Photo Blogging

🐾BillinGlendaleCA

Thirty years ago my wife became a US citizen, I promised that afterwards we would see her new nation’s capitol city.  A few months later we flew to Washington and spent 5 days there.  We saw the Capitol, the White House (including the tour), the Archives, and many other sites.  It was my 4th trip to DC and we even hit a few places that I’d not seen (the Zoo).

With today’s Inaugural, I thought I’d revisit some of the photos.  These were all shot with Canon Sure Shot Ace on 35mm film and scanned with a 35mm film/slide scanner.  All photo were reprocessed from the RAW scanned image with either Topaz Labs DeNoise AI or Sharpen AI to reduce noise and sharpen the photos.

On The Road – 🐾BillinGlendaleCA – Inauguration DayPost + Comments (26)

ChasM

Hiya! I’ve been a clicker of these pages since, as Tim F recently put it, the proprietor was a disgruntled warblogger emerging from the dark shadows of the right. I don’t comment or make myself known much, but we rescued our little one-eyed Sanders in NYC thru this Shabeen (Calendar: July), and I read and love y’all, so here we go.

In 1980 I signed up for high-school photography class, borrowed $200 from an aunt (my first loan! a lesson in capitalism!), and purchased my first big-boy camera: a Canon AE-1 kit with a 50mm lens. It was between that and a Pentax that had a nifty leaf shutter, but felt too small for my hands. This turned out to be ironic in the bad way as the ergonomics of that fucking thing haunted me for 20 years until I got a Nikon. You see, it was an aperture priority camera and they put the aperture ring on the top right in exactly the place I rest my forefinger when I’m carrying the camera (I don’t like neckstraps, and in the days before hand straps, I would wrap a thin leather strap tightly around my hand so that I could use a loose grip as I carry at my side). There is no more heart-sinking feeling as a photographer than pushing the shutter expecting f4.5 and the corresponding quick tick-tick of 125th of a second and hearing instead “Click” … … … “Click” meaning you just lost the shot because you accidentally set the f-stop to 22 while advancing the last frame because the designers felt it important to locate that dial and the optimum finger-leverage spot in exactly the same place. One can page thru my pre-2000 contact sheets and see the dark and overexposed images and go, “yep, I remember that shot I didn’t get. Fuck that camera.”

Anywho. These are photos from the first roll that I have the negatives and thus scans of, my fifth roll overall. The first four rolls were used in class assignments, and all I have from them are some bad, faded prints that I turned in for grades.

On The Road – ChasM – Beginning at the Beginning – Rustic Canyon 1980Post + Comments (22)

Albatrossity

Winter in Flyover Country can be tough birding in some years, or maybe it just seems tougher as I get older. Nevertheless there are always things to see, and birds to photograph and celebrate. So this is the next installment in an irregular series of On The Road posts, showcasing some of the sights that keep me sane here in year 2 of the pandemic, and year eleventy billion of the reign of 45. I write this at the end of the week of the attempted coup, and dog knows what it will be like when you read this in a few weeks. Stay well, and go see some birds if you can!

On The Road – Albatrossity – Winter in Flyover Country 1Post + Comments (22)

On the Road: Week of January 18  (5 am)
Albatrossity – Winter in Flyover Country #1
ChasM – Beginning at the Beginning – Rustic Canyon 1980
🐾BillinGlendaleCA – Inauguration Day
Steve from Mendocino – Rorschach
Lapassionara – Paris, Paris

On the Road: After Dark: Week of January 18  (10 pm)
Looks like we will be treated to an interesting series next week, with Mike in Oly.

🌺  And now, back to Steve from Mendocino, thank you for taking us back to Paris!

Steve from Mendocino

So long and thanks for all the fish!

On The Road – Steve from Mendocino – Paris 10/10Post + Comments (25)

SkyBluePink

From the daily walks….

On The Road – SkyBluePink – Skies of Blues & PinksPost + Comments (20)