Jellyfish

A living mess - very cool. I could watch it for hours.

My life on the freeway

This shot is the 605N from the 405S this afternoon (or the Santa Ana from the San Diego for you natives). It is not one of my better shots.

Every day I spend two or more hours of my life on the freeways of LA and Orange County. I look for beauty, or at least something interesting during the ride. Like today, I saw a great vista of Long Beach Harbor, San Pedro, and Downtown Long Beach. All were visible against a golden sunset. The cranes in the port of Long Beach were glowing in silhouette. I missed the shot and a few others that were almost as good. When I thought I was finally free of freeway traffic, I see a clogged freeway. It turned out to be a 20-minute delay from a fender bender. I hate the freeways.

I saw on ABC World News were scientists think they have figured out how traffic forms – erratic drivers. Duh…

ABC news lists the 710 fwy as the second worst traffic hot spot in the country. I drive the 710 for three miles each morning (if I drive the freeway). It is dangerous, there are way to many large trucks on the road. I see an accident two or three time a week. It is like playing the lottery.

Happy Valentines Day

My son made a Valentines Day message out of tiny M&M's. I thought I would share it with my family and friends. Happy Valentines Day everyone!

Graduate School Blues

Let me set the stage for this short story: I am attending Pepperdine’s MBA program each Monday and Thursdays evening this spring semester. Monday’s class is International Business Law, Thursday’s class is International Marketing. Neither class is easy. There is lots of reading, research, paper writing, and just plain grunt work going on for each class. I am busy all the time, and now I am way behind because I have been sick.

Pepperdine is supposed to be a hard program (it is). Yet I am amazed when I find groups of students using the same peer pressure tactics on me in graduate school as were used in me in High School. Some of my fellow students were actually trying to get me to shut up so they could go home early. They had presented a poor analysis of a Trade Secret case study and expected me (and the rest of the class) to just keep quite. Our instructor, a Lawyer and former Judge, asked a few leading questions… I waited until the silence was tangible, and then answered by tearing apart their analysis (in a nice way). Their argument was wrong point by point, as usual. I got some dirty looks and caught a few snide remarks. They made a poor attempt to defend their position, I countered with further arguments. My position was supported by the rest of the class, and then again by the professor. I felt like I was earning the right to be in B school, while justifying the $70K tuition.

After class, one of the team members tried to talk to me about making them look bad. He had not done the course work, and had not read the material. He proudly admitted he never had. I told him as long as he wanted to put out poorly thought out arguments that I would be around to discuss them. As he walked away I thought, “Well, that is one guy I’m never going to hire (or have on a study group).” People amaze me. I am not going to turn off my brain because some halfwit is lazy. I cannot believe that at his (and my) stage in life, that he would even consider asking.

Ten Years of My Life

My friend Richard at Stuff I Found Time to Post (Sifttp) turned me on to a great photo project site called Ten Years of My life. The creator, Matthew Haughey, will be posting a picture a day for ten years. The project sounds exciting. I've tried to take a picture a day for the last year without stellar results. I'm going to follow his work to see how he does. Early indications are that his photography will be stimulating. I scanned the last few weeks and was impressed with his work.

Interesting photoblog

I found "|BG|Digital photoblog" because he found me. This site is short on words, but long on good industrial photography. I like it.

The site is work safe.

New 70mm to 300mm Nikkor lens

I'm still weak from being sick, so my family and I decided on a nice mellow day at the Aquarium as our Saturday outing. I was excited because it would be my first chance to use my new Nikkor lens. I shot 94 pictures outside in overcast light; I had to keep the aperture open in order to shoot at hand held speeds. Of the 94 shots, about 20 came out. I had a very hard time with the auto focus. It seemed to focus behind my subject. I tried different settings, and got different results. Manual Focus proved to be a little awkward; all of them were of poor quality. My biggest complaint was focusing time; it took 3 or 4 seconds to reach an acceptable focus. I’m sure I’m doing something wrong.

This shot is of my son from about 20 feet away and tight. He is holding two lorikeets in the outdoor aviary. I like the results I got in this series, and in a a few other similar shots. (like the one below).


I had forgotten what a pain it is to change lenses. I’m going to have to get back in the habit. I don’t even have a good camera bag anymore. I went fishing for an old camera bag, but the one I found looked like something M.C. Hammer would have carried, so I had my wife stick the new lens in her purse.

Weird, Wild & Wonderful

I shot this today at the Long Beach Aquarium of the Pacific. I saw the sign and thought it would make a good picture if I could get somebody interesting to walk by. Five minutes later, Mr. & Mrs. Goth walked by as if on cue. Mr. Goth was like 40, it was weird.

I’ve been sick

I picked up a cold or something a few days ago. I got worse yesterday; that is when I got sick. For me, being sick is akin to mild mental illness. When I cross the line between not feeling well and being sick, my mind starts down this dysfunctional repetitive process where it repeats the same series of images, over and over again.

It usually happens when I have a fever and I’m trying to rest, but sometimes it will happen when I’m watching the tube. The imagery is always weird. This time is started with Vincent D’Onofrio from Law & Order telling me I could no longer watch his show unless I caught and killed a peccary. I renegotiate for a javelina , to which his partner says “It’s the same things stupid”. I try to reconfigure my freckles to give me jaguar like skin cover whiule in the jungle, only my freckles start migrating to my back to hide from the sun. While trying to find my freckles, I notice a javelina near a bush, but I don’t have any weapons. I remember that I’m really a robot that can fire arrows out of my ass so I point my ass at the javelina, kill it in a barrage of arrows, and then gleefully take my kill to Vincent D’Onofrio. Only along the way, I find out I’ve been fired by Donald Trump because I'm not a good project manager, and then SNAP, it starts over.

This happened, I don’t know, say... ten thousand times between midnight last night and noon today. Then sanity returns and I just feel like crap again. The funky thing about this is that I know it’s happening but I am helpless to stop it.

Oh, and I looked it up, a peccary is a javelina (I knew that, right?)

Some Sandpipers

I'm out sick today (well actually the last two days), so here is something from the archive, sandpipers from Bolsa Chica.

Ethnologue, Languages of the World

I found a good research tool on the web tonight while looking into the languages used in Argentina. Ethnologue gives indept language usage information for each country and supplies maps and papers to support their facts. It is a great site to have in your back pocket.

Truck at sunrise, 710 fwy.

I did not get a chance to shoot much today, but I did take some time this morning. I shot this while sitting in traffic on the freeway. I get the strangest looks, and a lot of honks.

Nikon D70: 18mm, F14 @ 1/30s

Macro Needed

I was experimenting with my D70 and realized I need two things: A good Macro lens and a better flash. I was limited as to what I could accomplish with the standard Nikkor lens. I shot a dozen photos but a combination of distortion, bad lighting, and bad technique did me in. My birthday is coming soon; I bet a new lens is in my future!

I nearly kill a man today...

…so I am posting a picture I shot a few weeks ago instead of the picture I wanted to take today.

Today was a slow photo day. I shot a few marginal shots on the way to work, worked through lunch, and left for home after dark. So, no good pictures today. Well, I left out the part where I almost killed somebody, which happened while I was running a brief errand about 2 pm today. I saw a character a bicycle. The bike was specially constructed to be part high-rise, part circus bike. The rider was sitting about 10 feet in the air and pedaling a bike via a long chain drive. The bike had absurdly small circus wheels. The bike looked custom made and was in poor shape. The rider looked like a bum, or at least very poor. I grabbed my camera (while turning left in traffic) and tried to snap a picture. I blew it and drove straight at the bike instead. The rider freaked and then drove into the back of a parked truck, landing in the bed. I stopped (I was responsible after all). He was hurt; I could see he was holding his arm. I asked if I could help, he said no; he was an illegal alien and did not want to draw attention to himself. I thought to myself, “hmm, then why are you driving a circus bike in heavy traffic?” He eventually peddled off and I did not get a single shot. I guess I would not be a good combat photographer.

This shot is for my grandmother. She is always after me to shoot pictures of pigeons on telephone wires.

Justice denied out of stupidity and a sex drive

I was in school Monday night when this issue came up for discussion. US guard tells how Nazi girlfriend duped him into helping Goering evade hangman. This guy came forward only after he realized he could not be prosecuted. He wanted to clear the air for history. Great, now history has a footnote: Herbert Lee Stivers might just be idiot. Here is how the story goes: Stivers wanted to get laid. I German Nazi girl wanted to help Goering die with dignity. It was love at first sight… I don’t think so, Stivers did whatever he could to impress this girl, then could not put the pieces together after Goering died to see that he had contributed to Goerings death.

I can see it now, Stivers thinking Goering is dead because of a suicide and then the military investigating Goering’s death. Stivers deciding the military did not need to know about the messages, the pen, or his connection to a Nazi sex trade worker. Then the long wait to tell the truth. Yep – Stivers is a peach of a guy. I wonder if he even got laid out of the deal?