Peace on Earth

Well, maybe not on earth. However, in a suburban backyard, she's found a bit of temporary sanctuary and peace from traffic and hunters.

Goodbye November

Like it says ...

Hell-ooooo December

Well, we live in a temperate zone, with 4 full seasons. This sums up what we have, off and on, to look forwards to for the next few months. With a little visual assistance from Cincinnati's The Power of 5 televised weather information.

U. S. Capital

A photo I took back in 1976 or thereabouts. Mamiya C330f Pro

Ray ...

A squiggly abstract I managed to create without thought and without effort. It simply appeared as one of my October thumbnails. So, I named it Ray 'cause it looks like it's autographed. Ray scribbles from the beyond.

Reflecting on our Vacation

A mountain stream in the heart of the Smoky Mountains, near Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Image is inverted to make it .... uh, whatever.

Wooo Wooo clackity clack

All Aboard. Took a trip on the Great Smokey Mountain Railroad headquartered in Bryson City, North Carolina.

Blackberry 8310 GPS working without cell phone service

I just found out an interesting and, for me, very useful revelation. Recently, I had switched to an Android phone and my previous Blackberry phone provider was terminated.

Recently, I was thinking about getting a GPS tracker (data logger) for my Android. The free Google app, when I began to install it, required me to allow nearly every piece of data on the phone accessible to Google so I decided against that. When I read through all the things that were checked, it seemed that Google's Mytracks was straight out of the pages of the spy agencies. So, once again I began thinking about my Blackberry 8310's GPS capabilities. Voila!

I discovered that my Blackberry's GPS unit works without phone service. I had to go to Options -> Advanced Options -> GPS Services and make sure it was turned ON. I turned it off for a few seconds and turned it back on, stepped outside as it was searching for satellites. In less than a minute later, the display showed 6 satellites and had refreshed the previous reading. Voila and Eureka!!! ... or is it Eureka and Voila?

Next, I activated my tracking program, bbTracker, my friend when I'm roaming the forest, and took a very short walk. The tracker immediately started plotting my progress. The image below shows the my excursion's route. The chart was saved and then re-opened just to make sure the whole process worked. I edited some digits out of the GPS data so you won't know, without some research effort, where the concrete step is on my front porch.

I think I'll keep my Blackberry 8310 for a while longer.

Orb or not Orb?

OK - I don't believe in the orb thing. But some do. For them, here's one I nabbed during an off-camera flash test early in the game of photographing goblins this Halloween. As photographed except 1) cropped very slightly (2) small frame added (3) black border added to that and (4) saved at a higher compression. Make of it what you will.

The EXIF data FWIW:

The water's up ...

East Fork of the Little Miami River, near Williamsburg, Ohio. November 2, 2013. That front that passed thru 2 days ago muddied things up considerably, as well as blowing off many of the autumn leaves. Paraphrasing a friend "No two days are ever the same along a river." That's a large part of the magic!

Gone ...

Gone but not forgotten. I took this photo of dad, back in the late 80's, when he and I were clearing some land. It was a typical late Ohio winter or early spring, chilly and muddy. The river was up and running. Overcast. However, we had fun working together.

Moto-x or moto cross

Moto-x or moto cross, however you spell it, it's noisy, dirty, and exciting. Here's a cropped film scan from a roll I shot on a Christmas tree farm in Hamersville, Ohio. I'm pretty sure it was back in 1974. This was an AMA sanctioned event but not a championship event. Ready, set, GO!

Girl, Smiling

Let's all sing a few bars from "When you're smiling"

Celebrating Roll FIlm

US patent #248,179 for Photographic Apparatus is dated October 11, 1881; issued to David H. Houston of Cambria, WI

Today, I pay tribute to the invention of the roll-film camera. Below is an image, from a roll-film camera, taken many years after the invention. Yet, many would say that this photo is, of itself, an old photo. The photo is from a scan of the original negative. (Folks out there ... don't throw away negatives!)

I salute the roll-film camera for putting photography into the hands of the common person. I cannot estimate how many hours of enjoyment I've gotten from using mine. I'll argue that the roll film camera (along with, for example, Eastman Kodak's roll film) did for the average person, way back when, what the digital cameras do for us today. What benefit would that be? I'd say the roll-film camera is/was a relatively inexpensive mechanism through which we may easily document, according to our own expertise, personal vision, and time table, people, places, things, and circumstances that we appreciate (or, for some reason, do not!) This image of Pingree Binkley's Garage, Summit Road, Batavia, Ohio, ca. 1948, is an example of an image that captures a bit of what I might call micro history. It's a rather static image, simply a record photograph, offering up little but a view of the past. This structure remains to date but has been added onto and has changed in a variety of ways since the photo was taken.

Ping, no doubt, took the photo. To some who might view the photo, it could be interesting to see the old gas pumps, to examine the various products and brand names, and to see the structure, in general, as it stood facing what was, at the time, Ohio State Route 74. And since the scan is non-destructive, perhaps someone, some day, might want to re-scan the negative and be able to extract even more detail from the image. For now, I salute Ping for many photographs he took. This one was far from his best or most interesting. Also, I'm told, that he built this building. In addition to being able to repair most anything, it's said that he built an embalming machine prototype, for a local mortician, and a patent was issued, to the mortuary, soon after. Grandma said he was embalmed using the very machine he had constructed so many years before.

Natural Bridge State Park, Kentucky

A view of the suspension bridge, very near the lower parking lot. This is looking towards Hoedown Island. 10/09/2013.

Enlarge this map of my hike alone, as a full-scale map. The Blue Tags, on the enlarged map, contain additional information and image links. The line represents the trails we followed up and down the hill.

Shhh. Was That a Hiss I Heard?

On the deeply-shaded mountainside trail leading to Natural Bridge (Natural Bridge State Park, near Slade, Kentucky) a small movement caught my eye as I stopped to catch my breath. Almost underfoot was a baby Garter Snake, approximately 9 inches long. It was wriggling quickly through the leaves and I had considerable trouble seeing to focus. This was the one, of three images, that happened to be in focus and the flash happened to go off, freezing the snake's movement and the tremors of my hand.

Chatfield College 2005

Graduation Procession, Chatfield College, St. Martin, Ohio, 2005

Sister Hogan

Sister Hogan, of the Ursulines of Brown County Ohio, playing the harp for folks in the nursing home. 2002

That was a Good Year

2005 was good year.

Sister Agatha

A portrait of Sister Agatha Fitzgerald of the Ursulines of Brown County Ohio, St. Martin, Ohio. Taken in 2008. Nikon D-70, kit lens, natural light.

Gonna Play Guitar

Potential Blues Man ... 2008

Gonna go Fishing

This guy's going fishing back in 2008

Wayback Machine - 2008

Some portraits:

Swallowtail

Behold the mighty swallowtail! copyright 2002 stephen bayer

Uh ...

Common teasel with a visitor - a Silver or White Spotted Skipper. 2002 with a Sony DSC-F707

Swinging

Swinging high with a friend. 2002. Film scan, same data as below.

Pouting ...

What more can I say? (Actually, she's play acting.) Mamiya 645, 150 mm C, tri-x most likely, film scan.

Whaddya Mean Filibuster?

All in fun. Don't remember exactly what I took this with. But it was digital - a Sony 707 or something like that - and I zoomed in to catch the decisive moment!

Stop!

I call this one The End of a Long Day.

Teen Girl Volleyball Serve

Posture + Toss, Contact, BAM and away it goes! #2 served up something like 5 consecutive points this evening. That was cool. FWIW, these images were from 3 different serves, not from continuous shooting on one serve. Behold the triptych:

Teen, Girl, Volleyball

Psychologists call this a Manifestation of Attentive Post-game Behavior, candid. Nikon D-70, kit lens

Let's All Count

Who doesn't appreciate the instruction and humor presented by PBS's Sesame Street's character "The Count"? Well, if you remember the style, let's all play count the birdies:

One streamlined gull standing steady.

Two fine examples of feathery floaters
that are not floundering.

Three tiny birds teetering
on top of twisted wires.

Four, fat, feathered, flat-footed birds
lined up in formation for some fine food.

Cinco de Bird-o by Steve-O

Six semi-sequential squabby-looking sea-side rock doves.

1 preening birdy plus 1 gull sitting plus 1 that's sleeping
and then add 4 more standing equals
SEVEN salty birds standing on the sand!!!

Seven Salty Birds!!! Bwaaa-ha-haaa-ha-haaaaa!

9 in Black and White

Well, first of all, it's in color, not b&w. Really. Second of all, there are 7 flowers - not 9. Now, we have that settled. Tarpon Springs Florida, or somewhere nearby, 2001.

One

Sometimes, one photographs one's reflection for one's own self portrait. Taken in the urban jungles of Florida, back in 2001. You may call me Bwana Steve-o, if you'd like.

Camo

Back in 2001, on a walk through a Florida nature trail, I saw something - just barely. Then I photographed it. Here's what I barely saw. Sony DSC D-770

Cincinnati from Hopple Street

Bridges are easy to drive over and, as said elsewhere below, very often, one can't really see the view but one rarely wants to stop to see all there is to be seen. "One" means, in this case, speaking for myself, is expressed in the proper collegiate fashion. Hopple Street is a long and higher-than-normal bridge, spanning portions of a large switching yard. This particular day, one decided to park the car and have a walk to see what one was missing. This image is a good summary of what one saw. Now, you've seen it. It was not a particularly nice day and, as evidenced by puddles along side the tracks, obviously it been raining. The Cincinnati profile BT, seen as we look southerly, is off in the distance a couple of miles away. Sony DSC D-770, 2001.

Reds game, back in May of 2000. It rained. Pretty hard. People left. Here we have texture, color, repetition, rhythm, order, and more.

The camera? T'was a Sony DSC D-770, 1344 pixels maximum dimension. At the time, it was an expensive leader - about $1800 and beyond a megapixel - 1.4 I think. A very, very good consumer-grade image for its day. Some (or arguably all, though some may not be marked as such) had very good 3X Zeiss lenses, starting at 28mm equivalent to about 80. This was a very useful range for many things. Used the first generation Memory Stick. Still a fine camera for 4x6 inch prints (no cropping of the long dimension!) and, especially, images destined for web pages. Some, including mine, had some back-focus problems on closeups. Too bad Sony didn't fix this design and upgrade the sensor. I really thought it was a very smart and ultra-modern design.

I_heart_my_barbie_camera_Y2K

Somewhere, someone collected an unused, boxed version of this camera. I'll bet they'd like a copy of this to go with it. I wouldn't blame them. DSC D-770 back in the spring of year 2000.