ARCHIVE 5: June 2009

DAVID'S PERSONAL NEWS PAGE
and JOURNAL

Jan/Feb 2009
March 2009
April 2009
May 2009

In this Archive:

Believing blogs
Budget cuts
Max Lyons
Pain for City/Budgets
Zoomify, 1st test

6/27/2009: San Diego - Presentations/Lectures

I gave a presentation on Panoramas and Mosaics (Multi-Row Panoramas) at the San Diego Photoshop Users Group this afternoon.  It was a good group with some great questions so I enjoyed it a lot.  Now I have two left for the San Diego Fair.  Those will be given next Sunday Afternoon starting at 2 pm. 

These presentations have also revealed that having some small thing to sell can add up to some good pocket change.  I selected 70 of the photo student  handouts along with a few of the PowerPoint Presentations I use in classes and seminars and put them all on a CD (noted in the 6/16 post) for $10.00 thinking perhaps I'd sell a half dozen and that would pay for dinner somewhere.  Counting the first Fair presentations and the lecture this afternoon I've sold about 25 copies.  I am stunned but now definitely have a mind set slowly evolving into thinking "merchandizing."  Hmmmmmmm.

6/26/2009:  Salton Sea Pix are finally ready to show!

It has been hard to find the time to work on the shots I took on our adventure to the Salton Sea.  I think getting these processed and online was an adventure in itself but that is a separate issue...

In organizing these shots I discovered that I had some interesting images from previous trips I had never put up on my site so decided to create a Salton Sea Gallery instead of just putting a few travel shots here in this post.  However a few pictures seem specifically appropriate to this trip in particular so I'll show them below.

We had been late leaving San Diego and arrived in the area in late afternoon.  We were headed to the area of the wildlife sanctuaries on the south of the sea when we were saw some burrowing owls.  I didn't actually see them since Lee told me to keep an eye out and I was having trouble focusing with just the one and the pain was intense.  But HE saw it and we slid to a stop to see if we could take its portrait.  I put my eye back in and grabbed some gear.  The little owl was patient for a few moments casting a baleful and bemused eye on our efforts, but ultimately it grew tired of our shenanigans and flew off for more entertaining fare and perhaps a mouse for dinner.  Lee, whose lens was already mounted and ready to go got a terrific shot.  (Note to self... keep a camera and mounted lens at hand!)

There were also farmers in the same area that were getting the last light's work in.  The dry ground kicked up billows of dust that swallowed the huge implements.  It was often like moving clouds of dust dancing to their own beat until a glint of sunlight would hit a machine and reveal it as in the shot below.

A little later that evening, and farther down the road, as the sun was dropping behind the mountains to the west, we were photographing on an obsidian island with some iconic nesting trees and a fabulous sunset started setting up.  The water is incredibly low, exposing yards and yards of ground that used to be under water.  You can see the old water line on the trees.
 

The island was now a peninsula. The mummified bodies of fish were strewn around the ground as evidence and warning of the catastrophe awaiting their still swimming brethren.  Of course as photographers we had to pay attention and interpret the images as we felt them.  To me it was sad but reminiscent of lost civilizations and I thought of the gold encrusted bedecked mummies of the Kings of the Old Kingdom.  Perhaps these fish were kings in their own kingdom for a time, their resting place disturbed by these unruly newcomers with their strange log-nosed devices.  The low sun cast a golden hue on the still shiny scales so I thought it appropriate to memorialize this poor fellow. (Bigger images of the fish, tree and sunset are in the gallery.)
   

On Saturday morning we  started shooting near three geothermal power plants where some wheat fields had been processed and then cut and baled for straw.  A pleasant odor that instantly reminded me of my youth, mowed hay and straw, still hung faintly in the air and instantly took me back in time. 

We stopped because we saw a  burrowing owl on one of the bales.  By the time we unlimbered gear it flew away but still it was a good place to start the day's search for wily images.    Here is Lee zeroing in on some critter or another.  One little owl fooled us.  It laid out flat on a bale and "played 'possum."  We actually thought it was a squirrel or rodent of some kind and paid it no attention until we were right on top of it and it flew away right under our noses.

Here is a picture of Steve in one of the fields crouching to sneak up on some cagey image.  Sometimes if a photo doesn't see you coming it will wait patiently hiding in plain sight.  This shot was taken before he threw himself into the volcano... and it summarily threw him back out.

The trip really was an adventure at times.  At an old abandoned resort Lee was looking in a structure and had a barn owl still carrying a mouse, fly right at him as it tried to escape.  He managed, despite the surprise, to fire off a shot and you can see this great shot on his own blog. 

As the morning progressed it was quickly over 100 degrees and an unrelenting sun pounded on us as we got to the spot that actually inspired the trip: the mud volcanoes along the south-eastern shore of the sea. 

Here we found a scene right out of a sci-fi movie from another planet.  Though they do not occupy a large area, the place of the volcanoes is still the scene of primordial processes still at work.  The first photo, on the right, is a mud pool at the base of one of the mounds.  The white "spots" in it are bubbles from the boiling temperatures.  This is not a place to go for your facial toning! 

The next photo (left) shows the flow from one mud crater.  At the top of the flow is a bubble of mud and steam just starting to burst and spew hot mud down the slope.  What is interesting is that although the surrounding ground is a pale brown color, the mud coming out of the little volcanoes is almost a true neutral gray.  It clearly comes from a very different area.  In the gallery for the Salton Sea I have an image of the patterns this forms as it lays on top and then dries out in the sun, baking to a very hard consistency and then cracking in fascinating patterns.

While there, Steve tried to go out in a blaze of glory by falling in a mud volcano but mercifully picked an already cooled spot to break through the crust and go in over his knees in the still soft muck.  (Some time ago I was shooting there with my friend Yaiza and she stepped off the track at Bombay Beach and sank into the muck that turned out to be very little mud and mostly compost created from decades of rotting fish.  I think the volcano mud was vastly preferable...)

The closer one gets to the shore the greater the sense of abandonment and desolation.  Here is a car left near the sight of an abandoned resort/spa (more pictures of this spa are in the gallery).  The caustic soil and ever present salt mist in the air ravage anything left, especially things made of wood or metal. 

Further up the eastern shore line are a number of small "towns" left from the days of glory for this area.  The gallery has shots from near several of them.  Closer to the northern end of the shore is the site of an old abandoned casino, the "Aces and Spades," which was allegedly run with ties to organized crime.  The building, of cinder block, is left in pretty good condition but where once the sounds of slot machines and croupiers and music filled the air only countless pigeons and rats and the things that hunt them live.  But outside the structure the story is clearer.  A beautiful man-made breakwater and dock once beckoned to boaters from all over the inland sea but is now reduced to rotting pilings and nothing more.

And a beautiful swimming pool is now only the canvas for vandal taggers.

The really astonishing thing to all three of us is that near the Aces and Spades there were lines of people fishing at the shore!  I'm not sure how comfortable I'd be eating anything that came from these highly polluted waters.

There are more pictures from the Salton Sea area from this and other trips in the Salton Sea Gallery.  It is a sad, sometimes creepy, but always visually fascinating place to go.  Take water, sunscreen, bug spray, extra shoes, and, if the air is still and hot, a clothespin for your nose. 

6/21/2009: San Diego: Successful Salton Sea Photo Trip. 

Lee, Steve, and I returned safely (more or less) from the photo expedition to the Salton Sea Area.  it was simply great!  We saw Mud Volcanoes, great sunset opportunities, and the generally bizarre if slightly sad environments around the Salton Sea where so much money ands so many hopes and dreams went into building a great resort area only to see it all fail and fall into ruin.  There are lots of photo ops but the economic ops that people staked everything on back at the earlier part of the 20th century never materialized and by the late 50s was all but gone.  There are deserted buildings, businesses, and houses everywhere, each with its own story I am sure.  Still, there are enclaves that have managed to hang on scattered along the shore.

This week, as time permits, I'll be working on the shots I took and try to get a page of them up by the end of the week.  

However Lee already has a few of his shots posted on his blog which you can see HERE.  He has a great shot of a barn owl that flew right at and by him in one of the ruins we were photographing.  The afternoon at the Fair noted below (not to mention school needs) has slowed me down a bit but I promise to work on it this week.

Presentation.  Today starting at 2 pm was the first of my presentations at the San Diego County Fair.  I gave two back to back on Digital Workflows and Close Up/Macro Photography.  Both went really well and to my surprise I sold a number of the CDs containing the collection of handouts and PowerPoint presentations I give to seminars and workshops.  Will wonders never cease...  Wednesday the 24th I'll be on the Digital Dialog Panel and then on July 5th I will give two more presentations.  One on Panoramas and Mosaics and the other on HDR.

Also next Saturday (the 27th) I will be presenting a talk at the San Diego Photoshop Users Group on Panoramas and Mosaics.

6/19/2009: San Diego Budget Crisis then Desert & the Fair Grounds

The first week of Summer session went off pretty well but there is panic in paradise over the budget BS at the state.  By Fall, City College needs to drop 50 course sections and perhaps as many as 150 by next Spring but thus far the District is managing to at least keep the doors open (something that cannot be said for some other districts in the state).  We do not yet know the exact impact that will have on the Photo Program.

I will be leaving this afternoon for a short trip with colleagues Lee Peterson and Steve Burns for a shooting trip out near Brawley and then the Salton Sea and am looking forward to perhaps having some photos to put up when I get a moment next week. 

We have to get back so that on Sunday Lee can do his Father's Day thing and I can give the first of my seminars at the Fair.  I will be presenting 1.5 hr talks on Digital Work Flow and Macro/Close-up photography starting at 2pm.  So it will be a busy but fun weekend.  I will try to get some new photos up this coming week.

6/16/2009 - San Diego: Back after it...New Handout, New CD

Well today is the first day of the summer classes and with it we shall se what has to be cut due to low enrollment.  I do hope I do not have to tell anyone else they do not have the class they anticipated.  I'd just as soon not have to tell myself that either.

In the past few days a flurry of activity has resulted in a new datasheet being available, this new one covers cutting mats properly and other issues involving preparing a photo for display.  I see so many people struggling with what ought to be a fairly simple procedure and also doing some of the goofiest approaches to it that I thought it was time to put down the proper ways of doing it whether or not anyone wishes to follow that advice.

Photographers sometimes exist as if hundreds of years of 2-dimensional art has never happened and they have to invent the appropriate wheels over and over.  It is such a waste of time and energy and it almost never is as good as what was determined through centuries of trial and error.  New is not always better... progress is not always positive.

I also finally gave into requests that I put the collection of data sheets together in one form.  I think what they wanted was for me to assemble them into a book and I did think about it.  But after the "Thinking Digitally" book and its never ending updates I could not deal with self publishing another book since I just do not have the time to keep up the research, writing, printing and distribution  But I did make what I hope is a reasonable compromise.  I have collected all of the data sheets to date that were not utterly specific to a single class, plus the existing PowerPoint presentations I use in school and for workshops and seminars, and put them on a CD.    They are gathered in folders for General Photography, Film Specific Photograph, Digital Specific Photography, and The Business of Photography plus the folder holding the PowerPoints.

I'm going to offer them officially for the first time at my lectures at the San Diego Fair, but if you are interested, I am selling them for $10.00.  There are almost 70 datasheets and ten PowerPoint presentations.  Of course you could download any of it individually online from this site for free,  but if the time to do that has any value then given the number and size of them, unless you are on a T1 line or better this is a pretty good deal and it makes it sufficiently worth my time to continue to offer it, at least for a while.  Of course now I have to figure out why my CD burner is dead...  Man if it isn't one thing it is 25!

Anyway, if you would like one of the CDs and you can get down to see me at City or at the Fair then I will have them there but do please email me and let me know so I will have enough with me. 

For those in my classes this summer... see you in a day or two!

6/11/2009 - San Diego: More budget cuts affecting classes

Well, it was regrettably foreseeable but still it is a shock.  One of the summer lab classes was cut due to low enrollment.  This is the first time we've not been allowed to have the first week of classes to "sell" the lab sections to new students.  It fell to me to have to tell the instructor the class was cut.  My worry was that by next Monday, when the Dean will make the decisions on the remaining sections, more will fall under the knife as well.  I emailed the students in my 143 classes to encourage them to register for a lab class but it is usually the 100 classes that are the ones to fill them up.  I guess we will wait and see...

Meantime, barring the true miracle of legislative brilliance being displayed, it is almost a sure bet that next year, summer classes will be cut entirely.   

6/10/2009 - San Diego: Pain for City Students... Major Cuts Ahead... Stay tuned

If you have been waiting to see if you can crash this class I have bad news for you.  Both sections of the class have the roster and wait list filled plus a few that earlier on had asked to add.  Oh well there is always next semester but do not procrastinate.  Due to both space requirement and deep budget cuts (our department has just had to cut three more sections) we are also having to really pay attention to existing course caps. 

I know that many think the students pay for the classes but that is not even close to the reality.  Community Colleges in California are highly subsidized by the state.  Every student costs the state money and the simple fact is they promised more in more directions than they could ever reasonably have delivered and got caught with their hands in their own cookie jar.  They are now having to face some really ugly economic realities.  The District is left holding the bag.  For the past several semesters they have been carrying the shortfalls without a penny arriving from the State.  Thanks to the foresight of our Chancellor we had the reserves to do it but those will not last forever.

If the State had done its job and addressed this issue sooner it would not require so radical an action as now.  But liberals assume the world can hardly wait to pay for their grandiose schemes to make life wonderful and free and are just lining up to be the first to write the checks.  They failed to note that Keynesian economics so loved by so called "progressives" has failed in every attempt save one, and that was during a world war.  It was a huge shock to their systems when even the California voters had had enough and just crushed a special election that would have let the legislature raise taxes.  These are the same voters, of course, who through the overused referendum process, made themselves an other arm of the legislature and voted for goodies for themselves without a thought or clue, and certainly no wording in the bills, to address how those goodies were to be paid for as if all the State had to do was step out back of the Capital and pull greenback leaves off of the money tree.  What self absorbed idiots!  And it is now coming around to bite us in the tender parts, one of the most tender of which is education.

I think the nation is about to run headlong into that same reality but that is an issue for another day. 

It reminded me of the shock that went through the energy companies when the crisis in the mid '80s demonstrated that they actually did not have the imprimatur from God to rake in obscene amounts of money. That was such a shock to their psyche that they went into mental paralysis for several years unable or terrified to make any decisions that put anything at risk.

The politicians and special interests tried to spin the descriptions of the ballot measures so you wouldn't notice that as the necessary outcome the only way to pay for it was through noticeably higher taxes hidden behind wonderful euphemisms such as "fees."   But the voters saw right through it.  They still thought all the goodies they still wanted delivered could be paid for with that tree mentioned above.  They want all this stuff but they want someone else, you for example, to pay for it.

The Assembly is deadlocked because all of them want "the other guy's ox to be the one that gets gored" so none will give an inch on their latest entitlement scheme.  The democrats won't give an inch and want all the problems solved by raising taxes and continuing the vapor-ware increases.  The republicans won't give an inch and want all the problems to be solved simply by slashing programs back to a break even point.  They have been out of economic control for so long that would probably take us back to an 70's standard given today's living cost.  Neither plan will work, neither side will budge, and so de facto the state is bankrupt and in stasis.

We will need to get creative to keep up the growth and quality of our photo program until reality of some sort returns to the scene -- if it ever does -- but that is what creative people do.    But at least for a while we will have to stay very legitimately within our caps, at least until the new building is complete and we have more room.

6/9/2009 - San Diego: Addendum - First Zoomify Image is online!

I just completed the creation and upload of the first of my large mosaics using Zoomify(tm) software.  It was fitting that I start with the very first mosaic I produced, a 10 frame shot (5x2) of the action of my friend's old upright piano.  This was shot with a home-made spherical pano head several years ago with a little Nikon e5700 5 megapixel camera and assembled manually to test the concept.  It hooked me. Since then I've worked at improving the technique and now have some that are 20, 30, even 50 frames.  You can do more than that, of course, Max Lyons blew me away back in 2003 with a 96 frame mosaic of Zion National Park -- the file size was over a gigabyte!  But the problem is getting images of that size printed and displayed unless you have a client who wants a wall mural.

As I get time I will be adding some of them to the list.  I can hardly wait to do the ones shot with far better equipment and many more frames.  But this will give you an idea of what is possible. (Note: on 6/10 I added another one, a 27 frame (9x3) from Yosemite.)

Discovering this software was exciting for me because I was always frustrated that the extraordinary detail in one of the mosaics could not really be seen or appreciate online with an image that would take less than several days to load even with cable.  By the way it is now a standard function in Photoshop starting with CS4.

To see this first one, go to the Gallery Page, then click on the Mosaics link.  Or you can just click here to go right to it.  By the way, this topic is part of one of the lectures  I'm giving at The Fair on Panoramas and Mosaics so check that out. The link takes you to the page where you can see me schedule there.

Also, I've just been asked to make a presentation on the same subject to the San Diego Photoshop Users Group in August.  That should be fun.

6/9/2009 - San Diego: Last week of Semester Break

This is it!  The last week of the semester break.  Next week we start the intensive 8-week summer semester.  Our classes are the same as our 16-week classes except condensed for half the time.  That means instead of 3-hrs per class twice a week it is 6 hrs per class twice per week.  It is a good news/bad news situation.

The good news is that we can really get immersed in the subject. with six hours available we can even go shooting around the campus or at the park to help demonstrate things and it is easy then to slip in and out of lecture and lab work as we go along.  The bad news is that there is very little time for "gestation" of the material by the students since every class period we need to cover what would be TWO classes in the normal semester.  There is not much time to study and think about the material.  Some students love it and some hate it.  I guess it is a wash.

I am hustling to try to get al the material online I will need so that I can do this as a "web enhanced" class prototype.  I'm anxious to give it a try and see if having the students turn in assignments and take tests online works out better than the standard way of getting assignments on CD or pen drive and having to load and grade them individually.  I'll get everything loaded into a master template and then the system can populate each class section with the data.

I do have the PowerPoint presentations all done for the lectures at the SD Fair so that is ready to go.  I have a few files to load so I can demonstrate the value in the mosaic process and then I will be done with prep for that.

I'm still trying to find time to go shooting with Lee.  Some new stuff is piling on so that is looking "iffier and iffier."  Oh well, maybe the next weekend will work!  And I'm still trying to get school prep finished so I can shoot my comparison shots between 35mm and digital to finally put that tired old debate to sleep.  I know the answer (it is why I now shoot digital) but I've never kept any of my own tests since I saw what I needed and then trashed the files and film to save room.  This time I'll not only save them but will publish the results online and in a handout.

I do love having all of this time off!!!

6/3/2009 - San Diego:  Blogs/Forum stuff-Who Do You Believe?

In an attempt to keep up on the incredible progress that the world of photography is making these days, I spend a large amount of time reading forums and blogs on the topic since they are far more accurate, up-to-date, and relevant than most of the consumer mags out there. 

I advise my students to do the same but with that advice comes a major and serious caveat.  Some of the material is just nonsense.  Fortunately even a modicum of knowledge usually kicks up some red flags and tells you to look for verification.  But sometimes the material may be accurate for a given approach or demographic of photographer, but it is not universally accurate and may be really bad advice for YOU.  Photo gurus are too often like most gurus: they assume that what works in their sphere of knowledge works everywhere.  In science that is referred to as the "Paradigm Effect."

I have a local acquaintance who has an incredibly thorough, well written, often funny Photo-based web site filled with reviews, tips and techniques, and pronouncements on "how it is done" usually citing "pros" as the verification.  I love reading his site.  Actually I enjoy chatting with him when we cross paths at some photo event or another.  But when it comes to advice for photographers I almost never agree with it.  Does that mean I think he is wrong?  Well sometimes yes; but far more often it is because he is addressing (without specifying it) a very different genre of photography than either I or my students are involved with. 

If you are making photos of your summer vacation to beautiful downtown Commerce City, CO, then showing them on the web or even little album prints, or if you are a travel photographer, a sports photographer, a photojournalist, a documentary photographer, a would-be Cartier-Bresson hoping to stumble onto "The Decisive Moment" even, then a lot of what he advises makes perfect sense.   But it does not make sense for pretty nearly the rest of the vocational-professional photo world.  It does seek to make things easier in the field, but art is not a function of effort.  I do not know why, but in all fields of creative endeavor, creativity seems to find it easier to elude the lazy than the dedicated and hard working.

I am willing to believe his usually unnamed "pros" actually exist, but my own experience is 180 degrees in contradiction to his.  I worked at this for 40 years and most of my friends were and still are pro shooters of one kind or another and I am prepared to tell you that except for the photo-j types, none of them, not one of them, shoot like, carry equipment like, hand-hold shots, or treat equipment in the field like he recommends or insists "pros" do.  No, those working pros of my experience did not, do not, and likely will not be working like that. 

They do not expect it to be easy.  They did not shoot 8x10 because it was easy.  They did not spend hours, sometimes days setting up a single killer shot because it was easy.  Adams did not struggle through the brush with 4x5 on a tripod over his shoulder weighed down with a bag of film holders because it was easy.  Serious shooters do not use a tripod because it is easy and honestly do not always use it just to steady a camera.  They do it because it gives the shooter the maximum ability to carefully compose and work with variations.

If you will only carry your camera or some equipment because it is easy then turn in your artist's badge right now along with all hopes of being competitive in the real world.  True, sometimes things went smoothly and the effort was transparent.  But that was not the goal it was a by-product of the effort and energy that went into the planning.  Art is not a function of effort.

I'm mentioning it not to discourage you from seeking out blogs and forums on photography since they can be a source of major insight and information.  But I am strongly encouraging you to take any of them, including mine, with a dose of skepticism until you have verified for yourself what is claimed and whether or not it really works for you and your way of seeing and shooting.  As a former President was famous for saying, "Trust but verify."  Old (and new) west ranchers were usually friends and generally trusted and relied on each other.  But they still branded their cattle.

And anytime you hear someone phrase something implying that this is the ONLY way to do it or the ONLY way pros do it, simply write them off as totally unreliable.  Though there are scientific aspects to it, perhaps even scientific underpinnings, photography is still an art.  The aesthetic and stylistic differences between pro photographers is precisely because they do things differently.  They don't just SEE differently, they WORK differently.  There is no uniform.  There is no government authorized certification procedure.  In the end all that matters is the image and whether or not it reflects your vision for it.  How it was done is utterly irrelevant.

That it was not produced as someone else thought it ought to be is utterly irrelevant in any environment outside of the classroom.  Your job is to be the best you can be.  It is not to try to be better at being someone else than they can be.  You will never succeed at that.  But they cannot be better at being YOU than you can be, either. 

So, in your own work, follow your own passions and visions.  They are what will set you apart as an artist.  Try every approach you hear or read and see what works for you, what feels comfortable for you to produce based on your vision.  Take a little from here and a little from there as it best resonates with you and your vision.  No one, NO ONE knows it all much as many times we all would like to think that is true.  Unfortunately in the day of the web, it is up to you to sort out the bluster from the brilliant and the trash from the truth.