There’s always a way

Skimming through my archive photos looking for a topic for a blog post, I found one! Amazing, isn’t it? Anyway, one of the things I tell my photography students (and anyone else that will listen) routinely is that chasing equipment isn’t the key to getting those wonderful images they’ve been after. I’d use myself as an example, because I’ve worked on a shoestring all read more

My apologies

If you had any difficulty with this site in the past day or two, I apologize. Some settings got skewed I believe, and it took me a while to recognize them. I think everything is back to normal now (and upgraded to boot.) If you’re still having issues, try to reach me on the Contact page above, or through my main website Feedback page.

I’ll be back with real content shortly. Thanks for read more

Ya work with what ya get


On christmas evening, the threatened storms rolled in, giving us the third snowfall of December. This is a fairly rare occurrence for this latitude, where we usually don’t get snows until January at least, and often not this heavy. While I learned how to drive in central New York, I don’t have a vehicle ready for winter driving, so when the roads get treacherous, I stay read more

As close as it gets

Yep, I’m actually out watching the lunar eclipse progress – or at least, I was. The conditions are deteriorating and I’m both too cold and too tired to stay with it. This is as close as I’m likely to get to live-blogging, by the way. I know that’s disappointing my legions of followers who have been waiting for an update.

In my area, we’ve got thin overcast starting read more

Compensation: It doesn’t refer to those giant lenses

After a recent post, someone remarked about the effect I showed in one of the illustrating photos, reminding me that this is one of those photography techniques that’s much easier to implement than to explain – and I know, because it’s the hardest thing I’ve had to teach students. So here goes an attempt within a post, on the subject of exposure compensation.

One key part read more

Frustrations, part five


Now that the season for such things is effectively over, I can admit to myself that I didn’t get what I was after this year, and go with what I have so far.

The Sphingidae is one of the more interesting families of moth. While not as big or impressive as luna moths, they have a very finely developed protective camouflage, which is exhibited not only in coloration, but in body size read more

Frustrations, part four

So this afternoon, noticing the massive activity at a yellowjacket’s burrow in my yard, I decided to try and get some nice close shots of their work. That would be called, “foreshadowing,” in English Lit classes, wouldn’t it? Ah, not in the way that you’re thinking…
Eastern Yellowjackets (Vespula maculifrons) are generally ground-nesting wasps, read more

Frustrations, part three

First, we’ll talk about the photo. What you’re seeing below is a two-by-two stake (so 1.5 inches square, or 4 cm) that was probably used to anchor a crab trap or something similar. It had fallen into shallow salt water in Florida’s Indian River Lagoon near Melbourne, and everything that is not wood colored in this image is alive. The largest things are barnacles, which grow surprisingly read more

Things that go burp in the night


It’s been longer than I planned since my last set of posts, and I actually had something else intended this weekend that didn’t work out – basically, my telescope was way the hell out of collimation. For a reflecting scope to work properly, the mirrors have to be precisely aligned, otherwise you can’t get properly sharp images. It’s still not up to read more

Yay!

I just upgraded WordPress almost painlessly! Made sure I had meticulous backups, then simply uploaded and clicked “Update database.” All done!

This sounds like a nonsense post (or, bile rising, a “Tweet”,) but I actually started this blog on B2Evolution, and lost it all during their simple little upgrade. I reconstructed the trashed posts from the text buried read more

1 9 10 11 12