“Tripod! And I don’t mean the free hosting provider!”
I have taken a new step in my life taking photographs. I now own a tripod. I was in Charlottesville buying Christmas gifts for the family, and saw a tripod deal that I couldn’t resist at, of all places, Kmart, despite that I’m a Wal-Mart kind of person. So I bought it. I happened to have Big Mavica with me for other reasons, and so I couldn’t even wait to get home before I started playing with it. I got in the car, unwrapped the tripod, and hooked Big Mavica up to it. So now was the fun part. But the question is, what am I to photograph at 9:00 at night on a Monday? The answer turned out to be simple. I simply hopped out of the car and took some shots of the parking lot and nearby intersection. This also gave me the opportunity to seriously test the long-exposure feature that Big Mavica does that the old one couldn’t do. I tried it once at JMU when it was snowing, but I was not rock-steady enough all by myself to make it work, and ended up with blurry pictures, and odd streaks (ever seen a snowflake fall up and side to side before?). Now I got some seriously good-looking pictures, and got something that is the classic giveaway to long exposures. Traffic streaks! Yes, that white blob in the left of the picture is headlights, and the red streaks along the middle of the photograph are taillights! Also notice that the traffic light is showing yellow and red both, because the longer exposure caught both. Needless to say, I was pleased. Now that I’ve figured that out, who knows what I’ll photograph next!
Date posted: December 22, 2002