This Memorial Day, I tried a couple of barbeque sparerib tips passed on to me. The first tip was to remove the white membrane attached to the bottom side of the spareribs. The second tip was to apply a layer of mustard to the ribs to make the dry rub stick to the meat.  Each time I cook, something changes. I have opted to use some leftover Harry’s Pig Shop Sweet Onion Barbeque sauce with my imported Montana Bear Claw Hot Chipotle sauce and Original Sweet Baby Rays. I let the ribs smoke for about 2 hours and start painting the sides and rotating them on the grill. The other tip that I got wind of was applying apple juice on the ribs as they begin to get done. Let that cook in for a while and then place in foil, apply the apple juice again, close the foil and put back on the grill.  I used the indirect method of grilling. The method that I use is really a hybrid of smoking/grilling. I get the coals white hot while the wood chips soak in water. When the coals are ready, I drain the water off the chips, move the coals to one side, add the chips, replace the grill and put the meat on bottom side down. Depending on the temperature I turn the ribs several times during the time period, in this case about 2 hours. The sauce painting is how I finish them off. That way, the sauce is caramelized on the meat and it is really good.

Technorati Tags: barbeque, grilling, charcoal, spareribs, cooking, outdoors, holiday, recipe, preparation, meat, pork

 

Once again, I headed to the botanical gardens with my Nikon D80 and Nikkor 105mm Micro lens.  I originally thought that I would use a tripod this time; however, it is just not practical, at least for me, to use. There are too many angles to use one effectively. These photos were taken with very bright, but overcast skies. This is an ideal condition as there is lots of even, bright light.  I just purchased and inexpensive LED ringlight and am anxious to see how well it works doing these kinds of shots. A steady hand and body posture is absolutely required when taking these shots. The closer you are to the subject, the harder it gets. Just a breath of movement takes the plane of focus outside of acceptable norms.

 

 

Â

Technorati Tags: photo, photography, macro, closeup, flowers, nature, natural, insects, bumblebee, bees, bloom, blossom

Analog Cameras are not dead…
…they’ve just been put on some dusty shelf…
Cat and I were out driving on a Saturday afternoon and passed an auction taking place in front of an old odds-and-ends store.  We decided to stop off, get a bidder’s number and follow the auctioneer around along with the group of potential buyers just in case something amid the “goods” was interesting.  The goods were varied and some of it was junk, some not.  As the saying goes, “one man’s junk is another man’s treasure.  A lot of things were going for ridiculously low prices.  As the auction went on, we arrived to an area that contained 4 Minolta camera bodies with 50mm lenses. The models were in the 200 series with one being a Minolta 101.  There were also a couple of Vivitar 85-205mm zoom lenses (they often sell for less than $10 a piece on eBay),  a decrepit naugahyde camera bag (headed for the landfill, unfortunately), and a dead Minolta flash unit.  The bidding started at $2 and I got caught up in the upward spiral and finally purchased the lot for $17.50.  I  was both tickled and shocked because I had no real need for the cameras. I have been shooting digital since the late 90s. Why did I feel the need for these relics?

Minolta SRT 101

My first serious camera back in the early 80s was a Pentax K1000.  I purchased it because it was a good camera at the time for a good price.  I just had it re-built several years ago. A very good manual camera for a student like myself at the time.  I learned a great deal about photography using that camera. Back then, I even learned how to develop black and white film, use the enlarger to expose print paper and develop the prints.  My K100 is still in mint condition and works like it did almost 30 years ago.  Do I have an affinity for the old gear?

It is still VERY COOL!

Minolta SRT201

These cameras are no different. They are great cameras even if they are about 30 some odd years old.  So, I cleaned them up with alcohol, Q-tips and lots of elbow grease.  One of the 4 camera bodies was shot. The other 3 were in good working condition. These are not made of plastic. These are solid metal and well made. You know, “they don’t make things like they used to…”.  The button batteries (for the light meter mechanism) were long dead. One was actually starting to leak, but no damage done.  So, I headed out for replacement batteries and, of course, film after work one day.  The batteries are around $3.50 a piece (I bought 2) and the film I picked up at Target (convenience in this case) 3 rolls of ASA400 Kodak UltraMax 24 exposures per roll at $7.98 for a grand total of around $15.

 
Minolta SRT 200

Now, it doesn’t take a math professor to figure out that I was only $2.50 shy of the cost of all the equipment that I had purchased.  However, what fun I have had so far for less than a nice dinner out.   These are neat cameras in their simplicity of design, ease of use,  and long life.  This gear when purchased new would have cost hundreds of dollars and now, they are selling for ridiculously low prices.

More as it DEVELOPS…

Technorati Tags: camera, 35mm, conventional, minolta, srt200, srt201, srt101, film, analog, manual, lens, lenses, slr

The days are shorter now. The sun has moved down the map and the leaves have decided to quit photosynthesizing and the glucose remains in the leaves trapped until they die and fall to the ground.  It seems like everything smells earthier” in the fall.  Soon, it will be cool most of the time and we’ll be patiently waiting for the sun to hit higher up in latitude. Today passed by so quickly…just moments in time.

I subscribe to several photography magazines and I look forward to them arriving in my mailbox each and every month.  I started wondering why I liked them so much.  It’s not that I seem to get that much out of them, at least consciously.  Today, I received a link via email to a poll being taken by Digital Photography School and was somewhat surprised by the results so far.  Only 21% took 2 or more magazines per month and 20% took one per month.  I would have expected more out of the photography community.  Of course, at this time, the economy is not conducive to extra expenses.  These magazines are one of the simple pleasure that I really have.  I don’t think that for the enjoyment that I get out of them that the cost is all that high.  I could skip several meals out per year and have the funds to subscribe.  I must also admit that occasionally I head down to Barnes and Noble Booksellers and sit and rifle through several different issues that I don’t subscribe to.

But why do I like them?  They have so many ads in them and some of the articles are not all that interesting.  The camera reviews are only mildly interesting, unless I am in the market, of course.  Then I realized that subconsciously, I have been drilling the tips and techniques into my brain while enjoying the great photos that are displayed in them.  In addition, since digital is now the mainstream, most of them have great post-processing tips.  Every once in a while, though, I read an article that sparks my imagination. I see an image or a technique that really magnetizes me and I want to check it out, expand on it, make it my own personal stretch of the original idea.  I see magazines as a way to stay in touch with the photogrpahic community at large too.  I like reading about true professionals and how they see things. I also like the articles that take photography into the realm of art, into the realm of reporting, into the realm of service to society.  These magazines are a stepping stone that take the creation of images to a higher level.  Photo mags also give an idea of what is happening in the field now.  The leaders in the field are the ones that set the pace and the rest of us follow.  Not everyone can be an NBA star and not all of us can be polished, well known and sought after photographers. However, we can enjoy what we do, make a few extra bucks at it and strive to become better and better as we work the craft. Photography magazines are a bridge between us photo hacks and the more polished pros.

I suppose the main reason that I like photo magazines is because of the great pictures inside.

The book, “The Impressionists” by Diana Newall which gives a nice overview of many famous Impressionist’s paintings, their basic pallette colors along with other interesting hightlights. I decided to digitally capture the pallettes of several paintings to find out what colors they had in common and I was very surprised by the results. Obviously, the color accuracy will not be extremely high. Here are images of the paintings followed by the sampled color palete for each:

Hoarfrost at Ennery by Pissarro

 
Impression, Sunrise by Monet

 

La Grenouillere by Renoir

 

The Dance Class by Degas

 

The Luncheon at the Boating Party by Renoir

Next, I combined each of the palettes into one single image to get an overall sampling. Here is the image that I sampled:

This is the sampled palette created using the image of the collection of palettes above.

It is amazing how many colors each of the images have in common.

 

We humans really can’t multitask. We actually only work on one thing at a time. As a seasoned professional computer programmer, I knew that. It has always been that way. I only wished that I could multitask.

When it comes to work, I always referred to what is misconceived as multitasking as “switching gears”. After I began to think about the real mechanism of what is thought of as human “multitasking”, I began to mentally verbalize the concept as “Sequential Time/Task Segmenting with Prioritization” and here is why:

1. Since we can only work on one thing at a time, obviously, the work is executed sequentially. For instance, we cannot hold a phone conversation, take photographs, work in Photoshop, and write computer code all at the same time (at least I can’t). Unfortunately, we as individuals, cannot do “background processing” like a computer can, at least not in the real sense. (Our cerebral synapses may be doing things that we don’t consciously know about - that is another subject).
2. These things are done in time segments of our own choosing (although the “choosing” may be based on customer or supervisor demands). These segments vary in length, but they hardly ever overlap and when they do, each of the overlapping tasks usually suffer. Obviously, it is best to focus on one thing to do it effectively and efficiently.
3. Under normal circumstances, we do what needs to be done first and that usually involves something mission critical. Sometimes, we prioritize based on how quickly we can get a task done. For instance, there may be an important, invoivled task that needs to be tackled; however, we decide that another problem can be corrected in a very short period of time. We may decide to quickly take care of the small problem before we tackle the big one which will take more time. We prioritize based on what will get the best results from limited time and capabilities that we have.

Now, I suppose there are exceptions to any rule. I think that a person who can spin multiple plates on sticks above their head could be called a multitasker. The same goes for a juggler. However, upon careful inspection, one realizes that the plate spinner gets each plate spinning one at a time and then focuses on holding the sticks steady. The plates are actually spinning on their own. A juggler is working with one ball at a time and the ball handling is done so rapidly that it looks like multi-tasking but in reality it is not. The juggler works with only one ball at a time.

When we take a look at the long history of the earth and its varied evolution, humans have little effect (OK, long term effect) on the planet; however, we have a huge influence on how we affect ourselves as living beings, even in the short run.

In the “grand scheme of things” and given the extreme measures of time relative to how long humans have been effecting the planet, nature could care less about the effects that we have on it. When we look at how long it has taken geological and living aspects of the earth to arrive at its present state, we are merely an aggravation, at most, to the planet as a whole. We can take its resources, spend and waste them to the point where they seem scarce, and given enough time (barring some cataclysmic event such as a celestial body slamming into the surface of the planet) everything will heal on its own and have a whole new paradigm of life. We homo sapiens may not be so resilient. We think in terms of hundreds, possibly thousands of years. The planet works in a time framework of hundreds of thousands of years, possibly millions of years.

I believe that man is extremely vain and overly confident. Many humans seem to believe everything on the planet revolves around us.  Just because we have the ability to know what we know, we feel that we are superior to every other living thing on terra firma. However, we are not independant of the ecosystems that we rely on for our living.   Our superiority stops short at the microscopic level where we depend on bateria to keep us going and we rely on our own internal defene mechanisms to ward of illness in the form of other microsopic beings that live within us. Those creatures are merely the start of the huge chain of ecosystems that we carelessly play with each and every day in our modern society. Our human planning is extremely short term. We feel little responsibility to our kind far into the future. We only feel responsible for several generations ahead without noting the generations that may live beyond our thoughts and cares. Why should we care? Should we care? Heavy questions for beings that not too long ago were hunter gatherers.

So many large and seemingly disastrous things have happened to the earth since its inception, we are fly spec in the grand scheme of things. Nature mocks us by regurgitating the result of our actions based on our ignorance back upon us. We cut, burn, pollute, and dig and seem to have an enormous effect on the planet. In the short run, from our perspective as living beings on the planet, we do have an effect; however, from the perspective of millions of years, we are only a split second in the nature of things. When a vine is cut, it comes back even stronger and larger. When all is gone but microbes, given time, life usually returns in some new form of glorious, complex splendor.

When I venture into a natural setting devoid of the synthetic world that is all too familiar to most of us, I see more clearly how insignificant we really are in comparison to the natural world outside ourselves. Given our emotional makeup, we tend to take things to the extremes and lose sight of the natural world around us. Even further, we tend to ignore how the natural world really works with us. That is, when we allow it to. We think that we can shape the world ourselves to our own liking and it will bend to our needs. We have lost sight of the fact that the entire world is a system and that when we throw synthetic elements at it that are out of sync with the natural scheme of things, we are making things more hostile to our own livelihood.

Nature can and will heal itself. Do we have the wisdom to do the same? Only love, compassion and care can save humanity from itself.