Show You Care 2

Another image I'm going to use in my presentation to illustrate paying attention to detail in the work you do. I took this one a couple days ago on the dining room table with my macro gear.

It's a common object most of us have handled today. Did you ever notice the tiny Abraham Lincoln sitting in his chair in the center of the Memorial?

What kind of attention and effort did it take the minters to ensure this smallest of details was included?

Update from Comments: At the Lincoln Memorial you can read the state names across the top. Don't miss the unlit state names across the lintel above the front columns.

Show You Care 1

With a little extra time on my hands (¡Hooray! I'm off work this week) I've been putting together some images I want to use in my training presentations across the country this winter.

I've spent the last four days wrestling with this shot, trying to pull anything out. It's a picture of red bricks with red mortar — already impossible to make it look good. To make matters worse it was shot handheld in the dark under a sodium lamp streetlight — dreadful lighting, and even worse framing on my part. There's not a straight line in the original.

Last night I got it mostly defished and straightened out. Tonight I had the Photoshop breakthrough I needed to unblast the sickly orange everywhere obscuring the brick detail: drop all magenta from the black & white conversion. I love it when a plan comes together.

What is it? I was walking around in DC one night and found this nice flourish in the brickwork on the front of an older hall on the George Washington University campus. Around the back and sides of this former residence they're constructing a giant, nondescript glass office building that envelops the older structure being left in place.

What's the point? To illustrate the idea of paying attention to the littlest details in what you do. When people look at my web pages at work, I want them to see I put considerable thought and effort into the content and how it's presented. And I did it for them, my audience — my fans.

36 Again

Joanie's birthday is three days before Christmas so each year our festivities get an early start. For future posterity, here are some lines of etiquette for those with Christmastime birthdays:

1. You should not combine gifts and say, "Here's your birthday present and Christmas present all in one."
2. Don't wrap the birthday present in Christmas wrapping paper.
3. Birthday presents don't go under the tree.

Follow these guidelines, my friend, and you will live long and prosper.

We had Chinese for dinner with her parents, then cake and presents. Malcolm made the cake, his first triple-chocolate torte. It's a many-layered concoction of cake, chocolate whipped cream ganache, and a hard, shiny chocolate shell on top. It was delish.

Wicked

For Christmas, Joanie and I took Malcolm, Madeleine and her parents to see Wicked yesterday at Proctors Theatre in Schenectady. The singers were astounding and the show was clever and funny throughout. The intricate sets and lighting were my favorite part, they were fun to watch change between scenes. Malcolm liked this dragon over the stage.

Christmas Lights

At the Washington, DC Temple earlier this month. Last year I visited around this time and I had no idea they put up lights — I was blown away at how many there were. They also have nightly concerts there in the visitor center auditorium, I saw an excellent pianist last year.

This year I made sure I went again, this time with a camera.

Messages From Above

Back in September I was in Boston right next to Fenway Park with some time to kill before my concert. I did some walking around the block and found some excellent signs to grab. You never know when you'll need a generic sign like this for a future project.

Preschooler of Destruction

Joanie and I were just now talking about how our three-year-old Claire must wake up each morning and make a list of all the hijinks she can get into that day.

The girl's good. You could be cleaning up the current mess, and she'd have two more started by the time you realized what was happening. 

In the first hour after I was home from work I cleaned up her handiwork from earlier in the day: 

• Spaghettios sauce all over the kitchen floor
• Candy cane shards ground into the carpet, complemented by shredded mozzerella
• Toilet paper clogging the bathroom sink (it's still not unclogged)

During the same hour she accomplished the following:

• Pulled a keepsake ornament off the tree and ripped it up
• Took 15 bites out of a Nerf ball and spit the chunks on the floor
• Tossed her salad all over the floor
• Smeared cottage cheese into her hair and eyes

After I got her out of her early bath she started yawning, and it's no wonder — by her standards it was a highly productive day. 

She would have been on the curb a long time ago if she wasn't so cute. 

Neón de Guapo

Inside the front window at Guapo's, a Mexican restaurant in Arlington, VA.

Back 40

Tire tracks lead the way out back. The day before the first snow in Charlton, NY.

Frequency

My friend at work Colleen hated this striped shirt of mine. If I was the right distance from her and moving around just enough it would get her eyes in a knot. Putting it on in the morning I'd laugh thinking about how dizzy I was going to make her that day.

This shot is the same for me. Any idea what it is? It's not a bar code — it's metal building siding in low morning sidelight. Look for it next fall when picking apples at Knight's Orchard in Charlton.

Fence & Flower

Beautiful desolation along the roadside in Charlton, New York.

Shimmer

Tall roadside grasses at a stop sign glow in the backlighting of the early morning sun. Charlton, New York.

Triptych

At Charlton, New York. I pulled over to the side of the road and walked around in the street to make this shot. A short spell down the road was an older man out checking his mail, very interested in me. I'm guessing it was his barn.

Using Safari on a Mac? Did you know there's a built-in dictionary? Hold down Command + Ctrl + D then hover your mouse over the word Triptych and watch what happens.

Hoof Dreams

No barn is complete without a basketball hoop. For a short while growing up we lived in a house with a barn, and sure enough, it had a hoop. Not that you could dribble in a barnyard.

I found this barn up in Charlton, NY and it had cows inside. Maybe the hoop was for them? I see potential Far Side cartoon material here.

Pass the Grey Poupon

Just got back from my second show at the Kennedy Center this week. No photos allowed during the shows, so you get the inside view, including a giant, abstract JFK bust.

The first performance Monday night was a Norwegian jazz duo on sax and bass, who were a lot of fun. Part of the free concert series they do every night at 6:00 p.m. It was a night of men-richment for me and fellow DC-employed part-time bachelor Levi.

Tonight as I got back to my hotel the clerk said she had an extra ticket for New York City Ballet tonight and would I like to go? It was about to start but it was a five minute walk from the hotel. They played a two intermission show, the dancers and orchestra were fabulous — another excellent, free night out!

Seinfeld reruns, eat my cultured dust.

Gingerbread Airlift

This week was going to be a trip to DC, so what smarter idea could there be but to bake and haul 12 tins of homemade cookies for my co-workers with all my other luggage on the plane? Saturday morning I mixed up five batches of gingerbread dough so I could bake and frost and package Sunday afternoon and into the night. This was my most ambitious bake-off yet. It all paid off when Debra told me the cookies were flawed: you take one bite, then the rest disappears.

This photo shows the entire inventory that made it unharmed. Claire was very interested in touching them but I stationed the boys with Nerf swords in the dining room to protect them. This was the one job they've ever not complained about doing.

One time when Claire came back to look at the cookies again I told her, "Don't touch!" She responded, "Don't touch; I lick!" We caught her in time.

First Day of Winter

Winter is gorgeous at first. Check with me again once the temperatures are bitter and the roads turn all gray and slushy; it's a nice concept in the beginning, though.

Saturday it started snowing big flakes and this is what we woke up to on Sunday. This is the heavy, wet snow that clings to everything and freezes. It starts to fall to the ground in great plops once the sun comes out.

These are all shot from my car window from various stops along the way to early church meetings Sunday. (The first one's actually out the moonroof.) Just because I like the look of winter doesn't mean I need to go out in it.

Last Day of Fall

I went out shooting yesterday morning, and just in the nick of time: around lunchtime today we got a couple of inches of snow, our first of the season.

I got a ton of good shots heading out of Burnt Hills on Goode Street, another jumping off point into the countryside near Malcolm's middle school drop off. The sun was still low, making for golden light and long shadows.

This birch stand should look completely different today covered in white.

Tangle With A Rectangle

Reruns, sort of: yesterday's same waterfall photo, only cropped in really close this time. There's a lot more to see, like subtle striations in color and texture reminiscent of Saturn's rings. See it large.

If you compare it with the original you'll find the spot in the full picture where it came from.

I always try to frame pictures in their final form in the viewfinder, but when you get home and see it large you often can't help but find compelling subset compositions within the frame.

Rock City Falls

Rock City Falls is a little town just outside Boyhaven Scout Camp where we had a father and son overnight last spring. This is the only shot I got without a fishing line in it, there's a bridge right above it which looks like a popular place to cast a line.

This photo uses a relatively long shutter speed of 1/10 second, which makes the water silky and the falls below frothy.