Beers of the World

This is a store in Rochester called "Beers of the World". It is a big grocery store that sells nothing but beer, and they have beer from every place in the world. That's Bob Elbert from Iowa State behind me.

George Eastman's House

Yesterday I got a tour of The George Eastman House in Rochester. I got to see a lot of old cameras including one that belonged to Edward Weston, and a lot of other intersting artifacts and images.

UPAA Hospitality Room

These folks are some of the other photographers at the symposium. We have a hospitality room where we gather in the evenings to drink and talk about work and look at each other's work and so-on. The guy with the glasses is Bob who is the photographer for Iowa state. He is also into homebrewing and brought us some great samples.

Nikon Shootout at Genesee Country Village

I am now at the UPAA symposium at SUNY Brockport. It's been a good experiance. Yesterday we had a Nikon shootout at The Genesee Country Village & Museum. My assignment was to screw with the camera settings and find ways to make an old-time looking photo. This lady was making cheese and cooking ina country kitchen, I shot this photo of her next to her cheese press through a piece of cheese cloth. This is a great workshop, since all the attendees are other University Photographers it's a good chance to learn about how things work at other schools. We had some great speakers and the comraderie was high.

This is the X-dreams Skatepark in Rochester, NY. It is a huge place full of all kinds of fun stuff to ride.  

The Pedaling History Bicycle Museum

The Pedaling Musuem was a real neat place! I found this place on the internet before my trip and had to go. They had every type of bike ever made, all the way back to the velocipedes of the early 19th century. The 2 bikes pictured here were manufactured for the US Army by Columbia in the 1890s.

This is a camera made by Eastman-Kodak in the 1890s, it came with a handlebar mount and was designed for cyclist.  

This bike was set up in the musuem. Those things were very high off the ground and hitting a small rock meant instant faceplant. I want one though, and they can be had for a mere $4300.

Columbus, Ohio

I got to visit David Planchet and his fiance' Amy while in Columbus. We went to a bar called Andyman's Treehouse, it has a tree growing through the middle of it.

This is skatepark #3 on the trip, it is The Flow in Columbus, Ohio. The two 7' ramps on the far left were a lot of fun. 

Louisville Extreme Park

This is the best place I have ever seen or heard of in the way of skateboarding! It is also free and open 24-7 thanks to the city of Louisville, KY. I spent 4 hours there and there were even some other guys my age. I managed to get over my fear from the day before and carved up the vert quite a bit, but I rode an 8' bowl a lot more than this enormous thing.

Nashville Tennessee

This is my cousin Ellen and I at the Parthenon in Nashville.

A goofy shot of me at the Parthenon. 

Insanity Skate Park, Madison, AL

This was stop #1 on my road trip to this year's UPAA symposium. This was only a small part of this great park, the deep end is around 12 feet deep with may 2 feet of vert. I carved it a bit but just barely even hit the vert part, it was scary!

A top-notch meal prepared by Mary, she makes the best pasta sauce I've ever had. 

Photo taken while I sat in traffic for a long time on Monday the 13th. A big truck crashed and blew up on the interstate, it was a big mess. 

Early Morning Ride

I woke up very early this morning and could not get back to sleep, so I decided to take a sunrise bike ride. This was in front of the Alabama State Capitol, before the downtown traffic had started to move. The photo is B&W because I had the camera set that way when shooting infrared photos yesterday and I forgot to change it.

Google fun and games

This is a fun thing for those of you with time to waste. It's called google montage, and it has a companion game called "guess the google". The one linked here will search google images and build a montage based on what keyword you type in. For the photo above, I used "mary tefend". I tried my name also, but it didn't work so well.

google montage

guess the google

Bob Dylan

Sunday night we saw Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson, it was a great time. The photo is crappy because they wouldn't let me bring a camera in and I used my cell phone to snap it.

Mountain Biking at Swayback

McDowell Crook and I rode The Swayback Bridge Trail in Wetumpka this weekend, it was a lot of fun. The trail is in good shape, but the heat and humidity were so much that it was difficult to maintain. I ran out of water 2/3 of the way through. It was good to get back on the Mountain Bike, even if it did seem gigantic after riding around on the little freestyle bike.

McDowell going for the see-saw on the Swayback trail. The photo is low-res because it's a video screen grab. If anyone knows how to go about posting video on a blog let me know!

Another fisheye photo, ol Rob made it to town this weekend and we went our for Mexican food with Billy and Ethel.  

More Fun With Filters

Today I tried shooting some infrared photos with my little Canon. I used a near opaque filter and shot with the camera in B&W mode. If you remember the visible spectrum from physics class (r.o.y.g.b.i.v.), then think of this as the light that comes right before red, more or less in the range of 850 to 1350 nanometers. The images I shot today are not sharp, mainly because I had the camera on auto-focus and it uses visible light to focus. Since infrared has a shorter wavelength you have to focus back a little. I will try again with a tripod where I can use a smaller aperture and get more depth of field.
The photo is of the center of the ASU campus, the sculpture is called �The Equinox�.

Fun with Fisheyes!

I got a little thing that lets me attach my Kalt super-wide converter to my little posket camera. Haven't had a lens this wide for a long time!

Not only do I have a new lens, but I have a Great Dane as well. Mary has gone out of town for a few days and Ileya is staying at my place. She also has a brand new fuzzy white dog bed, in this image she is sacked out in the back of my car on her bed. 

This ones a little blurry, but fun.