Category Archives: Photography

New year random photo dump

My 2014 New Year’s resolution is to blog more. I was inspired by my cousin’s resolution to cancel her gym membership and my brother’s resolution to drink more. Why should resolutions be designed to bum you out? Start the year right with a resolution that will make you happy! So I’m resolving to blog more, play with the dog(s)* more, and eat more pasta. That first one may increase the down-scrolling and notification-deleting burden on you, my five loyal readers, but just think of it as additional exercise for your typing fingers!

In a move that is essentially burning through a month’s worth of good resolution-keeping material on the first day of 2014, herewith a photo dump from the back half of 2013, that is, random cellphone photos that entertain me without actually being worthy of an entire blog post.

From our favorite Denver deli, The Bagel Deli: cheesy jalapeño knishes. Just another reason I love the west!

More Denver/Jewish humor:

Behind the bar at Cholon which, besides having scary creatures in wine bottles, has amazing small plates like duck spring rolls.

Green tea chai latte fail:

Saguaro explaining that it’s time to stop vegging in front of the computer and start throwing the tennis ball.

A little light reading on my way to my cousin’s bridal shower in Portland, Maine.

When shopping for yard clean-up, I had to admire the attention to detail in the browser tab icon for Pet Scoop:

I know on some level I should be offended by this, but I found myself more amused, and admiring the entrepreneurial spirit.

We were very sad to say goodbye to our favorite tapas joint, Ondo’s, where we had a typically amazing meal last night, its last night before closing. Really hoping the owners will find a good space and reopen elsewhere.

Then we closed out the year in typical party-animal fashion:

Happy New Year to all and onward to 2014!

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*New puppy coming later this month! Will make the “more blogging” resolution really easy!

More photos from Santa Fe

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Taking photos in Santa Fe is like cheating. You just point the camera out the back door and voila!

Disc Golf Henge:

Fence.

Fence, HDR.

Barbed wire, HDR:

I couple of friends we met on our walk.

Window. Almost anything looks good in adobe. Ask Santa Fe! I think it’s in the building code!

Water spout:

The same water spout, an hour later:

Hubble the Golden Retriever discovers that Rodney has a snack.

And it wouldn’t be my blog unless I took the opportunity to go just a bit Andy Rooney on your ass. My rental car was a Prius. Even after I learned the sequence of button pushing and gear shifting that was necessary to make it go, and adjusted to the fact that it sounded, at every light, like the car had died and I’d need to call a tow truck, there were two more very disconcerting things.

(1) You don’t need a key to drive the car but you do need a key to unlock it. This means that when you get in the car, you have to figure out what to do with the key, since it’s not sitting in the ignition. If I owned a Prius, I would lock the keys in the car at least once per week.

(2) You not only get the general warm, fuzzy, superior feeling of driving a really fuel-efficient car, you get a constant, real-time, animated demonstration of just HOW efficient you’re being:

This little animated diagram changes as you drive, showing — near as I can tell — which direction the little energy hamsters that power the car are traveling. The diagram is (a) designed for the driver to monitor the car’s energy situation in real time, and thus incredibly distracting and unsafe; (b) not designed to convey anything to the driver, and thus pretty pointless; or (c) designed solely to show the passenger what a cool, energy-efficient person the driver is.

I love the West

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I flew to Albuquerque this afternoon. Now hanging at the airport to meet my stepfather and drive up to Santa Fe for my stepbro’s 50th birthday. Quick flight, but I chose a window seat on the right side of the plane so I could play with the camera. The views reminded me why I’m such a happy immigrant to the Mountain Time Zone.

This accidental shot that turned out to be a good bookend for the start of the trip.

Fly Frontier! Until They Go Bankrupt!

Couple of photos from the plane:

Little bit of a bumpy landing:

The Albuquerque airport. The light and coloring in the west are so amazing, even the airport is beautiful.

Now ensconced in the Sunport’s faux western workspace, pretending to edit a brief (hi, co-counsel!) while in fact playing with photos and receiving regular Bronco updates from Tim.

Photos from LA

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I’m in LA for the Disability Rights Legal Center’s Disability Rights Summit. Great event. Saw lots of old friends and put lots of faces to internet names. Presented on fair housing with Fernando Gaytan, a wonderful attorney from the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles.

Couple of photos:

Had dinner at Hama Sushi, where they really really really only serve sushi.

And it was magnificent!!!

Shroom

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We have been lucky so far and have not been flooded. Two worms have attempted to shelter in place by crawling in the back door, and our neighbor’s lawn generated this awesome shroom:

The ramps of Route 1

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[Cross-posted at CREECblog.]

Every summer or so, we visit my brother and his family at their place in Maine. To do this, we generally fly into Boston and then drive the four hours from Logan to mid-coast Maine. The first three hours are on I-95; the last hour or so on Route 1 from Brunswick to Thomaston. It has long struck me, as we meander up the barely two-lane road — often at 30 mph behind a giant RV or tractor — the amazing number of very small businesses that have ramps.

This past weekend I made the trip with no deadline and no one else in the car, so I had the time* to take some photos of these examples of readily-achievableness. (Ready achievability?)**

Disclaimer, because every now and again some defense-side attorney (hi, guys!) may read this: I did not evaluate these ramps for compliance with the Standards. I don’t know their dimensions or slope. If you try to introduce this as evidence in one of my cases, I will file a Motion for Judicial Notice of Completely Missing the Point.

The first couple were actually near Manchester, NH, where I had taken a detour to visit a college classmate.

These next two are churches, which aren’t even covered by the ADA (unless they have some sort of commercial business on the side):

Onward to Rte 1:

This actually might have been someone’s house. Along Route 1, the distinction between house and business is often sort of vague.

Just north of Wiscasset.

Jean Kigel Studio, Damariscotta.

Cheap cigarettes in Waldoboro.

Somewhere south of Thomaston.

The Hair Loft, Warren, Maine.

Unidentified business, Warren:

The famous Moody’s Diner, Waldoboro:

Ralph’s Homes, Waldoboro:

Random business south of Waldoboro:

The Nobleboro Antique Exchange:

So next time you hear some fancy store or chain claim that it’s not readily achievable to ramp their business, here are some examples to, in legal terminology, call baloney.***

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* My leisurely pace turned out to have been a good plan for another reason: when I got to my brother’s house, he and his family were out and their house was guarded by their snarling goldendoodle. Seriously. This dog

exiled me to the hammock until my hosts returned to chaperone my canine interaction.

I was not suffering:

** Under the ADA, buildings built after January 26, 1993 were required to be accessible. 42 U.S.C. § 12183(a). Those built before that date and not altered since must remove barriers — by, for example, ramping entrances that are only accessible by steps — where it is “readily achievable” to do so. 42 U.S.C. § 12182(b)(2)(A)(iv).

*** I might have used a different word if not for the cross-posting, but I’m trying to keep it clean on CREECblog.

Because what would you photograph if you just got your new Olympus EX-25 Extension Tube?

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The EX-25 is a piece that goes between the camera body and the lens that permits you to take macro-like photos with an ordinary lens. It has the advantage over a true macro lens of being way less expensive, so I can goof around with this style of photography without investing a lot of money. Many of the reviews noted that you’ll probably want to use a tripod, and they appear to be correct. But, having just taken the device out of the box and put it on my camera, attaching the camera to a tripod would have required far more patience than I have. And a slightly greater depth of field would have brought more of the nostril into focus. I have a lot to learn — but this is going to be fun!

My $150 investment in figuring out I’m not a landscape photographer.

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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.

Like renting a Ferrari to a teenager.

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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.