Last Saturday before 1st Grade
Aiden waking up - Last Saturday before 1st Grade, originally uploaded by jjlapierre.
Our big boy is growing up so fast. He spent the last weekend of Summer vacation at "Nana's house" with us and as always, he is so sweet. I was typing away on my iMac and I heard him stirring on this Saturday morning. All of the other grandchildren had long since awaken, and were busy playing, it's as if he sensed the end of an era in his life and was savoring this last drop.
I opened a browser to NetFlix, pulled up the Batman vs. Dracula movie, and then took a few pictures of him as he started to watch. This one was with an old film camera, the very first EOS by Canon, the EOS 650. The film was FujiColor Superia Xtra 400, and is a little grainier than I expected. The room was fairly dim and I didn't want to use a flash, so it's a 1/10th of a second shutter speed, the camera was resting on the back of my chair.
Within a few minutes he was in my lap and we watched the whole movie in our pajamas.
That's my boy, and I'm glad I captured this moment.
iPhone 4 Photography
An evening in Savannah, one of the most photogenic cities anywhere, originally uploaded by jjlapierre.
I took this with thne new iPhone 4 in Savannah, it was almost 8:45 PM, and pretty dark already. The camera auto jacked the ISO to 1000, lowered the shutter speed to 1/15th of a second at f/2.4 aperture. Even hand held it turned out great. The editing was done in "Touch of Color" app on the iPhone itself!
Amicalola Falls in North Georgia
Andy and I made a side trip during a recent ride and scooted over to Amicalola Falls in north Georgia. I tried multiple exposures and shutter speeds. I did not have any ND filters to block out some light and allow a slower shutter speed, so I cranked down the aperture to f/22 on this one, and had a .6 second shutter speed. Next time I'll definitely bring the ND's and be able to shoot at a nicer aperture, around 7-8 would have been good. I think the shutter speed is right though. ISO was 100.
Tail of the Dragon and more…
The image below was the general route for our recent motorbike trek. It doesn't show the exploring and riding around each of the destinations which was the best part of the ride. Total time was 6 days and 3 hours for me. I started in Columbus at 8:00 AM on July 18th, went to a family reunion in Ider, then met Andy in Rome. From there we toured all through the mountains, including The Tail of the Dragon, Cherohala Skyway, parts of the Blue Ridge Parkway and many unnamed but very high and twisty back roads. The GPS routed us once over a pass that included washed out roads that were essentially gravel and one lane! We split up after Savannah on Saturday morning July 24th, where I headed home to Columbus, and Andy headed to Florida to work. It was epic for me, my first time on the Dragon. Now, how do I top this?
Polaroid Land Camera 103
PolaroidLand103 - 07, originally uploaded by jjlapierre.
I'm so excited about this camera. I received it as a gift from Wendy's parents, who found it at a yard sale. Case, manual, accessories, are all there.
Today I cleaned it really well in preparation for the film due to arrive on Friday. Fujifilm makes four types of film for this camera, from what I've found so far. I ordered a pack of color and black & white, both in 100 iso. The official name of the film is: "FUJIFILM FP-100B" and "FUJIFILM FP-100C". With the cost of film and shipping, pictures will be anywhere from $1.00 to $1.20 apiece.
I ordered 2 batteries from EBCO today, about $8.00 apiece, but it would actually be an easy hack to set up 2 re-chargeable AA batteries. I temporarily clipped a couple AA's in today just to test the shutter, and it worked great... (Snap!)
She's ready and waiting; hopefully the batteries will arrive on Friday as well, I can hardly wait to use it.
Midnight Commander on my Mac
I finally broke down and added the old reliable Midnight Commander file manager to my Mac. To do so I used the excellent program(s) Rudix 2010. In their own words,
Rudix is a package-based, user-friendly way to extend the Unix portion of Mac OS X with additional network utilities, computer languages, development libraries, text tools and everything else you missed from command line.
I've had to get used to a couple differences; shortcut keys use an "ESC + Nbr" scheme instead of just an F key, but that's cool. I'm a KB man and develop muscle memory very quickly for keyboard shortcuts. Is this a step back to my old friend Linux? Not yet. At this point what I miss from Linux most is purely sentimental. We were together for 14 years. The iMac is working superbly for all of my needs. My only program longing to this point had been a file manager.
Midnight Commander on Mac
Billings Road
Billings Road, originally uploaded by jjlapierre.
This is one of the shots from the Canon AE-1 camera in my last post. Most of the pictures turned out really well, technically, albeit boring as far as subjects go. I still need a bit lot more practice though.
When I browse Flickr it is simply amazing at the number of really good photographers; you can learn so much from other peoples pictures, especially if they take the time to describe the film, ISO, Lens, Aperture, etc...
Back in the day, I'd sneak a peak at Other Peoples Pictures at Sam's or Walmart - yes - they used to leave the pictures right out in the open alphabetically sorted for self-service pick-up. It was bad, I know, but it was kind of fun. Now, with Flickr, Facebook, and a hundred other sites, you can browse OPP's to your hearts content. Millions upon millions, conveniently sorted any way you want.
What an amazing time we live in. I really enjoy the instant gratification of digital, but there is still something a little silkier, smoother, and warmer in an analog film print to me.
Shooting Vintage Cameras
Beck135mm_04, originally uploaded by jjlapierre.
Not long ago I got a great deal on a box of old cameras, one of which was a camera I've wanted for years.
A few weeks ago I shot a roll of film through this camera "as is". The results were less than stunning, except maybe stunningly bad. Today i carefully cleaned the camera and one of the lenses it came with. I re-read the manual, then went out with my herd of dogs to waste some film. The lens is a Beck 135 prime lens, very clean already actually, it almost looked like new.
I was very careful to check the aperture, shutter; framed my shots carefully, watched for background distractions, shot wide open (2.8) and shot closed down to 16. After the film counter rounded 27, 28, I realized I had forgot to load the film. Chalk it up to practice.
So I went in, loaded some Walgreens el-cheapo 200 ISO color film, and did it all again.
I'll get them processed at Wolfes tomorrow - the only place I know of in town that still does them in an hour. Walmart takes a week. So I'm stoked - excited to see the results. I'm not sure how they'll turn out, but it looked great in the viewfinder, and in my mind's eye. We shall see.
By the Light of the iMac
Monitors Glow, originally uploaded by jjlapierre.
Playing with the iPhone camera and doing self-portraits... this is about 11:00 PM, the room is dark except for the monitor.
I used Darkroom Pro camera app with a timer. This app is one of the few custom camera apps that geotags like the native camera on the iPhone.
This picture was taken with the Hipstamatic app and adds a bit of mood to the portrait... I like it better.