I think Saguaro hacked my Amazon account #potd
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Category Archives: Photography
Pumpkins #potd
Deer Lodge, MT #potd
This photo is a study in contrasts: the contrast of the beige gloss paint and the darker matte paint, but also that a building so beautiful is in the town that houses the Montana State Prison. The morning light in Montana makes everything look amazing.
Moo! #potd
Yup – still in Montana! (Wish I’d gotten the exposure better, or taken an HDR series, but had to stop on the shoulder of the highway to take this.)
Missoula to Helena in the early morning #podt
Truncated domes #potd
Leaf carnage
We had a major hailstorm — along with a tornado warning that actually had us sheltering with the dogs in the approximately 10 square feet of the house not adjacent to a window — that left some significant leaf carnage in the back yard.
Still some hail in the lawn three hours later.
Denver in the summer!
Freedom’s Engines
On May 26, I was driving from Colorado Springs back to Denver and noticed, as I neared the Air Force Academy, fighter jets flying in formation over my car. After contemplating the pros and cons of trying to photograph them through the sunroof as I drove up I-25, I pulled into a restaurant parking lot to take photos and found that many other people had done the same.
Turns out the Thunderbirds were practicing for an airshow. I had my camera and kit lens and managed to get a couple of OK shots. Memo to self: if you’re going to drive around Colorado, bring the good lenses.
It was breathtaking! Back when I was a biglaw associate, our firm represented GE in some litigation or another, and a partner I worked with had a big poster of fighter jets on her wall, captioned “Freedom’s Engines.” My first reaction was that that was sort of cloying — the aerospace engineering equivalent of a big-eye puppy photo — but when I thought more about it I thought, as I did last week watching these amazing pilots of these amazing machines do mind-blowing, stomach-churning maneuvers, I’m really glad these folks are on our side, protecting us.
Kitchen technology
In yesterday’s installment of “adventures in remodeling,” we packed up our kitchen. For the next few weeks, we’ll be camping out in the living room, cooking with a single burner and a microwave. In other words, the same way we’ve been cooking for the past 20 years, but in the living room.
Just kidding.
Sort of.
This process required us to pack up everything except a small collection of kitchen equipment that we’ll use in our living-room camp-out. I thought it was telling that our first two must-have choices were a martini glass (Tim) and a colander for pasta (me). What we’d want on a desert island.
As I packed up the various drawers of random kitchen equipment, I came across a couple of interesting items that I think I tossed in the boxes coming from my Dad’s house in 1997. I find them funny for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is: my father essentially didn’t cook. He knew how to make his own standard breakfast (two fried eggs over easy; burned* & buttered toast); a couple of standard dinners (hamburgers;** steak; roast chicken****); and vacation food (lobster*****). I don’t think he was unable to cook; he just liked those things and didn’t see any reason to expand his food horizons. When he and I traveled to China in 1981, he survived largely on packaged peanuts.
Anyway, here are some of the tools I inherited from Dad. First, a snicker for your inner 11-year-old:
If the meat baller weren’t enough, he also had a melon-baller, though from Spain or Mexico, so we miss the English-language snicker. I love “¡¡si!!” on the packaging. Whatever problem this tool is solving, we are clearly intended to be very happy that it has solved it.
I loved the idea of a culture so into eating sardines that it would develop a single tool for opening the sardine can and eating the contents.
What is this and why did Dad have one?
What is this and why did Dad have two of them?
Prehistoric food processor:
And finally, just a couple of cool, old, weathered kitchen tools:
Detail:
In conclusion, show of hands, how many people think I should (1) learn how to use the white balance****** features of my camera and software; and (2) get some real lighting equipment:
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* Intentionally. And when he ordered bacon in a restaurant, he would go to great pains to insist that it be burned as well.
** Classic divorced dad moment: he wanted to make hamburgers for us; little shits that we were, we*** wanted McDonalds. Dad: “OK, then, if you want a McDonalds hamburger, I’d be happy to step on your burger before I serve it to you.”
*** And by “we” I mean “Bruce.”
**** IIRC, Dad’s recipe called for dowsing the chicken in butter every five minutes while it roasted. No question, that was an excellent roast chicken.
***** Steamed; dipped in butter.
****** This has to do with the temperature of light, not some weird-ass reverse affirmative action.
My evolution as a photographer
When I found this in the middle of the kitchen floor this morning, my first thought wasn’t “ew!” but “that will be an excellent photography subject!”
The culprit is undoubtedly Holly, our year-old Golden Retriever, who has proudly retrieved — and often attempted to eat — sticks, mulch, a bird, a plastic box containing mouse poison,* and a four-foot length of plastic piping that was only recently an integral part of our sprinkler system. I guess the fact that she retrieved a tissue-thin wasp’s nest and deposited it in the middle of the kitchen floor shows she can be very delicate — the “soft mouth” so valued by hunters. Given her soft mouth, excellent retrieving skills, and laser-like focus on the squirrels, rabbits, and birds that frequent our backyard, I fear she’s wasting her true talents with indoorspeople such as Tim and me.
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* After a quick trip to the vet and a couple of induced pukes, it was determined that she only ingested a couple of shards of plastic, and no actual mouse poison.
Thought Snax 