Scammon Bay Approach

This is a tonemapping of a scanned Kodachrome slide taken back in 85 or 86. I was in the co-pilot seat of a Cessna Caravan that was landing at Scammon Bay. This was taken with my Minolta XG-1. I posted this before, some time ago, but I like the effect the toneapping gives it (Photomatix 4.1).

LIGHT from Matt Kleiner on Vimeo.

The Goalie's Eyes Say It All

From my daughter's hockey team this past season.

Country Livin...

This past week, a brown bear was shot and killed about a mile from our house in a residential neighborhood, near a park I used to take my daughter to when she was small. The article link is here. Some of the comments are pretty stupid.
Here's a link to a map showing the tracking of some brown bears in the Anchorage area. Not the usual problem a city of this size would have in most places.

You Can't Always Get What You Want

Canon EOS7D, Tamron 18-270mm lens, ISO:200, Focal length: 18mm, Ap: f8.0, Exp: 1/794 Circular polarizing filter used, hand-held.

A photo looking WNW, towards the mouth of Turnagain Arm. This is at extreme low-tide. Turnagain Arm is one of the two locations in North America where you can observe a bore tide. We were expecting a pretty good bore tide today. Unfortunately, the local media had publicized this fact, so it was a real zoo along the highway. I wanted to get out to a good vantage point to take some photos of the incoming tidal bore, away from any crowds,kids,tourists, etc.. I asked my daughter if she wanted to go along and she said yes, so we drove down to Bird Point and trudged out (through marsh) to an isolated point where you would have a great view. That's where I took the above photo.

As we awaited the bore tide, my daughter announces that she has to get back for a soccer game. Some discussion ensued, but we packed up before the incoming tide arrived and went back to our car. I wasn't real pleased. Then on our drive home, she gets a nose bleed, a real gusher of a nose bleed. I have a box of kleenex, which she's going through like nobody's business. She's a mess, the inside of my car looks like Ted Bundy had borrowed it for the weekend, I didn't get the photos I went there for and we are going to be late for her game. Some days are like that.

But the bore tides are cyclical. I like to view them and I've seen many of them. I'll see more, and hopefully get some good shots of them to post. But your kids only grow up once. That's something well worth remembering even on 'those days.'


Canon EOS7D, Tamron 18-270mm lens, ISO:800, Focal length: 270mm, Ap: f6.4, Exp: 1/395 Circular polarizing filter used, hand-held.
Finally, here's an interesting item, via 'Small Dead Animals';

Venus in Transit

I took this yesterday, (obviously).
Using a Tamron 18-270mm f3.5-4.5 lens.
fl: 270mm
iso: 100
Ap: f36
Exp: (1/500), 0.002sec.
Exp. Bias: -5EV
I also used an adjustable neutral density filter dialed almost to opaque. The only post production enhancement is the color saturation. The original image was almost in black & white.

Grandeur

From "The People's Cube"...

* Condecession: set-asides or subsidies to groups one feels sorry for.

* Defaulty setting: Something incorrect that's widely believed because it was the first explanation proposed rather than because there was any actual evidence or proof.

* Dimprovement: A bad, dimwitted improvement that isn't better, often worse. (Can you say New Coke, Vista operating system or nationalized health care?)

* Feelosophy: positions and policies adopted because they make you feel good or virtuous rather than on any reasoned basis or because they could possibly work.

* Iconoklatch: group of nonconformists who uniformly conform to an "alternative" set of standards.

* Infopinion: The intermingling of news and opinion so that it's hard to tell which is what. Often called analysis.

* Literateur: Someone who talks about and refers to books they've never actually read. Think Wealth of Nations or Das Kapital.

* Malapropitization: Needlessly adding prefixes and suffixes to words to make yourself sound erudite, more scholarlisticalful.

* Nincomproof: A line of thinking both logical yet so unreasonable only an idiot or an intellectual would buy it.

* Oprahtunity: The chance to cash in on fame in one area in another area you really have no qualification for. (Al Gore for instance.)

* Psychophant: A lunatic follower of a lunatic leader. (See Marxist-Leninist)

* Sophistreatment: A "fake but accurate" film treatment. Such as any "documentary" film by Michael Moore, or docudrama by Oliver Stone.

* Shamnesia: a condition where one cannot remember personal details or incidents on the advice of their attorney.

* Spoofemism: Play on words making fun of a euphemism. Like calling a bald guy "tonsorially challenged."

* Xenotopia: Something you find unbearable but, strangely, other people desire.

* Preachable Momement: pompous blather masquerading as wisdom

* Quackification: phony, over-hyped or bogus credentials

* Propagandate: an official proclamation which is total baloney

* Compretention: simulated competition, as in two family members running for the same senate seat (also see "public option")

* Negatiate: a negotiation in which one party gives everything away in the very beginning (see "Polish-Czech missile defense")

* Factate: to feed false or irrelevant factoids to gullible supporters for wider dissemination

* Hopeable: susceptible to false or unfounded hopes; idealistically gullible

* Bidentify: to locate and recognize a gaffe-prone official idiot

* Intaxicate: to become drunk with political power, especially with regard to fiscal authority

* Anthropogentrification: the process by which one comes to believe baseless, fraudulent or convaluted theories due to frequent association with self-styled elitists and pseudo-intellectuals

* Clodify: to make idiocy into law

* Wrightisms: The act of damning the nation you live in, and blaming unpopular religious groups for your problems.

* Correctify: to collaborate on fixing something in such a way that only the already-solved problems get "treatment", whereas anything that actually needs attention is dismissed or left alone (See Health Care Bill).

* Legistrate: to conflate the legislature's duties with those of the judiciary. Also known as "legislating from the bench" (see Judicial Activism).

* Extra-Sensory-Deception(ESD) - the ability to communicate absolute garbage through a teleprompter directly beamed across tv into gullible minds full of mush

* Self-Bidentity- seeing yourself as far more competent than you actually are

* Pressoteric- Insight belonging only to members of the Fourth Estate

* Historectomy- removing evidence of past events to promote an agenda

* Stimulation- giving the illusion of fixing the Economy while actually lining your own pockets

* Fundle- to touch a taxpayer's money for your own pleasure

* Acornicopia- a bountiful display of illegitimite votes

* Genufliction- bowing to a dictator to purposefully offend your own people

* Procrasstorial- apearing to be carefully weighing an opinion as a cover for screwing around and not doing your job

* Obesequezy (n.): the feeling of nausea that one experiences upon watching a lemming perform an act of political ingratiation.

* Sacroshanked (adj.): Having been attacked, sometimes mortally, by a religious fanatic.*

Memorial Day 2012

"It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather, we should thank God that such men lived." -- Gen. George S. Patton

05/27/12

After Dinner...

I saw this over at Instapundit's site and thought it was very much worth passing on.
150 year old photos from the American West.  These were taken by Timothy O'Sullivan in the 1860's & 70's and are from the Library of Congress. Take a few minutes and have a look. It's well worth your time.

Roller Blading on the Coastal Trail

Infra-red in Black & White

I took this yesterday evening. It's an HDR composite of three IR images. The images were shot in black & white using a Neewer IR720 filter.

Checked out Roller Derby Friday night

Pretty entertaining all in all. My wife, daughter and I had a good time. Unfortunately, I didn't take the 'fast' Canon 70-200mm, f2.8 lens I use to shoot action in low light, I took my slower 18-270 Tamron f3.5 lens.
I should have (and do) know better. I'll definitely know better next time.

Below is a short piece I read over at Jaded Haven, via Improved Clinch. It's not very long and is below in its entirety...

A Sweet Lesson On Patience

A NYC Taxi driver wrote:

I arrived at the address and honked the horn. After waiting a few minutes I honked again. Since this was going to be my last ride of my shift I thought about just driving away, but instead I put the car in park and walked up to the door and knocked.. 'Just a minute', answered a frail, elderly voice. I could hear something being dragged across the floor.

After a long pause, the door opened. A small woman in her 90's stood before me. She was wearing a print dress and a pillbox hat with a veil pinned on it, like somebody out of a 1940's movie.

By her side was a small nylon suitcase. The apartment looked as if no one had lived in it for years. All the furniture was covered with sheets.

There were no clocks on the walls, no knickknacks or utensils on the counters. In the corner was a cardboard
box filled with photos and glassware.

'Would you carry my bag out to the car?' she said. I took the suitcase to the cab, then returned to assist the woman.

She took my arm and we walked slowly toward the curb.

She kept thanking me for my kindness. 'It's nothing', I told her.. 'I just try to treat my passengers the way I would want my mother to be treated.'

'Oh, you're such a good boy, she said. When we got in the cab, she gave me an address and then asked, 'Could you drive
through downtown?'

'It's not the shortest way,' I answered quickly..

'Oh, I don't mind,' she said. 'I'm in no hurry. I'm on my way to a hospice.

I looked in the rear-view mirror. Her eyes were glistening. 'I don't have any family left,' she continued in a soft voice..'The doctor says I don't have very long.' I quietly reached over and shut off the meter.

'What route would you like me to take?' I asked.

For the next two hours, we drove through the city. She showed me the building where she had once worked as an elevator operator.

We drove through the neighborhood where she and her husband had lived when they were newlyweds She had me pull up in front of a furniture warehouse that had once been a ballroom where she had gone dancing as a girl.

Sometimes she'd ask me to slow in front of a particular building or corner and would sit staring into the darkness, saying nothing.

As the first hint of sun was creasing the horizon, she suddenly said, 'I'm tired.Let's go now'.
We drove in silence to the address she had given me. It was a low building, like a small convalescent home, with a driveway that passed under a portico.

Two orderlies came out to the cab as soon as we pulled up. They were solicitous and intent, watching her every move.
They must have been expecting her.

I opened the trunk and took the small suitcase to the door. The woman was already seated in a wheelchair.

'How much do I owe you?' She asked, reaching into her purse.

'Nothing,' I said

'You have to make a living,' she answered.

'There are other passengers,' I responded.

Almost without thinking, I bent and gave her a hug.She held onto me tightly.

'You gave an old woman a little moment of joy,' she said. 'Thank you.'

I squeezed her hand, and then walked into the dim morning light.. Behind me, a door shut.It was the sound of the closing of a life..

I didn't pick up any more passengers that shift. I drove aimlessly lost in thought. For the rest of that day,I could hardly talk.What if that woman had gotten an angry driver,or one who was impatient to end his shift? What if I had refused to take the run, or had honked once, then driven away?

On a quick review, I don't think that I have done anything more important in my life.

We're conditioned to think that our lives revolve around great moments.

But great moments often catch us unaware-beautifully wrapped in what others may consider a small one.

Downward

This is a tone-mapping of a scanned kodachrome slide. Taken with my Minolta XG-1 sometime in the mid-80's. We were flying into Scammon Bay in western Alaska in a Cessna Caravan. This was shot from the co-pilot's seat.

Bearfoot in the Park

Taken at Katmai National Park, near Brooks River Falls.

Maximus Snackimus