Getting a “big boy” camera…
6 minute read
January 20, 2016, 1:44 PM
Last Thursday was a lot of fun. I got together with Elyse, with the intent of getting some sample material to evaluate for the future purchase of a new camera. This new camera will be a digital SLR, as I am quite confident that I have outgrown the “prosumer” level of camera that I have operated on since Big Mavica in 2002. I discovered that in 2014 when I photographed Brighton Dam and Triadelphia Reservoir with a borrowed Nikon Coolpix P510. The photos with that camera came out well enough, but other than a few extra pixels because of the higher resolution on that camera, I didn’t get any better features than my existing camera.
But first, after Elyse and I got together, we had lunch at Jimmy John’s. I had a sandwich, and Elyse just had one of the day-old rolls that they sell:
Continue reading…Categories: Cameras, Elyse, Food and drink, Maryland, Retail
I feel like I was shooting the photos for those motivational posters…
4 minute read
October 25, 2015, 11:12 PM
This past Thursday, I went up to High Rock, which is a rock outcropping on South Mountain in Pen Mar, Maryland, in Washington County near the Pennsylvania border. It reminds me a little bit of both Humpback Rock in Virginia, and the Aqueduct Bridge stub in DC. Like Humpback Rock, it’s high on a mountaintop, however, unlike Humpback Rock, you can drive up to it and park right next to it, rather than parking down below and then hiking a mile straight uphill. Like the Aqueduct Bridge, it’s covered in graffiti and a popular overlook point, but unlike the Aqueduct Bridge, it’s a natural feature rather than manmade. I went up there with the intent of scouting out the location for a potential future set for the Photography section on Schumin Web. I knew it had a view, but I wasn’t so sure about it. I arrived just before 5:00 PM, and stayed for about an hour and a half. While there, I let my curiosity lead the way, as I checked things out at the site and just kind of followed what I found interesting. I don’t know which intrigued me more: the formation itself, the view, or the graffiti.
So here’s what some of the take from this outing looked like:
View from High Rock facing approximately north, towards Waynesboro, Pennsylvania. The bit of stone in the foreground is actually manmade. As much as I can tell, this is some of what remains of an observatory that once stood at this site.
Categories: Maryland, Photography, Walmart, Waynesboro (PA)
“He offered her the world…”
2 minute read
October 14, 2015, 11:50 PM
I’m always surprised to see how some of my photos are used. I recently got a membership with Pixsy, which skims the Internet for potentially infringing photo usages, and then allows the user to go after infringing users to get them to pay for their usage. One photo that surprised me as a frequent candidate for infringements was this one from 2003:
Categories: Copyright infringement, Roanoke, Schumin Web meta, Television
While hunting for a photo…
4 minute read
August 29, 2015, 9:29 PM
Yesterday, I was hunting through my archives to find a photo to show a friend. My photo archives are arranged by subject and by date. If I took a bunch of photos in a single day, then all of those photos typically go into a folder marked with the general subject of the photos and the date. One-off photos usually get dated, marked with their subject, and get put in a folder with all of the one-off shots for the month. The photo that I was looking for depicted a bus sign after the normal text for that route had changed. So I knew what it was, and knew what the photo looked like. I also knew that the photo was a one-off, since I took the photo at Glenmont on the way home from work. However, I didn’t remember exactly when I took it. I had an approximate range for when I took it, but didn’t quite know. So that meant that I needed to hunt.
First of all, I was successful in finding the photo. Here it is, dated September 24, 2012:
Categories: House, Photography, Schumin Web meta, Washington DC, WMATA, Work
“I am always so thrilled when people realize how much better a place can look with just a few simple changes!”
10 minute read
October 12, 2014, 12:07 PM
This past week, I finally finished the work that I’d been doing at my house for the past two months. The way I figured, since there was a period of time while the various processes related to onboarding at the new job were still coming together, I might as well take the time to finish a few things on my to-do list. It’s funny, however, what inspires a person to decorate. Back in July or so, my friend Suzie described my house as “a hot mess”. I thought about that over the next week or so, and came to the conclusion that she was right. And I admit – it was looking a little bit too “lived in” at the time, with a lot of unfinished business all over the place. The closets were not being used to their full potential, I had a pile of stuff on the counter between the kitchen and the living room, the table was full of junk, and there were things in visible locations when they should have been in closets.
I started out on August 5, doing what I called the “demolition” phase. This was where I cleaned out the closets and determined what I wanted to keep and what I wanted to get rid of. It’s amazing how much junk can fit in a one-bedroom apartment. I ended up getting rid of a ton of stuff. I had long-outdated information about the 2008 Democratic National Convention from the Unconventional Action consulta that occurred in January 2008. I had the banner from the black bloc at the National Equality March from October 2009. I had an expired bottle of generic Solarcaine from the time when I got sunburned at Splash Down Waterpark in June 2008. I also had a carton of fabric softener from 2007 that I had never opened, where all the liquid had been absorbed by the carton itself, leaving a blob of whatever solids were in the softener at the bottom. No, seriously. Take a look:
Categories: Fire alarms, House, Mercury Sable, Photography, Power Rangers, Schumin Web meta, Today's Special
Back to Cumberland…
10 minute read
October 11, 2014, 7:56 PM
On October 2, exactly a year and a half after my first road trip to Cumberland (where I produced a photography set), I was back out that way again. The purpose of this trip was to explore the downtown area a little bit more deeply, make some photo spheres, and check out a few things that I had missed the last time I was out there for one reason or another.
I had two planned stops on the way out. The first was at the westbound South Mountain rest area and welcome center on Interstate 70. Besides its being a logical spot to take a break, I wanted to get some photo spheres while there, plus I wanted to get updated photos of something that really bothered me on the last trip to Cumberland. In the Journal entry for the April 2013 trip, I discussed an errant apostrophe on the signage directing motorists to parking, where “RV” was pluralized using an apostrophe. The rule of thumb when it comes to pluralization in English, by the way, is that an apostrophe is never used to form a plural. Ever. I filed a request about this with SHA, which became case #SR-0198410, in early May of this year, to get it fixed, referencing the photo from 2013. I heard back from SHA a few days later, where they promised that they would have the apostrophes removed by the end of the month. When I was through that area again in mid-June, I swung by the eastbound rest area (opposite side) to check to see if they kept their promise. They did, as they scraped the apostrophe off of the sign. This left a somewhat inelegant result:
Categories: Cumberland, Photography, Railroads
Google Camera is my new favorite toy…
5 minute read
September 6, 2014, 12:38 PM
I recently went on a trip down to Stuarts Draft to see my parents and sister, as well as my sister’s friend Vickey, and I came armed with a new app for my Android device: Google Camera. If you’ve never used it before, Google Camera is a camera app that will function as a regular camera plus do a few other things. Besides shooting regular still photos and videos, it will also do a lens blur effect, it helps in shooting panoramic photos, and it also shoots “photo spheres”, also called “spherical panoramas”. That last one is what I took for a spin on this trip. Those are the ones that I can post on Panoramio, and I believe that they go in as Street View (but don’t quote me on that just yet, because they haven’t fully propagated to Google Maps/Earth as of this writing).
Shooting them is surprisingly easy. Here’s a screenshot of the app in action, taking a photo sphere at my place:
Categories: Blue Ridge Parkway, Photography, Roanoke, Staunton, Virginia
So I found an app that lets you take stereo photos…
8 minute read
July 16, 2014, 10:24 PM
Last night, I found an app called 3D Camera for my Android phone. The idea behind the app is that you take two photos a few inches apart from each other, you line them up, and then the app makes a stereo image for you to look at. Depending on how you shoot them, they can come out as either crossview or parallel. I tested it out late last night on a Wheelock 7002T, and came up with this:
(By the way, I strongly recommend clicking each of the images on this entry to view them at full size in the lightbox)
Categories: Photography, Reddit, Retail, Rockville
Acceptance testing on a waterproof camera enclosure…
6 minute read
July 5, 2014, 9:33 PM
First of all, I had fun at the Outer Banks. I’m going to leave it at that for now, though, because the whole trip is going to become a photo set for Life and Times, and so it’s going to come out, but the “extended Journal entry” treatment in Life and Times is what will do it the most justice.
That said, in preparation for the trip, I bought a waterproof camera enclosure, with the intention of taking photos in the water. The idea behind the waterproof camera enclosure was to get Duckie, my Vivitar ViviCam 6200W, out of the picture. Duckie, to put it nicely, has a very limited operating envelope. It’s because the ISO is too low, as 200 is as high as it goes. That means that when you take that camera underwater, you have to hold the camera very still to get clear pictures, unless you want to use the flash (which I don’t always want to do). It became quite frustrating, and led to a lot of bad photos. Basically, submerged handheld photos were a no-go under the vast majority of conditions. It worked well enough outdoors and in daylight on land, but the pictures taken under those conditions have a slight red tinge to them, which is a pain to try to correct. Plus it has no optical zoom, and the buttons were a bit stiff, with the latter’s making the camera’s use somewhat cumbersome.
Thus I got this to replace Duckie:
I completely nerded out on Sunday, and it was awesome…
14 minute read
June 24, 2014, 10:21 PM
I went out on a miniature road trip on Sunday, and I had a blast, taking photos of anything that vaguely interested me. It was more or less spur of the moment, when you consider that for what ended up being a photography trip, I only had my cell phone, and then, I didn’t bring my spare battery along. Thus it was a bit of a continual battle to keep a sufficient charge on the phone with only the car charger, but somehow, I managed, and the results came out pretty well despite my leaving my real camera at home. The way this trip came about is that I wanted to go up to and explore Westminster, Maryland. I’ve been wanting to explore Westminster for a while, ever since my father took an overnight business trip to Westminster a few years ago and I didn’t find out about it until it was too late in the day to go up and visit, because Dad didn’t realize that Westminster was as close to me as it was. That sucked, because I would have totally gone up if I had known. I’ll gladly travel an hour or so on relatively short notice to hang out with family.
So early Sunday morning, I just decided to go up and see what there was. I like doing these sorts of trips, because it’s basically a scouting trip, seeing if there’s anything that I want to explore and photograph in more detail in the future. Getting to Westminster is pretty easy: turn onto Georgia Avenue (MD 97) and take it all the way to Westminster. Seriously, it’s that easy. I got to Westminster just as the sun was coming up. After a quick drive through the main commercial area along Route 140, I located the downtown area.
The downtown area in Westminster has what I consider an unusual feature: a single-track rail line for the Maryland Midland Railway running diagonally through the main intersection in downtown. Main Street goes one way, and Liberty Street and Railroad Avenue (both MD 27) go the other way, and the rail line runs diagonally across the intersection. I would have loved to have seen a train come through here while I was in the area, but unfortunately, I did not get to see that this time.
Categories: Arundel Mills, Baltimore, Baltimore County, Companies, Converted buildings, Driving, Howard County, Howard Johnson's, Photography, Reddit, Sheetz, Vintage business, Westminster
Car show!
5 minute read
April 20, 2014, 8:34 PM
On Saturday, April 12, I got together with my friend Matthew, and we went to a car show in the Sterling area. I’ve always enjoyed a good car show. I used to go with my father when he would bring his Mustang to car shows in the 1990s. I met Oliver North at a car show at Wright’s Dairy Rite in Staunton back when he was running for the Senate in 1994, in fact.
Thus I was quite pleased to go to this show with Matthew. I had been to this show once before, in 2012, and had a lot of fun, but for whatever reason (possibly related to the ongoing site conversion at that time) never really featured all of the neat cars that I saw, save for one. I’m not about to miss this time, because I saw some really neat cars. I also remembered what I like when photographing cars. I like seeing show cars as they might appear while being driven. Thus I like it when the hood is kept down. For whatever reason, I’m not that interested in looking at the engine. And then if it’s a convertible, I love seeing the top down.
That said, this is not the way I like to see a car when it’s on display:
Categories: Events, Matthew, Photography
Infrastructure pix with a borrowed camera…
6 minute read
April 10, 2014, 9:34 AM
I have had my current main camera, a Canon PowerShot SX10 IS, for approximately five years and two months as of this writing. The camera still works quite well, but is starting to get up there in age. For one thing, the fliparound screen on the back of it no longer works when the screen is flat against the camera while facing out. The electronic viewfinder comes on and the screen goes black when it’s in that position. Go figure. I’m also often finding myself “hitting the wall” with the camera as far as its limits go. Some of the ways I want to go with my photography, the camera can’t go there with me because it doesn’t go far enough. Also, if it gives you any concept of how much time has passed, I wrecked Big Mavica in a rainstorm after I had owned it for five years and four months.
All that said, I am looking to replace my main camera. In this case, however, there is no camera damage forcing my hand. My current camera works fine, though it is starting to show some signs of age. And even if the main camera was kaput, I have two other cameras plus a phone as backup. So this puts me in a good position, as there is no pressing need to replace equipment. I also do not feel that I am currently in a position to upgrade, so running on existing equipment works just fine for me.
However, this doesn’t mean that I’m not trying out other equipment when I can. I recently got an opportunity to borrow a friend’s Nikon Coolpix P510 and take it out for a photo shoot. The Nikon Coolpix P510 is a “prosumer” level camera similar to my Canon PowerShot SX10 IS, but is newer and takes photos in higher resolution (16 megapixel vs. 10). I did this mainly to see where the prosumer cameras had gone in the past few years, since I’ve been toying with the idea of getting another prosumer or finally going to a digital SLR.
Categories: Cameras, Photography
At last, my Washington Monument photo set is done…
9 minute read
February 20, 2014, 12:30 AM
At last, I have finished my Washington Monument photo set. I started work on this photo set in September, finished up the photography for it in November, and now it’s February and with the scaffolding mostly gone (only a quarter or so of the height is now covered) at the time of this writing, the set finally goes out. This was quite a project, too.
I spent most of the first day, September 5, out on the Mall, shooting photos of the monument under clear to partly cloudy skies. I was out there from mid-to-late morning until around 5:00. I got home around 7 PM, after having walked 6.35 miles around the Mall area. I got off the train at Metro Center, headed to the Washington Monument, and looped around it once at fairly close range. Then I did another loop around it from a distance, following the path around the Tidal Basin, going past the Jefferson Memorial, the FDR Memorial, the MLK Memorial, the DC War Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial, the Vietnam Memorial, Constitution Gardens, and the World War II Memorial. Then I headed back up to the Washington Monument, and did another loop up close before heading out. I went over to the Old Post Office on my way out in order to get a few photos of the Washington Monument from up above, before returning to Metro Center to head home. After I got home, I don’t think I made it to 7:30. I was out like a light. Walking all that distance while taking some 900 photos, I definitely earned my sleep that night, as I was both physically and mentally exhausted.
Categories: Photography, Schumin Web meta, Washington DC
No more Creative Commons license?
3 minute read
February 20, 2014, 12:00 AM
As of today, The Schumin Web is no longer offered under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license. The site will now be offered under the traditional “all rights reserved” model, i.e. explicit written permission is required for most downstream usages. I am doing this for one purpose: to make money. I went to the Creative Commons model back in November 2005 in order to give my work more exposure through downstream uses, and apparently it’s worked. I now have a portfolio of over 250 downstream usages, both online and in print. I now have plenty of exposure. People know who I am, and know about my work, based on multiple usages from a few high-profile entities. Therefore, I believe that I have reached the point where I can monetize my photography work and bring in a few extra bucks. The idea is that if you work for some vague notion of “exposure”, that is all you are ever going to get, and it’s very easy to be taken advantage of that way. As I field more and more licensing requests from companies, it is clear that there is monetary value in what I produce.
Because of this, there are a few changes in the way that things will operate as far as image licensing goes, as I attempt to reconcile the old Creative Commons license with the new all-rights-reserved model. First of all, please note: as of today, no new downstream usages of any Schumin Web content are allowed under any form of Creative Commons license. Please see the new Content Licensing page for information about new downstream usages of Schumin Web content. All existing downstream content usages that were made using the old Creative Commons license are grandfathered. Thus, for example, if you used a picture under the Creative Commons license last year, nothing affects that past usage. However, if you want to use another image today, you need to receive explicit written permission to use that image, even if the image was originally published during the period when the Creative Commons license was in effect.
Categories: Copyright infringement, Schumin Web meta
Trashing a tripod…
4 minute read
October 16, 2013, 1:38 PM
It’s funny how things work out sometimes. Some of you may know that I’m in the process of doing a photo set of the Washington Monument while it’s in scaffolding. I shot all of the daytime material on September 5, where I walked 6.35 miles around the Washington Monument, and took 900 photos in the process (no wonder I was exhausted after that). One of the photos became the photo feature on September 8.
The plan was to also do a nighttime component for this set, and I got together with my friends Suzie and Rocio to do half of the night photos (since the full round proved to be too much) on September 28. Since I had gotten jittery photos when I did a similar photo shoot in March (the nighttime photos of the DC War Memorial and Jefferson Memorial are from that shoot), I did some equipment testing out on my balcony prior to this shoot to determine the cause of the jittering and get some quality photos. Since the camera wasn’t going to change, the test was on the tripods. I tested Big Mavica’s original tripod, which is a Kodak tripod that I got in December 2002, and my regular tripod, which is a Sunpak tripod that I got in December 2003 (which I used in the March shoot). Turns out that the Sunpak tripod jittered and the Kodak one didn’t. So it seemed a no-brainer: take the Kodak tripod out on the shoot.
Getting out on the Mall, with Suzie and Rocio along for the adventure, things quickly went south. I can deal with most equipment issues fairly well. But this time, an important piece decided to go: the head of the tripod. Early on, things held together, but while I was working in front of the Jefferson Memorial, the head popped off, and it wouldn’t go back in and stay there. Thus the best I could do was perch it in there and make do, but the problems got worse and worse as the night went on.
Categories: Friends, Photography