Rick’s Rants and Raves

Nathan went faux rock at Vertical Adventures for the second time tonight. After an hour or so, I challenged him to follow a route. He followed a level one route (the easiest aside from just grabbing anything) and got about 19 feet high–6 more feet to get to the top. “I’m done. I can’t get any higher.” I encouraged him to not stop there–make one more step, grab that next hold, try a little bit more. He made it to the top. He was so proud of himself, and appreciative that I had pushed him just a little bit. He was ready for more, but just didn’t know it.

This weekend started for Anne and me on Thursday at Byrne’s Pub with the Adam Ezra Group and Enter the Haggis. We’d first seen Enter the Haggis at the Dublin Irish Festival. This was a night out for the two of us, so I didn’t take any cameras except the one on my phone.

We’d never heard of the Adam Ezra Group and I was really impressed by their sound check. For some reason I felt a bit emboldened and introduced myself to a couple of the guys after the sound check. I didn’t approach in a marketing frame of mind–instead I approached them because a) I really did like their sound, and b) I felt a moment of compassion for guys traveling to a small bar in a mid-west town playing to an audience that had never hear of them before. They turned out to be very personable and seemed to appreciate that I had introduced myself. Their full set did not disappoint–it was great singer-songwriter material, and I really liked the passion that Adam and Turtle brought to the performance. Unfortunately, I’m no music critic, so you’ll just have to go listen to stuff from their website to get a better handle on their music. Of course they had CDs for sale, but they didn’t have a set price on them. Their philosophy, much like my brother-in-law’s, is that they want people to have their music. So they had a box labeled “I Love You” where people could throw so money in exchange for CDs. The amount of money was up to the listener. I grabbed a full-length CD, View from the Root, and a short three-song eponymous CD in exchange for $20.

Enter the Haggis played next, and their performance did not disappoint. The crowd wasn’t as big as I had anticipated, but maybe the $10 cover on a Thursday night scared off some of the crowd. During their set break, I was surprised to find the “headliners” in the back of the bar, near the restrooms, hanging out among themselves rather than mingling with the crowd. So I went back, introduced myself, and gave them a bit of a ribbing. They told me that they were expecting the true fans to follow them back, and that, Congratulations, I was their first true fan of the night. Anne joined me in chatting with the band, so we had someone snap this crappy cell phone pic.

During the day, Anne and I did some grocery shopping, but after dinner went our separate ways. Anne went to book club, and I went to see Racecar for my second time. I shot a previous performance, and I did a set of promo photos. Though they didn’t specifically ask me to shoot this performance, I decided I wanted to give it a shot. Plus Andy, the lead singer, is so passionate about his performance, it is hard to not shoot it.

Of course his passion was through the roof, but getting decent shots in the “venue” was a serious pain in the butt. Similar to many bars in the city, the lighting is crappy, and very dim, at best. This shot was at 6400 ISO, f/3.5, and 1/25s. The performers were top lit by christmas lights, and back lit by the rope lights. The camera couldn’t focus on their faces, and I could barely see well enough to take a stab at manual focus. After the performance I finally learned why I couldn’t get the camera or flash to use the AF Assist lamp, but that is the topic of another post. So I ended up with a majority of my images out of focus. Including this one.

But I kept this one because a) it shows the background of band stickers, and b) there’s some tension in having Andy’s menacing face out of focus. I like the result.

I’m having a hard time thinking of why I like some of these images, so I’ll just post here a few more of my favorites from the set.

The last photo is something I’ve come to really enjoy about the small band music scene–a lot of it is very intimate. The fans are right in the faces of the performers, and the performers will get spit on the fans if they aren’t careful. And it means you can actually talk to folks between sets.

Saturday was spent with friends playing Dungeons and Dragons and watching football. How’s that for blasting your stereotypes of D&D nerds? Married couples who can role play, drink some beer, eat some chili, and cheer-on the Buckeyes to victory.

Sunday we went to my grandparents’ church where my grandmother was honored for her 90th birthday. It was a pleasant service for a vibrant and growing congregation. Afterward we took a picture of the gathered family.

The designated photographer (someone from the church) first took a picture with her camera, then picked up mine. I had set it to full auto and only had to instruct her to look through the viewfinder. She pressed the shutter and was clearly used to a point-and-wait sort of delay because my camera fired off two shots before she let go. She wanted to do it again so as to be assured of getting a decent shot, and again made two shots.

The real reason I took the camera was to attempt to capture “candid” conversations between my grandmother and her well-wishers. Unfortunately we spent a fair bit of time waiting in the sanctuary to get our picture taken, and I think, as a result, many of her friends had already left. Fortunately I was able to get this shot of her with the pastor.

We enjoyed lunch together afterward and enjoyed catching up a little bit. Fortunately we’ll be spending a fair bit of time together over the holiday as well. I’m so lucky to have two living grandparents (90 and 89) and I’m really glad their great-grand-kids have had a chance to spend some time with them.

For dinner Sunday evening, we had some friends (and our son’s godparents) over to our house. There was lots of animated conversation about all kinds of things, all the while Reggie and I were getting a bit restless and fidgety. So I got some little toys and someone (Anne or Emily) brought out the magnetic color cubes. Reggie went right to work.

Almost as fun was watching Emily taking pictures of some of the toys we’d been playing with, exploring the wonders of macro photography.

Here’s the first one she took of the toy on the corner of the table.

It was another great weekend-in-the-life, filled with the stuff we enjoy: music, photography, books (for Anne), family, games, friends, and food. I know its a few days early, but I’m thankful to be part of it all.

We know it’s getting cooler outside (and inside) when Ashes, above, starts napping on an end table. This end table has one of the remaining incandescent bulbs in it. As a result, Ashes’ fur gets nicely warm under that glow. He’s already got the softest coat of any cat we’ve ever met, but with that added bit of warmth it becomes nearly impossible to not pet him. And that’s a shame because he always looks so comfortable and relaxed under that lamp–it’s a pity to disturb him.

Last week we went to the National Air Force Museum in Dayton, and I gotta say that was the best visit to a museum, ever. It really is hard to appreciate the scale and scope of the museum until you’re there, under the wing of a B-52 (the three dots in the middle of that picture are the wife and kids). I took a bunch of pictures, of course. I’ll narrate a few here.

I found myself particularly drawn to the shiny planes in the early exhibits in the first hangar (early aviation and WWII). Those were JUST SO COOL to my inner ten-year-old and I kept trying to capture the coolness in pictures. Of course, the inner ten-year-old probably got in the way of the shutter a bit (“Oh look! Shoot the shiny!”). For me the experience was all about the visual. The history is interesting, but seeing the cool propellers, and the wheels, and the engines up close were all way better than reading the stories on the walls, fascinating though the stories were.

The middle hangar had aircraft from the Korean and Vietnam war eras, and I took a few pictures in there, like documentation of extensive bombing runs, and artwork. We were also simply stunned by the size of the B52 (picture at top).

When we moved into the Cold War hangar, I was immediately returned to my teenage obsession with the SR-71 Blackbird. I used to love learning what little I could about it in the 80′s (before the Internet, and before the plane’s capabilities were declassified). I tried several times to get a decent shot of the black plane in the very dim hangar, but without an army of external flashes there was just no way to get a decent shot of a shadow in darkness. So I settled instead for the above if-it-were-human-it-would-be-indecent shot up its left afterburner. Of course the Stealth was cool as hell too.

This engine reminded me of the Borg ships from Star Trek: The Next Generation. I can’t imagine troubleshooting something like that if it didn’t work properly.

With so much visual candy, I felt like a tourist snapping pictures at every turn.

Then we took a shuttle to the R&D & Presidential hangars. If I had been jazzed in the regular hangars, going to these on-base, tightly-access-controlled hangars, just about caused me to hyperventilate. After we stepped off the bus, we had a choice–left to the Presidential hangar, or right to the R&D. Everyone else in front of us had turned left. I chose right. And we were in a hangar full of experimental planes with no caution tape or barriers keeping us at bay.

So we explored and we played. Signs told us no-touchy but there was no one else there. We refrained out of respect for generations to follow us, but we really could look very closely at these planes.

We were all like kids in a jet fighter museum.

And then I saw one of the planes in the infamous Bell X-1 series.

I almost teared up.

About half way through our allotted time, we worked our way over to the Presidential hangar. For a history buff like Anne, I think this was one of the most interesting hangars. We got to walk through several of the planes that had served a number of presidents, and it was very cool to see the interiors of these planes. Anne got a little choked up when she saw the picture of Lyndon Johnson getting sworn-in after Kennedy’s assassination in the very plane we were standing in. Wow.

Final photography notes–I shot the whole day with the new Tamron 18-270mm. I had brought our small camera bag which contained only a single extra battery. I really tried to travel as light as possible. At one point (the B52 shot the leads this post) I wished that I had brought an external flash and radio triggers. Otherwise I was quite content with my light-weight-not-trying-to-impress-anyone camera bag. I was really glad to have the wide end on that lens–nearly two thirds of my shots were at 18-21mm. I had anticipated getting more detail shots at the long end of the lens, but as I saw the planes, I opted more to show the scale and capture as much as possible. I’m also really pleased with the high-ISO performance of the camera (the shiny plane second from the top was at 3200!). I finally started to get used to the Auto ISO function: I set the ISO to 200 or 400, minimum shutter to 1/60, and aperture priority. After that, the camera largely did the work for me. I primarily adjusted exposure compensation (yes, I really want a dark scene) and exposure metering (spot vs matrix). I could definitely see going back specifically as a photography junket with some gelled external flashes to create all sorts of cool images. As it was, there was plenty of eye candy even in tourist mode.