Humor

Now how do you use this damn thing?

Posted by Paul on January 8, 2010
Posted in: Humor, Photography, Techy Stuff. Tagged: , , .

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Evening Flight

Standing calmly near the edge of the Ashley River, waiting with eager anticipation as the sun began to drop below the horizon, I mounted my D300 on the tripod, framed up the scene before me and then a thought occurred to me. I’ve not used auto bracketing in a long, long, time. As the contrast was fairly high, I figured that this would be a good thing to do. Later, I could come back home and combine a couple of exposures using Photoshop and have a nice looking image.

For some reason, my mind would only bring up memories of how to do it on my D2X, which I sold more than a year ago. I hunted through the various menus and could not remember how to do it. Damn! I always carry my book with me, but I never want to waste time when the sun is sinking trying to thumb through a book and figure something out!

All of my simplifying left me a bit clueless. Suddenly, I started laughing out loud and thinking to myself: Dufus! What would you do if you had a film camera that didn’t have all of that cool technology in it? Of course, I’d change it to manual and kick it old school, which is exactly what I did.

Sometimes that guy behind the camera is so funny! What a knucklehead! Of course, when I got home, one of the first things that I did, while the photos were being copied to the computer, was look to see how to do bracketing. Maybe I’ll be ready the next time, assuming that it isn’t too long between those times.

Oddly enough, there were a few of the bracketed ones that I liked, but none quite as much as this one, which isn’t bracketed. I was looking at the clouds after the sun had dipped below the horizon and noticed this jet flying through what looked like a corridor between the clouds.

Impressions of … Pookie-vision

Posted by Paul on April 9, 2008
Posted in: Humor, Photography, SoFoBoMo 08.

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Yesterday, I talked about accidents and impressions. Well, today I went back to the glen and took some impressionistic pictures that I like to do from time to time.

This technique of setting the camera to a small aperture, like f/11 and using it as a paint brush is fun and informative. There’s nothing like this technique, that I’ve found, to show you how much crud you have on your sensor, or as I call it, pookie, or the resulting picture, pookie-vision!

The first image is after the fact with the pookie-vision glasses removed, AKA, after a ‘brush’ with the clone stamp. The second picture is the before picture, full pookie-vision. I noticed this on all of my pictures as they were loading into Lightroom. A quick opening of the shutter showed a large piece of some material hanging around the edge of the sensor. A quick blow with air cleared it out. Tomorrow, we clean for real! One of the hazards of shooting with a digital camera, you have to endure pookie-vision from time to time. I’ve cleaned my sensor a number of times, so it’s no be big deal to open the shutter and have at it. :-)
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Oh well, at least it was at the far edge and easily taken care of! I did get a couple of shots that I liked, so it wasn’t a wasted effort at all.

Someone’s missing: 49/50

Posted by Paul on February 23, 2008
Posted in: Humor.

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Well, 49 of 50 ain’t bad!l I was looking at the statistics for my site via Google Analytics. I pulled up a report for 2007 that indicates where my various web site hits came from, by state. I noticed that people in 49/50 states have visited my site. Not bad.

Heck, I’ve even had visitors from Hawaii and Alaska. Only one state remains unrepresented … Take a guess?!!! When I tell you, you might not be surprised.

Will someone from West Virginia, please chime in? Do they have computers there, yet? :-)

Not much to write tonight; however, the picture is from this trip! Well, much to write, but sleepy and need to get up at 5:00 AM to do it again!

Two black guys in a ditch…

Posted by Paul on February 16, 2008
Posted in: Humor, Personal, Photography.

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I think that our interpretation of a scene, or perhaps an event, are shaped by our experiences, and sometimes, probably a lot of times, by our fears.

Saturday was a perfect day as far as the light was concerned. The sun hung out behind a thin veil of clouds all day. This created a giant softbox effect. You could have shot portraits, macros, or whatever you wanted for the entire day.

Along about 3:00 PM, I called a friend of mine, Stephen, pictured here, just to chit-chat. He asked if I wanted to go shooting, to which there was only one possible answer. Yes! He said that he’d meet me at Reedy Creek in about 30 minutes. I drove down, staked out a place near the road and waited. We had forgotten to say where we would meet.

I picked a position close the main road where I was sure that he’d see me. Suddenly, I noticed that there were dozens and dozens of flowers, perhaps Daffodils, that had begun to sprout from beneath the bed of pine needs, couple that with the wonderful light that was bathing them and suddenly, waiting for Stephen was not a problem. I laid down among the pine needles and began shooting.

When Stephen arrived, he said that he had no problem finding me. It’s kind of hard to miss a guy laying down close the road taking pictures. I asked him to join me, pointing out the beautiful light and flowers. He was happy to join.

Soon, we were happily shooting pictures. There was wonderful light everywhere, sidelight, rim light, front light, you name it. It was there and all very soft and subtle. About 10 minutes into the session, a park employee drove his truck up close to us and said that he was getting complaints about:

“There are 2 black guys laying in the ditch taking pictures of people on the basketball court”.

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Now, I’m a big guy and cannot possibly hide behind a flower, so there wasn’t even the slightest hint of surreptitiousness to my actions. We were in plain sight. Anyone with even a nominal bit of curiosity could have come up and seen what we were doing, but they decided to use their cell phone to contact the park office to say that we were behaving “suspiciously”. Also, we were on very level ground, slightly elevated above the basketball court and in plain sight. No ditch was involved.

I know that people carry a lot of fear with them, day to day, and that, unfortunately, anyone who carries a camera is automatically under suspicion as either a terrorist with a plot, or a pedophile on a mission, but it gets really tiring, sometimes, to be under suspicion merely because of your skin color. Mind you, this wouldn’t have even popped into my head had it not been presented as “two black guys …”.

Oh well, we didn’t let it stop us from continuing to shoot. We stayed there, in plain view, for another hour or so, refusing to run, not letting the fear of others diminish the beauty that we had sought to capture. We made a few jokes here and there, but in truth, we expected the police to show up next. Fortunately, they never did.

Lastly, I know that this post is somewhat provocative and could cause heated debate, but it is my own experience. I’m interested to know if any of you have had similar experiences with your cameras where you’ve been approached and questioned about what you were doing simply because you were holding a camera, or in any other way that you can relate.

Thinking back though, based on my experiences, I cannot help but wonder if the same things would have happened if it had been two white guys taking pictures …

Hobbservations

Posted by Paul on January 26, 2008
Posted in: Humor.

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Sure! He looks all innocent and what not, doesn’t he? Well, this guy is a career criminal, a miscreant of sorts. I knew that when we went on our Christmas vacation to Texas and spent 10 days that, when we got back, he would probably mope around for a few days, but I didn’t expect what I actually got. He went on a ‘crime’ spree.

Normally, when we leave the house, we let him have the run of the house, although there’s usually not much running that he’s going to do. He just likes to choose his places of slumber. Occasionally, if someone has left a tasty morsel, or what smells like a tasty morsel of food in a trash can, he’ll go for it! When we arrive home and he doesn’t greet us at the door, we already know that something has happened.

Since coming back off of our vacation, our trash cans, no matter which room, have been vandalized. His trash can crimes are usually isolated to the bathrooms, for some reason.

His first incident of note was getting caught in Tony’s room. Tony’s door closes by itself because I put a bit too much WD-40 on them. Oops. Anyway, Hobbs smelled something, went in, found the treasure … an 11 ounce bag of Hershey’s Kisses with caramel! Naturally, he ate the whole thing, foil and all. We didn’t know until some hours after the fact when Tony went to his room and made the discovery. A quick call to the vet indicated that, based on his weight, he had only eaten about 50% of the chocolate needed to be toxic! Phew! We were told to keep an eye on him as he might need to, ummm, errr, go the bathroom at bit more frequently than normal! Thankfully, it didn’t happen. His barker was a bit sore for a few days though. It was kind of funny to hear him try to bark a lot.

So, not learning from that lesson, we continued to let him stay out, but had Tony remove all chocolate and foodstuffs from his room, which wasn’t supposed to be there anyway, but that’s an entirely different post! Within a few days, he made a pantry raid. No, not a panty raid, but a pantry raid! He decided that while we were gone that perhaps a few of those mini muffins, about 16 of them, on the bottom of the shelf in the pantry just might be really tasty! Who could blame him … we left the pantry door wide open!

OK! Now I get it!!! I’ll keep him in his crate, or Hobbscienda, as I call it, while we are out. Now, he doesn’t get in trouble. So, yesterday, I offered a little parole. I closed all doors to the bathrooms and the pantry and let him stay out. Lo and behold, he made it into my office and the bathroom downstairs and vandalized the trash cans.

What can I say? Parole revoked!

About the title: Much thanks to Kathy for the title of this post! She coined this word in a previous post. I told her that I would use it one day and today is that day!

Mistaken Identity

Posted by Paul on January 25, 2008
Posted in: Humor.

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Back in the late 50′s and early 60′s there was a television show named, To Tell The Truth. In this show, 3 contestants would try to guess who was the real Paul Lester, for example. The show ran into the early 1970′s, I believe. This show coined the very popular phrase, “Will the real [name], please stand up!”.

I get a lot of hits from Google for searches using my name, Paul Lester. The interesting thing about it is that if you do a search for that name, in order, here’s what you see:

  • Paul Lester – Hey, that’s me! – My site comes up at the top of the list
  • A professional golf photographer in Van Nuys, CA.
  • Paul Martin Lester – A professor at UC Fullerton who teaches visual journalism, of all things! He’s written a few books that you could find on Amazon. I’ve never read them, though.
  • Finally, to add a 4th contestant, there is the Paul Lester who worked on a movie called, The Photographer. He was the still photographer and second assistant camera for the film.

Periodically, bordering on frequently, and as recently as yesterday, I get e-mails asking me about golf tournaments and weddings. I know that they are intended for Paul Lester, the golf photographer, so I just either forward the e-mail to him or tell the person inquiring that they have the wrong guy.

I don’t know any of these guys, but we all share a couple of things: our names and photography, in some form or fashion. I find it quite interesting.

Even my phone number almost has a mistaken identity. My cell phone number is just one digit away from Laser Quest’s phone number; transpose the second and 3rd digits, 7-6, to 6-7, and you’ve got Laser Quest. I get several calls asking to reserve times. Hmmm, maybe instead of giving them the right number, I should start taking prepaid reservations. It could be a way to make a bit of money on the side because of a mistaken identity! Hmmmm!

I’ve always been partial to the name Xavier, or Jamal, maybe I’ll change my name! Xavier Lester … I like it! :-)

About the photo: A bit of fun with the camera. I was pointing at the trees in the back yard. I was moving the camera diagonally while taking some pictures. 1/125@f/11. This output kind of reminded me of something one might see in The Twilight Zone, or perhaps The Outer Limits.