Ohiodave

Saturday, December 05, 2009

Favorite Photos of 2009, Part 1

Since the year’s coming to an end, I thought I’d reflect again on what I’ve learned about photography in the year 2009, and share a few of my favorite shots with the stories behind them. This first set is photos I took from January to June.

In January, my Fuji point and shoot finally died, so I took a break and started saving my pennies for a DSLR. I wanted an Olympus E-520, because of the in-camera image stabilization. My biggest complain with the Fuji was that I had no control over shutter speed, which ruined a lot of photos over the years. Built-in IS would go one step further towards eliminating blurry photos without buying expensive IS lenses.

I ended up buying a Canon Rebel XSi. I have friends who already shoot Canon, so I figured the ability to borrow equipment would make up for the slightly higher cost. I think it was a good decision. The XSi is a solid camera except for the mode dial, which is way too easy to bump. Several times this year I lost a shot because I had somehow nudged the camera from Aperture Priority mode into Manual or the strange and useless A-DEP mode.

I got to travel quite a bit in early 2009. I went to Minneapolis and New York for work, saw my parents in Florida, and took a road trip to Toronto. Back at home, the town where I live flooded and my photos got hundreds of hits in 24 hours. I also became a Toledo Zoo member this year, so I took the chance to visit many other zoos on the cheap and practice with my telephoto.

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Saturday, November 07, 2009

I Got Scammed

I should have known better. I should have seen the signs. Luckily, I’m only out $15.00.

The scammer in question is director Olatunde Osunsanmi, and the scam is his laughably bad new film, The Fourth Kind, which I’m happy to report was 98 minutes of pure incoherence. The Fourth Kind has been much hyped, and the little bit of the plot revealed in trailers (a psychologist investigates alien abductions in a remote Alaska town) seemed pretty interesting. Boy, was I ever wrong.

Warning: Here Be Spoilers. If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.

As I said, I should have seen the warning signs. The Fourth Kind begins with Milla Jovovich (who is, along with Elias Koteas, this movie’s only saving grace) standing in the woods and explaining that what we’re about to see is a dramatization based on real events that happened in Nome, Alaska, in 2000. I hated (hated!) the Blair Witch, I’m not a believer by nature, and I have a hard time suspending disbelief for anything but a really good story.

To achieve the mockumentary affect, two movies were filmed: a “dramatization” starring Jovovich and Elias Koteas, and the ostensible “original footage” featuring a bunch of no-name actors shot with camcorders. At various points in the movie, the two are presented side-by-side in a split screen. Sadly this doesn’t lend the movie any credibility, it just looks cluttered and confusing. The original footage also has an annoying tendency to get blurry and swim in and out of focus whenever anything really interesting happens. Jovovich goes to pains to explain that most of the characters besides hers have been given aliases, because they are real people and they are really concerned about privacy.

Jovovich and her unnamed double play Abbey Tyler, a psychologist working in Nome, Alaska. Her husband was murdered in their bed while she was mysteriously paralyzed and unable to help him. Tyler can’t remember who killed him, only a disembodied arm stabbing him through the chest. She and her husband were working on some sort of government project, analyzing the residents of Nome who have all been reporting the same dream in which they wake up at 3:00 AM to find a creepy white owl staring at them.

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Friday, October 09, 2009

Bonsai

When I was in college, I owned a bonsai tree. I like trees, and I like miniature versions of things, so this seemed like a natural choice of hobby. My bonsai wasn’t a miniature spruce like the one here, or a tiny grove of birches like you see in the the best Japanese gardens, but some kind of dwarf shrub with fat glossy leaves. I bought it because it was easy to take care of.

Bonsai is supposed to be an exercise of patience and perseverance, as you train a sapling to look like an ancient, full-sized tree that fits on your windowsill. My tree came “pre-trained”, which means that somebody else had already spent a few years contorting it into an interesting curved shape. I had no plans to continue my bonsai tree’s training. I was supposed to bind and wire the branches to make the tree loop back on itself again and again, but that seemed like too much work. All I ever did was prune the upper leaves when the tree started to look like an unruly Chia-Pet.

I was in college at the time, and suddenly I had a living thing to worry about. When my parents came to get me for school breaks, the tree rode home in the car. After a while I decided it was easier to fly or take the train home, and it became harder to take the plant with me. One winter I left the tree at my parents’ house between New Year’s and Spring Break, which was in February for some reason. I left my brother instructions to water it every couple of days and keep feeding it Miracle-Gro, which I believed to be a substitute for actual plant-care skills.

I came home six weeks later and found the tree’s desiccated corpse sitting on the kitchen table. There was a single green leaf left on an upper branch, a lone holdout who hadn’t heard the declaration of surrender. My parents told me they’d found it in my brother’s room a few days before. He had forgotten all about it.

We tried hard to save the plant. We pruned back dead branches until the tree looked like a bundle of woody straws. We doused it with water and pierced the soil with enough Miracle-Gro to raise the dead, but finally the last green leaf shrivelled and fell, and the bonsai went in the trash.

I gve my brother a lot of crap about this over the years, but in a way it was a relief. Now at least I could go on trips again without having to worry about who was going to water my plant. My first taste of responsibility was a failure, but at least I didn’t have to give it a funeral.

Sunday, August 09, 2009

Chauchilla Cemetery

This post is based on a journal entry originally recorded on May 26, 2008.

Pati arrived back at the airport to collect us and we drove away to visit an ancient, Pre-inca cemetery. I was the last one in the van and so had to sit in the backward-facing seat. The bumpy road and lack of a stable horizon made my nausea return in full force. I leaned back, shut my eyes, and waited for us to arrive. After what seemed like an eternity bumping and sliding down roads made of compacted sand, we pulled up under a thatched shade overlooking a sandy plain that sloped down to a green valley lined with huarango, or South American carob trees.

At first glance I saw nothing but sand, rocks, and a few shallow depressions. Small wood-and-thatch sun shades dotted the plain, connected by rock-lined paths. My feet sank into the fine sand as we walked. Susi explained that this place was a cemetery for the local Nazca people, and that it had been extensively plundered by grave robbers, ancient and modern. Because of the dry conditions in Nazca (most years get less than 4 inches of rainfall) the graves were little more than shallow, stone-lined pits that were easily accessible to anybody who happened by. In the 1940s there was a severe drought in Nazca. The people applied to the government for help, and the government suggested that the Nazcans dig up the tombs and sell the grave goods to buy food. Many people did just that, taking the precious metals and fine textiles and leaving the mummies sticking out of the sand, exposed to the elements.

Looking across the plain, I saw now that each depression was in fact a disturbed grave. More touchingly, I saw that many of the bits of trash strewn across the sand were grave goods; pieces of pottery, cloth, cotton wrappings, and even small bleached human bones strewn about, destroying their archaeological value and displaying an appalling lack of respect for the people that lived and died here.

We made a slow loop around the cemetery, visiting all the thatched awnings. Underneath each one was a pit where archaeologists had gathered up some of the scattered mummies and their grave goods to show what an undisturbed burial might look like. Susi told us that the Nazca people believed their loved ones weren’t dead as long as they remembered them, so they regularly visited and cleaned the tombs until the Spanish came and put a stop to it.

More pictures of Chauchilla cemetery (warning: includes photos of human remains) »

The Nazca Lines

This post is based on a journal entry originally recorded on May 26, 2008.

On the morning of May 26 I faced one of my greatest fears about the Peru trip. We left the hotel early and drove down rutted sidestreets to Nazca’s small airport, where we were to board a small plane for a flight over the Nazca lines. I was excited, but also afraid. I’m prone to motion sickness, and I dreaded the notion of getting sick on a tiny plane, but even worse was the thought of someone else getting sick.

Our first stop was a dingy concrete building across from the airport proper, where a dozen “airlines” competed for tourists. We passed shacks for “Aero Ica”, “Aero Condor”, and several others before stopping at “Aeroparacas”, where tickets were negotiated and purchased. We sat back down outside for a few minutes before our guide for the morning, Susi, announced that we would be flying right away. The butterflies in my stomach were busy waging war with flamethrowers and explosives as we bundled into the van and were driven back across the road and down to the airport entrance.

Nazca Tourist Airport is little more than a dusty field surrounded by a fence, and exists primarily to carry tourists on short trips over the lines, but it carries itself with the grandeur of a tiny JFK, complete with boarding passes, security checkpoints, and certificates stating that we have paid the mandatory airport tax. All these things were handled fairly informally - Susi told us the fancy new terminal with its carved wooden pillars, floor-to-ceiling windows, thatched roof had only been open for two weeks. A sign listed the things that could not be taken on our flight: explosives, batteries, aerosol cans, oxygen tanks, flammable materials, and paint. Who brings paint onboard a five-seater Cessna?

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Sunday, July 12, 2009

From Huacachina to Nazca, Peru

This post is based on a journal entry originally recorded on May 25, 2008.

We drove on through the desolate outskirts of Ica and stopped at a roadside restaurant in Huacachina, the only natural oasis in the Peruvian desert. There, towering dunes ringed a small green lake, maybe a hundred yards across and ringed with palm trees. Huacachina was developed in the 1940s and was once a popular resort or balneario, but now it looked run-down and rough. I read later that tourists who wandered too far away from the promenade were liable to be robbed in broad daylight by desperate locals. The area immediately around the lake seemed safe enough and was overrun by young families and couples on honeymoon. Aside from the water, Huacachina was known as a place for “extreme sports”. High up on the dunes we saw groups of tourists sandboarding (sliding down the hills on small modified surfboards) and tearing up and down in dune buggies. Pati asked if we wanted to do any of these things, but no one was interested.

Inside the roadhouse we sat down at a long table to eat lunch. I had chicken soup, served with lime wedges and hot rocoto pepper sauce, and seco, a beef and carrot stew with a side rice and beans. The soup was simple and delicious; strong broth, tender chicken that fell off the bone at the touch of a spoon, a whole hard-boiled egg and spaghetti noodles. The seco was equally tasty, and the beans reminded me of the Mexican home cooking my grandmother used to make.

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A Long Weekend in Chicago

Michelle and I needed a vacation, so we took a long weekend and went to Chicago. This time around we decided to skip the touristy stuff and relax, do a little shopping, and see as much free stuff as we could.

We spent a lot of time at Navy Pier (whence this photo), and dropped by the Art Institute for their free admission evening (Thursdays after 5 PM). We also spent a morning in Chicago’s small (but very nice) Chinatown. While there we had dim sum, bought some snacks and miscellaneous souvenirs, and I picked up some very good tea at Ten Ren.

The next day we went to the Lincoln Park Zoo, which is probably the best small zoo I’ve ever seen. It blew the Central Park Zoo away. All the exhibits were really well-designed to get you right up close to the animals. The aviary had a design I’ve never seen before, with a long, dark hallway full of mostly un-glassed-in exhibits. Apparently the birds stay out of the hallway because the darkness might be hiding predators. The ape and lion exhibits were also very nice, although the indoor big cat area was still the old-fashioned kind with bars. Between the screaming kids and the roaring fans (to keep the heat at a tolerable level) the poor cats must have been deaf or half-insane.

The one thing we did pay for was the Harry Potter exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry. Michelle’s a big fan of the books and the movies, and while I don’t know anything about them I thought it’d be fun to tag along. We took a taxi down to the museum, which is way out in BFE as compared to most Chicago attractions, and waited in line with about 50 kids and their parents while an overly-cheerful English woman asked trivia questions. Of course, the kids knew the answers to everything. Kids are like sponges for useless information. The exhibit was actually really cool. Even though I’ve only seen one of the movies (in Argentina, because it was the only movie at the theater in English), seeing all the props and sets was interesting. We paid extra for the audio tour, so we got to hear the producers and costume designers talk about where each piece came from, how it was made, etc. Michelle had a really good time, and I enjoyed it on a technical, “my god, this must have taken forever to accomplish” level.

All in all the weekend was a big success - no tall buildings (we’re still bitter from the Empire State Building debacle), no meals over $30, and plenty of relaxation. I can’t wait to go back.

More Chicago pictures »

Sunday, June 07, 2009

Twitter Malaise

It’s been eight months now, and I still don’t get Twitter. I don’t understand the etiquette of following people, I don’t know what a retweet is for, and I can’t understand why you use #hashtags when regular text is completely searchable. I don’t consider Twitter a social outlet; I’ve never been to a “Tweetup” (I hate the verb “tweet”), and I don’t use Twitter to have conversations.

I’d like to think that I use Twitter the way it was meant to be used: to answer the question, “What are you doing?” I post whatever comes to mind and don’t really expect an answer, or even anyone to read it.

Recently I’ve noticed a rather disturbing trend; more and more of my posts result in people I don’t know following me. The other day, I posted a complaint about my former web host, and immediately two people affiliated with web hosting companies followed me. Tonight I posted about how most of the photos on Flickr are crap, and three photographers (according to their Twitter profiles) added me. Then, for absolutely no reason, I was followed by a girl who describes herself as the “Official Spontent Party Chick”. No idea what that’s about.

So I wonder, is this normal? I’m pretty sure nothing I write on Twitter is of general interest, so I can’t fathom why people I’ve never met are subscribing to it.
Only two thoughts come to mind:

1. Someone is trying to market to me, or
2. Someone is trying to bullshit, trick, or spam me.

I have no way of knowing whether these people are shills, automated Twitter bots, or regular people with a lot of time on their hands. For awhile I was blocking them, but I’m starting to wonder if these shenanigans are standard on Twitter. Are they doing it wrong, or am I? Malaise…

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Dolla Dolla Billz Y’All

So I twittered earlier about the Dollar Redesign Project. I said that the project was cool, but all the designs posted so far were hideous. Within 20 minutes, the owner of the blog had tracked me down and rebutted that he’d love to see what I would do. Touché, internet.

I really do like the site and think the dollar needs a refresh, but I’m not going to post any redesigned dollars for the following reasons:

1. I don’t know thing one about designing currency.
2. I can’t point out good currency design, only bad.
   All the designs on the Dollar Redesign site are either jokes, statements (I especially like the one where all the money looks like barcode labels), or inspired by the Euro, the Australian dollar, and other neon, sans-serif-loving monstrosities. I like clean lines and modern design in a lot of things, but money isn’t one of them. I also think that more color in money is not necessarily a good thing.
3. Anything designed on a bet is bound to be terrible.

A semi-related anecdote

Recently I had to take a logo designed for the U.S. market, in which a character was holding a stack of greenbacks, and convert it for use in Canada. I agonized over how to represent Canadian dollars, given that Canadian money has changed appearance many times over the years and didn’t seem to have a strong visual metaphor the way U.S. dollars do.

Money has a certain look in America: Bills are basically duotone - black and another color. There is a border around the edges and a rounded area in the middle that may or may not feature a portrait. You can play around with most of the elements and still not lose the basic connotation of money, as opposed to any old piece of paper.

I asked a Canadian co-worker whether (a) using U.S. money in the Canadian logo would be insulting, and (b) if he knew of a visual metaphor that would play in Canada. He said that (a) yes, it probably would, and (b) suggested maybe a handful of Loonies (Canadian dollar coins). Unfortunately, the logo was too small for the coins to show up clearly.In the end I modified the bills to look vaguely like the new Canadian $20 bill, which has a green bar on top and a white bottom, but I wasn’t completely happy with the result.

About a month later I went to Toronto on vacation, and walking down Yonge Street I happened to see an ad with a caricature of Canadian money. The ad used the familiar U.S. greenback shape, but the stack of dollars alternated green and red. This seemed like kind of a cop-out to me.

A final word of caution to U.S. dollar redesigners: Don’t end up like Canada. Push the dollar in new directions, but don’t throw away 100+ years of brand equity and force a lot of designers to reinvent the wheel like I tried to, or use an inappropriate metaphor the way the designer in Toronto did.

Do any non-Americans read this blog? I’d like to get some opinions and learn how “money” in the generic sense is represented in other countries.

Friday, May 15, 2009

HouseholdHandyman.biz

Here’s the official, if somewhat belated announcement of a site that I launched in early April, HouseholdHandyman.biz.

Household Handyman Ltd. is a home repair and maintenance service located in Waterville, Ohio. The owner, Todd Lentz, has over 25 years experience in all aspects of home maintenance, from carpentry to painting to light electrical and plumbing. He specializes in work for the elderly, especially handicap improvements like bathroom grip rails and non-slip floor and stairway treads.

Todd takes great pride in his work and was an amazing client to work with. If you live in the south Toledo area and need a handyman, or you know an older relative or friend that does, I strongly suggest you give him a call.

Merillat Good Life in Times Square

I got this photo today of a graphic I created on a billboard in Times Square, New York. This is a promotion we’re doing for Merillat (full details at http://www.merillatgoodlife.com).

I worked late last Friday night to create this high-res billboard version of a design by the very talented Jessica Englund. Shoutouts also go to designers Chad Berlean, Charles Ryder, and the whole Hanson team. It’s cool to see our hard work out in the world!

Sunday, May 10, 2009

Messing Around with Macro

Back in March I got a Tamron 70-300 lens to take pictures of zoo animals. I paid about $200 for it at my local Castle Photo (now sadly closed), which is still pretty cheap for such a long telephoto. The tradeoff, of course, is in optical quality. The lens is mushy at the extreme long end, giving it an effective range of about 70-270mm. Still, I’m pretty happy with the Tamron, and after learning its limitations I’ve been able to take some pretty good pictures.

The other neat feature about this lens is a 1:2 macro capability at the long end of the range (180-300mm). I hadn’t really played around with this much, but the weather has been absolute crap so yesterday I set up various small objects on the bathroom counter and got out the tripod to see what I could do. I still have a lot to learn about controlling depth-of-field in extreme closeups, but I got lucky a few times, as in the shot above.

I was also playing around with some rudimentary lighting, using a cheap LED headlamp to shine white and red lights on the dragon and other objects. I posted an example of that here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/daverodriguez/3516629677/.

All in all, a pretty successful day in, and hopefully the first of many macro shoots to come. Now all I need is a better tripod…

Saturday, May 02, 2009

Why I Hate the Empire State Building

I’ve been to a number of tall buildings, and I can say without a doubt, that the Empire State Building was the worst managed, with the longest wait for the least payoff. The only thing I’ve ever waited longer to get on than the Empire State Building was the Maverick at Cedar Point, and while the Maverick was a rip-roaring good time, the Empire State Building was a crowded hellhole with a mediocre view and one of those diagonal fences that makes it impossible to take good photos.

If you have never been to the Empire State Building, let me break it down for you so that you can skip it and not waste two hours of life.

1. You pull up to the Empire State Building in a cab and stride through the doors, full of hope and happy to be seeing an American icon.
2. You go up an escalator and into a lobby with high ceilings, nice carpeting, and lots of velvet rope. There is a very long line, but it moves very quickly. When you get to the first wall, a cheerful man hands you a brochure with ticket prices and all the extra add-ons you can ever hope to not buy. The man also offers to sell you an “Express Pass” for $45 per person, and you decline because you are an idiot.

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Thursday, March 26, 2009

Coming Attractions

A little preview of an upcoming site, scheduled to Launch in early April:

Sunday, March 01, 2009

Ica, Peru

This post is based on a journal entry originally recorded on May 25, 2008.

Early in the afternoon our Peruvian Mystery Machine pulled up at El Catador Winery outside Ica. The further we got from the coast, the higher and drier the terrain became. Already we were driving through low foothills the color and texture of old, crumbly chocolate. Every river valley was plowed into fields and dotted with more of the reed-and-stick shacks we had seen along the coast. Ica itself was little more than a large village, a disorderly cluster of crumbling buildings baking in the semi-desert heat.

El Catador was down a side street in a neighborhood of trash heaps, rusted cars and stray dogs. Glicerio parked the van underneath a shelter made of huge logs and thatched with some kind of palm fronds or reeds. I have no idea where they got such massive beams, as I never saw a tree higher than fifteen feet until we got to Cuzco. From outside, the winery looked disappointing and flyblown, but as soon as we stepped through the door it was transformed. Inside was a restaurant with picnic tables under a shady awning made of the same log-and-reed construction as the parking shade outside. The walls were brick painted with restful shades of red and white, and all the trim was painted white in the colonial style.

A young man named Jesús met us and led us back outside for a tour of the winery. We went down a set of stairs and down an alley. Jesús was dressed for work, with a dirty T-shirt, jeans, and a pair of heavy gloves. The back of his T-shirt read:
“Si a Ica vino,
y no tomó vino,
A que mierda vino?”

Which means, “If you came to Ica, and you didn’t drink wine, what the hell did you come for?”

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