Peonies 2010

This year's peonies have come and gone, but not before I stopped to smell them. And take a few pictures.

These little ants do some kind of work on the buds, they walk around busily employed. Our theory is whatever they're doing helps the flowers bloom.

This year I used my macro tubes to get close. It's something different every year: 2007, 2008, 2009.

Rays 1, Braves 3

As I visit new cities for work I'm slowly making my way through all the Major League ballparks. The Braves were at home during my Atlanta visit two weeks ago, so I visited Turner Field for the Braves' June 17th win against Tampa Bay.

Getting to the park from downtown was a puzzle. As someone who studies interfaces for a living I was pretty frustrated; I had to ask several people along the way what to do.

It starts with figuring our MARTA, the city subway system. The station maps and signs use the smallest fonts available so I had to watch the stops carefully. Getting out of the subway station was a challenge because the gate is labeled "Tap Card Here." So I kept tapping my card on the gate, surely looking like an idiot. Eventually I saw a round sensor a couple feet below the sign, tapped my card there and escaped.

Then you have to find your way from MARTA to a poorly marked door into an underground shopping mall called "the Underground" and pick up a shuttle to the park. Luckily I saw a couple Braves hats headed in the right direction and I followed them. I'm still not sure if the shuttle costs $2 or is free, I asked the driver no less than four times if there was a charge, but I couldn't understand what he was saying — was it English? He said just tap your subway card here. Didn't know if I had just spent my return subway fare or not.

No kidding — after finally making it there and 15 seconds past buying my ticket, a huge rain shower doused everybody waiting in line to get in. I got soaked and thought the game would be rained out. Luckily the rain passed on by, we only had a half hour delay, but I was damp for the first half of the game.

Despite the interface and weather issues, I enjoyed the evening. I don't keep up with it but I love baseball. Mostly I go to OD on peanuts ($6.25 a bag in Atlanta!), take pictures, people-watch, and enjoy the atmosphere. Such as: when the Braves were nearing victory, the crowd did the tomahawk chop!

That last picture is of the top of my head on the crowded bus ride home.

Bike Hike

Yesterday I went with Malcolm and a dozen other Boy Scouts on a 27-mile bike ride along the Mohawk River. Our route went from the church south to the Mohawk River, then east along the Mohawk-Hudson Bikeway to the I-87 Twin Bridges, and then back home.

The first 1.5 miles from the church to the river basin is downhill all the way, and that's a big confidence boost if you don't think you're ready for that long a ride. The problem is you have to get back up that same hill at the end.

Luckily on the uphill side of the steepest stretch there's a Stewart's shop, and we gave the boys $3 each to get any treat they wanted. Half of them realized they could afford an entire pint of ice cream, which they quaffed before riding the final mile.

I'm feeling surprisingly good, not all that sore today. It was a fantastic day and I was really proud of the boys, they all made it. I'm ready to go again!

Fly Away, Be Free!

I'm currently stuck at the airport in Baltimore. Storms along the eastern corridor have delayed my flight about 2-1/2 hours, and of course I got here early for my original flight on top of that. Ironically, it's beautiful and sunny outside BWI.

Here's another artsy installation at the Albany airport, flying leaves in blue. This is not my fisheye lens; the ceiling is just round where the leaves are dropping through.

Es Selamu Aleikum

Photographing along Michigan Avenue in Chicago late at night, I was blocks away from my hotel, but I wasn't going to make it back without finding a restroom first. I ducked into a luxury chocolate and cheese bar which seemed to be the only place open at the time. I was greeted by the most amazing ornate lobby.

It took me a bit of research to figure out what this building was. The engraved inscription on the marble lintel was the start — "Es Selamu Aleikum." This is a Shriners' greeting which means, "Peace be with you."

Some more searching on "shriners" and "Michigan Avenue" led me to find the building used to be the Medinah Athletic Club, built in 1929, complete with 440 rooms, a 14th floor swimming pool used by Johnny Weismuller and Esther Williams, and a zeppelin dock on the roof. It's now the Intercontinental Hotel.

Wheel In The Sky, Keep On Turning

At Navy Pier, extending out into Lake Michigan, Chicago.

Knock, Knock. Who's There?

Giant ball, tall as me, chock full of knockers in the Albany Airport.

It's an art piece but is also supposedly a tradition for fliers to knock for good luck before their outbound flights.

I usually rap on it a couple times if I'm headed to a flight down Terminal B. I mean just look at it. It's like bubble wrap — too hard to resist.

Atlanta

I've been in Atlanta for the past three days, giving a couple presentations to health educators on using technology and the web.

This is my first time spending any time in Atlanta — not counting a couple of times through the airport, and for a few minutes around 1980 when my family was driving through, lost in a bad part of town at the height of a string of child murders.

My hotel this week was downtown and everybody said to go visit Centennial Olympic Park. Everything must have been closed when I went because it was just a bunch of grass. But it had some good views of the city.

Bird On A Wire

Lens test with Grandpa Hugh's 25-year-old manual focus 210mm lens on my modern digital camera.

Tribune Tower 3

After some night shooting of the Chicago Tribune Tower from a distance, as I walked up to it I noticed these bricks sticking out of the building at odd spots. Getting closer I noticed they each had inscriptions. They were chunks of masonry and rocks, one for every state and lots of other famous places. Chicago Tribune correspondents collected them from all over the world to add to the building. A nice touch.

Tribune Tower 2

Night shift in the house at the Chicago Tribune.

Tribune Tower 1

One of my two favorite buildings in Chicago is the Tribune Tower. Its design came from a 1922 contest to create "the most beautiful and distinctive office building in the world."

More pictures coming of this one.

Angel Wings

On my last couple of visits to my Grandmama in Florida we talked about how my photography was going. She told me about how my Grandpa Hugh also liked to photograph, and she pulled out all his old gear for me to look at. I had no idea about this hobby of his, so this was a great connection for me, even though he's been gone since 1999.

Before Grandmama passed away last year I expressed my interest to her in an old Kodak of Grandpa Hugh's. I ended up with it after visiting my Mom in Missouri last month. More on that later.

What I didn't realize is that Grandpa Hugh had even more gear than I had seen. In fact he was a total camera nut. He also had a Nikon FG and a couple of lenses for it, which I also inherited. This camera dates back to the mid-1980s, but that's not a problem. Nikon's been using the same lens mount since 1959, so I can mess around with new lenses on the old film camera, and vice versa. Just as long as I don't mind focusing old-school by manually twisting the lens barrel.

Here's the wild part. There was a half-exposed roll of Kodak film in the Nikon. Pictures taken by Hugh over a decade old, waiting to be developed. Probably the last pictures he ever took. You could say I was eager to see what was on there. They came back today.

Unfortunately only half of the pictures developed at all, and what did come through is extremely faint on the negatives. So faint that Wal-Mart charged me nothing for developing. Everything was almost solid magenta.

Enter Photoshop, which with some skill, and hours of loving patience, can turn an awful "Before" into a convincing "After."

So presented here, is one of my Grandpa Hugh's last pictures.

Overpass Overview

Late afternoon view of the Chicago skyline. On the right of the highway is the Sox-35th train station near the White Sox ball field.