Moving On

“Everything changes”.

A cliche, of course.  But sometimes – like this past week – it’s hard to ignore just how obvious “change” can be.  Even in those instances when you know that change is imminent, there’s still considerable shock when it actually happens.

Like the death of Joe Paterno.  After he was fired during the Sandusky revelations, and soon after diagnosed with lung cancer, it wasn’t hard to see that the end might be near for the old coach.  Forty-six years and 409 victories.  An amazing run.  Then, suddenly, it’s over.  But still a shock.

Or the Kodak debacle.  If you live here in the Rochester area, the Chapter 11 filing wasn’t (or shouldn’t have been) a surprise.  The company that once employed about 60,000 people locally (including my father and one of my brothers) has been in a death spiral for years.  Well, maybe not a “death spiral”, but something awfully damn close to that.  People used to say that if you owned Kodak stock, it was like having a money tree.  You just couldn’t lose, they said.  Well, Friday it closed at $0.31 a share.  Retirees are worried about healthcare benefits.  Current employees don’t know if they have a future here or not.  Film is just about dead as a money-making commodity.  And Kodak failed to take advantage of nearly all things digital (much of which they actually invented).  They may survive, but I personally doubt it.  What’s left will get split up and sold.  No more “big yellow box” and no more “kodak moments”.

On a much lighter note, there’s the most recent developments in the race for the Republican presidential nomination.  A couple of weeks ago most people thought (me included) that Newt Gingrich was politically dead.  You might as well stick a fork in the Pillsbury Doughboy.  He was beaten.  He could pack up his round little self and head home, just like Rick Perry did.  Mitt Romney was as good as nominated.

Then a Las Vegas casino mogul gave him $5 million.  Armed with lots of money and his usual nasty personality, he went after Mitt in South Carolina and turned the tide.  He won by 12 points.  Holy crap.  I guess it really isn’t over until the fat lady – or in this case, the fat guy – sings.

Things change.  Don’t dig your heels in too deeply, folks.  It could all look a lot different tomorrow.  Forget the status quo.  It doesn’t exist.  Probably never did.  Just one of those intellectual illusions.

But as photographers, we already knew that.  Didn’t we?

Playing with LR4 Beta

Late last week, I downloaded Adobe’s newest version of Lightroom (Lightroom 4 Beta).  Since it’s a beta version, it’s free to anyone who wants to try it and will work until they actually start selling the program (in March, I think).  Then, of course, you have to buy it.  Before downloading it, though, I watched some of the videos Adobe provided to see what was new.

To me, the most useful “new” feature is the changes they’ve made in the Develop module.  The old “Brightness” slider is gone, as is “Fill Light”.  Instead we now have 4 sliders that are labeled Highlights, Shadows, Whites, and Blacks.  Each of these sliders correspond to a very specific part of the histogram.  The idea, apparently, is to provide the user with a lot more control in adjusting tonalities.  The same sliders appear if you activate the “Brush” tool.  And they all are set at “0″ when you open an image.

In theory, this additional control should provide more “headroom” with respect to dynamic range.  In one of the videos, they pointed out that HDR-like effects could be achieved with a single image without blocked up shadows or blown highlights.  For the somewhat lazy among us, this would eliminate the need for multiple exposures, something very useful if you have movement within the frame.

OK.  That sounded like something worth trying.  So after doing the download, I needed to find an image that had the necessary ingredients for testing the new adjustment tools.  My choice turned out to be a photograph taken a couple of months ago down in Buttermilk State Park.  There’s a formation in the park known as “The Pillar”, a kind of tallish pile of sedimentary rock that was separated from the main gorge by weathering.  The problem I had on that particular day was positioning.  No matter where I placed the tripod, there  was a relatively bright sky at the top of the frame and deep shadows at the bottom.  So I elected to do multiple images (4 of them) that ranged from 1″ of exposure to 6″.  When I combined them in Photoshop and did the HDR conversion, I wasn’t real happy with the result.  It wound up looking too flat.  It just didn’t look like I remembered it.

So I decided to try it in LR4, using just the shortest exposure (1 second).  That image (unadjusted) is shown below.

The Pillar (1 sec. exp.)

Clearly, the shadows are blocked to a large extent and there are still blown highlights in the sky.  The highlights I could live with, but the shadows needed some serious help.  In LR3, you could add fill light or push the shadows slider up in the contrast curve or use the adjustment brush.  Or some combination of all 3.  The problem, at least in my experience, was the addition of significant noise in those shadows.  Even images taken at low ISO seemed vulnerable.  It never seemed to work all that well.

So I did it in LR4 on the 1 second exposure image.  And here’s the result.

The Pillar, Adjusted

The interesting thing is that this took only a few minutes.  There are no blown highlights anymore and no blocked shadows.  Detail in the shadow areas is good and noise is for all intents and purposes invisible.  If I was going to print it I’d probably do some additional adjusting, but even this looks pretty good, I think.

One example, certainly, doesn’t constitute “proof”.  But it’s encouraging.  Especially for those of us who tend to use Lightroom as our primary software.  If I don’t have to go to Photoshop, great.  We’ll just continue to keep that monster in its cage until we absolutely need it.

There are other changes as well.  Lightroom now (finally) includes softproofing, both for printers and for monitors.  I haven’t used that yet, but it sounds good.  They’ve also introduced some movie functionality as well as a new bookmaking module.  I have played with the movie stuff (disappointing), but have not even looked at the bookmaking.

Not that I need another software expense.  Seems like I just switched over to LR3.  But I do like the new Develop functionality.  More headroom at the edges of the histogram is always a good thing.

Paraskevidekatriaphobia

Now that’s a word I’d never seen before.  At least not until today.  But there it was, on the front page of USA Today, saying that this would be a bad year for paraskevidekatriaphobics.  Rattle that word off 20 times in a row after drinking a few beers.  Heck, I can’t say it once.  Way too many syllables.

What does it mean?  A paraskevidekatriaphobic is a person who’s afraid of Friday the 13th.  If you recall, we had one of those yesterday.  In fact, we’re going to have 3 of them this year.  One yesterday, one on April 13th, and the last on July 13th.  Usually we only get 2 per year.  Last year (2011), we only had one of them.

What’s kind of interesting, though, is that the 3 dates this year are exactly 13 weeks apart.  That’s kind of spooky.  I wonder how often that happens.

All I know is that yesterday’s edition of Friday the 13th wasn’t all that great for me.  First, we had our first snowstorm of the year.  We didn’t get a whole lot of the white stuff (about 5 inches), but the wind was blowing a zillion miles an hour and road conditions really sucked.  My plans were to stay in.  But then a problem with a broken tooth forced me to go visit one of my least favorite people – a dentist.  That was fun.  And I have to go back on Monday.

Am I superstitious?  No, I don’t think so.  At least not much.  I don’t think anyone can say that they have absolutely NO superstitions.  We all have at least a few strange habits in that regard.  But my question is:  what happens to a person with a really severe case of paraskevidekatriaphobia?  Do they not venture out at all on a Friday the 13th?  Not even go to work?  Do they hide?  And is there a “treatment” for it?  A pill?  Are there support groups?

Anyway, it’s a neat word.  One you don’t hear very often.  Or more likely, never.

And what does the picture have to do with Friday the 13th?  Not a damn thing.  But I found that I haven’t a single image in my collection with the number “13″ in it.  None that I could find, anyway.  But I do like old walls.  And this one’s been around for a lot of Friday the 13ths.

So Who’s #1?

Scarlett's, Savannah, GA

For some reason, as I grow older, I find myself more and more disinterested in sports.  I still watch some stuff on TV and I do read the sports pages in the paper, but I rarely get excited about anything.  I suppose that could be because most of my “favorite” teams don’t do so well anymore, except maybe for the Yankees.  They’re still competitive.  But it’s hard to be a Cleveland Browns fan or a Notre Dame fan these days.  Neither can compete on the “big stage” anymore, largely because of money.  That could change in the future, but right now I don’t think it’s likely.

Even if it did, though, I’m not sure I’d care.  Especially with respect to college sports.  I understand why professional teams in the NFL are all about money and profit – that’s really why they play the game.  Like any other corporation, survival depends on the bottom line.  But that didn’t used to be the case with major college sports.  At least not totally.  There was at least a hint of amateurism.

And things tended to be more “local”.  The conference you played in, for instance, tended to be determined by physical things like geography.  If you were a member of The Big East, you probably existed somewhere in the eastern part of the U. S.  There was no Big East team west of the Mississippi.

Not anymore.  The top schools now view conference affiliation as a kind of musical chairs thing.  Show me the “chair”, they say, with the most money piled on it and that’s where we want to go and play.  So now “The Big East” goes from coast to coast.  Time for a name change, guys.  The one you have now makes no sense.

Then, of course, there’s the dramatic shift in the pay scales for top coaches.  Guys like Rick Pitino and Nick Saban make millions of dollars a year.  And that’s for one reason and one reason only – to win.  They’re not there to build character.  It’s all about winning and making money.  Any way they can.

Which brings us to college football’s BCS nonsense.  Last night, LSU and Alabama supposedly played for the national championship.  Why?  Because after the regular season – some 45 days ago – the almighty BCS decided that these two teams were the best “contenders”.  No matter that they’d already played once this year (a game won by LSU in overtime, 9 – 6).  A game that some saw fit to call “the game of the century”.  Game of the century?  Please.  It wasn’t even the game of the day.  It was just two very good defenses playing against two mediocre offenses.  And these BCS geniuses wanted us to see more of this?  Not to worry, they said.  The second game – last night’s game – would be different.  It would be really, really good.  Plenty of offense, they said.

Or maybe not.  LSU, the number 1 team in the country (45 days ago), managed less than 100 yards of total offense.  And no points.  They didn’t even run a play on Alabama’s side of the field until the second half.  Impressive.

And Alabama?  Just a little better.  Five field goals, and then finally, in the 3rd quarter, an actual touchdown.  Then they missed the extra point.  But no matter.  The only way LSU could have scored was if the Alabama guys stayed off the field.  And then it might have been difficult.  All in all, these two offensive giants scored 1 touchdown in 2 + games.  Wow.

So now there are 3 teams, each with only 1 loss, that might legitimately claim to be “the best”.  Alabama, LSU, and Oklahoma St.  Chances are, they’ll give it to Alabama because they won the “championship” game.  Who knows – maybe they are the best.

Anyway, here’s my plug for a Division I playoff system.  You know, a setup where you have to win some number of games that culminates in one last contest where the winner is, in fact, the winner.  No final vote.  No computer rankings.  Just actual football games.  Seems to me they could play a lot of those things in those 45 empty days.

At least that’s how I see it.  Well, that’s how I’d see it if I actually cared.

A Day at the Beach

Kite Flying

Let’s hear it for the AO (Arctic Oscillation).  According to the weather gurus, it’s the “strongly positive” AO  currently in effect that’s responsible for the general lack of snow and cold weather across the lower 48.  It may not be beach weather, I guess, but it’s still pretty good.  All of the frigid, Arctic air is being bottled up at the top of the world by this strong, tight circular air flow.  If the AO decides to turn negative – as it was for much of last winter – the snow demons will return.  One of the local meteorologists says this might happen later this month and that “winter” will be nasty in February.  Curses on you, weather guy.  May the coming blizzard arrive only at your house.

But for now, no boots, no heavy coats, no shovels.  And maybe this guy is wrong.  Maybe this will turn out to be the “winter that wasn’t”.  I could live with that.

Desert Maze

Springdale, Utah

2012: A Blank Slate?

Shit Happens

One of my favorite newspaper writers is a guy named Craig Wilson.  He may do other things as well, but my exposure to him comes from the weekly article he does for USA Today.  It’s probably fair to say that I like him because I nearly always agree with him (I suppose that’s pretty much true for everybody, huh?).  Up until last week’s column, anyway.  On that occasion, we parted company a bit.

Why?  Well, because he said that each new year was like a “blank slate”.  “The future”, he said, “was hope”.

I can’t argue with the “hope” part, I guess.  Even I’m not that cynical.  But I don’t subscribe to the “blank slate” thought.  The only thing I know of that’s new about 2012 is the fresh calendar hanging on my wall.  Otherwise we’re looking at all the same old stuff.

I suppose Craig Wilson might have been pulling our collective leg.  He’s certainly not above doing the tongue – in – cheek thing.  But I think he was being at least partly serious.  When he was talking about the virtues of not looking back, for example, he even took a shot at those of us who like to make photographs while on the road.

“I’m so good at not looking back that I can go on vacation and take no pictures.  None.  Friends always ask to see the photos from a trip, and I always proudly say there aren’t any”.

Blasphemy.  How the heck can you travel hundreds or thousands of miles sans camera?  It’d be like going into a restaurant and just looking at the menu.  You don’t have to eat anything – just read the menu and try to remember what it said.  Exploring Lower Antelope Canyon in Arizona without a camera and tripod?  What’s the point?  Well, OK.  There is a point.  It would still be worth it.  But oh so much better with the camera.

No, 2012 isn’t a “blank slate”.  As Shakespeare said in The Tempest, “what’s past is prologue”.  You can’t define today – or tomorrow – without yesterday.  Everything is a continuation.  We may not be able to predict specific events, but we can predict general behaviors.  What we’ve done before we’ll do again.  And that’s the scary part.  We just keep making the same stupid mistakes.  As individuals and as a society.  Humans are creatures of habit.  If we screwed up last year, the chances are very good that we’ll do it again this year.

I think that’s why science fiction writer Ray Bradbury once said:

” I don’t try to describe the future.  I try to prevent it”.

Head Games

One of the things I used to do, especially during the short time that we lived in the southwest, was wander around among the many strange rock formations out there looking for “heads”.  That is, rocks that had been weathered in such a way that they looked like human heads.  Generally speaking, they weren’t all that hard to find.  Sometimes, I guess, Mother Nature likes to play games with our imaginations.  If you look hard enough, you’ll find them.

I even have one that looks like the head of Darth Vader (from Nevada’s Valley of Fire).  And if you really let your imagination go, I have one that sort of looks like George Bush.  I was creating a regular Rogue’s Gallery.

After we moved back east, however, I stopped looking.  Not a lot of strange rock formations in these parts.  Most of the frozen, stoney heads you see around here belong to real people.  These folks just don’t know that they’re dead yet.  We’ve been back to the southwest a couple of times since, but I guess I just wasn’t seeing them anymore.  Or more likely, just not looking.

Anyway, this past October, on the night before we headed back to I-70 and the long road back home, we stayed for one more night in Moab, Utah.  Moab, of course, is within a couple of miles of Arches NP.  So I decided to go back into the park one more time (we’d spent 4 days there earlier in the trip).  It was late in the evening and I wasn’t even thinking much about photographs – I just wanted to see some of the park one more time.

So I drove out to the Balanced Rock area.  It’s more elevated than much of the park and, since a nearly full moon was going to be rising soon, I figured it would be a good place to hang out for a half hour or so.  So that’s what I did.  When I’d had enough, I turned back toward where I’d left the car.

And there “he” was.  This big old hunk of red rock that I’d walked by a number of times before, but perhaps never quite at this angle and certainly not in this much darkness.  The first thing that struck me was the lips and what appears to be a short beard below the lips.  Then there’s the nose and then -

Well, you get the point.  At least I hope you see the same things I saw.  Otherwise, maybe I’m completely losing it.

I’m also not sure if this guy’s been “spotted” by anyone else.  If he has, I have to wonder if he has a name.  There are other formations in the park with names like “The Three Gossips” or “The Marching Men”, but they really don’t have anything that looks like a face.  Not like this one, anyway.

My problem is that this guy looks like someone I’ve seen before.  I just can’t remember who that “someone” is.

Shadowy Solstices and Other Scary Things II

Just about a year ago I published a post called Shadowy_Solstices_and_Other_Scary_Things.  I called it “shadowy” because it was accompanied by a total lunar eclipse, and “scary” because the winter solstice has always had something of a dark connotation.  In the northern hemisphere it’s the shortest day of the year.  Even if the sun makes an appearance, you don’t have to reach for the sunscreen here in New York.  A sunburn isn’t all that likely.

My target, though, was altogether different.  I was poking fun at a different kind of “darkness”.  The kind of darkness that comes from politicians.

Now, I don’t often quote myself, but one of the things I said in that post was in the form of a question.  I asked if the newly elected Tea Partiers would ”be like the unleashed dogs of hell in the new congress next year”.  Well, “next year” is now over and the answer is, yes, they absolutely were.  And still are.  Generally speaking, all of the things that should have gotten done – but didn’t – can be attributed in large part to those 100 or so memebers who pretty much refuse to compromise on anything.  Like the current squabble over the Payroll Tax reduction extension.

Actually, the “squabble” isn’t about the extension.  Everybody wants it and everybody wants it to be extended for a year.  No problem there.  The problem has to do with how it’s going to be paid for.  Democrats want to pay for it by increasing the taxes on people making over$1 million.  Republicans want to pay for it by reducing certain Medicare benefits and by hacking away at the new Health Care law.  And there are other issues.

And so we had yet another deadlock in congress.  To get past it, the Senate passed a measure to extend the tax reduction for only 2 months, and it would be paid for by increasing the fees on mortgages.  When the bipartisan Senate deal was made, House Speaker John Boehner indicated that it would pass the House as well.  Crisis avoided (for 2 months, anyway).  The Senate passed the measure 89 – 10.

Cue the Tea Party caucus.  They didn’t like it, forcing John Boehner to reverse his position and not allow the bill to reach the House floor for a vote.  Now we’re at a standoff, playing political chicken with a question that should have been resoved weeks ago.

The only question is: Who’s going to blink first?  Before all the 99 percenters arrive on the Capitol steps with torches and pitchforks.

Oh, almost forgot.  Happy Solstice and Merry Christmas………….

It ain’t Spring, but…….

Flowers at City Center, Las Vegas

No, we don’t have any flowers here in western NY at the moment.  At least not the outdoor kind.  I do know of a few flowering cabbages around my neighborhood that aren’t dead yet, but they do fairly well in the cold.

What we also don’t have, though, is snow.  Nothing.  Zero.  Nada.  Zip.  We don’t have any now and we haven’t had any.  The weather folks say we’ve “officially” had 2 inches so far, but that’s a bit of an exaggeration.  Maybe we did at the airport – where they measure such things – but I guarantee that it didn’t stick to the ground.  The grass is still green, I’ve not seen a single snow plow, and people are still riding bikes and motorcycles.  A few people, anyway.

Which makes this year a lot different than last year.  By this time last year, we’d had 43 inches of the white stuff.  The temperature rarely got over 30 in December, 2010 and snow plows were out night and day.  Some days, they couldn’t keep up.  There was no question that Christmas would be white.  Skiers and snowmobilers were loving it.  Their world was frozen.

But not today.  Not so far this year.  November was generally balmy and December has been a gift.  Maybe we’ll get hammered in January.  Who knows.  But for now, I’ll take every snowless day I can get.