And we are once again fully operational. Now I just need something to photograph…
2 minute read
May 4, 2008, 9:16 PM
I finally got a chance to test the new Kodak Z1012 IS camera tonight, and let me say that this is a big leap from Big Mavica. So here’s a quick round of test shots:
Continue reading…Categories: Cameras
I have about 7 GB of SD card volume now – think that’s enough?
2 minute read
May 3, 2008, 2:23 PM
After a trip down to Stuarts Draft on Friday night, Mom and I went to Costco in Harrisonburg to get various odds and ends. Among other things, I got two 2 GB SD cards to use on the new cameras. Thus I have the two 1 GB Polaroid SD cards I bought at Target, the free 1 GB card I got from Kodak along with a fanny pack of some kind (I wouldn’t call that thing a camera bag), and now these two 2 GB ones from Costco. And I hope I’m all set. I get like 200 photos on a single 1 GB card on the Vivitar, and that’s 6.0 megapixels. Then I’ve been too busy to give the 10.1 megapixel Kodak a test run yet (it arrived on Wednesday), so I don’t know about how that will go, but hopefully I’ve got enough capacity now.
That’s the thing about this – I have no track record at all with the Kodak, and then I’ve only done about three photo sets with the Vivitar. That was a test set, then Operation Reconnect with Anonymous, and then counter-protesting the Nazis with my regular activist buddies. Going by Big Mavica’s standard’s doesn’t work, since everything’s bigger now. The Vivitar is 1.5 times “bigger” than Big Mavica, and the Kodak is roughly 2.5 times “bigger” than Big Mavica (remember that the “big” in Big Mavica referred to the resolution). Plus the movies are different, too. The Vivitar shoots in AVI format at 320×240 (Big Mavica shot MPEG), and then the Kodak shoots really high-resolution videos.
Categories: Cameras
Done for another year, and good riddance to it.
2 minute read
April 6, 2008, 3:26 PM
You know what they say. There are only two certainties in life: death and taxes. The former only comes once, and most of us try to put it off as long as possible. The latter comes annually, and it comes due on April 15. And so I can now put it behind me again.
What’s weird, though, is doing it now, vs. in January when I usually do taxes. But this year was more complicated. I changed jobs and states, after all. I left Wal-Mart (yaaaay!), and found work with Food & Water Watch. And I moved from Virginia to Maryland. So for that, I bought TurboTax, and did the whole thing on the computer. Usually, I just sit down with a 1040, a calculator, and a pen, and do it. For the forty bucks or whatever TurboTax cost, it’s normally worth it to just do it manually. But for more complicated years – I was more worried about the state stuff than the federal stuff – TurboTax is handy.
Categories: Cameras, National politics, Walmart
What a great visit!
3 minute read
April 5, 2008, 11:42 PM
Mom came up for a teachers’ convention during the latter part of this week, and she stayed at my house. And we had a great time. She arrived on Wednesday, and we met up at Wheaton Plaza and then went to my house. Then while I went to work on Thursday and Friday, Mom was at her convention for the Virginia Writing Project. On Thursday, Mom actually lobbied a few Virginia representatives and senators, and then on Friday they had some workshops.
And Mom got to be a DC commuter for two days. She took the 51 and the Red Line just like I do. She left the house ahead of me in the mornings, but we rode back together in the evenings. Thursday, Mom got to see her first big Metro delay, as there was a train having a problem at Van Ness-UDC in the direction of Glenmont (of course). An out-of-service train whizzed by Dupont Circle station, and then I took the next (very crowded) train, to meet Mom at Union Station. Then from there, we rode to Glenmont and took the Y5 back home.
Then on Friday, Mom and I got Breda 3062, which had advertisements on the ceiling. Take a look…
Big Mavica is gone…
3 minute read
March 31, 2008, 9:05 PM
Well, Big Mavica is officially on its way to that big photo set in the sky, as I shipped it to Recycling For Charities on my lunch hour today. And I got photos of this solemn event, too, which a friend of mine has described as the end of an era.
Big Mavica is in the box, the last anyone will see of it.
Big Mavica’s fate is now sealed.
< 1 minute read
March 29, 2008, 12:18 PM
It looks like Big Mavica will have a happy ending after all. I’m recycling Big Mavica with an organization called Recycling For Charities, with the proceeds from the camera’s recycling going to support Stage Left Theatre, a Chicago-based theater that produces plays intended to raise debate on social and political issues.
So after more than five years of documenting various political mobilizations, among other things, Big Mavica’s recycling will likewise help raise awareness of various political and social issues. Yay!
Categories: Cameras
And we’re back in business!
2 minute read
March 25, 2008, 10:43 PM
Yes, we’re back in business! The Vivitar 6200W waterproof camera has arrived, and I’ve fired off a few test shots. I hope you like looking at my kitchen:
Categories: Cameras, Project Chanology
Well, the Big Mavica era is over.
2 minute read
March 21, 2008, 12:22 AM
The era of Big Mavica has officially come to a close, as the screen is busted, wrecked due to water at the March 19 anti-war protest in DC. Due to the age of the equipment, I determined that a repair is not worthwhile. And the new camera is on order. The new camera is a Vivitar ViviCam 6200W, a 6.0 megapixel waterproof camera.
Well, that’s actually only half the story. This Vivitar will be my all-weather “hazard conditions” camera. This would be the one I’d take on the beach, to protests where showers are expected, and any other situations where I would expect the camera to take some abuse. In theory, this camera should be able to withstand a pepper spray to the face and keep on firing. Just don’t forget to wipe the lens. Isis, a photographer friend of mine, actually recommended this camera to me for bad-weather imagery. And I got a really good deal for it on Amazon.
After almost five and a half years, Big Mavica may very well be done for…
< 1 minute read
March 19, 2008, 5:38 PM
First of all, the “Funk the War” protest in downtown Washington, for which I took the day off at work, went very well. I got a lot of great photos, but it was really rainy. It rained. Hard.
Which brings me to point number two. Big Mavica took on water, as it’s done in the past, but this time, I think it might be a goner. It quit shooting photos, and the screen is all white. Something tells me that something might have shorted out in the camera. Hopefully once Big Mavica gets time to dry, it will be up and kicking again. And if not, well, it might be time to finally upgrade. After all, five years is a long time for electronic equipment. So if it’s to the point where I’m faced with sending it out for repair or just replacing it, I’m going to replace it, and retire Big Mavica.
And if this is the end for Big Mavica, at least it went out in a blaze of glory. In Part 3 of the Virginia Beach 2005 photo set, I said, “If I’m going to lose Big Mavica, it might as well be in the process of shooting a great photo set.” And when it comes to shooting a huge protest, I can’t think of a better time or place to lose it.
And the photo set won’t be toast, either. I can still recover everything that I had shot prior to the camera’s going out on me, and my friend Isis is going to help me fill out the remainder of the set.
So we’ll see what happens. Hopefully it won’t be the end of Big Mavica, but we’ll see…
Looking back, I’m like, whoa…
2 minute read
August 16, 2007, 2:56 PM
As I restore all these photo sets, it struck me – my photography has evolved over the course of seven years of doing photo sets. The older stuff definitely looks like the work of a younger, less experienced man. Let’s just say that half the stuff that made it onto the Web site for some of those older sets (The Schumin Web Salutes America comes to mind) would never have made the cut today. Plus the way I covered some of it back then would never have happened today.
A good comparison is with the treatment of the US Capitol. Back in 2001, I covered the Capitol as part of “The Schumin Web Salutes America”. The writing was so-so at best, and it came off as a walk-around in a hurry (which it was). The focus was on the building, with tourists in place. Then compare it to the Capitol’s most recent appearance, as part of the J27 set. There, the Capitol’s appearance was incidental, but we told more of a story. In fact, the writing is often king in Life and Times sets. But Photography also tells a “story” as well, and more emphasis is placed on telling the “story” now than before.
Categories: Photography, Schumin Web meta
A whole bunch of miscellaneous stuff I’ve been meaning to show you…
3 minute read
June 17, 2007, 10:07 AM
I realized recently that I’ve gotten a little bit of a backlog of stuff I’ve been meaning to show you that I’ve captured with my cell phone over the last week or so. So here we go.
So there you go – photographic proof that deer do wander through the vacant lot next door. Apologies for the blurry picture, but this is the cell phone, and not Big Mavica.
Categories: Fire alarms, Photography, Shoes, Silver Spring, Washington DC, WMATA
A few quick things…
< 1 minute read
April 24, 2007, 1:02 AM
First of all, the photos of the now-demolished Skyline Parkway Motel are officially in the can, and I will be posting those on Wednesday, after I get back from apartment hunting in DC on Tuesday.
Secondly, does anyone have a good recipe for green slime? I want to do a homage to You Can’t Do That On Television for the splash page, and so I need to make some slime. In making the slime, the finished product can’t be clear. It needs to be opaque and somewhat thick, and it also can’t be completely smooth. I want something authentic poured on my head when I say “I don’t know.” And of course, to get clean again after getting slimed, you just have to mention “water”.
Meanwhile, to be truly authentic, I’d need to find an old-style metal jungle gym to do the shoot at.
Categories: Afton Mountain, Photography, Skyline Parkway Motel, Television
Attention, YouTubers: May I suggest…?
2 minute read
April 21, 2007, 1:29 AM
For all of you who post videos on YouTube, may I make a suggestion? If you’re going to be posting videos of yourself demonstrating something, please do one of two things. Please either get someone to do the filming for you, or alternately, please use a tripod or something else to put the camera on.
Why? Because people who are demonstrating something with one hand while filming with the other so often produce videos that will make a person seasick. The videos are so often also out of focus because they’re too close or moving too fast. Such videos make it hard to follow what’s going on, and it takes some of the human element out of a video, since all we see is this disembodied hand.
If I had prepared more thoroughly for this entry, I would have made multiple videos for you of the same basic thing ahead of time to show you what I mean. One where I filmed myself doing something, and the other while having another person film me doing the same task. Then I could have you compare the quality of the two videos.
But you won’t get to see this, because I came to this entry utterly unprepared. So let me pick a few videos out of YouTube to demonstrate what I mean in lieu of filming my own demonstration. My apologies up front if any of these videos that I am about to use were made by someone who is familiar with my work and may eventually read this.
Categories: Copyright infringement, YouTube
Protesting leaves you SO sore…
3 minute read
January 29, 2007, 2:07 AM
Marching around DC for six hours at a relatively fast pace leaves you sore the next day. Specifically, my legs hurt. Whatever muscle runs along the outer sides of the thigh must have gotten quite a workout, because it’s aching today. Going down the stairs has been hell. Going up is no problem. Go figure.
Otherwise, I thought it was interesting to read this in this ABC News article:
The rally on the Mall unfolded peacefully, although about 300 protesters tried to rush the Capitol, running up the grassy lawn to the front of the building. Police on motorcycles tried to stop them, scuffling with some and barricading entrances.
I was part of that group of 300-some protesters. And it was quite an event, as this picture attests:
Sometimes, the way I set up a shot is amusing…
2 minute read
October 22, 2006, 1:02 AM
I’m looking at the photo feature I’m running right now, described as “Headlights illuminate a sign marking the Buena Vista overlook on the Blue Ridge Parkway.” What I find amusing is how I used practically everything I had with me except for the Blistex that I keep in my camera bag in order to get this shot. Seriously. Even the Sable got into the act. Where do you think the headlights that illuminated the sign came from? Sa-a-a-a-a-able…
I was actually trying to get a nice long-exposure shot of the sign, which is how this all came about. The sun was down enough to where the shot would come out dark, but light enough to where it would be blue. So I fiddled with things, and also, since I was parked right in front of the sign, I fiddled with my headlights to get things how I wanted. In the shot I ultimately used, I timed things. I set the camera up at an eight-second exposure, and then using the remote, unlocked my doors (which makes the headlights come on) with two seconds to go. I used other exposures and length of time with the headlights on as well, but that’s the one that looked the way I liked.
I also had some fun taking some long-exposure shots of the Sable while I was up there in the dark, with the tripod all set up. I reached into the car and hit the switch for the interior and door lights. Then I fired off a few long-exposure shots of that. Thus we have the Sable, an island of light in the midst of darkness…
Categories: Blue Ridge Parkway, Photography