Sometimes, when the light is just right and the location is ideal and you have a willing subject, you can really get some nice portraiture results.
This was one of those times.
Category Archives: General
Mobile Readiness
We finally moved into the 21st century a few days ago with a matching pair of Androids. We’d been considering it for a while but when Kelli’s old phone decided it wasn’t going to start up any more, our hand was forced.
This got me to thinking about how many people have smartphones these days and how not all of them are ideally suited to browsing full-sized websites. Those sites I’ve encountered which have mobile-specific feeds are much more enjoyable when browsing on a phone! Luckily there are ways to make WordPress sites mobile-ready without requiring heavy coding. We’re talking plug-ins here.
So this site is now mobile friendly. For the large photo posts, the photo will display only if you go to the actual post. From there tapping on the photo will take you to a full-size (1024 pixel) version which should display nicely scaled to your device and whatever way you have it oriented.
People using desktops, laptops and tablet devices should get the full website as before. I don’t own any tablet devices but will be trying to get a couple of minutes of “fondleslab” time to make sure it’s all OK.
Do let me know if anything is amiss and I’ll see what can be done to fix it.
Marginal Arts Festival 2012
Science Fiction Evening of Wonders 2/17/2012
Outside of family get-togethers I don’t shoot much color these days, but some events just scream out for it. This was one of them.
Our plan was to see Kelli’s former work colleague Jeremy perform his chiptune set as Receptors/8-Bit Operators but I also figured there’d be some Star Wars cosplay going on which should offer a few photo opportunities, so brought the F-1 and some ISO 400 color negative film along. Sadly, we arrived too late to catch Jeremy performing (though we did spend a while chatting with him later).
I also got to play with long-ish exposures (around 1/4 second) and light trails thanks to Christian Perkins. Given the opportunity to try something like that again I’d want to throw in some second curtain flash, but the F-1 pre-dates that particular innovation by a few years.
Darth Vader ponders whether to pose or slice my shutter finger off with a light saber.
Some thoughts on the Kodak situation
Edited from a comment I made over at TOP:
I’m getting increasingly grouchy reading uninformed Internet comments from people who actually, honest-to-God firmly believe that death of Kodak = death of film.
Apparently none of them are aware of Ilford, Fujifilm, Foma, Efke/Adox, Rollei and a motley of Chinese film manufacturers such as Lucky and Shanghai. Or that Kodak don’t make or sell black and white photo paper. Or that they haven’t made Kodak branded photo chemicals for several years. It’s somewhat akin to saying that air travel will cease to exist because American Airlines are currently in Chapter 11 protection.
Kodak’s film lines going away completely would suck for film shooters, but certainly isn’t the end. For color shooters it would represent a significant loss of choice and the best color print emulsions that we’ve ever had (Ektar 100 and New Portra). For black and white shooters, there are more than a few other options, which may or may not be acceptable. Personally, I’d have a hard time telling the difference between my Ilford HP5+ and Kodak Tri-X negatives if I didn’t have the edge markings to tell me what they were. Your mileage may vary, but lets be realistic here: there’s a lot of choice available for something which is a niche within a niche.
To address another apparent internet misconception, Chapter 11 bankruptcy means Kodak could survive in some form. It’s not a guarantee; creditors might not agree to the reorganization plan or the company may emerge from bankruptcy only to fail later. But it offers the possibility of continuing normal operations while they figure out how, or if, they can get their act together. That, in fact, is the whole point of Chapter 11. If they wanted to just wind down they’d file Chapter 7 or keep plodding along burning their cash reserves and hoping for a miracle.
Either way we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.