| A pony a day keeps the money away . . .

~o:> Charming Oddities <:o~

Posted on 2010/08/31 by webmaster

Odd thing #1: the bug.

Dentist Kris found this thing in his yard. He was mowing (mowing what?) or trimming or something, and – I don’t even know how he found it. I think it’s an alien. This is, after-all, New Mexico.

Additional note: 09-01:

“This is a Blister Beetle in the genus Megetra, and sadly, it has no common name other than the general family name of Blister Beetle. According toBugGuide: “Range Restricted to Chihuahuan Desert of the USA (TX, NM, and extreme southeastern AZ) and Mexico (where most of this desert region is located).” In the past, we received a submission from Spain that looks very much like the genus Megetra, and is probably in the same tribe, Eupomphini. You should use caution if handling a Blister Beetle as they can release a compound cantharidin which is a blistering agent.”

Yow.

The red bands on this guy are really beautiful, and his armor is like something out of Babylon Five.

Red striped bug. Purple plants. A very interesting place, this. I think Kris let this bug go. I’m pretty sure he did. I’m super sure he didn’t take it to work the next day and drop it in some unsuspecting mouth as a joke. He wouldn’t do that. I’m almost certain.

Second odd thing: (odd to me) Copious numbers of lizards.

My first New Mexican lizard-on-a-wall. Now I know why they make huge ones out of clay and metal.

Odd son, sneaking up on the wall lizard with his phone, set on camera (rather than stun).

Third odd thing: this vicious looking mer-boy. That tail looks dangerous.

And his uncle. Who can remove two of his teeth on demand.

Fourth thing: frustratingly odd. A dentist and a Frazz on bikes, wisely wearing helmets.

M went with these guys on a very long bike ride. Their community has miles of trails like this. I am tempted to move there with the horses – somewhere to ride that is not either a road or the steep side of a mountain. But if I did, Gin would sneeze her face off.

The next day, M and I took a quick walk along this same path. See that cloud? Yeah – thunder coming out of it. We would have walked quickly anyway, but we really sort of put on the speed, keeping a weather eye out on this cloud.

Fifth thing: wilderness odd.

Kris found this ancient fire-watching ranger tower off in the wilderness. Gin and I gratefully went shopping while the boys went off to explore the tower. Little did I know that the thing would be a hundred feet high, and that they’d climb rickety stairs or something to get to the top -

Yeah. It’s far down there. Definitely you could see budding fires from this perch. Only nobody uses it for that anymore. Instead, they use it for breaking windows out of and leaving bottles in. It was once a cool little place – with a plumbed sink and other amenities. Sad that it should have fallen on hard times. But here is the odd part:

That these grown up men would climb up a thing like this with a six year old child and a DOG.

Sully seems to be reconsidering his choice. I don’t know how they got him or Max down alive, and even writing this makes the palms of my hands sweat. I will NEVER let them out of my sight again.

And the finale:

This actually has to do with the trip home, which will be the next, and last, installment of this story. As we drove away, back up to the north of New Mexico, heading into the mountains, we passed a “Falling Rocks” sign.

M started to laugh. I hadn’t seen the sign, being a responsible driver with her eye on the road. “One of the rocks on that sign looked like a cow,” he said. And we thought that was a really funny idea. Especially as we passed—

this sign about a mile later. Such a stark statement:

COW

Meaning, I must assume, “cow crossing.” So right away, we decided to take pictures of these signs and go home and make our own very funny “falling cows” sign in PhotoShop. But we only saw one more rocks sign, and had shot past it before it had registered. (At that stage of the journey, we weren’t stopping to record the interesting stuff.) So when I got home—actually almost two weeks later—I searched for a picture of that rocks sign on Google. On the way, I found this, which was pretty great:

I don’t have the reference for this image. I promise I will look for it again tomorrow and give the credit. But I also found the falling rocks sign I just showed you up above there. And having all the pieces, I sat down today to put together our own, personal Very Funny sign. As follows:

Pretty funny, huh? My favorite part is the dent on the roof of the car. I gave a lot of thought to the position of the cow, and decided she was doing a back flip. Funny—except for one thing; as I was searching the New Mexican highway signs, I found something very interesting:

Yep. The very sign Murphy had actually seen had HAD A COW on it. New Mexico had put it there on PURPOSE.

Uh-huh. New Mexico is really a weird place. But before I let you go here, I have to send you to Gin‘s blog. Because as NM signage goes, Murphy and I hadn’t even scratched the surface. Go. Look. Enjoy.

Posted in Gin, The g-kids, The kids, Visits | Tagged bugs, cows, Max, Santa Fe, signs, Sully | 18 Comments

~o:> See How They Grow <:o~

Posted on 2010/08/30 by webmaster

First, a message from our sponsor:

The last of the storm sky shots. I used one of these for the header. This is where I am the saddest that I didn’t check the ISO rating on the camera – where this shot should be the most dramatic thing I have to offer, instead it looks like bad pointillism (translation: looks like it’s put together out of painted grains of rice).

Even so, I was so taken with this sky that I couldn’t help shooting it over and over, standing in the damp wind. It was an amazing mass of Jacob’s ladders, shooting out of a dramatic mass of cloud: cross hatching, light against light, rain against cloud.

So I took a close shot, trying to catch all the lines.

Then, wanting to catch the impact of the sky, I shot it with a little more distance.

And then a really wide shot, to catch more cloud detail and give you more of an idea what it was like to stand on that back step, looking out at a sky that had become the whole world.

Then a vertical shot – see? I can’t catch it all, but I keep trying.

And then horizontal again. Look at that dark “ray” on the right. Does it exist simply because it is the one place where the light is not coming down through those clouds? Look at those repeating “v” forms. Amazing.

And here is the shot I took after finally realizing that the ISO was wrong. Look at the texture in this one, and you will see the difference between shooting at an ISO of 1600 (very fast) and an ISO of more like 320 (moderately fast). Smooth as icing. But too late – by then, the clouds and sun had both moved, and the distinct lines of light had blurred.

Drat.

Now – the actual post.

When Gin was little, I knew she would have an interesting life.

I wasn’t surprised when she ended up owning several different kinds of these. (Soprano to bari.)

And I always expected her to own one of these (the family, not the camera. Although I am glad to see she is teaching her son about what is really important in life).

And one of these. (Hey Sully!! How are you, boy?)

But never in my wildest dreams did I think she’d ever own one of these. (A panarex, for x-raying your whole face – 180 degrees, all in one sitting.)

Or one of these. I mean, how many kids grow up to own a waiting room? Especially one complete with southwestern art (perched above the window, mostly).

Or one of these. (Do not ask where the John Wayne cut-out came from. None of us are sure.)

Or that she’d end up being a boss, and running a staff. (A really NICE staff – the boss is in the back there, on the left.)

Or a break room. I never once, in all my life, owned a staff break room.

I did have a business partner. And still do. And he owns hats, but not like this hat. And he’s just a record producer. Not like Gin’s partner.

The dentist.

and the story goes on . . .

Posted in Gin, Journeys, The g-kids, The kids, Visits | Tagged Dentist office, Santa Fe, sax, sky | 12 Comments

~o:> Slight Distractions <:o~

Posted on 2010/08/28 by webmaster

Okay. Running like a mad thing? (check)

Getting almost absolutely nothing done? (check)

Why? Besides the fact of business as usual? Because. Because when I sat down to work with these images, I became seduced by the technology, and by the problem solving. These pictures are still part of the Santa Fe story (why am I assuming anyone is interested in my story?), but, as you will see, there are four or five of them that took about the same number of days to deal with – hours, slaving over a hot keyboard. And I want to show them off to you, and then ask you a question.

And yes, I’ve been spreading manure and cleaning the kitchen, and finally got unpacked and bought the dirt for the parking pad and spread it with the tractor (which isn’t easy, I want you to know) and then broke the tractor and took down some fences (not with the tractor) and caught up on some of the family photo book project, and knitted some horses – and – and – I’m pretty certain there were some other things, too.

To begin: these are not the techno shots. These are a strange and happy sort of coincidence:

When Gin got married, I made her this quilt:

She loved petroglyphs. I’m not sure why. We never lived in that kind of country. But for some reason, she was fascinated enough, I designed this quilt (after quite a bit of research) and made it up for her. I still have some of the shapes, all ready to be made into blocks for another one of these. Wonder if I’ll ever use them? But funny, isn’t it, that this quilt, a little out of place in our wee city, turned out to be so apropos for her new life?

I’m kind of proud of it. The sashings were all my own idea – partly planning and partly happy accidents. Lucky to find granite flavored fabric. Her favorite part of this quilt, she told me while I was there, is this block with the rainclouds. ”They really do look just like this out here,” she said. And I looked.

They do.

Yeah. I like it.

But before I did that, and many, many years ago, out of all G’s and my really cool jeans from the seventies and eighties, I made these denim quilts – one for each kid for Christmas. Half way through the year, we had a family home evening, and I hauled out the thousands of blocks I’d cut from those wide-legged things – some with seams, some with pockets, some plain – all different shades of denim – and the kids got to choose their blocks and stick them together with pins – artistically suited to each taste.

Then I sewed them together, picked the perfect backing, bundled them up and took them to my local quilting store to be done up on the long-arm. And – well – my quilts broke the machine. Long-arms, it turns out, don’t really like sewing over jeans seams.

The point is, look at the fabric I chose for Gin, even back then:

IT MATCHES HER BACKYARD.

Okay. So that is the first fun thing. Now comes the second: Image manipulation.

Gin got this beautiful lamp for her wedding from one of her almost-uncles (if he ever read this blog, he’d know who he was). In the move, the top of the lap got a little bent, so the shade is hanging a little skiddy-wompus. I noticed this as I was shooting the room. And immediately was suffused with the sort of warm thrill that comes with the thought of fixing the world.

What I did was, I took the lamp shade completely out of the shot, repaired the back ground, then straightened up the shade and put it back on again. If you look at these three images pretty quickly, one after another, you can kind of make the lamp dance:

Well. No, you can’t. Dang. If you’re running through them sideways, you can. Anyway. I felt really good about that. And it whetted my ambitions -

We had a rain storm. Well, we had several, but this one happened at a quiet time when I was lying on the bed in my guest room with all the windows open to the wind. The sage smelled so incredible as the rain hit it – and the wet desert was fresh and wild. So I took several shots to share with you the view from my window, even though you won’t smell a thing:

The spaces. The sky. The wet wind.

These windows are pretty much on ground level. And you have to sleep with them open in the summer or die. Do you know how SCARY that is? It’s totally dark out there in the wilderness at night – and how are you supposed to know who – or WHAT – might be peering in from the wrong side of the screen? Like Big Foot? Or coyotes? Or mad Kachinas?

Or even Irish – what are they called, those mischievous black demon horses . . .

And the sky ended up looking like this. By this time, I was ready to go find the fam, and found M outside, perched on the low stucco wall of the back yard (garden, really).

He was talking on his iPhone. To a girl. Through earphones I believe to be mine. (Yeah – are they mine? Huh?) But the picture I saw (besides the utter loveliness of my son) was so dramatic and amazing, I had to shoot it. And I kept shooting it and kept shooting it over and over (as you will see – and you will only see a fraction of what I could have thrown at you) as the light and the players changed.

HOWEVER. Under this kind of lighting condition – with a camera that can compensate for a dark subject – I could not capture exactly what my eyes were able to see. To shoot so that M would be clear in the picture meant that I would miss capturing the sky (overexposing it), while to shoot the sky meant losing the boy (underexposing him).

As you see. He is underexposed to the point of being a silhouette. To be frank, unless you are terribly taken by M in his orange shirt or by the details of garden and wall, there’s not a whole lotta drama in that top shot. But in this one, the sky – the blessed storm sky – is all drama. So I shot each of these things – the light and the dark – with, once more, the intention of fixing the world. I wanted to make an image that would show you what my own eyes had seen.

I knew there were ways to do this, because I’d done some little things like this before. I just had no idea how much I was about to learn on the way to doing it.

And this was the result. This is pretty much what I saw. Both boy and sky together. The lighting on him is wrong – and I should have shadowed the near side of him up quite a bit. But really, there was light coming from behind me, too. The edges are the tricky part. Preserving the details without making the edge sharp and harsh.

So this is the dark shot.

Then Max came out and joined his uncle, and I had to shoot more. Same problem. What I had to do, once I was back at my alchemist’s lab of a desk, was figure out how to make a mask that would preserve the delicate details of the foreground, but allow the sky to come through – and compensate for the different positions of the people in the two shots. Because I don’t hold still enough to have two shots that align perfectly. (You can see how different the shots are by comparing the position of the flowers on the bottom right side of each shot.)

If you scroll up, you’ll see how the figures are in slightly different places than in the light shot. I tell you what – the Photoshop content aware fill really helped in some of these situations.

And here is the composite. Again, far closer to what my eyes actually saw. If you want, I can actually show you how I did it. But I think maybe that would bore most of you pretty much to death, and the others of you are professionals and could have done it in about twelve less hours than it took me.

I had no dark shot for this one, so I borrowed some sky from another shot altogether.

In this one, I faded M out a little more to match the grayish mood.

The dark shot.

This is the one that just killed me. It’s very hard to make a mask for intricate things like hair and foliage. For this one, I tried quite a few different techniques. I started with a fairly simple mask that started with dividing the front image into color channels and choosing the one that showed the most contrast. The problem is that a mask is never perfect because the selection tools are not perfect (or you don’t have five years to select every perfect pixel), and when you contract or expand your selection, you lose detail. (Are you following here? Sure you are.).

Add to that the fact that the two images, light and dark, are offset because my shooting angle changed just enough that the dark shot is higher than the light shot, and the tops of the dark foliage weren’t hidden by the mask. So here are several tries, and here is where I ask the question:

As you look at the following four composits, just looking at them the way you’d buzz through most of my shots, do you see a lot of difference to them? But when you look closer, do you begin to see problems and differences? And in the end, which one do you think worked the best? I ask these things because I’m trying to learn what is important when you are doing this work, and what is not. One of my quilting friend’s mothers used to say, “You’ll never see that from the back of a running horse.” But as the person who is doing the work, I see very flaw.

C.

D.

Thank you for getting this far. I know that sometimes, things that fascinate me are really not that interesting to anybody else in the world. But I’d really like to show you the rest of the story, if you don’t mind? If so -

to be continued . . .

Posted in Arts and crafts, Fun Stuff, Gin, Journeys, The g-kids, The kids, Visits | Tagged compositing, image manipulation, light, M, Max, Santa Fe, sky | 23 Comments

~o:> Being there: Santa Fe pt. 1 <:o~

Posted on 2010/08/25 by webmaster

Okay. Not really there yet. But close. Real close.

First of all, this is the self portrait I favored. Not so white now, are they???

In the mountains of Colorado, we ran into this.

And M shot this. Then we came to my favorite place in the entire western US:

I want to live here. A BLUE BARN, nestled (literally) into this high mountain valley. Look at that land. Look at that sky. Imagine me flying across these folds of green on the back of my beautiful Zion -

Heaven. I know this is what it looks like.

Then we got to New Mexico. And after four days (only felt that way), we hit St. Francis Street and after another four days, we found our way to Gin’s.

I didn’t take a shot of her whole house. Why didn’t I? But then, all the houses you see from Gin’s windows look just like hers, except different. These houses are set here and there, scattered among the hills of the high desert, subtle houses that don’t disturb the natural vista.

This is the first sight that greeted us – the boys on bikes, headed down their driveway just to look for us.

Isn’t this face WAY worth the drive?

The front porch (portico, really) and the drive – which is dirt.

This is the actual sky you should have seen in the shot above. But I’m going to be writing about that effusively in the next few days.

Two silly people in the kitchen. See that brick? The whole rest of the house is floored with this brick.

Gin, blooming and telling me not to take pictures of that fact (resistance is futile), standing in that wonderful kitchen. It needs an island, I think.

Look just to your left, and here is the table – French doors and two flanking full length windows open into what passes in New Mexico for a back yard. Lovely, but no grass.