And we’re back in business!
March 25, 2008, 10:43 PM
Yes, we’re back in business! The Vivitar 6200W waterproof camera has arrived, and I’ve fired off a few test shots. I hope you like looking at my kitchen:
Continue reading…Categories: Cameras, Project Chanology
Well, the Big Mavica era is over.
March 21, 2008, 12:22 AM
The era of Big Mavica has officially come to a close, as the screen is busted, wrecked due to water at the March 19 anti-war protest in DC. Due to the age of the equipment, I determined that a repair is not worthwhile. And the new camera is on order. The new camera is a Vivitar ViviCam 6200W, a 6.0 megapixel waterproof camera.
Well, that’s actually only half the story. This Vivitar will be my all-weather “hazard conditions” camera. This would be the one I’d take on the beach, to protests where showers are expected, and any other situations where I would expect the camera to take some abuse. In theory, this camera should be able to withstand a pepper spray to the face and keep on firing. Just don’t forget to wipe the lens. Isis, a photographer friend of mine, actually recommended this camera to me for bad-weather imagery. And I got a really good deal for it on Amazon.
After almost five and a half years, Big Mavica may very well be done for…
March 19, 2008, 5:38 PM
First of all, the “Funk the War” protest in downtown Washington, for which I took the day off at work, went very well. I got a lot of great photos, but it was really rainy. It rained. Hard.
Which brings me to point number two. Big Mavica took on water, as it’s done in the past, but this time, I think it might be a goner. It quit shooting photos, and the screen is all white. Something tells me that something might have shorted out in the camera. Hopefully once Big Mavica gets time to dry, it will be up and kicking again. And if not, well, it might be time to finally upgrade. After all, five years is a long time for electronic equipment. So if it’s to the point where I’m faced with sending it out for repair or just replacing it, I’m going to replace it, and retire Big Mavica.
And if this is the end for Big Mavica, at least it went out in a blaze of glory. In Part 3 of the Virginia Beach 2005 photo set, I said, “If I’m going to lose Big Mavica, it might as well be in the process of shooting a great photo set.” And when it comes to shooting a huge protest, I can’t think of a better time or place to lose it.
And the photo set won’t be toast, either. I can still recover everything that I had shot prior to the camera’s going out on me, and my friend Isis is going to help me fill out the remainder of the set.
So we’ll see what happens. Hopefully it won’t be the end of Big Mavica, but we’ll see…
Looking back, I’m like, whoa…
August 16, 2007, 2:56 PM
As I restore all these photo sets, it struck me – my photography has evolved over the course of seven years of doing photo sets. The older stuff definitely looks like the work of a younger, less experienced man. Let’s just say that half the stuff that made it onto the Web site for some of those older sets (The Schumin Web Salutes America comes to mind) would never have made the cut today. Plus the way I covered some of it back then would never have happened today.
A good comparison is with the treatment of the US Capitol. Back in 2001, I covered the Capitol as part of “The Schumin Web Salutes America”. The writing was so-so at best, and it came off as a walk-around in a hurry (which it was). The focus was on the building, with tourists in place. Then compare it to the Capitol’s most recent appearance, as part of the J27 set. There, the Capitol’s appearance was incidental, but we told more of a story. In fact, the writing is often king in Life and Times sets. But Photography also tells a “story” as well, and more emphasis is placed on telling the “story” now than before.
Categories: Photography, Schumin Web meta
A whole bunch of miscellaneous stuff I’ve been meaning to show you…
June 17, 2007, 10:07 AM
I realized recently that I’ve gotten a little bit of a backlog of stuff I’ve been meaning to show you that I’ve captured with my cell phone over the last week or so. So here we go.
So there you go – photographic proof that deer do wander through the vacant lot next door. Apologies for the blurry picture, but this is the cell phone, and not Big Mavica.
Categories: Fire alarms, Photography, Shoes, Silver Spring, Washington DC, WMATA
A few quick things…
April 24, 2007, 1:02 AM
First of all, the photos of the now-demolished Skyline Parkway Motel are officially in the can, and I will be posting those on Wednesday, after I get back from apartment hunting in DC on Tuesday.
Secondly, does anyone have a good recipe for green slime? I want to do a homage to You Can’t Do That On Television for the splash page, and so I need to make some slime. In making the slime, the finished product can’t be clear. It needs to be opaque and somewhat thick, and it also can’t be completely smooth. I want something authentic poured on my head when I say “I don’t know.” And of course, to get clean again after getting slimed, you just have to mention “water”.
Meanwhile, to be truly authentic, I’d need to find an old-style metal jungle gym to do the shoot at.
Categories: Afton Mountain, Photography, Skyline Parkway Motel, Television
Attention, YouTubers: May I suggest…?
April 21, 2007, 1:29 AM
For all of you who post videos on YouTube, may I make a suggestion? If you’re going to be posting videos of yourself demonstrating something, please do one of two things. Please either get someone to do the filming for you, or alternately, please use a tripod or something else to put the camera on.
Why? Because people who are demonstrating something with one hand while filming with the other so often produce videos that will make a person seasick. The videos are so often also out of focus because they’re too close or moving too fast. Such videos make it hard to follow what’s going on, and it takes some of the human element out of a video, since all we see is this disembodied hand.
If I had prepared more thoroughly for this entry, I would have made multiple videos for you of the same basic thing ahead of time to show you what I mean. One where I filmed myself doing something, and the other while having another person film me doing the same task. Then I could have you compare the quality of the two videos.
But you won’t get to see this, because I came to this entry utterly unprepared. So let me pick a few videos out of YouTube to demonstrate what I mean in lieu of filming my own demonstration. My apologies up front if any of these videos that I am about to use were made by someone who is familiar with my work and may eventually read this.
Categories: Copyright infringement, YouTube
Protesting leaves you SO sore…
January 29, 2007, 2:07 AM
Marching around DC for six hours at a relatively fast pace leaves you sore the next day. Specifically, my legs hurt. Whatever muscle runs along the outer sides of the thigh must have gotten quite a workout, because it’s aching today. Going down the stairs has been hell. Going up is no problem. Go figure.
Otherwise, I thought it was interesting to read this in this ABC News article:
The rally on the Mall unfolded peacefully, although about 300 protesters tried to rush the Capitol, running up the grassy lawn to the front of the building. Police on motorcycles tried to stop them, scuffling with some and barricading entrances.
I was part of that group of 300-some protesters. And it was quite an event, as this picture attests:
Sometimes, the way I set up a shot is amusing…
October 22, 2006, 1:02 AM
I’m looking at the photo feature I’m running right now, described as “Headlights illuminate a sign marking the Buena Vista overlook on the Blue Ridge Parkway.” What I find amusing is how I used practically everything I had with me except for the Blistex that I keep in my camera bag in order to get this shot. Seriously. Even the Sable got into the act. Where do you think the headlights that illuminated the sign came from? Sa-a-a-a-a-able…
I was actually trying to get a nice long-exposure shot of the sign, which is how this all came about. The sun was down enough to where the shot would come out dark, but light enough to where it would be blue. So I fiddled with things, and also, since I was parked right in front of the sign, I fiddled with my headlights to get things how I wanted. In the shot I ultimately used, I timed things. I set the camera up at an eight-second exposure, and then using the remote, unlocked my doors (which makes the headlights come on) with two seconds to go. I used other exposures and length of time with the headlights on as well, but that’s the one that looked the way I liked.
I also had some fun taking some long-exposure shots of the Sable while I was up there in the dark, with the tripod all set up. I reached into the car and hit the switch for the interior and door lights. Then I fired off a few long-exposure shots of that. Thus we have the Sable, an island of light in the midst of darkness…
Categories: Blue Ridge Parkway, Photography
A photo of my camera bag’s damaged shoulder strap…
October 13, 2006, 9:00 PM
They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, and so here’s a photo of the broken strap on my camera bag, originally referenced here:
Categories: Cameras
I visited Foamhenge, and it was…
July 1, 2006, 6:25 PM
I visited Foamhenge in Natural Bridge today. It was interesting. Realize that Natural Bridge itself is something interesting. It’s a little collection of roadside attractions on US 11 in basically the middle of nowhere. There’s the natural bridge itself (for which Rockbridge County gets its name), plus there’s Natural Bridge Zoo, a wax museum, and probably other stuff I’m not remembering.
But this is Foamhenge:
Categories: Photography, Places
You know, I could finish this right now…
June 28, 2006, 7:13 AM
If you’ve looked at my site updates, I just released a new photo set in Life and Times called Night March. I wasn’t planning on finishing it this morning, but I got to working on it, and I realized that I was very close to completing it, so I just decided to go ahead and finish the set, and get that out there. So now you can view that protest against the World Bank and IMF that I went to on April 22, where a black bloc snaked through the streets of DC. It was fun.
My only issue with the set is that the dark and the rain, combined with the constant motion of the camera, led to pictures that I don’t consider my best work. Of course, Life and Times is there to showcase events, where capturing the action, rather than creating beautiful photos, is the point. Still, I’ve done better. A16 and the Million Worker March are two Life and Times sets that I consider to be really nice photography-wise. On this one, with the camera having water issues during the event and the need to heavily retouch some of these photos to show the action, it leaves me wishing that the photos had come out better. Still, though, I do like the set, and the photos certainly demonstrate the hostile environment in which they were taken.
For the next set to go up, it’s either going to be one about downtown Waynesboro or Breezewood for Photography, or the “No Armageddon” rally in DC for Life and Times.
Categories: Photography, Schumin Web meta
That was fun…
May 4, 2006, 10:07 AM
I had fun while I went out on Tuesday. As I kind of implied in the last entry, I went to Breezewood, Pennsylvania, which as it turns out is feasible to run as a day trip.
Going up, I took I-81 to I-70 just south of Hagerstown, Maryland. Then I took I-70 straight into Breezewood. First thing I did was to drive up to the east end of the strip and reset my trip meter to get an idea of the length of it. Turns out that it’s a half-mile from the first motels to the last. Then, finishing that, I couldn’t find a place to turn around for several miles. No one told me that US 30 becomes a divided highway west of Breezewood. Getting back into the subject area, I first went to McDonald’s, which had been remodeled since I was last there in 2003, and had their Asian Salad for lunch. Then after lunch, Starbucks let me use their lot while I did the photo set. Then from there, I walked back up towards the Ramada, crossed, walked back down to the other end, crossed again, and then returned to Starbucks.
And I took over 400 photos in the process. We’ll see how this turns out as a photo set.
Since I was working along a very busy highway, much of it with an Interstate designation (I-70 follows US 30 through Breezewood), where there were no sidewalks, and for that matter no facilities at all for pedestrians, I used my FliteStar vest to make sure people could see me. It worked out. In fact, I think I accidentally fooled a Turnpike employee into thinking I worked for the PTC. A turnpike worker in his car waved hello to me. I waved back.
Categories: Photography, Places
What a beautiful day!
May 2, 2006, 6:19 AM
Wednesday, May 2 is looking to be a beautiful day in the neighborhood, just like the last time I went photographing. This time, though, I’m doing a little traveling, as I’m going to cover something I’ve been discussing for a while, but have, for various reasons, been unable to do yet.
Compare this to the last time I went and did some photography, where I traveled to the far-off land of Waynesboro, which is actually the town where I work and also the next town over from where I live.
It’s funny, though. Yesterday at work, a customer came up to me and asked me if I was a photographer. Turns out that they’d seen me doing the photo shoot downtown last Thursday. That kind of caught me off guard, since I usually don’t photograph near home, and thus customers don’t see me doing my photo sets. I do most of my work in DC, and in other cities that are a ways off from home. So fun stuff, indeed.
Meanwhile, today looks like it’s going to be fun, as it’s also laying groundwork for a future photo set at a similar location.
Categories: Photography
I photographed downtown Huntsville, er, Waynesboro, today.
April 27, 2006, 3:53 PM
For those of you who are movie buffs, the upcoming movie Evan Almighty (sequel to Bruce Almighty) had some scenes filmed in Waynesboro, specifically downtown. You won’t find me in the film, but you will see the city. For this, downtown Waynesboro is dressed up as “Huntsville”.
It’s interesting what they did to Waynesboro, too. First of all, banners hanging from the lampposts say “Huntsville Festival of Fine Arts”. Then the Waynesboro Heritage Museum, which is very much under renovation, was done up as a coffee shop, with tables and chairs outside on the sidewalk. The Charles T. Yancey Municipal Building, which was a Bank of America before it became a city building, was disguised as a church. The building’s real sign was concealed by trees, and a fake church sign was placed in front. It said, “Obeying God: That means you, Evan.” The sign was covered by a tarp when I did my shoot. And finally, there were all kinds of fake plants attached to the real ones, and placed in various other places. The trees had fake blossoms tied on with wire. There were also piles of mulch on the sidewalk, with fake flowers stuck in there. All in all, downtown Waynesboro looked pretty good. It makes me want to see the movie, if nothing else but to see how Waynesboro ends up looking in the movie, done up as Huntsville.
And I now have a photo set of it all, which you may very well see in Photography.
Categories: Movies, Photography, Waynesboro