2 days ago
Angry Robot BooksUpdate to a Favorite Tool
Two pretty cool updates yesterday from social media related apps that I use. #Klout added G+ to it’s indexing and since I am using G+ more and more it will be relevant to what I am doing. This is a passive update and I did not have to do anything really, it just happened. The other is a bit bigger for me personally and a lot more fun.
I’ve been a user of #hootsuite for a couple of years. It started as strictly a twitter client, but they have steadily added features . I used it when I was powering twitter and had three accounts. I have backed off and really only watch one of them now. I just don’t have the time to work it like I used to. I went through a lull when I started my new job hardly checking it more than once a day and interacting very little. (My Klout score suffered) I am slowly working back into the swing of things and today when I opened Hootsuite I found they had added Apps. The two I am mildly jazzed about are Flickr and Tumblr. Let me ‘splain.
Flickr, while a great site 6 years ago (and for what it is), still a great site, has fallen short and become a stagnant beast that a power user bangs his head against on a daily basis trying to keep up with all his contacts. This is obvious to everyone except the stewards of Flickr – Yahoo. Very little if any major changes to the social aspects of Flickr have been made in house. You can make a connection to other users by designating them as contacts. Your home page has a small section for those contacts, but I have no idea how it determines what images it is going to place there from those contacts. They sure as heck aren’t the obvious, most recently uploaded images. The only way to see those is about two or three menus deep. I am sure there are other user developed tools for getting around this. The app community is pretty rich and deep, just to me, adding the functionality into something I already use a bunch ROCKS. So now I can create a new tab within Hootsuite (which is a web application so I can access it anywhere) that has a live feed of image posts from all of my contacts. As you can see above, you can also create a feed for your own images or a feed based on a search. Very cool, thanks Hootsuite.
The addition of Tumblr while good is not as big a deal for me, but I like having my dashboard available to just keep up with.
Moontown Fly In
Last weekend I went for a nice lazy ride on my motorcycle and then stopped for a couple of hours at the annual Moontown Fly In and Airshow. I’ve meant to check it out the last couple of years, but this is the first time I either remembered on the weekend it was actually happening or was able to get to it. The weekend was great and the show while small was quite nice. I missed a couple of very nice fly overs, but the ground displays were what I was after with my camera.
Shiny and looking fast even on the ground, I really enjoy getting in close a shooting the mechanical bits.
This line of planes was just finishing up their show when I pulled in. I managed to catch a couple of passes, one peel off and their landing.
There was also a world war two Jeep and ’43 Harley on display. I’m wondering if I can get one of these for my Jeep.
NAPG Instagram PhotoWalk
I finally made it to a NAPG (North Alabama Photographers Guild) meeting tonight. I have been a member of the Flickr group for several months, posted photos to the group and gone to one other event.. tonight was the first time the stars aligned and I made a meeting. One of the planned activities was an Instagram photowalk (non iPhone users were welcome to walk as well) One before and after the meeting. I was barely able to get to the meeting on time and this was a big one.
Final total was 23 apparently. I took this before a couple more folks showed up and we had to add another table. The food was good, the meeting was loud :) I managed to catch bits and pieces of conversations. Check out the flickr group for more on the people and their photos. Really nice bunch.
The photowalk was a nice stroll around Bridgestreet, iPhones in hand and Instagram loaded. Instagram is an app with a handful of filters to apply to shots, a small image size and a way to share the photos with your circle of instagram friends. You can also upload from the app to twitter, flickr, facebook and tumblr. If you don’t have an iPhone but want to get a feel for what Instagram is all about, check out Webstagram, it is a website that lets you view the photos without an iPhone.
And now one to my shots with little to no commentary, my personal feed by the way, is viewable at Buzzregog on Webstagram
First shot was of the merry-go-round, since it was right outside of Terry’s Pizza, the location of all the NAPG meetings.
Next was a try at catching the fading sunset.
A line of clouds catching the last rays of the sun.
It was a photowalk, so the bricks seemed appropriate.
Some needed a break, so we stepped into the Monaco, and I saw another floor opportunity.
And finally the best shot of the night for me, a wall on the back side of some shops not far from the waterfalls outside the Westin.
The Dixie Derby Girls
While I am a recent recruit to the Dixie Derby Girls fans, it is quickly becoming a favorite way to spend an evening with some friends. I had seen mention of the DDG’s here and there, but the final straw was an invite to go to the VBCC last month and watch a game from a former coworker. He is a regular since his wife skates. I’m not going to spend a lot of time trying to fill you in on the rules, their website has the details. Since my thing is photography, I’ll stick to that. These shots were all taken at the August 27th games against the the Little City Roller Girls from Evansville, IN.
The evening was titled “The School of Hard Blocks” and I am sure many a lady went home with plenty of bruises.
By the way, if you can’t tell from these shots, this is not my strongest form of photography. Action shots is a whole different best to setting up macro shots and it shows here. You can get a feel for what came right after the shutter clicked though. It is also worth mentioning here that this derby league is flat track, not those high speed inclined tracks you might remember from your youth. Don’t worry it is still fast and fun to watch.
They have fun, but do mean business.
There are a few derbies left in this season. The remaining home bouts are at Roller Time , check the schedule here.
That last shot might have been the best capture of the overall action, but nothing beats seeing it for yourself. Give them a watch one of these weekends, they work hard, are all volunteers and really enjoy what they do.
Sorry for the Mess
Working on installing a fairly complicated theme, so the place is going to look really terrible. maybe for a few days.
More Mushrooms
It has been a couple of weeks now, but after a long stretch without rain we got a few days of constant moisture. This of course made the fungus and mushrooms quite happy. I took a few shots in the yard, then harvested a few to bring in and play with lighting the little lightbox I set up. Most of these shots are also up on my Flickr stream along with some of the older stuff. For a more interesting look at them, check out the set using Flickriver.
I did not take any measurements or really try to identify them. May start doing that when the next crop springs up. I’ve picked up a book called Mushrooms Demistified and found MycoKeys an interactive website that should help some as well. Just need to make sure I get plenty of details. Guess a moleskine will come in handy for that. Would be a shame if I had something tasty growing in the yard and let it go to waste.
I’ve been taking pictures of these things for a while, adding the diopter filters to my dslr lens helped get good shots immensely. That and I have just gotten better in general. Another thing I’ll be trying is the zoom and focus on my iPhone 4. Really itching to play with some filters and the 3G I had before was horrible for this kind of stuff.
Most of the shots taken of this crop were not mature mushrooms, it seemed I missed the prime shooting opportunities as the tops split and looked pretty ragged late in the evening. I’m also pretty sure the squirrels were muching on some of them.
All of the pictures I took inside in my mini diy light box are not single exposures. I wanted to play with getting several shots with different lighting angles and intensity, then merge them in Photoshop. Not really HDR, which I do intend to play with at some point, but just a way to get the most out of a dark room and a couple of flashlights. The process was pretty simple really (as long as you remember to turn off auto focus). 3 to 5 shots with light hitting the subject from different angles and load the raw un-processed raw files into Photoshop as layers. Once the you have them in Photoshop get your best looking image to the bottom of the stack. Now tweak the fill and transparency levels of the other layers to taste and if you want, play with the blending mode as well. As mentioned, auto focus needs to be off or you are gonna end up with the end result looking blurry.
The setup to keep them standing up was a 3rd hand and tooth picks poked through the base of the ‘shrooms.
Happy Snail
After about 10 days or so without rain we got a few showers yesterday. This apparently made the garden snails quite happy as they were crawling about in the late afternoon checking things out. This fellow was giving my front porch step the once over.
Fungus Among Us
Joani and I took off for an impromptu trip last weekend and ended up at Land Between the Lakes in Kentucky and Tennessee. Our first stop there was the Woodlands Nature Station where a guide was waiting to lead a hike pointing out some of the local fungus and mushrooms. This series is some of the better shots I took while she gave a great tour on and off the trail.
Deena (hope I am spelling her name correctly) was waiting to give a tour that was on the parks schedule, however due to the flooding they were (and are) experiencing there Joani and I stumbled into a private hike. Lucky us and bummer for the folks who did not want to brave the high water and mosquitoes. The hike was a little shorter than they had planned as some of the trails were flooded out. The lakes were up about 18 feet. I wish I had taken some notes to use in this post but will do my best to pull some things back out of head.
This is a yellow variety of Jelly Fungus, we only noticed one example of it, and it was just starting to fruit.
We saw quite a few examples of Wood Ear fungus (also called Tree Ear or Cloud Ear) This weather seemed to be optimal for it. Our guide mentioned it can be dried and shredded, then served as a substitute for noodles.
This was a white variety of the Jelly Fungus, there was quite a bit more of this.
The most common fungus on the hike was polypore mushroom known as Turkey Tail, the mushroom looks quite a bit like the tail of a turkey when it is fanned out.
Polypore mushrooms are named for underside of the mushroom which is covered in pores instead of the traditional gill structure seen in the first picture
More Wood Ear
Totally drawing a blank on this one, but it was gilled on the bottom, so not a polypore.
Last but not least there were a bunch of puff balls at the end of the hike.
Thanks again to Deena and the other folks at the Woodlands Nature Center, Joani and I had a great time. Just so you do think the only thing to check out there are mushrooms and fungus, they have several rescued animals including several birds of prey.
Magnifier
Soon after I did the blur shot, I thought it might be cool to use the same setup I had for the violet a few weeks ago. Kinda interesting to play with depth of field when the background is interesting. Leaves me with some more ideas. Just need a few more strength magnifying glasses to play with.
Suprise Little Spider
Wandering around the yard at my wife’s parents usually nets me something to shoot on a sunny Sunday afternoon. Today was no different, however this one was a bit of a surprise. I had picked a flowering weed to bring it in away from the wind and to get some better lighting. The breeze was just bouncing the flower back and forth too much. I wedged the stem of the plant into a rail on the deck, and started taking some shots when i noticed the little petals moving. Out crawled this little spider who had hitched a ride across the yard. I should start trying to figure out what these spiders are that I am shooting.
