Borrowing Babies

Posted by dkrashb on July 21, 2013

Mom and baby just chillin’

I don’t really think of myself as a baby person. Babies are cute and cuddly and fun for a short period of time and then they start to need things. And you have to guess at what they need because they’re not particularly articulate. This is about the time I like to have someone handy to hand them back to.

But meeting the new daughter of one of the two women in the world who refer to me as their “second mom” felt different. I’m not saying I wanted to whisk this tiny baby off and be responsible for her. But, her crying wasn’t annoying. Her smile seemed brighter. Her expressions were cuter. And her laughter was more addictive than the babies of people I didn’t watch grow up.

Grandma grabbing a kiss

I was still happy Mom and Dad were quick to jump in when she started fussing. Fortunately, they speak baby and were were able to interpret exactly what little Ireland needed quickly. But it occurred to me why so many parents are excited about becoming grandparents.

In the decision not to have children, we didn’t really think about the inevitable outcome of not having grandchildren either. I think I’m OK with borrowing other people’s grandchildren. I suppose it’s not really fair–after all, we didn’t go through the sleepless nights or the difficult adolescence or the expense of raising the next generation. But, sometimes it’s best to leave these things to more qualified people.

Just watchin’

I enjoyed watching Chris and Karen with their daughter. They have a sense of calm rarely seen in new parents. Or maybe it was just exhaustion? Whatever the case, they exuded confidence and seemed unflustered, knowing what was needed when and dealt with hunger, fatigue, and projectile spit-up like pros.

I’m sure it helps that Ireland is a happy baby without colic. There are many parents who would probably be calm and collected if their babies weren’t keeping them up all night. In any case, we apparently kept Ireland up past her nap time. After enjoying playing for a while and then having her own breakfast, she started nodding off like some of my sleep-apnea-suffering co-workers during a long, boring meeting.

I actually remembered my DSLR is also capable of shooting video just in time to catch Ireland nodding off one more time before she was put down to sleep in her car seat. Isn’t it amazing how a baby can sleep soundly in the middle of a restaurant patio in a car seat? She slept through conversation and commotion and even while she was carried across the shopping center and set back down time and time again.

Perhaps that wouldn’t be so bad–someone to cart you around while you nap.

Mom’s beautiful smile

Meet Up

Posted by dkrashb on July 20, 2013

Surely this is Olympus?

Today was full of nostalgia. It started off with a visit with friends. One of those friends is a young woman I’ve known for 23 years now–since she was 7. I didn’t realize I’d known her for 23 years until we sat down and figured it out over breakfast. But there I was, flipping back and forth in my mind between the 7 year-old Karen the day I met her and the 30 year old wife and mother sharing breakfast with me.

Karen and Chris

It was the first time I met her new daughter, just born in March. She’s a happy baby. Smiling and cooing and doing cute baby things. I will have photos from today eventually, but I need to get them downloaded and post-processed first and I forgot my card reader–I’ll have to find one tomorrow.

Since I don’t have new photos to post, I thought I would take a trip down memory lane from the last time I saw my friend and her husband. It’s hard to believe it’s been 3 years since I last saw them. We went hiking with them in Montana when Pat and I were out for a visit.

One of the things Pat and I did while we were in Montana was take a helicopter ride over Glacier National Park with some other dear friends who accompanied us on part of the trip. We flew over the mountains, above the clouds that surrounded the peaks. I think of these photos whenever my young friend talks about her job. She’s a paramedic and flies on life flights over the same mountains I paid to see.

I sometimes visualize her in an emergency medical chopper over these same mountains. I am part jealous and part afraid. Such beautiful sights so often, and to get paid to see it to boot! On the other hand, it seems like such a dangerous thing to do, rushing out into this unforgiving landscape in a tiny helicopter to try to save someone. I am impressed all over again every time I think about it.

Reconnecting with this friend and her extended family (4 generations were at breakfast together) reminded me how wonderful family is. I found myself missing my own family as well as this adoptive family I was able to spend the morning with immediately upon leaving.

I started winding through history, remembering cute things Karen and her twin sister and younger brother did when I spent 2 summers babysitting them. I also remembered all the hard times having this group of people in my life helped me through.

I managed to slip back into the present moment enough to enjoy one of the nicest parts about meeting the whole family: getting to watch Mom and Dad, Grandma and Grandpa, Great-grandma and Great-grand dad all making faces at the newest addition to the family. They were all adorable in their face making approaches.

A Bigger Coop

Posted by dkrashb on July 19, 2013

Welcome to the Coop

One of the main reasons we haven’t been nearly as nomadic as we had expected to be is because of my husband’s decision to start building guitars in Chattanooga. They have a really cool business development center that makes it a lot easier to start a new business and make it successful.

My husband had wanted to build guitars for a long time–he invented a machine to make it possible to build replicas about 16 years ago, in fact. He periodically would order parts, but the machine didn’t become a reality until a couple of years ago. Then, when we moved to Chattanooga, he had set guitar building aside.

A ring from a very special tree provides the wood for caps on 3 guitars

At least until he discovered the business development center directly across the street. Suddenly, switching gears from buying and selling collectable vintage electric guitars to building reproductions of them became a reality.

He’s an impressive guy. He knows everything there is to know about the guitars he’s dealt in for more than 20 years now. He’s among the best at recognizing original finishes and has been consulted for his opinion from near and far. Now, he’s turned that knowledge into a way to create beautiful replicas that are aged to look like a genuine vintage guitar, which allows people to enjoy the look and feel of playing an extremely valuable instrument for far less money.

He’s also added some touches that make his guitars more playable than some of the originals. Essentially, he creates instruments you can play that make you feel like you’re playing an instrument that should be in a museum.

Using one of his inventions to carve out the complex curves of the body

But he doesn’t just know vintage guitars. He knows how to build them. And he doesn’t just know how to build them, he knows how to create machines to help make them really accurate.

I’m always amazed when I watch him designing something like the complex machines he has invented, designed, and built. He gets as excited as I get when I’m talking about f/stops and the exposure triangle. His eyes light up and his voice gets more intense. He exudes the energy that only comes with creativity.

A second machine he built allows him to make necks the exact shape he wants

I am going to go back and get some macro shots of the carefully aged parts on the guitars if I have to time to shoot again before this set ships. Even the screws have been aged to look like an actual vintage instrument’s.

When Pat first hatched the idea of Coop Guitars (www.coopguitars.com), he was looking for a space for a workshop that would allow him to build in an efficient manner (rather than in our garage where he spent half his time moving things around to make space). He went to look at a friend’s vacant chicken coop to see if it could be converted into a workshop That was when he decided the name of his guitars would be Coop Guitars. He ended up not setting up shop in that chicken coop, but the name stuck. Someday, maybe we’ll have some chickens in the workshop.

Product testing

Post Post-Processing Blues

Posted by dkrashb on July 18, 2013

Custom guitar from a very special tree

I mentioned a couple of days ago that I was working on a project that got me doing a more intentional shoot on Sunday. I have now completed post-processing of those images. I am going through the general post-post-processing blues of not being that happy with the resulting images.

The post-post-processing blues actually start at the beginning of a project. It’s that initial excitement that gets the creative juices flowing followed by flashes of images in your mind of the things you want to try to capture. The promise of creating something really cool gets the blood pumping a little faster.

Guitar bodies in the rough

Then, there’s the preparation for the shoot. Thinking through the shots you want, the lenses you’ll need, making sure you have backup batteries in your bag, and deciding whether a portable light stand is in order. It reminds me of the excitement I had as a child when I would start pulling out toys I wanted to play with and imagined whatever it was I was going to do with them.

Next comes the actual shoot. The place where your imagination meets reality. This is when I realized I should have brought a step ladder and I needed a big sheet or something to cover up some of the distracting background clutter and create some better contrast than the cream-colored walls.

Maneuvering around obstacles, finding angles where backgrounds are cleaner, running into physical obstructions and lighting challenges start out as fun exercises, but as the clock ticks and the sunsets, the pressure to complete quickly builds and the challenges turn into annoyances.

Necks waiting for the final fitting

In the end, I have to call it quits because of time, not because I’m done. I didn’t get to work on any of the macro images I had in mind. I didn’t get to shoot the building lobby or down the hall. A million imagined images begin to dissolve, fading from possibility to forgotten.

Relief that the job is done replaces any remnant of excitement. If I were a tired child playing with a favorite toy, I would probably toss it across the room at this point. But, these are not the kinds of toys that would survive a toss and I am an adult.

I downloaded the images, but didn’t look at them until the next day. I was left with the feeling of holding my breath in the hope that some post-processing would make me happier with them. When I finally did the post-processing, I can’t say I was any more satisfied that I had been the day before.

Part of me wants to go back and reshoot. That part of me doesn’t need sleep and doesn’t worry about work the next day–the rest of me does. I decide sleep is more important. I go back to my day job and forget about my images until now.

There they are. Not quite what I was shooting for.

Finished and ready to ship

Dog House

Posted by dkrashb on July 17, 2013

Even scratching is cute when a puppy does it

The vet we saw on Saturday specializes in dermatology. Similar to a specialist in human medicine, his office is far more luxurious than most vet offices. Rather than a stark, sterile place, it’s a house on a lake that’s been converted to a vet practice.

They kept a large, open room in the front as a living room setting with lots of big furniture to lounge in and wide open spaces for pets to run around in. They even provide a big bowl of tennis balls in case you didn’t bring your own toys.

Out front they have a fenced play area with a miniature agility course and small goldfish pond. Through a gate there’s a large fenced yard that slopes down to the lake. The fence ends at the water and a large flock of domestic geese hang out at the water’s edge in spite of having been chased into the lake by more than one dog.

Conner, the vet’s brand new puppy, has quite a life ahead of him. He will go to work every day with his dad and be surrounded by dog lovers. Between the assistant, the collection of vet techs, and the puppy-loving customers, he was having a hard time getting enough sleep.

When we first arrived, he was napping in a chair next to another customer. When Tisen rudely squeaked his latest toy, Lamp Chop, repeatedly, Conner managed to open one eye part way and slightly lift his head, just enough to identify who had the audacity to disturb his nap. I sat there wishing I’d brought my camera in with me. So much so, I went out to the car to get it.

Of course, as soon as I returned, the vet was ready for us, so I missed the opportunity to catch Conner napping. But when it was time for us to leave Tisen for an hour, Conner was waking up. The assistant took him out in the yard to play and I was quickly reminded how unpredictable puppies are as I chased Conner around the small yard trying to get a shot.

Conner rears up to take the jump

True to form, in my rush to catch Conner every time he didn’t something cute, I forgot to check my settings from shooting at the park we’d stopped at on the way in. When I finally got a good look at the images, I was dismayed that I had too slow of a shutter speed to get much that was worth keeping.

But Conner was so cute, I couldn’t discard all the images. Especially when he made an attempt to jump over the low jump in the agility course. The vet had just picked up Conner the night before, so this was the first time he’d seen the agility course. We were all impressed.

For those of you worried about Tisen from yesterday’s post, he is still sick, but improving. He saw our local vet today and we are hopeful his stomach will settle soon.

Conner changes his mind mid-leap and darts around the jump instead

Pit Stop

Posted by dkrashb on July 16, 2013

This image looks way more interesting in sepia that it did in color–why is that?

On Saturday, we went on a not-so-fun road trip. We took Tisen to see a doggie dermatologist to get allergy tested. His allergies have been getting worse and worse and he’s been getting more lethargic.

We skipped his antihistamine the night before and the morning of so as not to interfere with the allergy test. This had a profound effect on his energy level. When I took him for his morning walk, instead of feeling like I was walking a pet turtle, I was having to double-time it to keep up. In fact, he actually galloped the last 100 yards back to the building, charged down the hall, and then ran all over the place once we were home, chasing me and tossing his toys around like a puppy.

It made me sad to realize how much the drugs had been affecting him. My poor boy.

What a silly face!

We loaded him into the van and took off for Louisville. That’s Louisville, Tennessee–there are not many unique city names in the Eastern US.

In any case, Louisville is just outside of Knoxville. It reminds me a little of the Lake of the Ozark’s in Missouri in terms of scenery, but it’s not ridiculously over-developed–or if it is, they hide it well.

We arrived about 30 minutes ahead of schedule, so we made a stop at Admiral Farragut Park. There, we found a nice little walk by the lake, a good strong breeze, and a sign that told us about Admiral Farragut who was born in Knoxville and joined the navy when he was 9 years old. I used to think I was industrious because I started mowing lawns at 9–now I feel like a slacker!

My boys

I got out my camera and attempted to find something interesting in the high-noon sun. I was impressed that on a Saturday in July, we saw only 3 boats go by in a half an hour–definitely not like the Lake of the Ozark’s.

Then, I turned and saw Tisen and Pat waiting on me. Pat was petting Tisen and apparently hit a spot Tisen really wanted scratched–he started backing up so Pat could reach better with the silliest expression on his face. My happy boy . . . I wish he were looking half as happy now.

He was sedated for his allergy test and has been so miserable ever since, I am feeling horribly guilty. On the plus side, he hasn’t been itching since we got back. There’s not really a good explanation for that–he’s been so sick we haven’t given him anything new. The only thing that’s changed is we found out he’s allergic to dust mites (along with about 25 other allergens) so we got rid of his old bed that had a washable cover over an un-washable fill. We got him one that’s completely washable instead.

I don’t know if I’ll every forgive myself if all this time it was his bed making him itch!

A view of the lake, which is really a reservoir on the Tennessee River

Attached and Detached

Posted by dkrashb on July 15, 2013

Theo looks like he's all set for a landing, but Dale is still in motion

Currently my favorite image–Theo never ceases to amaze me

I managed to get motivated to do a more intentional shoot Sunday. I have had a project in mind, but didn’t have the time or energy to pursue it. As fate would have it, a deadline appeared out of nowhere for what I had been intending to do.

Unfortunately, I didn’t manage to make as much time as I needed and didn’t get exactly what I wanted.

Interesting cloud formations over Chattanooga

This is another one I still like–the clouds were just so cool.

I often wonder if any photographers ever says to themselves, “There is nothing that could be better about this image.” Does that happen?

I once read a quote: “It can be a trap of the photographer to think that his or her best pictures were the ones that were hardest to get” (Timothy Allen). There are times when there are so many obstacles to getting the shot I want that when I finally get something decent, I find myself pleased with it. Weeks later when the memory of how difficult the situation was has faded, if I happen across the same photo, I am only disappointed.

There’s just something so red-white-and-blue about this one. the blue is a little too blue, the bird could have used some fill flash, and the sign is cut off in an odd place, but I still like it.

I guess sentimentality has the same effect–the more emotionally attached you are to the event, the people, the day, or whatever might color your personal response to a photo, the less likely you are to perceive your photo as someone who wasn’t there would. Since sentimentality is what drives the bulk of the photos taken in this world, when a photographer manages to create art, those images really stand apart.

View of Downtown Chattanooga from Stringer's Ridge in the fall

As much as I wish this had been taken in the golden sunlight of dawn, I still enjoy the trees.

I don’t have art yet, but I have a few images I have gotten attached to. I like what’s in these images because there’s something about them that strikes me as a reminder that beautiful things happen in simple ways. They also remind me that I’ve learned to see these things, which is perhaps at start at the most important lesson in photography.

Every time I look at this photo, I think “wow” right before I start pointing out all its flaws. But no matter how many things I find wrong with it, I still think “wow” first.

That isn’t to say that there aren’t still many things I miss. I remember taking some corporate class once where they talked about how our brains automatically filter out what we aren’t interested in, causing us to completely miss information. When I took a motorcycle safety course, this phenomena was brought home to me when the instructor talked about how people don’t see motorcycles because they don’t expect to see them–in a large percentage of accidents where the motorcyclist reported having made eye contact with a driver right before the driver hit them, the driver reported having never seen the motorcyclist.

As unfair and biased as it is, I love this image more because it’s the moon than I would if it were the sun.

But the point is that photography is teaching my brain to filter less. As I walked home from an errand the other day, I couldn’t take my eyes off the sky. I was passed by cars, bicyclists, and other pedestrians that didn’t notice the sunset. I found myself wondering how many amazing sunsets I had failed to notice when the opportunity presented itself. I found myself grateful I’d taken up this journey–sometimes it frustrates me, but it has given me new ways to see. That’s a pretty big gift.

I can’t help myself. I love about every photo of Tisen, but his ears particularly make me smile in this one

Bad Habits

Posted by dkrashb on July 14, 2013

I don’t know why, but big puffy clouds make me happy

I expect to collapse into a deep sleep from which I cannot be awakened at any moment. Between long days for my day job and several personal projects, sleep seems to be the thing that’s not fitting into my schedule. Oh, and healthy meals. Oh, yeah, and working out. How long can a human survive on limited sleep, limited nutrition, and way too much time sitting?

More importantly, how do bad health habits affect photographic skills?

This is my list of what I have observed in how my photography habits have changed:

I have less time to shoot. Therefore, I shoot what presents itself. Sometimes what presents itself isn’t all that interesting. I shoot it anyway because I don’t have time to go find something more interesting.
I have less imagination. There have been many times I have had a lot of fun shooting uninteresting subjects and made them more interesting by choosing to treat them differently. With a muddled mind full of unfinished to-do’s, I seem to be stuck in landscape mode. I guess when we are stressed, we tend to fall back to where we are most comfortable.
The same clouds as above as they begin to break up
I take fewer images. Instead of shooting every possible angle with different exposures and trying different focal lengths, etc, I take a couple of angels less than a half dozen times and call it done. This would be a good thing if it were because I was taking my time and carefully deciding what I wanted. But it’s more like I am not seeing all the possibilities and don’t have the energy to create a bunch of shots I have to go through later.
I minimize the time I spend on post-processing. If I have 3 similar images, I spend less than 2 minutes adjusting the first and then I stamp the same settings on the rest. Unless there is something really amiss, I call it done.
I don’t plan my shoots or my shots. When I am experiencing less stress, I think about images I’d like to get. I think about where I can go to get them. I think of techniques I’d like to improve and give myself assignments to work on them. Now, I am grabbing what I can get.
I don’t work on new skills. Normally, I find at least a couple of hours a week to read about something related to improving my photos or go to a workshop or watch one online. Those hours have been consumed. Perhaps this is why I am having a shortage of ideas?

Now that I have enumerated the ways in which I am neglecting my development (that would be funnier if I were a film photographer), the only question is whether it’s better to keep shooting or whether I’m just picking up bad photography habits in addition to bad life habits.

I cannot recall having ever seen a cloud quite like this one

High Water

Posted by dkrashb on July 13, 2013

It’s hard to tell if there is any separation between the wetland and the river

The other day, the water levels reached a new high. I decided to go grab a few shots from the common room balcony where I had shot the landscape in times of normal water levels for comparison.

Taken last June before the drought dropped the water levels–previously the highest I’d seen it

Two things distracted me. First, I started experimenting with the in-camera HDR feature since there was a lot of contrast between the wetland (in the shadows) and the sky. Second, the clouds were interesting. They never got really colorful–I watched until the sun was well below the horizon–but they were making some pretty interesting shapes.

All of these images are the HDR version of the image created in the camera.

My favorite cloud

On the one hand, I get better dynamic range using Photomatix. On the other hand, I didn’t have to do any special post-processing to get these and given that I didn’t start processing photos until after midnight, I appreciate that.

I will try processing the 3 exposures using Photomatix and doing a comparison when I have some more time (like that will ever happen), but for now, I feel like the feature did improve the dynamic range of the image some and I didn’t have to do as much work.

I should also note that the clouds were moving, yet the in-camera feature managed to match them up across 3 images and then crop the image to the size that worked with the data it had. While I wasn’t crazy about the cropping, I thought the matching worked very well.

Bed is calling . . .

Getting Rosy as the sun goes down

Fast Camera

Posted by dkrashb on July 12, 2013

I am experimenting with a new iPhone photography app called Fast Camera. It’s fun little app that starts firing away in rapid-fire mode the moment you launch the app. You can change the settings so you have to push the button manually, but what fun is that?

I love the idea of being able to capture rapidly moving objects (such as Tisen) before they stop doing the thing that I wanted to take a picture of in the first place.

This is a constant struggle with smart camera apps. By the time I get the app started, get the thing focused and click the button, whatever I was hoping to capture has often already gone on it’s merry way or turned its back to me.

However, I find I am struggling with this app a bit. The first problem is it starts taking photos as I am raising it into position, so I end up with 24 shots that look like this:

I am not fond of my feet. Certainly not fond enough of them to want two dozen pictures of my toes. And I’d much rather have Tisen’s entire face in the frame than just his nose. (I really didn’t mean for that to rhyme.) That said, it is easy to delete all the extraneous misfires, so that’s not a huge problem.

I also like that the app does not automatically save all the images to my camera roll–that would fill up my photostream with a bunch of crap I would rather never see again.

However, the down side of it not saving images to my camera roll is that I end up with a collection of photos inside the app that I forget all about and then discover again weeks later when I next use it. For example, I had 62 images that looked pretty much identical to this:

I cannot come up with where this image was taken or whose foot that could possibly be. Perhaps I should have a “who can identify this photo” contest? I can only imagine that I accidentally launched the app and didn’t even realize it was shooting away.

Yesterday, I chose this app over the more familiar apps I use to catch Tisen trotting down the hall in his happy mode. This means he was picking his feet up, wagging his tail, and holding Lamb Chop (the newest addition to his family) high.

In spite of the speed of the app, Tisen stopped his happy mode trot as soon as I stepped out in front of him and held up my phone. The other problem was that all 45 images were just as out of focus as the 2 I’m posting. When I just now opened the app to check the settings, I ended up with 12 images of my computer before I could hit the “stop” button. But, I did switch it to autofocus mode so next time I launch it, the focus will hopefully be improved.

Perhaps the only problem is that the app is faster than I am?

nomadicmainstream

Combining living on the road with a mainstream lifestyle

Monthly Archives: July 2013