motorcycle, stories

Holy crap.

I can’t remember the last time I said or wrote that, and I am so serious about it I’ll say it again. Holy crap..so much fun :D

Pertinent facts:

’82 Suzuki 750
3 highways
one awesome motorcycle shop along the side of one of the 3 highways
a (much needed) pair of earplugs, a (also much needed) twinkie and bike talk with  the two resident motorheads at the above mentioned shop
one quart of oil (which I didn’t know I very badly needed until I was pulling out of the above mentioned shop and the oil light flickered twice; I almost ignored it, too. That would’ve been really, really really dumb)
hundreds of miles
sun-warmed post-rainstorm air that smelled fresh and honey-sweet during  a stretch of highway through fields and woods
a cup of coffee and a strawberry bear claw on the way home, from a great small town bakery with an awesome  “won’t close till the pastries are pretty much gone” policy

“Just along down the way, there is a place where no plow blade has turned the ground”
-40 Acres, by Caedmon’s Call

On that note, only very tangentially related, here’s a cool picture:

no photoshop, polaroid circa 1970's on top of an envelope circa 1980's
funny, other

shining brilliant awesome as always. From the back of one of Newman’s cartons…

LEGEND:

The marathon in Africa…I’m halfway out and barely chugging. Mountain coming! Liquid needed! What’s around? Water’s bitter! Beer’s flat! Gator, blah blah!…Fading fast. Then a vision – sweet Joanna! – Tempting me with pale gold nectar…Lemon is it? Yes, by golly! Lemonade? No, Lemon aid!… Power added! Asphalt churning!… Cruising home to victory! Hail Joanna! Filched the nectar (shameless hustler) – in the market – Newman’s Own.

From the back of a  Pink Virgin Lemonade carton, to be exact. Is that not shining brilliant awesome? I actually think, if I could be paid to do stuff like writing things like that, I would be down for a career in marketing..maybe. Maybe for little while.

other

a new theme and other small changes after six months, 63 posts and north of two thousand views.

I’m also moving to another continent in not too long. Addio summer, ciao autumn. Saludos a los EEUU que amo, hola hermosa Guatemala.

Words of a coworker: “I love to just be in the weather, all the different seasons and how they change, I love all of it.

—–

Less important note: I switched to an account with my name rather than the “donqvijote” pseudonym. This post should show up as authored by donqvijote, but anything before or after should show “david padvorac.”

funny, photography

When love comes to town gonna catch that train, when love comes to town gonna catch that flame.

Ironically, in the flight of the moment he failed to realize that this coal car had seen neither engine nor caboose in 13 years. It has indeed come to town, has been in town for a while and likely will be in town for a while to come. Smooth move, man, smooth move.

Nikon F3, E-series 50/1.8, Ilford HP5+

photography

part II:

Nikon F3; Zeiss Planar 50/1.4 and Dad’s Nikkor 28/3.5 (except for a few shots I took with an E series 50/1.8); no photoshop.

(part I is here: http://wp.me/p11VMI-j0)

Roll 1: Kodak Gold 100
I have previously dissed on Kodak film. It’s for chumps? Real camera nerds use Ilford for black and white, and pro-grade Fuji for color, right? Well, this roll saved the day. I had decided to bring one roll of film–and absentmindedly grabbed an already-exposed roll. Smooth move dave, smooth move. As the dice fell, a nearby gift/souvenir shop just happened to have film. What film was it? Kodak Gold 100. Kodak, I apologize; your film is everywhere, you rock.

Roll 2: Fuji Pro 160S
I like this film. Nothing really super crazy, just good color and grain.

Roll 3: Fuji Sensia 100
The jury didn’t even have to go out on this one: I <3 slide film. It is beautiful. If I had to take a camera, lens and two films for the rest of my life, it’d be the F3, a 35/1.4, and Sensia 200 (or maybe the Kodak slide film, I haven’t tried it yet) and Ilford HP5+. Done deal. Actually that doesn’t sound like a half bad plan anyways…

Roll 4: Fuji Superia 200 (another one of the old rolls of film from pops)
Nothing too crazy here, same reddish vintage-looking hues from the 7-year aged film. This roll was halfway used up when we left, so it had only a few trip shots worth posting here. Why call it roll 4? Because I didn’t realize until a moment ago that it was the first, not last, roll I took on the trip; water under the bridge.

Without further ado, here they are:

roll 1 #10. Chips and salsa and hummus and apple pie and coffee, at the top of a 3.2 mile hike. All baked by scratch at the tea house up there, baking supplies helicoptered in once per season, fresh supplies hiked in weekly. The staff (a family) lives there five days per week. Yes, awesome.
#11. Yummy in my tummy :)
#13
#15. This view is even better while having the aforementioned chips and salsa and hummus and pie and coffee.
#26
roll 2 #2. A train boiler blew back in the day, sending this piece (over 500 lbs) on it's way to where it sits now. The railroad tracks are 130 meters away. Egads.
roll 2 #3
#4
#5. Awesome man riding his bike through the rockies with a guitar.
#8
#11
#19
#24
roll 3 #3
#5
#7. This was taken with a prime lens, a 50 for that matter...this required me to get closer to a nasty spider than I like to get to spiders. Especially the nasty ones.
#10 Up and to the right, you can see some of a glacier. Once and a while pieces would calve off and their thunder would roll down the valley. Awesome.
#17
#18. Pops sacking a few sweet macro shots. Mom is a total shutter bug, too. Go figure.
#28
#35
#36
#37. Slide film is awesome.
roll 4 #9
#11
#12
..and that’s it. It was a great* trip.
*”great” is overused. I mean great, actually great.
other, photography

Well..I’ve done it. I bought LR3; the install just finished, and I’m poking around for a few minutes before hitting the sack. I took my first step onto the slippery slope of digital world a few weeks ago, D200 in hand, and now I step again. I will still resolutely dislike digital photo editing, with the following (maybe sorta possible) exceptions:

1. mellow HDR
The mind essentially does this when you look at a sunrise, it balances color/light so that you can see full detail in the ground (dark) and full color in the sky (bright). Well..actually I think what happens is that you see full detail in your field of view (the breadth/width human eyes can focus clearly on at one time), while the mind corrects the colors outside of that. I think I’m right, but may be far from fallacy-free. From the little browsing of HDR’d images I’ve done, what you “see” lands somewhere between a typical single exposure and a typical HDR job. I’m going to play around with very mellow HDR processing and some low light exposures. All that said, I’m super skeptical of it. I like natural light shots. I like them a lot. Yes details are lost and/or colors get washed out..but that’s part of what makes a perfectly taken photo so crazy beautiful, isn’t it? So yeah, HDR..we’ll see.

2. White balance
Film is awesome. It does white balance all on it’s own..oh wait, no, it’s SO awesome it doesn’t even need to do white balance! As a matter of fact, most film simply captures colors as most folks see them, straight up yo. Digital sensors aren’t that technologically advanced yet (oohhhhHHH SNAP, kid. Yeah huh). So when I have a digital shot with off-key white balance, I’ll fix it.

3. Straightening
Yup.

4. Exposure Value
Ummm..I’m on the fence about this one. I take a fair number of pictures, not knowing how my camera’s light metering functions would be pathetic, so I shouldn’t be flubbing up the exposure value to need to correct it. That said, I will likely use it to “push” exposures when need be (i.e., when cranking up the ISO and opening the aperture doesn’t cut it).

I can’t think of anything else at the moment. Tons of thoughts and ideas go through my head when I think about digital photo editing and before long I start thinking about what photography actually is. Someday I hope I’ll have good clear thoughts on all that riff raff and I’ll write it all up real nice and simple.

photography

Nikon D200, Zeiss Planar T 50/1.4

safer and more productive than texting whilst driving...
Starting fluid AND Old Spice Original Aftershave.
dear '82 Suzuki, I <3 u.
WATCH YOU
Shot at a stop, guy on the train that was going the opposite direction
the docks off in the distance
The classic blurred-departing-bus shot. Gotta have one every few albums, right?
underpass
If I wrote a letter to a world, to nicely detail how the whole of life works, you can bet your bottom dollar I would not want to see it sitting on bookshelves.
other, stories

I have never thought to myself “Hmm, I could appreciate coughing.” Now though, I appreciate coughing.

I woke up last night (somewhere in the middle of it, after taking a long time to fall asleep amidst coughing fits) coughing, but then wasn’t able to cough because the coughing muscles were finally completely spent; I tried to cough and all that happened was this really pathetic sound, “cchhHHeeeaaaaahhh.” It sounds like wind-knocked-out wheezing less the charm, all the ugh of coughing minus the momentary relief of the actual “cough” part. The only thing I can think to liken it to is when you’re puking and you’ve basically emptied your belly, but your system is like “oh no I don’t think so, we’re going to keep at this.”

A different perspective can be a mighty thing. I appreciate coughing.

Apologies, I believe this is the most unpleasant thing I’ve written here by a long shot. Does anybody have some crackers and cheese to go with my whine?

other, photography

Practicing on a (newly acquired rental) violin in my room as the sun gets close to setting:

Sunshine and music

Shot with a D200, Zeiss 50/1.4

ideas

What is it they say–a bird in the hand beats two in the bush, right?

Well, if I have a bird in my hand, I’m going to go after the two in the bush anyways and I’ll come out with three birds in hand.

–little bit of gold from a wise man I know

photography

Rocky Mountains in Canada, 9 days.
—
part I:
Nikon D200; Zeiss Planar 50/1.4 and Dad’s Nikkor 28/3.5. The 28 is pre-AI, which made for some trickiness, but with some creativity it’s nothing insurmountable. By miles and miles this takes the pie, cake and tart in the biggest-post-on-dave’s-blog competition, and will likely keep those respective desserts for a long time. No Photoshop.
—
part II:
Nikon F3; same two lenses (except for a few shots I took with an E series 50/1.8).
ETA: ~2 weeks. No Photoshop.
—
Thoughts:
Shooting scenery with a 75 is really interesting–I liked it, but the few times I used the Zeiss on my film camera, seeing that pretty 50mm perspective through the viewfinder was a breath of fresh air. Shooting so many photos of such variety as a road trip gives gave me lots to think about in the realm of lenses. I think a 18-70 (which, with sensor crop, is actually 27-105) would be an absolutely stellar all-rounder as long as it’s reasonably fast. The 18-200ish lenses are pretty cool, but that just seems like trying to do too much.
#23
#50
#146
#154
#172
#239
#460
#538
#569
#579
#614
#3 (second memory card)
#77
#137
#254
#332
#403
#115 (third memory card; the thumbs up is for Dave H.)
#244

#245

#313
#324
#429
#466
#468
#495
#509

#545

#582
#614
#888
#907
#193 (fourth card)
#197
#244
#247
#270
#277
#287
#293 (US-Canada border. Back in the good old US of A baby!)
#336 (out of order because it perfectly follows the previous shot. Wave on, Old Glory)
#307
#327
#329
#381
#390
#403
#458
#547
#574 (this one ought to be a bit bigger than the others I believe)
#626
#665 Lest there be misunderstanding, the road trip wasn't taken in this truck. That said, it is very high up on my bucket list to take a road trip in an old vehicle that has lots and lots of character. I may after I finish work for the summer. Ride to Haida Gwaii from WA state on a thirty-year-old Suzuki? Yes, maybe.

It was a great trip; I do hope the 53 photos were enjoyable.

ideas, photography

Where your treasure is, there your heart will be too; home is where the heart is.

Letting a thing be your treasure makes for a shabby home for the heart.

That’s something to not forget, especially when buying things.

Especially especially when buying things like a Nikon D200.

So..ah..on that note, I bought a Nikon D200.

Side note: it is unbelievably hard to not spend a lot of time looking at more stuff to buy right after buying a really, really really cool camera:

“Ah that lens isn’t all so expensive, considering I’ll be shooting for National Geographic as soon as they see some of my work and realize I’d be a positively stellar staff photographer. Heck, may as well spring for a Nikon 200mm/2.0 IS, one of their 17-35/2.8 deals and one or two of the Carl Zeiss primes, while I’m at it..just for the sake of being ready to travel to foreign exotic places and do crazy work at the moment that National Geographic calls. Oh gees, I hadn’t even thought about a tripod. Maybe I’ll look at those basalt fiber ones as soon as I finish picking out my flash setup…”

funny, other

WE CAN CHANGE!

*ka-clink*……*ka-clink*..*ka-clink*

*whirrrrrrrrrrrr*

*ssshhhhHHHHHhhhckk* ( <– the sound of a vacuuming/sealing machine)

…

Ta-daaah!

We can change.

(we’ll bottle it too, if you want; just bring $3 for the deposit, glassware ain’t cheap)