Weak!

'Crocodile Hunter' Steve Irwin dead.

I guess if you gotta check out, doing what you love while snorkling the Great Barrier Reef in Australia is an OK way to go.

I was never a huge fan, but if I was bored lying on the couch on a rainy Saturday afternoon and I happened across "The Crocodile Hunter", I'd watch for a bit. He definitely did a lot for the conservation movement, and his help in that field will be greatly missed, I fear.

The Crocodile Hunter was the second (as far as I know) of the "Hey, there's something creepy and slimy in that dark hole in the rock-face, I'm gonna jam my arm in there and pull whatever it is out!" naturalists, and I like that (as, obviously, did a great many fans around the world). It was much more interesting to me than the "We're sitting in our Land Rover with our cameras and 800mm zoom lenses shooting video of a lion a mile away taking down a zebra" style.

The first and foremost "creepy thing in the hole...let's grab it" naturalists was (is?) the great Aussie Harry Butler. Harry hosted a show in the 70s called "In the Wild with Harry Butler". I caught it two decades later in re-runs, but it hadn't lost any of it's charm. Harry looked like an outback hermit,



and he would do the creepiest shit (for example, swim in a water hole with a bigass croc and a decomposing kangaroo corpse...cuz it was the only water for 100 miles, and he was hot). Since the first day I had internet access, I've searched for tidbits of info on Harry and "In the Wild" with no luck (literally, zero results). It's probably been a year or two since I last looked, and in looking again, it's nice to see there is a bit more info on him now (thanks to Wikipedia and everything2). There was an entry on Harry on Wikipedia, but nothing for "In The Wild" specifically, so I created a brief blurb. Hopefully I, or someone else, will be able to flesh [thanks Ben] out the article in the future.

Anyway. I've gotten off-topic. The point of this post was mainly to say "Farewell, Steve". Your acting was a bit over-the-top, but your contributions to the conservation movement will be missed.

The saga ends

For the last week or two, I've been fighting with my truck, trying to get it to pass an emissions test so I could re-register it (due today, naturally). (I won't even get into how much of a scam the emissions testing process is for modern vehicles. Let's just say that they no longer sniff your exhaust and get an actual check of the output of your truck, they just read your computer and get a theoretical check of what the output of your truck *may be*. So when my truck was throwing error codes that probably had nothing to do with it's actual output, they failed me. But anyway...I said I wasn't going to get into it). Last night, with DT's help, I finally got the last bits fixed and got the error codes cleared. Today, I took it back and had it re-tested. It passed. *Whew*.

So I went to the DMV website to re-register and decided to treat myself to some license plate fun. I registered a fancy plate with a personalized message...



Basically it says "Dead F*ckin' Last singlespeed" baby! Which is where I typically finish every ride. No sense setting your sights too high. You might let yourself down.

f/8 and BE THERE!

The f/8 part is easy. It's the BE THERE that stumps me most often.

Last night, 'round midnight, they blew up a section of the old Woodrow Wilson Bridge here in DC. I thought it might have had the potential to be a cool photo op. I debated heading down to shoot it, knowing there might not be a good vantage point for us non-credentialed-journalists to shoot from. So I bailed on the idea. I should have at least tried. I'm so lame.

So, instead of seeing photos of what I may have gotten, here's a shot that a credentialed photographer from the Washington Times got:


(Click the photo to go to the Wash Times story on the demolition.)

On the Wash Post's site there is a cool, short Shockwave movie of the demolition as it happens. The page with the link to the movie is here

From the looks of both the video and still photo, there must have been a press room set up in one of the apartments right next to the highway. I gotta get me some o' them credential things.

Be there. Be there. Be there. Be there. It sounds so easy.

Baby steps are better than no steps

A couple of weeks back, I mentioned that my buddy Michael from Speedgoat Cycles in PA wanted to use one of my photos of him from Lodi in an ad for their shop. Well, the ad is out in the latest issue of Dirt Rag (Issue 123).

As thanks for the photo, Michael was kind enough to send me a copy of the mag, a Speedgoat shirt, and a couple of pair of bike socks. Actual payment (of sorts) for a photo. That almost makes me a professional, doesn't it? Time to update that resume!

In other, similar "Holy crap that's my photo in print" news, local racer, rider and writer Joel Gwadz had his story published in the free Mid-Atlantic cycling mag "Spokes". The story was about the recent Wednesdays at Wakefield race series and was accompanied by a couple of my shots of the racers (like this one of the author). Visit a local bike shop and grab your stack...er...copy today!

Photography stuff I learned yesterday

Yesterday Ben and I got on the subject of flash photography. (In my humble opinion, photography has about as much in common with flash-photography as snow skiing does with rodeo-clowning. Anyawy...). We started discussing high-speed synch flash work. I explained how I *thought* it worked, but had to admit...I had no proof to back up my idea. So I did some Googling[tm] and came up with the following web site. It seems to explain the reasons I wasn't happy with many of my Wednesdays @ Wakefield mountain bike race photos. For many of them, I was seeing blur in the riders, so I'd up the shutter speed (beyond the 1/250 synch speed). Instead of freezing the action more, it actually blurred it. I never really *got* why until now.

http://webs.lanset.com/rcochran/flash/hss.html

This site offered some nice insights that I thougth I'd pass along. The most important points of the site (for me, anyway) are:

"...there is a somewhat widespread misunderstanding that high speed sync would be useful for stopping motion in action photography. Since it's called "high speed sync", it seems reasonable on the surface to presume that it would be good for photographing objects moving at high speed. But this is not the case. "

...

"With ordinary flash, the first curtain of the shutter opens fully, and then the flash electronically turns on and off, faster than any mechanical shutter could possibly open and close. Finally, the second shutter covers up the film."

...

"The problem with "high speed sync" for action photos is that it works by making the flash slow down. Since the camera's shutter can't open fully in less time than its max normal sync speed, the film can't be exposed all at once at high shutter speeds. Exposure must be controlled by the shutter's slit traveling across the film, exposing different parts of the film successively. Instead of giving one almost-instantaneous burst of light, the flash gives a sequence of many pulses of light, approximating a continuous light source during the time the shutter is open."

So there you go. A 2 minute primer on high-speed synch flash photography. Hope you enjoyed it.

My first Flickr set

I've had this idea for a series of photos for a few months now. Something I hoped would be unique. (Ha! Note to self...there is no "unique" anymore. Everything cool has already been done at least once...probably more. And 640k of RAM is all anyone will ever need). Anyway, I just recently started taking the photos for this series, and I've posted the first few on my Flickr site.



The photos are of those temporary roadside memorials you sometimes find at accident sites. Where someone has been killed in an car (occasionally bicycle...coming soon) crash, and their family and friends erect a DIY monument to the person. I love the uniqueness of the monuments. The complexity and creativity of some. And the fleetingness; The fact that at any time, the highway administration can (and probably will) remove them. I thought it would be cool to start capturing them and putting them somewhere people could (hopefully) appreciate them after they've been removed.

I'm not a 100% fan of Flickr yet. I don't really like the interface (tho, the changes they've made recently are an improvement). However, this series lends itself to the tagging/grouping/pooling/Flickr way of doing things more than it did the pbase way of doing things. Additionally, there was already a flickr group set up for photos of temporary monuments, so I figured I could add mine to that and perhaps get seen by more folks.

Capturing the images is often an adventure in itself. Last weekend, the girl and I took a roadtrip up to western MD. Lots of unfamiliar highway randomly dotted with unexpected monuments. Often you'd find yourself barreling along at 70mph, only to see a makeshift memorial along the roadside (invariably, in a place where there was no shoulder to pull off). You'd have to beeline for the shoulder as quickly (and safely...usually) as possible, pull the car as far off the highway as you could, then hike back along the highway 1/4 mile to the monument site.

I made a point of dropping a waypoint in my GPS at most memorial sites, so in the description of each photo on Flickr, you'll be able to see the coordinates of where the shot was taken (accurate to within a couple of hundred yards, cuz the GPS was in the car, not necessarily with me on the hike back to the monument itself). Copy and paste these numbers into the all-powerful Google Maps and you'll be able to see where each monument is. I figure that should keep you entertained for a few minutes.

I have a few more waypoints of monuments I wasn't able to stop and shoot. Hopefully one day soon I'll get back out to them and photograph them...before they're gone.

Doing my (small) part

So I just made my first real edit to a Wikipedia article. But of course I forgot to log in, so I don't actually get credit for it on my little "my contributions" page on the site. So you poor suckers have to hear about it here.

The article is about John Wilkes Booth. Having grown up in Clinton, MD (formerly Surrattsville, MD), and having graduated (just barely) from Surrattsville HS (which sits about 1/10 mile from the historic Surratt house/tavern), I think it's an appropos article to chime in on.

I read this morning that Booth's childhood home had been purchased by the county in which it stands in order to keep it as a(n?) historic site. So I added this bit of info to his page.

The part about the house previously read:

"The house still stands today and is no longer open for visitation after being sold as a private home."

to which I added:

"However, it was recently purchased by Harford County, MD and is expected to become a memorial to the Booth family and their influence on Shakespearean acting in 18th century America."

A much-improved bit of knowledge-spreadin' compared to my last Wikipedia contribution.