Saturday, 16 May, 2009. Tagged with: photography, travel
I talked about deliberate practice in my previous entry, which was borne out of some frustration with the photos I took on an April trip to DC and my general lack of attention to photography.
I was on vacation last week and we planned a much more reasonable afternoon trip to Winston-Salem to photograph around the multitude of RJ Reynolds facilities. Driving north on U.S. 52, on the east side of downtown, there’s quite a number of decaying buildings and redevelopment possibilities. I’d previously photographed around the area a few years back, but revisting has been a goal of 5x5 and I.
We spent a few hours wandering around a three or four square block area and making a couple of side-trips into Krankies, a coffee shop between 3rd and 4th Streets. Overall, I’m pleased with the results I’ve been posting in a new Winston-Salem Flickr set. I’m also trying to learn more about Aperture’s tone controls, particularly where it concerns black and white images.
I am after a few goals with my black and white images. I want some pop, so I tend to emphasize contrast. I generally underexpose slightly when taking the photograph and optimize exposure during editing to give myself some highlight latitude. Looking at other photographers, though, I want to work on my middle tonal range. I see see great tones in some middle grays, and I want to aim for that, but without leaving the image flat. My own work leans towards strong highlights and shadows, which is certainly part of how I compose my photos.
To that end, looking around at other architectural photography on Flickr and my brother-in-law’s professional work is very helpful in my own growth as a photographer.
Apart from the photography, Krankies is highly recommended. They roast on site, the shop is in a great space and there’s plenty of seating, complete with a shaded patio. Otherwise, downtown Winston-Salem seemed rather dead. Sure, it was Mother’s Day, but it’s amazing going to downtown Raleigh and seeing the activity level rise over the years and going elsewhere and seeing where that downtown revival is non-existent or still developing.
Be that as it may, we have another two photography trips to Winston-Salem in the discussion phases.
Tuesday, 12 May, 2009. Tagged with: photography
As I edited photos from our April DC trip, I realized I haven’t spent enough time out taking pictures, reviewing my own work or looking at the work of other photographers. While I got some shots I was absolutely ecstatic about – see above, taken from the Metro as we pulled out of Washington National – I found I’d missed angles and made cropping decisions I wanted to reconsider.
I ended up with a lot of blurry shots, even at higher shutter speeds. It was windy, but not so windy I should have ended up with that much jitter. I also noticed I should have gotten closer to waist level or grass level better, just to adjust the shot and make the angle more interesting. I stand about six feet tall, and, after a while, I need to remember to change up what I’m doing. This is where having two shooting sessions separated by editing, helps. I can see what I kept doing – putting the Washington Monument in my photos, for instance – and where I was missing opportunity.
Rushing my shot looms large as my shortcoming. There was so much to try and see, and not much time to photograph it in. I was pressing when I should have just let things flow. I was worried about time, when I need to enjoy the time I had available. A musician develops muscle memory playing scales. It gets good when it’s not thinking about hitting the right notes, just playing. Many other creative pursuits seem to have the same benefit of frequent play. Photography and writing to name two.
One of the notions I’ve been reading about recently, in a variety of forums is the necessity of deliberate practice to improve skill. My photography gets the short end of this a lot of time. I’m sensitive about it not being something that owns me 1. What I’m missing is the practice – I don’t make enough time for photography. A lot of times, grabbing my camera is an afterthought for whatever we’re heading out to do, and I don’t deliberately put photography at the top of my to-do list frequently. It’s been ages since I’ve been on a shoot with other Raleigh-area photographers.
I have three passions. Programming, photography and cycling. Lately, I’ve been neglecting the last two in favor of the first (and starting a business). It’s my responsibility and this is an accounting of facts to myself, not a lament. I’ve noticed earlier when I’ve stopped looking at other photographer’s work and stopped producing my own, my “eye” dulls a bit. I revert back to compositions I’m tired of. In a sense, my eye has to reboot into what I want it to be.
Tuesday, 05 May, 2009. Tagged with: coffee, mindfulness
I finally made it to Chapel Hill’s 3Cups for coffee this afternoon and it was a wonderful experience. I picked from a nice list of coffees, the staff was able to explain what I might like, based on stated roast preference (dark), and served it in a press pot with a timer. The second timer in the photo was for @5by5’s pot of chamomile tea, which was also incredibly tasty.
I chose a two-cup pot of Dolok Sanggul from Sumatra, which the tasting notes describe as “earthy” with spices and “hints of green peppers.” Perhaps it’s overly fussy, but I am interested in tasting some of the different flavors in my coffee. Tasting notes are a reminder to mindfully drink the coffee and enjoy it for itself rather than absently consume it.
Since it seems like everyone gets press pots or their own drip filters per order, the coffee is the absolute freshest you can have. Most places with large drip pots, including some of my favorite Raleigh shops, brew new every 60 to 90 minutes, and that’s pretty good. But if it’s fresh ground – and the grind for this was very coarse and almost springy – it’s encouragement to not load the coffee with milk or sugar but taste it strictly on its own merits. As fresh as other shops brew coffee, I’m not taking the time to slow down and pay sole attention to the coffee itself. It’s good, but I’m not focused on it.
Some other observations:
- 3Cups does coffee tastings every Saturday at noon. I marked a session on the calendar, if only to broaden my experience in tasting different coffees.
- I use a fairly coarse grind on my burr grinder and I’ve been very satisfied with the results. 3Cups’ grind seemed coarser still, with more ribbons and strands of bean. Again, it was springy against the plunger.
- I was also surprised at the amount of coffee 3Cups put in the press pot. About half again as much as I typically use, but I’ll try a coarser grind and more coffee and see what I think.
Anyhow, I’m on vacation and I made a long list of tasks I wanted to accomplish during the week. What I didn’t have on the list was drinking coffee as a solitary task. But, for about half-an-hour, that’s what I did, drank and savored coffee, relishing the experience with my wife.
Saturday, 11 April, 2009. Tagged with: travel
Last weekend, 5x5 and I hit the National Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington DC. I’d heard the event attracted a crazy amount of people. But we weren’t expecting the sidewalk-clogging, traffic-stopping crush of humanity we encountered when we got there. It was worthwhile, and overall, I’m happy with the photos I got, we came away with some thoughts on what we would do differently.
First, taking Metro into DC was an excellent idea. We parked in Alexandria at Huntington Station, which has two parking decks, both of which were largely empty. Weekend parking is free, weekday parking is $4.50. That saved us from trying to get into DC on I-395 or near the Lincoln Memorial and promptly into Cherry Blossom traffic. The traffic we saw around the Tidal Basin was at a near constant standstill, drivers looked frustrated, pedestrians had little notion of right-of-way and there was no parking to speak of.
What didn’t go as well was arrival and departure at Smithsonian Station. It’s the closest Metro stop to the Tidal Basin, which means nearly everyone taking Metro to the Cherry Blossom Festival arrives there. As each train arrived, staff would clear arriving passengers off the platform out one entrance. Departing passengers were waiting at the top of the escalators to be granted access to the platform. Above ground, bullhorns were in use to enforce a one-way only traffic flow. Trying to head back to Alexandria via Smithsonian was futile. There were so many people at the intersection of 12th St SW and Independence Ave SW, it was impossible to stand on the sidewalk or see the escalators leading from street level into the station. We walked to L’Enfant Station instead, and that was fine. Federal Triangle was my other choice.
Walking around was low key and pleasant enough, but again, crowded. Next time, we might try visiting the Tidal Basin early in the morning. That might also help with the bathroom issue. There were port-a-potties set-up, but they were apparently associated with the Cherry Blossom Run the next day (and thus locked), not for general use. That left a bathroom on the east side of the Washington Monument and another at 15th Street SW and Independence Ave SW. The one at 15th and Indy’s wait ran about 30 min for women.
That delay was on top of an unanticipated extra hour and a half or so in traffic. We wanted to try a day-trip from Raleigh, and I was counting on a five hour drive and some change to actually get into downtown DC. We left later than anticipated, at 9 a.m., but didn’t arrive on the National Mall until about 3:30. The area between Fredericksburg, VA and Potomac Mills on I-95 just blew chunks. US 1 through Ft. Belvoir wasn’t much better, but it moved. Our big frustration was seeing the HOV-3 lanes completely closed even as northbound traffic was completely tied-up.
With just over two hours of walking-around time, we had fun, but 11 hours in the car is quite a price for it. Next time, instead of depending on traffic, we’ll probably do a long weekend trip, driving up on a Thursday evening and heading home Sunday afternoon. Alexandria’s a nice place to stay, has good restaurants and is walkable in it’s own right. Something near DuPont Circle in the District would also work.
Be sure to check out 5x5’s photos, too.
Thursday, 12 March, 2009. Tagged with: web development
I’m developing some JavaScript to interact with a Rails service I have in support of CrazyLikeThat.com. I’m an infrequent jQuery developer, so I spend a lot of time in WebKit’s Web Inspector. I also use Google Analytics and Google AdSense. In the middle of looking at the Web Inspector console, I noticed a blizzard of warnings and errors from Google’s activity.
I remembered a few years back to some time at sacbee.com when one of the designers demonstrated Apache’s server side includes weren’t limited to including a page snippet or executing a CGI script, but included conditional logic. That’s precisely what I was after in this case.
I set an environment variable in my local Apache configuration then wrapped the conditional logic around my AdWords call and the Analytics JavaScript. In 10 minutes, I had a nice, quick solution to keeping the Web Inspector clean of anything other than my own errors.
So, what does this look like? My Apache directive is very simple. You’ll need both mod_include and mod_env enabled.
Then, on my pages, I do something like this:
When that NoAds environment variable is set, that file won’t be included. In production, it will be. My next approach on this will be to use different versions of jQuery based on environment. I can use a developer friendly version for my local development and use Google’s hosted jQuery in production. What’s really nice about this is with Apache 2.2’s chained handlers, I can use the same logic regardless of whatever’s building the page first, be it Rails, Template Toolkit or PHP.
