tree National Park is on the southern edge of the Mojave Desert. The Park is quite picturesque, particularly in the north where we were shooting. I nearly always prefer to enter the park from the north, at the entrance at the town of Joshua Tree, primarily because I like the views when looking south.

The guys I went with, Tim Devantier and Mike Harmon are members of a very loose group of motorcyclists who ride together at least ten times a year.

We’ve been riding together since 2005. We try to ride as a group at least once a month, but because of scheduling conflicts, that doesn’t always work out.

On that particular day we went in an automobile for two reasons; The air temperature was 26 F (3.33 Celsius) when we left well before dawn (with the wind chill, we’d have been riding in sub-zero temperatures on the motorcycles), and we had a lot of gear to carry. In addition to four cameras and tripods, we took a large cooler for food, and thermoses filled with coffee.

We saw coyotes several times that morning while we shot near the rock climbing area. They seemed to be quite used to humans being around that area, which has a small campground at the northeast edge.

The photos of the coyote crossing the road, the ground squirrel, and the loggerhead shrike were taken by Mike Harmon. Mike was shooting with his Nikon D300. The photo of the jackrabbit and sparrows was one that I took shortly before we gathered to eat breakfast at the tailgate of the automobile.

Morning In Joshua Tree

In the end, our precisely timed plan didn’t matter because I blew it by not filling the Subaru Forester’s gasoline tank the evening before and insisting on stopping at the local 7-11 store for coffee.

The stops at the store and filling station cost us twenty minutes, so Tim Devantier and I were late picking up Mike Harmon in Redlands, California at around 4:30 am.

The object of the plan was to be at a particular spot in Joshua Tree National Park at 5:15 am. That spot was one where we always have taken a brief break when riding our motorcycles through the park, an area popular with rock climbers. We pulled into the parking lot beside the rock climbing area at 5:40.

After quickly unpacking our cameras and tripods, it became obvious that it didn’t matter much that we were a bit late. It would be twenty more minutes before the sun peeked over the horizon, but the partially cloudy sky forecast by various weather services wasn’t going to appear.

The sky was a dead clear blue dome, cleaned of cloud cover by the 25 mph winds of the previous day. Oh well. There wouldn’t be a lot of color from clouds splitting the early light, but at least we’d get the horizontal golden light to shoot in for a while after sunrise. It wouldn’t be a wasted trip.

We set up the tripods and cameras, then Tim hunted for the self-timer setting for his new Canon 60D for a couple minutes. He’d received the camera as a gift from his wife, but hadn’t had much time with it, though he was looking forward to seeing how it performed in the field.

We were facing a couple of large boulder formations in the east when a coyote suddenly called from the boulders to our left front. A few seconds later, another coyote answered the first from behind us. It was a call to breakfast and they were right. We spotted dozens of rabbits who didn’t seem a bit spooked by us.

We shot from the tripods until the light grew strong, then each wandered around the area for another hour, hunting photographs.  In the photo to the left Tim Devantier (left, middle distance, near Stop sign) and Mike Harmon (right, foreground) hunt for photos in the horizontal light after sunrise.

The biggest problem I had was the abundance of things to shoot in the horizontal light. There were almost too many photo opportunities. Almost.

We eventually all made our ways back to the Subaru, opened the rear cargo door, then ate the breakfasts we’d packed into the cooler and drank coffee hot from thermoses. The rock climbers were slowly gathering in the parking lot at the base of the biggest rock formation. It appeared for a few minutes that the climbers might soon present us with more photo opportunities, but after we finished breakfast twenty minutes later, they were still socializing, so we packed up and drove to other places in the park, including Skull Rock.

By midday we had traversed a long southern loop through the park from the town of Joshua Tree, then made our way back north to exit in Twentynine Palms. It had been a good morning to be out in the world shooting, even without the more dramatic color that partial cloud cover would have created at sunrise.

Waiting for Film

There’s no question that shooting film (versus digital) is a considerably more time-intensive activity. Right now, I’m waiting for the negatives I shot in Joshua Tree National Park yesterday to be developed.

First one has to select and buy film before shooting, whereas with a digital camera one can simply pick up the camera and shoot. That’s assuming that the battery is charged, of course, but most modern film cameras use batteries, so it is also a good idea to check the batteries before walking out the door with a SLR or medium format film camera. Digital cameras use batteries, so nothing is different about that other than the type of battery and whether it can be recharged or not. Yes, I am aware that many older film cameras are mechanical and don’t need batteries. Let us ignore that.

After shooting with film one has to either develop and print the film in their darkroom or take the film to a (presumably)  trusted lab for developing and processing of some type. The processing may be prints or digital files or both. Or neither, since some people shoot film, get the negatives developed, then scan them to get digital files.

I no longer personally know anyone who has their own darkroom. That was considerably more common before the 21st century.

Film is expensive when you only consider it on a per-frame basis. The roll of film I shot yesterday will cost me around $.30 per frame, and that’s just the cost of film, developing the negatives, and having the negatives scanned. I don’t usually get prints, since my primary target is digital (this Web site), so that thirty cents per frame could easily be more money.

But even with the waiting, there are a number of things that I prefer about shooting film. Most of those preferences are intangibles. I like the way I approach shooting film versus the way I approach shooting digital. I tend to take considerably more time setting up to shoot with film. I give more time and attention to each frame before pressing the shutter button. I get more “keeper” frames when shooting film, because I’m paying more attention to what I’m doing.

I’m not going to dwell on the relative costs of full frame film and digital. Either way one goes, it is an expensive pastime, but I love to shoot film, and right now, I can shoot film for around $.30 per frame versus $3,000 for a full frame digital body. The film will hold me for a while…

The graphic on the left shows the relative sizes of a four thirds sensor, an APS-C sensor (Nikon’s size. Canon is slightly smaller.), a full-frame sensor, which is equivalent to a frame of 35mm film, and medium format film (220).

Just So You Know…

There seems to be a time lag with certain comments. They appear to get to this site rather slowly.

Delayed Comments

Today, February 28, 2012, 20 comments suddenly showed up with one thing in common: They all appear to have originated in France. I don’t know why those comments were (apparently) delayed. It may have been caused by any number of things. In any event, my apologies if it took a long time for your comment to get posted. The delay was not caused by me and I wasn’t ignoring your comments. The delays may happen again, of course.

Please comment as often as you like. I like comments.

Pingbacks

Lately I’ve begun to delete pingbacks. There may not be a problem with that particular mechanism, but I don’t understand it, though I’ve researched the subject. I am a Technical Writer in my day job, so I don’t usually have a problem understanding anything of a technical nature. It is entirely possible that I don’t understand because all of the explanations of it are poorly written. I have checked with engineers who I work with in IT and they don’t seem to know what pingbacks are, either, though it is entirely possible that they might understand the material I turned up when I researched it.

Links

I have the vague idea that pingbacks are some kind of linking mechanism, but since I’m no longer approving them it doesn’t matter much. If you would like to create a link from your Internet site to Crossings, please feel free to do so.

Midnight Blue

Quite often a photograph in one of my posts is little more than an excuse to write something. That is the case with this photograph. It isn’t necessarily a high quality photo. It has no solid relationship with the title, but it contains some blue sky which might have been captured at midnight, though it wasn’t.

Waking Songs

When I was very young I’d not only hear songs while moving from the dreamtime to the waking part of my days, but I would come awake singing whatever song was playing in my head through the transition to consciousness. I remember that the song was frequently Rock Around The Clock by Bill Haley and the Comets, which was receiving heavy play on radio stations at the time.

A Communications Breakdown

I believe that “hearing” music is widespread, but I know that not everyone does this because I know that not everyone hears the music in their heads. This was pointed out to me a couple years ago when I was interviewing for a technical writing contract. The man interviewing me was an engineer. During the last phase of the interview I asked about the noise levels in the work environment.

“Why?” He asked.

“Well if there is lot of loud talking, I’ll have to shut it out with earplugs.” I said.

He looked puzzled. It was obvious that I needed to explain further. “I hear language in the same way that musicians hear music. If there is a lot of external talking, it breaks into the way I hear language and disrupts my writing.” I said. “But if I use earplugs, it muffles the sound enough that the writing is not interrupted.”

His face was a dead blank. He had no idea what I was talking about. I realized that I shouldn’t have brought it up. I could have simply brought earplugs to work on the first day, in case of need. But now, he was at least confused and I was committed to explaining the idea. “You know when you hear music or entire songs in your head?” I said. “I hear language the same way.”

His blank expression morphed toward puzzlement. He shook his head. “I never hear music in my head.” He said.

“Do you listen to music on the radio in your car or on the stereo at home?”

“Not really. I rarely listen to music. And I don’t hear it in my head.”

Oh shit!, I thought. I’ve lost him. “Well, I’ve always thought that it was probable that mathematicians or physicists do the same thing. That they frequently thought about math or how the universe might be entirely comprised of tiny, vibrating strings.”

He shook his head again. I quickly changed the subject with a question about the software environment, then the interview continued for a few more minutes. I didn’t get the contract.

For Those Of You Who “Hear” The Music

My waking music varies quite widely. Sometimes it is an apparently random song that I hear on a particular morning, then something else the next day. At other times, a particular song will repeat for several consecutive days. The waking song is occasionally very pleasant surprise, like the recent morning when it was Led Zepplin‘s Dancing Days played on bagpipes.

For the past few days my waking song has been Midnight Blue by Lou Gramm. I don’t always know what triggers the waking song, but I do in this case. I heard the tune on Sirius Radio a few nights ago. I hadn’t heard it in several years and it sounded quite good to me. I backed up the broadcast and played it several times. Loud.

To my ears, Lou Gramm has a very distinctive voice. That isn’t because of the many hit songs that had heavy airplay when he was the vocalist for Foreigner. My experience as a member of his audience goes back before Foreigner. When I was a college student in Canandaigua, NY (can-an-day-gwa), Lou’s band Black Sheep frequently played at one of the many music clubs in town.

It was always a special event when Black Sheep played in town, and when I found out that they’d be gigging in Canandaigua, I cancelled any other plans and got myself to the club, even if I had to walk a few miles to be there. They were that good. Particularly Lou. At the time it wasn’t hard to forecast that he would make it “big time” in one way or another.

Featured Comments

From Steve Vaughn: You should experience a brain the goes between “hearing the music” and “doing the math”. That has been my struggle and why I am a mediocre singer and scientist. Could be linked with being ambidextrous – you think? I liked this one, Ray.

From Al Morrow: I remember listening to the Black Sheep album with the other Jim Armstrong when it came out…not bad:)…I feel sorry for the people who don’t hear the music. They say that you can only hear one note at a time, but I seem to be able to hear harmonies, and all the instruments…

From Dan Bohle: I find ‘hearing the voices’ in that same way extremely interesting — would really like to know the science behind that. Steve?

One of my guilty pleasures I won’t usually admit to: Every time I hear Lou Gramm sing ” I want to know where love is” it stays with me for days ( especially the chorus). I think Mariah Carey should be fined for slaughtering that song – must have been when she was going psycho…

Another Bad Idea Whose Time Has Come

In 1994 I was a Beta Tester for a new version of a Desktop Publishing (DTP) program, PageMaker, so I was working with the new version long before it was released to the public. I had used earlier versions of the program in my commercial printing business. I had tested several DTP programs when the first versions, typically Version 1.0, appeared. Unlike all of the other DTP programs, PageMaker was a very direct descendant of traditional typesetting and layout in the way that those tasks were approached. Also unlike the others, the developers apparently consulted heavily with printers when they initially defined the software specifications, because the technical terminology of the program was the same as the terminology that printers had developed since the 1480s, so there was no need for a printer to “translate” the terms when they started using the program, which made the learning curve considerably shorter.

I knew that I had a couple months of lead time before the program was released to the public and I had been doing some technical writing in my spare time for a couple years. I saw an opportunity. I knew I could write and illustrate a book about the new version of the program and deliver it to a publisher around the time of the program’s release.

I phoned an editor (The Editor) at the largest English language computer book publisher in the world. I won’t name The Editor or the publisher (The Publisher). It doesn’t matter who The Editor was and The Publisher is still the largest in the world, so it is easy to figure out which business it was. During the phone call The Editor agreed that it was a very good book idea and asked me to send him a formal Book Proposal. A formal book proposal is typically a “blueprint” for a book before it is written. It usually contains one or two sample chapters and a detailed outline of the structure of the remainder of the book. It is a very detailed plan, a plan that any competent writer could use to produce the proposed book. If the production of the book was approved by the editors at the publishing company, I would get a contract, then write the book.

Because I had given the project considerable thought, I already had the entire structure of the book outlined, so I quickly wrote the required sample chapter, performed an editorial review, then mailed the proposal to The Editor five days later, using a mail rate that assured that the material would be delivered in two days. Time was critical if the book publication was to closely coincide with the release of the program.

I waited for a phone call from The Editor.

Three weeks later I received a letter via the postal service. The Editor informed me that they would not be publishing the book after all.

Three months later I walked into a large chain bookstore. After finding a novel I wanted to buy, I wandered into the computer section. I spotted a book on the new version of PageMaker offered for sale by The Publisher. I took the book from the shelf and read the contents. The book’s structure was an exact duplicate of the proposal I had developed and sent to The Editor. Exact. The sample chapter contained the same material as the one I submitted. The softbound book had an attractive cover. Someone else’s name was on the cover. Someone who made the money for writing the book.

After that experience I became quite, well…”prickly”… about intellectual property rights. And of course, I learned something: Any future book proposal would be written under contract. I would get paid regardless of who ended up writing the book itself.

And now, the long-in-coming point of all of that…

Yesterday I received a “Request for Permission” via email by way of FaceBook. The Request is shown here (click on the graphic to view it at a reasonable size). I clicked on the Don’t Allow button. The request was so objectionable in so many ways that I have listed my objections below. Perhaps the most important to photographers is the second item on the list. I’ve edited the contents of the list down because the above setup was so long and, as an artist I know once pointed out (correctly, I believe), the majority of visitors to this site are viewers, not readers.

Access my basic information  On the surface this isn’t objectionable to me. It would make sense to me to include this information in an online yearbook and it is information that I have chosen to publish via FaceBook, anyway, so it is public information. I don’t mind being contacted by the members of my graduating class through information displayed by an online yearbook. Unfortunately, there is no link to the YearBook, so I can’t review it to decide if it is something I want to be involved in, even if only in a passive capacity.

Access my photos  This is the BIG NASTY. I can’t allow them to access my photographs and use them with impunity, since there is no mention of copyright, how they might be used, or payment terms. My articles on Crossings are fed directly to my FaceBook page. Allowing unrestricted access to my photos would amount to handing over the copyrights to slightly less than a thousand photographs (though some of them are of admittedly poor quality, and only useful to illustrate a story). It is a blanket permission, so they could use them in any manner or media they saw fit and without compensating me.

Send me email  Huh?… I apparently don’t receive enough junk email already. I guess I need more crap to arrive in my Inbox.

Post to FaceBook as me  Let’s clear this one up: This means that this organization would be allowed to impersonate me. There is no good reason to allow this, since it is not a permission to impersonate me in a standup comedy routine, which is the only type of impersonation I will tolerate.

Access my data at any time  There are no proscribed limits to this, which means that any information found anywhere can be used by SchoolFeed, and in any manner they choose.

The entire concept seems way too invasive to me. It also is unnecessary. Any of my former classmates can easily contact me via FaceBook.

The worst thing on the list is the attempt to steal copyrights, of course. This type of online behavior is why I don’t post my photographs on online photo sharing sites. The copyright terms are simply too murky. I’ll just have to pass. Anyone who knew me in school can find out what I’m doing and/or view my photographs on Crossings, anyway…

Featured Comments

From Charissa Dyal: I have been absent for some time, but now I remember why I used to love this web site. Thank you, I’ll try and check back more often. How frequently you update your site?

From Al Morrow: Good one…reminds me of the time I had a writer’s credit left off an album…A tune Greg and I wrote for Ronnie Dawson…

Fog

Two days ago I posted an article titled Early Light. What I wrote about foggy, misty, cloud-obscured mornings was not entirely true. There is “good light” in those obscured conditions. It just isn’t the type of weather I prefer to shoot in.

This photo was captured on one of those mornings, January 16, 2012. In the middle distance is the somewhat fuzzy figure of an older man (older than me, anyway) who walks in my neighborhood every morning. He walks laboriously with the aid of a cane, accompanied by two small dogs on leashes. Ankle biters.

Metadata: Lumix G1, Panasonic 14-45mm lens, f/8, 4 seconds, ISO 200, 35mm focal length.

Early Light

This photo was captured on February 18, 2012 at 6:21 am. The light is nearly always good around sunrise, even if I don’t encounter the dramatic cloudscapes I favor. The exception (from my viewpoint) is those mornings when the land is blanketed by a dense cloud or fog.

Alteration: I spotted out a sheet of plywood lying beside the asphalt trail in the right foreground. I generally try to avoid making alterations of that sort to photos, but it simply didn’t look right to me.

Metadata: Lumix G1, 14-45mm lens at 45mm, ISO 100, f/16, 1.3 seconds.

Clueless In River City

This morning we walked to a restaurant, The Soup Shop, for breakfast. It is about a five mile walk, and was fairly relaxing since we were not in any hurry. The restaurant is in a commercial area called The Brockton Arcade, which would now be called a “strip mall”, though it was built long before that term came into common use. After a good breakfast, we walked across the street to look at an Elementary school, the Palm School. I like the look of the exterior of the school.

After several decades of use as an Elementary School, Palm School was later used as a “Adult Education” facility. The school offerred G.E.D. Accreditation (High School Equivalency) and various classes that might be of interest to adults.

“I don’t remember why.” I said to Lisa. “But I swear I took a class here.”

“You don’t remember what it was?”

“No.”

The school’s front lawn, what the English would call a garden, is a pleasant setting. We sat on a wooden bench soaking in the surroundings for a few minutes, then I shot a few frames of the building’s exterior with the G1. While setting up the photos, it finally came to me.

“I know what it was.” I said. “It was a basic computer class. In the early 1980s.”

In that time period I was preparing to open a commercial printing business in a couple years when I would receive the money for my share of a real estate deal (filtered laboriously through divorce proceedings). I was going to use the money to open a  small printing company, pay myself for six months, and make a down payment on a house.

In preparation I took classes in Small Business Administration and Accounting at the local community college. I also wanted to be able to keep the businesses’ books on a personal computer using a spreadsheet program and write with a word processor.

Because I also thought that my children (and myself) should be able to play games on the computer, I didn’t buy a IBM PC. I opted for a Commodore system, which would handle both rudimentary business and game programs. In addition, unlike the IBM PCs, the Commodore would display state-of-the-art (at the time) color graphics. I knew “all about” these things, having read widely about personal computers for many months while saving for a system.

The day finally came when we went out as a family and bought the Commodore. The entire system included monitor, computer/keyboard, 5.25″ floppy drive, joystick, and printer, and cost approximately $1,100, which was a considerable chunk of change at the time. The system included a floppy disk containing business applications and we had also bought a disk containing a game which looked promising and a few blank floppy disks to store data.

With great anticipation and excitement, son Aaron and I unpacked the components and set up the computer system at home. We then turned it on.

And nothing much happened.

The system was obviously on. Various lights indicated that components were receiving electricity. On the monitor screen a single word, “Ready”, appeared followed by a blinking cursor.

“Ready for what?”, I wondered. I stared at the unchanging screen for a minute, then thought that it was possible that I had to put one of the floppy disks in the drive before something happened. I inserted the game disk into the floppy drive. The drive hummed for a few moments. Our excitement returned. It was about to do something. We waited while  the floppy drive emitted various mysterious humming sounds.

Then the drive stopped humming. We looked at the screen. Nothing had changed.

I, apparently, was an idiot. Completely clueless.

I took out the game disk and inserted the disk with the business applications with the same result. The literature that came with the system was very clear about how to connect all of the components and turn the system on. But that was all of the instruction provided by the manufacturer. With twenty-twenty hindsight, it may have been the first of a long series of incidents that eventually pushed me toward Technical Writing.

Now keep in mind that this happened sometime around thirty years ago and I had no previous experience with a computer of any kind. It was incredibly frustrating. During the next  twenty-four hours, I discovered a couple things; I had no friends who owned a computer and the local library contained no literature that would tell me how to proceed with the computer (the Internet existed then, but was only used by Universities and scientific establishments, and probably wouldn’t have contained any information about anything as frivolous as using a silly-assed personal computer, anyway). I stewed over these developments the next day, then finally phoned my brother Joe, though I didn’t want to. Joe had been working as a Technical Writer/Illustrator for a few years since leaving the U.S. Air Force, and he used computers at work.

I explained my problem with the computer. My explanation was liberally sprinkled with variations of a certain Anglo-Saxon word whenever I thought about the company that sold me the system, then gave me no instructions on running it.

He laughed, just as I knew he would. “You have to tell it to do something.” He said. “It is actually quite dumb.” He then gave me enough knowledge of simple commands to run the programs I had. I wrote the commands down, thinking that there was no good reason that Commodore hadn’t included a four-page booklet with the system, a booklet that explained the basic commands and what to do with them. It was as if they had deliberately erected a knowledge wall to keep undesirables such as myself out of some secret society.

I didn’t have too many problems with the computer after that phone call, but I wanted to learn more and found out that a basic computer class was being offered at Palm School once a week in the evening. I went to two of the computer class sessions. The class was instructor-led. It was obvious that I had already learned everything I was likely to learn in the class, so I stopped going. But it was a good thing that the class was offered for anyone who wanted to learn about personal computers.

I had done things in reverse order, though. The proper way to proceed would have been to take the class before buying the computer…

From The Storage Unit

There are treasures in that storage unit. In that closet. In that garage. Family treasures.

Earlier today we moved the contents of my mother-in-law’s storage unit to a larger unit because there are more pieces of furniture, chests, and boxes to go into storage and the old unit is not large enough. When we tried to move my late father-in-law’s desk, we had to remove the drawers to reduce the weight, and in the process of moving the drawers, we discovered a photo album that covered the time he was in the U.S. Army during World War Two.

When my father-in-law, George Pauly, was alive he and I had a couple conversations about his time in the service. A member of the 428th Armored Field Artillery Battalion, he had fought in the Pacific Theater. I found it interesting, like the stories I have heard from other members of the “Greatest Generation” over the years.

Years later, I surprised Lisa by filling in the “blanks” about his time in the service. I don’t remember how it came up but I told her the basic facts about his time in the Army. She was surprised that I knew anything about it.

“How do you know that?”, She asked.

I shrugged. “I asked him about it, and he talked about it.”

She was a bit puzzled. “Oh. He never talked about it when I was at home.”

The photos shown here are from his photograph album. The photos in the album cover home life before he entered the service, being stationed in San Bernardino, California after basic training, time spent in Hawaii for jungle training, and the period when he fought in the Philippines.

George was the photographer, so he is not in the majority of the photos in the album. There is only one photograph of him on the island of Leyte. At least it is the only one that I can identify as being him.

Having known him, it isn’t hard to understand that 99% of the photos in the collection are of other people. He was a slow and very deliberate photographer. He always took great pains to get the exposure and framing right, even if it meant that his subjects frequently became exasperated while waiting for him to press the shutter button.

I was on the other end of his lens a few times and can easily imagine that it was difficult for him to allow someone else to take control of the camera. It makes me smile whenever I think about it.

The photos shown here are just a sprinkling of the album, but what I found as interesting as the photos themselves were the comments in George’s careful hand script, and the “cover pages” that divided the sections.

I also like the choice of black pages with white script, which is a superior way to display the contents in that medium. Considering that the album is likely to be at least sixty-five years old (it appears to have been put together after the war), I’m glad he decided to use the black paper with white ink, rather than the more common white paper with black ink, since white paper would be extremely yellowed by now.

Featured Comments

From Megan: Those are really great. They would be beautiful framed if you could get good scans. I especially love the Philippines page with the trail lines throughout.

From Steve Vaughn: What a well done album. What was you father-in-law’s profession? This was really quite a find to be treasured in the family.

From Ex Copain: Hello there, just became alert to your blog through Google, and found that it’s really informative. I’m going to watch out for this for Brussels. I’ll appreciate it if you continue this in future. Lots of people will be benefit from your writing. Cheers!

Cordillera

This photo was made in the San Bernardino Mountains at a pullout on Route 330 with the Lumix G1. The view of multiple mountain ridges is toward the east.

I hadn’t rode any distance on the motorcycle for several weeks, but my throttle hand was itching from the time I woke on Saturday morning (February 4, 2012). The sky looked relatively clear from the valley. Sometimes the views from the San Bernardinos are not good above the clouds hanging over the Inland Valleys, but there had been mild winds the day before, and there is rarely any visible smog in the winter. I had a full tank of gasoline and decided to make a run through the San Bernardino Mountains. I packed the Lumix and a thermos of tea into the Road Star’s saddlebags, then rode the freeways through Riverside, Loma Linda, and San Bernardino to Route 330.

I expected to ride up 330 to Running Springs, take Route 18 east through Big Bear Lake, then circle back out of the mountains to the south on Route 38 through Mentone. It would be a three-hour ride if I didn’t stop too many times.

The air was relatively warm at home when I started, so I didn’t spend any time thinking about how cold it would be in the mountains. I was under equipped, wearing a couple shirts and a windbreaker. There was a medium weight jacket in the saddlebag. A few miles past Running Springs, patches of snow began appearing between the trees along the road as the temperature abruptly dropped. I stopped, pulled on the jacket and slipped glove liners on under the leather gloves. The electric glove liners would have been appropriate, but they were in the garage at home.

After a few minutes spent watching the skiers at the Snow Summit and Rim Nordic areas, I made a  u-turn, turning back toward the valleys. Since my hands were freezing up, I didn’t have any desire, or even a bad reason, to be cold for another thirty miles. Back home, I looked at the odometer reading of 92 miles. Not a bad ride and it “blew the stink off”, as is sometimes said. My throttle hand no longer itched, which is something that a ride across town to the grocery store wouldn’t have accomplished…

Early Volunteers

The daffodil shown here has been in bloom for a few days in one of our flower beds. The second one will open in a few days. It is quite early in the year for their appearance, since today is February 2nd, and they typically appear in the spring.

Metadata: f/6.3, 1/125 second, ISO 200.