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My $150 investment in figuring out I’m not a landscape photographer.
So I took the Ferrari out for a spin — the fancy lens that I rented for our Las Vegas trip — and made an important discovery: I’m really much happier with my Honda, photographically speaking.
That is, I really prefer macro-like or at least small-scale photography to landscape photography, at least for my own shooting. I guess I should have figured this out, since my preferred photographic genre is Random Shit. But I thought I’d see what I could do with a giant lens that could open up to f2.0 through the entire zoom range of 35-100MM. (Photo nerds – did I say that right?) A lens that was described in reviews as having “buttery soft bokeh, with a good nose, hoppy notes, and a peaty finish.” Or something like that.
Of course, I can’t blame the incredible lens for my lack of skill and preparation. I actually did a lot of theoretical preparation — checked the time of sunrise on The Photographers’ Ephemeris and set an early wake-up call — to make sure I was at Red Rock Canyon for the beautiful early morning light. But it turned out that I’d miscalculated sunrise, and I then found myself — this was both hilarious and devastating to my carefully-planned timing — unable to make the stove work in our hotel kitchenette,* requiring additional time to grab some breakfast on the way.
By the time I got there, it was long past sunrise, but I still got some pretty cool shots:
And, um, WHEW: 
When I got bored with taking landscape photos, I took a couple of exposure-bracketed shots and had fun with HDR,** which at this point requires no talent whatsoever. I toss three bracketed photos into Photomatrix Essentials, and voila! HDR!
But not just default HDR, “painterly” HDR:
“surreal” HDR:
and “black & white artistic” HDR:
I’m a regular Ansel Adams!
Stop her before she noodles again!
At this point in the morning, I switched to my Nifty Fifty*** and took the sort of photos I enjoy both shooting and looking at later. For example, I like the landscape on top of a cactus
more than the landscapes above.
Here are some more sorta kinda**** macro — or at least small & random — photos.
More fun with HDR:
And some fun with Lightroom:
I had hiked the first couple of miles of the 13-mile circuit through Red Rock Canyon, then hiked back to the car — that’s serious distance for this desk potato! — and drove the rest of the way around the Scenic Drive.
I stopped at the High Point Overlook for lunch and more amazing scenery.
Met a couple of cyclists and convinced one to take a photo of me and my cool rental car. One of them explained that he was going to do “18 or 19 miles today.” I said, “wow – 19 miles!” He said — you saw this coming, right? — “No. 90 miles. 9-0.”
Oddly, I completely failed to convince Tim that I encountered carnivorous wildlife on my hike with either this photo
or this one.
As you can see from the previous two photos, the final stop on my Red Rock Canyon Adventure was the Visitor Center, where I strolled past a lot of the sort of informative displays that I’ve been studiously ignoring since elementary school field trips, but did get to meet Maxine the tortoise:
All in all, a gorgeous and satisfying photographic outing!
Extra bonus photo of Shibuya, the excellent sushi restaurant where Tim took me to dinner. I love the food and the decor. It feels like you’re dining in your own private tree house!
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*In my defense, neither could Tim or our assistant, Dustin, who can make *anything* work. Nor did housekeeping have a clue — they had the hotel engineer come by later in the day and write out instructions.
** From time to time, I remember what this stands for. Not just now, though. But it means superimposing three differently-exposed shots to take advantage of the good exposure in each.
*** OK OK, Nifty Forty-Nine.
**** I don’t think the Nifty Forty-Nine counts as a macro lens, strictly speaking.
Sit! Stay! Code!
Saguaro is all set to receive legal software training.
We recently needed to purchase a fourth license for our favorite legal software to install on our remote server. Unfortunately, there are only three of us (me, Tim, paralegal extraordinaire Caitlin) and the company would not issue two licenses to one person. I emailed our rep, “Hmmm. No. Just the 3 of us. And the dog: Saguaro.”
Demonstrating why we love this software and this rep,* she responded:
Ok, so……all kidding aside…I am going to have to assign the license to Saguaro. LOL! … He is going to be contacted for training!
He got his license in the next email:
Dear Saguaro:
Thank you for being a registered licensee for [Software].
Here’s the link to download our … Suite of Software Tools:
. . .
Here is your [Software] Registration Information:
Registration Name: Saguaro Fox
Registration ID:
And, as promised, he was contacted for training.
Hi Saguaro,
My name is [Name], I work in the [Software] training & support department and will be your go to resource for [Software] questions.
I thought I’d check in to introduce myself and see how you’re doing with [Software] tools so far.
And so on.
If Chinook can learn legal research
Saguaro can master this software!
And for your entertainment, my other attempts to pose Saguaro and a laptop.
Aaaaaand “Why do you keep making me put my paws there? I’m done now.”
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*Both the software and the rep will remain nameless, so as not to get anyone in trouble. Suffice it to say, it’s not Summation: in my experience, their reps have no sense of humor whatsoever.
We need a general anti-butthead law.
With fee shifting.
Consider the following case:
This case, although likely tough to bring under current antidiscrimination law, would be resolved on a plaintiff’s summary judgment motion under the Anti-Butthead Act, the key provision of which reads, “Don’t be a butthead.” The high school, although fully entitled to implement whatever religious principles it wants,* is being buttheaded about a very simple thing. Let the kid wear whatever damn gown he wants.
His family says
they’re not expecting the school to change policy by next week, but hope the school would consider eventually having all students wear the same colored gowns to avoid the situation all together.
Laudable non-buttheaded thinking!
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*I am completely unqualified to opine on Christian doctrine, but I thought it had more to do with loving your fellow human than what color gown he’s wearing.
The upside down logic of executing Nathan Dunlap
Arapahoe County DA George Brauchler lives in an upside down world where strapping someone to a gurney and injecting him with lethal chemicals is “courageous” and deciding not to do this is “cruel and unjust.”
In a letter to the governor supporting the execution of Nathan Dunlap, Mr. Brauchler
questioned the motives and ethics of those who have argued on Dunlap’s behalf, and those who diagnosed and treated him for mental illness.
“Questioned the motives”? Questioned? The motive is, um, to keep Colorado from executing Mr. Dunlap. Not sure what’s in question. It’s right out there in the open.
Pause for disclosure of my motive: My view is that the death penalty is wrong and that my state should not execute Mr. Dunlap. Even if you generally favor or are undecided on the death penalty in the abstract, however, there are many, many reasons why it would be wrong in this case. You can read the clemency petition here, write to Governor Hickenlooper, or call him at 303-866-2471. 5280 magazine published a long article in 2008 that spelled out the history of the case.
Back to snarking on the DA.
Mr. Brauchler decries the “abandonment of professional ethics.” The ethics of trying to keep someone alive? I don’t think that word means what he thinks it means. I have scoured the Colorado Rules of Professional Conduct and can find nothing suggesting it is unethical to urge the governor not to kill someone.
The DA characterizes as “convenient ‘scientific’ epiphanies” — the scare quotes around “scientific” are his — the now widely-accepted conclusion that Mr. Dunlap had a severe, undiagnosed mental illness when he committed the crime for which he is to be executed. The diagnosis at which Mr. Brauchler sneers is one that has, since Mr. Dunlap’s sentencing, been confirmed and treated by Department of Corrections doctors.
More scare quotes. Can’t you just see him wiggling the first two fingers of each hand when he complains that
our state’s leaders are asked to accept as ‘objective’ evidence the conclusions of the anti-death penalty movement’s ‘best and brightest’ experts, and to ignore their obvious collaborative biases . . .
Well, the movement does have some excellent (“best”) and very smart (“brightest”) people, who work together (“collaborate”) to do what they think is right (“bias”?). Ouch!
And his letter
called assertions by the defense that race plays a role in imposing the death penalty in Colorado “vile, disgusting and offensive.”
Those are the adjectives you use when you don’t have facts. In fact, as of 2010, 41% of prisoners under sentence of death in the US were black, while only 13.6% of the population as a whole is black. There are three people on Colorado’s death row; all three are black. Studies in other states have shown that blacks killing whites are much more likely to get the death penalty than any other permutation, and that prosecutors are much more likely to seek the death penalty for black defendants.
Ultimately, it is the racism in our criminal justice system that is vile, disgusting, and offensive; not the act of calling attention to that fact.
The clemency petition provides measured, fact-based arguments why it would be a very bad idea to execute Nathan Dunlop. Many people, of many different faiths and backgrounds, agree with this:
All the DA has to offer in return is a salad shooter of insults: cruel; unjust; slap in the face; questionable motives; unethical; “objective” “scientific” evidence; collaborative bias; vile; disgusting; offensive. And the unsupported pronouncement that Mr. Dunlap “took the lives of four Colorado citizens, and justice requires he now pays with his own.”
There is no good reason for this execution; just the satisfaction of the primitive desire for revenge. Guess that’s my bias.
QOTRSTI:* Eddie Izzard on being a transvestite
I’ve grown comfortable with it. If anyone has a problem with that, they can see a psychiatrist and work on their problem.
In Vanity Fair, June 2013.
Reminds me of this excellent SNL parody ad. Homocil: Because it’s your problem, not theirs.
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* “Quote of the Randomly Selected Time Interval.” Because “Quote of the Day” would be too much pressure.
Like renting a Ferrari to a teenager.
We’re headed to Vegas on vacation for the next few days. While Tim is funding our next project at the poker tables, I’m going to take off for Red Rock Canyon with a camera. Just for the heck of it, I rented a lens:
This is waaaaayyyyy too powerful a lens for my photographic abilities, not to mention that
- It weighs one (1) ton;*
- It costs $2,500.**
The autofocus makes a sound not unlike a concrete mixer and it arrived at our office in this:
which has had me humming the Get Smart*** theme song ever since. Given the weight and the price, it’s pretty unlikely I’ll ever buy it, but it cost about $150 to rent for the weekend, and I’m hoping will generate some awesome photos. At the very least, I’ll look like a badass photographer — or a seriously overcompensating dude.
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* Approximate weight.
** OK, OK, $2,499.
*** If you’re over 45, you did not need to click the link to know what I’m talking about, and you may not be able to get the tune out of your head for the next few days. You’re welcome.
El Diablo closed. Donate to CCDC. QED.
This may be the strangest charitable donation request you’ve ever gotten. I’m asking you to donate to the Colorado Cross-Disability Coalition because the El Diablo restaurant closed.*
Huh?
CCDC’s legal team of Kevin Williams and Andrew Montoya represented CCDC and several Mexican food enthusiasts who use wheelchairs in challenging the fact that the owners of El Diablo took an accessible space — in, btw, a beautiful old building in a booming neighborhood — and turned it into a largely inaccessible restaurant by adding raised areas that were not originally there.
Two years, summary judgment for plaintiffs, and a couple hundred thousand in legal fees later — just at the point where the judge was about to order El Diablo to restore accessibility — the city shut it down for (unrelated) code violations. It reopened, reshut, reopened, reshut, declared bankruptcy, reopened, and — after the latest violation notice from the city — closed for good.
Bottom line: CCDC spent a lot of attorney time on this case, won the case on summary judgment, and will not see a dime in attorneys’ fees. Please join us in contributing to CCDC.**
If you’ve heard enough, just click on through to the donation page and send them some cash. If you want to know more about this case, here are some links:
- More snarky commentary about the defense counsel’s accusation that alleging discrimination when an accessible space is rendered inaccessible constitutes defamation.
This part of the ADA — requiring businesses to be accessible — has no damages remedy. The only way lawyers can bring these cases is because the ADA makes defendants pay the plaintiffs’ attorneys’ fees when they lose. But lawyers like the great team at CCDC always work under the threat that they’ll spend years on a case — and achieve excellent legal results — only to have it disappear. That happened here.
Please support CCDC’s excellent legal work. Thanks!
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* This photo is actually from January, but it’s more dramatic than anything I could find for the Final Shut Down.
** If you’re not comfortable with the online donation site — which seems highly unlikely if you’re reading a cutting edge blog like this one! — you can send a check to CCDC at 655 Broadway, Suite 775, Denver, Colorado 80203.
One of these is not like the other.
Apparently it’s OK to shoot your sibling or get plastered and shoot your hunting buddy, but not to have a curious and experimental mind. (I did enjoy the “category” assigned the first article by the Miami New Times.)
Remembering Chinook
We said goodbye to our sweet Chinook a couple of weeks ago. Herewith a couple (OK a ton) of photos.
We tried, for a very short time, to train him as a service dog. The failure of that project was a reflection only on us. Well, and you can sort of sense his attitude in this picture.
He loved to swim:
He loved to roll:
His human friends:
His canine friends (the first one is actually his dad!):
And of course his best friend:
From our holiday card a few years ago; truly sums up their personalities!
Twitter: @AmyFarr
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