The thing in my kitchen

I meant to put these pictures up awhile ago, but forgot about it. The apartment Jay and I live in is, in realtor speak, "cozy" and full of "character," which, of course, actually means small and old. Small is a matter of its own, but old doesn't have to also mean bad. Old can be very good. The pyramids are old, the White House is old, the Palace of Versailles is old. But old and shoddy maintenace can be very bad. Our bathroom is a disater (I like to refer to the cabinet door on the vanity as "the Mad Hatter Door" since someone decided to hang it up before the glue was dry, resulting in some whimsically sagging angles). One side of the fridge is on a plank of wood because the floor is that lopsided. We've had to plug various holes we've found with caulk or glue or whatever sticky, hole-filling goo we have around to keep the various bugs out. We have yards of cabling lining most doorways and many walls, much of which begins and ends (unconnected at both), at seemingly arbitrary points. I don't know who'd want a TV above a door in a hallway.

One of the mysteries of our apartment is this strange fixture near the floor by the fridge in the kitchen. Incidentally, the wall-patch job in the photo attests to the level of workmanship evident in all fix-it jobs around the house.

It's obviously some sort of electrical box thing, but why it's there, sticking out of the wall, exposed and dangerous looking is the mystery to me. Whether or not it's working or necessary are additional mysteries. Here's a close up:

I took these about a month ago when I was experimenting with the built-in flash on my camera and seeing if I could get any decent shots with it. I feel like the close-up was somewhat successful. The blue light on the left is ambient sunlight, and the warm light from the right comes from a continuous light on a stand. The flash was diffused with, uh, a paper towel, I think.

I have an external flash now, which I've been taking pictures with for about a week and a half now. I'll hopefully have some time while I'm here in the Snowy North (Michigan) for the holidays to get some of those up here. I have concert photos, modeling Jay photos, and family party photos. Coming soon...

P.S. The idea that was going through my head when I was taking these shots was of documenting all the gross, wrong or bad things in my apartment, like the ones I spoke of above. I started looking to take some pretty interior shots, but found there was little to work with. Anyway, that's why I didn't clean up the dirt and dust bunnies from the floor, which should be renamed dust kitties, due to their primary ingredient.

Papa

Here's my dad enjoying his retirement gift to himself (a leather recliner chair) taken when I was home at Thanksgiving.

And here he is with the model touch-up treatment. I kept it low-key so he wouldn't look fake.

Goal Change

Apparently I have other things to do, so a picture a day didn't work. I don't know what those other things are, but I'm readjusting my goals, anyway. So, enjoy the occasional picture. Here's a grapefruit:

Boring Beach Pictures

I haven't taken many pictures worth showing lately besides the election night brouhaha, so here are some boring but prettyish pictures of the beach in Stone Harbor from back in September.




And of course, there has to be a seagull shot. This one of naughty seagulls not following posted notices.

Post Election Celebration

Excitement in Charles Village, Baltimore, last night after President-elect Obama made his speech in Chicago.

Where this guy looked on

as happy guys

and happy girls

celebrated in a crowd like this

This guy was either yelling or trying to catch imaginary candy in his mouth

Here are some unhappy guys and girls. (Sorry it's so dark)

But they wouldn't be deterred.

Beachcomber

This picture doesn't do this woman justice, unfortunately, but none of the pictures I got from the front turned out. I wanted to get her digging. She was walking up and down the beach, not missing a square foot, waving her wand around and every so often she'd stop, do a little digging with her combination shovel, basket and sifter, alternate with a little wand waving to hone in on the right spot, and maybe find something to pluck out and put in her hip pouch. Then she'd wave around the hole she made a little more to be sure there was nothing else hidden in the spot and, once satisfied, push and pull the sand back into the hole until the beach was covered in strange lumpy disturbances on an otherwise silk smooth surface. It was really her dead on focus that fascinated and impressed me. There was no one and nothing else on the beach for her. I admit I was envious of her disregard of anything but her treasure hunt. That is a degree of focus I'm not able to achieve.

I don't know what to title this,

but it was completely intentional, I swear.

Banana

On the kitchen table. In some lovely early autumn morning light.

Hawthorne Aglow

I was playing with long exposures and flashlights one night and came up with this image. Though coincidental, the image's dark romanticism seems appropriate for Hawthorne. There's a literary term I'm trying to attribute to it, but I can't drag it out of my memory. Any suggestions?

Lovely Morning

A couple of weeks ago, Jay and I went to our friends' wedding in Stone Harbor on the New Jersey Shore (Congratulations, Jeremy and Jessica!). We stayed two nights in the wonderful Lark Motel which was simple, but more than adequate. I'll be going through the few photos I took from the weekend and posting what's good. Here is a lovely Saturday Morning shot.

The cloudy seaside morning light adds a nice glow.

Self-teaching

Somehow in my photographic education I missed everything about studio photography and most lessons about lighting. So, currently I am trying to remedy this deficit in my knowledge. Unfortunately, it becomes much harder to learn about studio work without a studio and lighting without proper lighting equipment. But I have a MFA in Jury-rigging from the School of Make-do, so I'm learning with what I've got. Below are some studio style shots of some of our household knick-knacks. Photographers use translucent cloth boxes called shooting tents or domes to diffuse light and soften highlights and shadows when photographing (usually small) objects. These cost anywhere from $40-$160, depending on size and quality, but mine cost me the price of a half gallon of milk because that's what it was, a half-gallon milk jug. Which is why all the objects were so small. I'm fairly pleased with how it worked and I actually kind of like the effect of the jug's curve and seam in the black cat picture.


The pink is just a red cloth draped over the jug.

My supercool fellow photog friend Steve has promised me a lesson in lighting with his badass lighting kit. Hopefully I'll have some shots to share from that sometime soon!

As Promised

Some pictures I took at the Maryland Wine Festival last Saturday.

This is Jess as queen of the Wine Festival:



And here is Steve. I don't actually think I took this one. I was showing off my camera to the other digital art savvy kids in the party and I think they all took a few. I'm guessing TAG took this one.


Jay is watching the sky for airplanes. Don't worry, he's not crazy. There really was an airplane there.

And here is Christie, Queen of the Wine Festival Forest (hence the leaf earrings), leaning on her trusty forest sprite, TAG.

After a toilsome afternoon sampling the selections of wines from two dozen fine (or not) Maryland vineyards, everyone went home with several bottles of their favorites. Except Jay and I, who were too lazy to carry heavy bottles of wine around and so just drank ours there on the grassy knoll. Don't worry Mom and Dad, it was only two bottles and we shared with others. Doesn't that reassure you?

Welcome

What's this? My first post in a month and it's not even a picture I took? Deal with it. These pictures are of my new niece, Lainie Elizabeth, sure to acheive greatness on the power of her middle name alone. Born Monday morning, September 22 to my sister-in-law, Joelle, and brother, Jeff at a healthy 8lbs 13oz.

Pictured here with her big sister, Zoe:

And here is the whole family:

Aren't they gorgeous? Sorry again that I couldn't be there, Jeff and Joelle.

And I have a couple of my own pictures in the queue that will be up in the next couple of days to restart this blog thing. Really. Promise. Cross my heart.

Friend or Foe?

A few weeks ago, Jay and I went to a farm to get fresh peaches and yummy veggies. Out back they had peacocks, sheep, goats, chickens, bunnies and a few other fuzzy or feathery creatures for feeding and petting.

Jay made a special friend:

Mr. Goat is doing a dance he's so happy to be friends with Jay!

It may also be a dance mocking Jay's lack of elevation, but my studies in traditional communicative goat dance lead me to believe the Dance of New Friend Joy is more likely than the Ha Ha I Have the Vertical Advantage Dance, though the fundamentals are quite similar.

Crabtree Falls

It may have been useful for Jay and I to know before embarking on the journey up the Appalachian mountain that lets Crabtree Falls meander down it's sloping side that it is supposedly the tallest US waterfall east of the Mississippi. Then again, if we knew the 1,380(+?) ft would take us nearly three hours to get up, we may not have been rewarded with all the lovely views it revealed, the below being one.

The trail was well maintained without being too manicured and there were a lot of people about, but most of them were pleasant and even though it kicked our unfit butts, it was a great time. Especially the way down.

Here is where we spent our weekend:

In a house on a hill in the Shenandoah Valley. We pretended to be hill people. I don't think Jay's doing a very good Job. He has a shirt and shoes on.

I taste good with ketchup

This little gem we found in south Baltimore goes out to my Polish ancestry. Otherwise , I think it speaks for itself...

Hungry Pigeons

I don't know if the trap was meant for pigeons or rats, but it sure wasn't working on these hungry guys. The light one in the top left of the frame got chased around by the darker one right behind it for a good couple of minutes. Mesmerized by a nice piece of tail, I suppose.

Viewer's Poll

Hey all, this week I started seeing this blog on other computers (at work, naughty me) and noticed that the pictures are coming out much darker than on my computer at home. Now I know about monitors and how they all show differently and such, but I want to know what the majority of you are seeing. If it's my computer that shows things lighter and brighter, and the rest of you are seeing them much darker, then I'll adjust accordingly. For instance, in the last post, in the first picture, can you easily make out the tree that's there? Thanks for your help. Here's a picture for your trouble:

Rainy Night

Here's what I got from my photo shoot on the porch during the rainstorm:


These two are the same shot, but the second caught the sky filled with lightning.



Mother Nature violates traffic laws.


And all clear at dawn... Yes, I do sometimes see the dawn. Occasionally.


Next time, don't miss Jay's birthday photo expedition: Bayside industry, pigeons, and Jay on his cell phone!

Rain, Rain, Here to Stay

We're having a rainstorm right now. It was pretty serious there for a while and Jay and I went downstairs to watch its determination to wash away, well, everything. I took my camera down and scurried around the porch, dancing with the wet wind. I'm a bit protective of my new baby. Much love and appreciation to Jay who did a wonderful job being bodyguard, as well. I ended up taking 88 pictures so it'll take me some time to pick out the couple of best ones (aka, the ones that aren't blurry) and make them viewable, but here's a teaser. The shutter speed was only 1/15th of a second, so it really was raining that hard.

Inside the World of Thompson

Here is me trying to make up for my slackerness:

A glimpse into the Family Thompson over the Independence Day weekend in Traverse City, MI. Incidentally, I bought a new camera (Yay!). A lovely Canon 40D. I'm still learning how to use it (hence the lack of pictures on the blog) and the weekend at the Thompson Ranch was my first time using it (hence some of the soft focus). I've been waiting to buy this for a while and I could declare my patriotism, saying I did my part to stimulate the economy like I was told to do with my $600 check. But I'm going to give credit to the friends and family who donated money to the cause on birthdays and Christmases as well as a generous end of fiscal year bonus from my employer which came just at the right time. Nyahh-nyah, Bushie!

Jay spent much of the weekend discovering muscles he had long forgotten with what we lovingly called The Stupid Ball Game [edit: Jay says he's working on his tan]:

This is his youngest brother, Brad, master of the Stupid Ball Game, making him Stupid Ball Game Master, I suppose.

We enjoyed after dinner glasses of wine watching the sun set on the lakeside porch. This is the brother to whom Jay looks similar, Randall. Jay looks pleased with himself, doesn't he?

This other blond brother is Ben, the eldest, with his wife Nicole. Ben was trying to pretend he wasn't posing for this shot.

I haven't decided why, but I like this picture of them better despite it's conventional flaws. It's hard to tell in this small of a version, but Nicole's eyes are open, she's just looking down.

And, the last sibling would be Little Cat. Isn't she lovely?

Jay can make her hop.

Unfortunately, none of my pictures of Jay's Mom or Dad turned out very well. There was one of his Mom with killer lighting, but I moved too much with a slow shutter speed causing too much blur. This is the best one. I think she's trying not to laugh at one of her son's antics.

Jay with his Dad in the basement wearing matching shirts.

This one of Jay's parent's turned out nice. They like to sit out on the end of their dock a lot. I saw them out there at least once every day we were there.

We had a good, relaxing time up there and a thank you to the Thompson's for their hospitality.