To my client who thinks I should own a Leica (you know who you are). Yesterday I bought this little gem from a thrift store in Maine for $5, case and working battery included. I didn’t even know that Leica had gotten into the pocket camera market all those years ago. The camera itself is unremarkable, what would have set this apart from similar offerings in the late 90s was the Leica Vario-Elmar 35-70mm, that and the $400 price tag!
There’s an Ansel Adams exhibit on at the Arlington Museum of Art running through August 3rd. As someone who grew up admiring his images, it was a thrill for me to be able to view 48 prints made in the darkroom by the photographer himself.
Unfortunately, that thrill was diminished by the way the photos were exhibited. The space felt like a high school gym and the lighting was poorly placed, resulting in reflections on the glazing of many of the prints. Still, it was wonderful to see the deep blacks of these silver gelatin prints and to stand in front of icons of photography, made by the photographer’s hand.
After I graduated from UNT I worked as a video producer making short instructional films. For two years I was in the Special Ed department, working with some basic black and white video gear. Then I moved to the physics department for two years, where this photo was taken. They had color cameras and an actual 3/4″ tape to tape editing system. Pretty big stuff back then. This is me in a live switching segment, in my best director pose, fingers poised for action. Cameras one, two and three on wide, medium and closeups. Character generator ready to lay in some graphics. I think we were prepping a piece on basic circuits.
My wife and I are in England for a week. Two good things happened today: We got a surprise rental upgrade from a Volkswagen to a BMW and we got to visit Highclere Castle, AKA Downton Abbey. In my excitement to get a photo to post on FB I had my finger over the iPhone lens. I kind of like it.
Last night was the first blood moon of the year. I had to get up and see it but realized that I had forgotten all my Nikon gear at the studio. This was shot with a friend’s Leica V-Lux 4, a small, affordable camera (same as Panasonic FZ-200) with a lens that is the equivalent of 25-600mm, f2.8 all the way!
I also forgot my tripod so instead was able to nestle the camera in a beanbag in the back yard and use the self timer to eliminate vibration. (Daylight photos are a recreation from the next day)
Today I took my own advice and spent the whole day shooting in Athens with the fixed focal length lens (35mm equivalent) on the Fuji X100s. I really liked it, even though it was tough at first not having my D600 and 24-120. I really liked the light weight and unobtrusiveness of the smaller Fuji.
On February 13 I sent out an email through Constant Contact promoting one of our workshops. Whenever one of these emails goes out it is immediately followed by several “Out of Office” replies by people on the list who are, well, out of the office and whose email accounts are set up to respond automatically to sender.
One of my clients on the list is working in Sochi during the Olympics and I got an email saying as much. Within six hours my email address started filling up with Russian spam. That means that either their computer has been infected with malware or that their data connection is being monitored. Just to make sure, I used Google translate on several of the emails. There were several promises of big winnings in an online lottery but the one that I loved was hawking the very service that was spamming me!
It turns out this is happening to pretty much everyone who is at the Olympics according to a slew of news stories about hacker activity.
Over the past few months I’ve been working on an expansion plan for The Spot Studio that would add a dedicated 2o x 50 ft upstairs classroom space. In my search for an architect I was very fortunate to be recommended to Mahbuba Khan. She has brought insight and creativity to a tough project and may be even more obsessed than I am about getting it just right. Today I found out that she was awarded Young Architect of the Year by the Dallas chapter of the American Institute of Architects. AIA announcement
Congratulations, Mahbuba!
Here are a couple of renderings of the proposed project. This room will be above the cyclorama wall and will be cantilevered out over the main studio space.
We have winners! Last week The Spot Studio hosted two photo contests at Klyde Warren Park to celebrate their first anniversary. Several prizes were awarded including three Nikon pocket cameras and several photo accessories.
There were three categories in the adult contest:
– Reflections
– A park in the heart of Dallas
– City lights
Congratulations to the winners:
1st Place – Amy Hendricks
2nd Place – Corrie Coleman
3rd Place – Lisa Estep
4th Place – Felipe Garza III
People’s choice – Phoenicia Hudson
We also had a Kid’s Photo Scavenger Hunt and a contest for the best photos. Those winners are:
1st Place – Olivia Paluga, age 8, “High Five”
2nd Place – Elle Paluga, age 5, “Jumping”
3rd Place – Blythe Sailer, age 4, “Sky”
Thank you to everyone who came out and participated!
Have you ever linked something to Facebook, like a blog post or website, only to find that an old photo keeps getting pulled in by FB? This has happened to me and it sent me hunting for a solution. Facebook often stumps me but this one is pretty easy. Evidently, FB actually caches or stores the image on their own servers and when you post that URL the photo they have stored is pulled up. Go to the Facebook Debugger and enter the URL you want to update. It will re-scan the website or blog post and pull up the current photo.
https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/
