We had my dad over for dinner tonight. He’s 69 and wants for nothing except time with his son and grand kids. He’s recently made it a habit of paying for dinner every time we go out despite our frequent insistence that it is our turn to pay. So for his birthday this year, we had him over to our house for a quiet dinner of Country Captain Chicken (our favorite made-at-home curry dish) and Krusteaz pumpkin pie bars (they are devilishly good!).

The shot above was a “grab” shot. I spent very little time composing it and the only light is from the overhead ceiling fan with a mixture of incandescent and compact fluorescent bulbs. I like the result.

As I approached the reserve area in the library, I overheard a man ask an employee how much it cost to rent a CD. “You’re at the library sir” was her initial response. She went on to explain borrowing and late fees, but no, there are no rental fees. I almost laughed out loud at her first sentence. It made me think “I’m sorry if this hurts sir, but you clearly need to be hit by this clue-by-four.” After he left the area, I told her I loved her response.

This weekend is going to be busy as hell. I’ll kill every battery and memory card I’ve got. I just hope I can stay healthy enough to get through it all. But this is not a post about this weekend. Its a post about random stuff, mostly photographic, but none of which deserves its own blog post.

• I recently started following a blog of a photographer in Ireland. It was this post that struck me. I really liked his style and the how-to nature of the post. More recently, he posted his experience shooting his sister’s band on-stage. He had already impressed me as someone way more experienced than I was, so I looked forward to hearing how he overcame the challenges of shooting performances in dim, funky colored light. High ISO. Been There. Fast Glass. Done That. Monochrome. Bought the T-shirt. I also frequently do what he couldn’t have done at that performance–augment with flash.
• Last night I was at the local office supply store visiting their copy center to get some color copies made for a local band I’m helping to book. I also asked the manager (who happened to be behind the counter) about business cards. I’m very happy with my Moo.com cards, but they were a bit on the pricey side, and took several days to deliver. So I asked the manager about their premium stock cards and asked him if they were as thick as my current cards. When I handed him a Moo.com card, his reply was “Wow [awkward pause] uh, no, I don’t have anything that thick.” We agreed that he could get me cheap cards fast.
• I’m working with Anne on a reunion book project for my mom. We’ve got pictures from 60 of her high-school classmates to match up with pictures from their senior year. The senior year portraits were clearly all done by the same photographer. They nearly all involve an unnaturally heavy body lean. Most are looking away from the lens. And there’s almost always a little bit of background showing on the bottom edge.
  
  In contrast, most of the “current” pictures are snapshots from family living rooms. A few are professional portraits (one was 15 years old!). My favorites are the ones where the flash glare in the glasses completely obscures the eyes of the subject. There was about an even mix of  prints versus digital files sent in. One guy even mailed a print on plain printer paper–clearly someone has that digital file, but not us so his picture in the reunion book will be a scan of a crappy print. Oh well.
• One of the professional prints in the reunion “current” group was from Olan Mills, and had a copyright symbol right on the front of the image. I understand that the images are copyrighted, but it just seems obnoxious to put it on the print that someone paid for. Its like putting the copyright notice on the front cover of a book, or as the intro track of an album. I’m also a bit torn on the concept of copyright, but I’ll have to flesh those ideas out more fully in a separate post. And yes, I know I’ve put a watermark on some of my band photographs, but when I sell or give my pictures to someone, they get them without the watermark. Only the “teaser” version has a watermark.
• Nothing terribly significant to say about the horse picture up top. Used the Jive Thirty Five, ISO 800, f/2.8 aperture priority, and waited for them to walk by a north-facing door that opened to a perfectly cloudy gray sky. Done by request so that we have some “scrapbook-able” images.

I had helped clear a tree from their driveway after hurricane Ike. I spent an hour or so clearing branches and cutting and moving the trunk of the tree with help from lots of other neighbors. The lady of the house had attempted to insist on paying me for my efforts, but I refused. I had been there to help out during a storm event, and was just being neighborly.

Monday, I decided to be neighborly again and cut their grass for them. I took the lawnmower over and knocked on the door. I could see through the side-lights that the house was vacant, but apparently some effort was being made to prepare it for sale, as evidenced by the vacuum cleaner and other supplies within view of the door. So I set to work cutting the near-forest of the front yard.

Within a couple of minutes a man with a lawnmower approached and in my naivete, I thought perhaps my altruism had inspired a neighbor to come help. He asked if I owned the house. Nope, just helping out by cutting their grass. Next he asked how much they were paying me. Nothing, just being neighborly. After a bit more chit-chat he asked if I wanted help. It had become clear to me that he was looking for a paying job, so I made it clear this wasn’t one of them. “Only if you’ll help for free” was my reply. “I won’t charge you that much.” I just about laughed in his face. With a “No Thanks” he left.

When I was about two-thirds of the way through the yard, the owner pulled into the driveway. For a moment I was nervous–I was intending to be helpful, but what if there was some other reason to let the grass grow crazy like this. Was she going to yell at me for being on her property? My nervousness disappeared when she got out of the van and beamed a great big “Thank You!” Again, I explained that I was there just to help out because something had clearly happened in their family that prevented her from taking care of the yard. She then ran through a long list of problems that had plagued her since her husband died just prior to hurricane Ike. This further convinced me that I had done the right thing. She needed the help. She then asked “What do I owe you?” Again, I tried to tell her that I wasn’t doing it for money. I was just being helpful. She pressed the issue, and I could tell I didn’t have the “natural disaster” excuse this time. So I came up with a number that would be pretty low, but not patronizing. I said “How about ten bucks?” She felt that was an incredible bargain, immediately grabbed her wallet, and fished out a pair of fives. She further explained that she would be getting in touch with her usual lawn care guy to get him to do it regularly until she could manage to sell the house.

So my good deed turned into a bit of cash. And had the guy who’d offered to help (for a price) stuck around, he would have gotten something too. But more importantly, her yard looks much better and the house doesn’t look obviously vacant.

I figured there would be some utility that might help, so I immediately removed the card and set it to read-only, and put a new card in. I continued shooting the rehearsal dinner, and some barely willing subjects even said “But you already took a picture of us!” Yeah, sorry about that. I may not have that picture.

When I got home, I put the card in the SD reader in my wife’s laptop. Windows 7 recognized the card, but told me it was unformatted. When I looked at the card in Disk Manager,  it said it was partitioned, but with no file system. Oh dear. Remembering my Unix Admin days, I started looking for a Windows equivalent to the dd command, figuring that if I read the raw partitition, I might be able to find some way to extract the files. In my searches, I saw mention of PhotoRec.

I downloaded the program, told it where to find the memory card, and told it that the card had a PC based file system (as opposed to Linux/Unix) and told it where I wanted to save the files. 15 minutes later, I had a directory full of JPG and NEF files. The file names were apparently randomish sequential numbers, but that’s OK–JPGs are easy to rename.

So, PhotoRec saved my butt. All the photos I took that day were recovered, along with some older files from months ago.

We all like to be appreciated. I think ultimately it was some highly flattering appreciation that really got me started in music photography. So I’ve recently had to admit to myself that I like the ego boost that comes from a “that’s a great shot” comment as much as I like making the shot.

Sometimes I don’t get that ego boost. For example, I shot a band several months ago that performed right after Mescalito. At that point I was building my portfolio so I introduced myself to the lead singer (and leader of the band) as they were warming up and asked if he minded if I shot them. He seemed really enthusiastic about it, more than just granting permission. I got several very nice shots from their performance, uploaded them, and sent a link to the lead singer a day or two later. His response? Nothing. I found him on Facebook, sent a friend request (he accepted), and uploaded a photo of him (tagged him in it). His response? Nothing. So, no ego boost from that shoot.

After Emily’s last track meet, Anne sent a link to the Flickr set to the coach, who then sent it on to the rest of the parents. Today when I showed up for a meet, the coach was wonderfully gracious and a couple of parents commented to me how great my shots were. Of course that was just the kind of ego boost I needed to shoot even more of the kids than I had the meet before.

So I enjoy being technically competent at photography, but I don’t do it just for me. I do it so that others can see, and hopefully enjoy, my work. I need that appreciation or I start to get bummed. I can usually counter-act that feeling by shooting some more. Even if no one says “nice shot” about my work today, I’m very pleased with a number of them. The triptych above, for example, is a great “won the race” story. The runner on the left had a slower start, and was half a stride behind for the first 3-4 hurdles. By hurdles 6 and 7 they were dead even. The final frame shows him with a clear lead coming down off the last hurdle. And the intensity on his face is fantastic. These shots are why I do it for me. I hope to hear some appreciation from the other parents but this is enough to keep me going to the next ego boost.

I also remembered just how lucky I was as a kid, and by extension, just how lucky my kids are. At least one of my parents (if not both) were at every track meet, I believe, from 7th through 12th grade. If they missed a meet (I don’t think so), it was incredibly rare. Though I know I didn’t spend a lot of time hanging out with my parents during those meets, in hind sight it added comfort and support to my experience. I knew they loved me because they showed it by being there for me to celebrate the victories, and to help with the character building experiences. My parents, and Emily’s parents, continue this trend.

Anne, Nathan, Grandma (Grandpa not pictured)

We had a fun time visiting the Slate Run Living Historical Farm today. We got to see lambs and piglets and other fun stuff. This goose decided to pose for me.

Since the long jump actually requires skill, and the 800m requires mental stamina that isn’t always present in 7th graders, I took Emily to a high school track this past weekend. Fortunately the rain broke for just long enough to get a bit of long jumping practice in, as well as some running. I explained the mechanics of the long jump (pacing, planting, landing, etc) as well as pacing strategies for the 800m. After some practice jumps, we got on the track, and I ran the 800m with her at what I thought was close to competition pace for her. Around 300m into the race, she was convinced she couldn’t make it the whole way. I told her quitting wasn’t an option and that she would just have to pull through. At 600m we started the first phase of the kick, then encouraged her to pour everything she had into the last 100m. She finished surprisingly strongly, and felt tired but very empowered. I timed the run at 3:51 and told her she would likely improve on that over the year. She was beaming as we completed some 200m pacing runs as she realized that she really did have the strength and stamina to run the full race. I also tried to caution against going too crazy during the first 200m of the race induced by adrenaline–she needed to know her pace, and save a bit for the end.

At the meet today, the long jump was canceled due to a wet pit, so all she had to worry about was the 800m. When her race time came up, I went to the opposite corner of the track so that I could encourage her at the end of the brutal back stretch. At 200m into the race, I thought she was running just a touch fast, but not too much. I shouted generic words of encouragement that I don’t recall at this point. She finished her first lap at 1:40 and had pulled away from her teammate whom she had been keeping pace with. When she came back to my position I reminded her “Drop your arms and stretch your stride. Pour everything into the front stretch!” As I said this, I could see her alter her stride, as did a competitor that was just in front of her. By the time she rounded the bend into the final 100m, she had passed that competitor and had her sights set on the next one 10m ahead. She finished really strongly, beating both of those competitors, placing second overall. From the opposite side of the field, I had her time at 3:25. I beamed.