Sign, Sign, Everywhere a Sign

Taken at the Melbourne Harbor Marina in Melbourne, Florida.

If I'm stumped for somewhere to go with my camera, I can always head to this marina.  Boats change over time so there's usually something new to see and photograph.

And few things are as varied as a marina during different parts of the day. Morning is one kind of beautiful, and sunset is another kind of beautiful.

We (Lovely Wife was with me on this particular Saturday morning) usually park up the road at a local park called Crane Creek Promenade - Manatee Viewing Area and walk along the creek until we get to the marina.

Sadly, there were no manatees in view on this morning.  It has gotten warm enough that they move out to the Intracoastal Waterway, and the ocean.

This sign was put up since my last foray into the wilds of this fairly upper crust boating area.

I have no idea what most of the pointers are pointing to, must be to placed boaters care about that a land lubber like me would not understand.

P.S.  I have always HATED that friggin' Sign, Sign, Everywhere a Sign song by the 5 Man Electrical Band.  Even as a kid when it was originally out.  Don't get me started on Tesla's 1980's version.  But, as often happens, years of unintentional hearings of the song have left me with many of the lyrics memorized.  It popped into my head while uploading this photo.  Now I'll have to start iTunes and play some King's X to input some good rock 'n roll into my massive cranium.

My First Stab at an HDR (-like) Photo

I've never been much of a jumper-onner.  Bandwagons hold little appeal for me.

This psychological trait is probably a result of the overall mental state that also has me preferring the life of a loner.

So as the High Dynamic Range imaging made possible and popular by the attributes of digital cameras has been all the rage for several years now, I've never tried to get this look in my own photos.

Yes, I certainly have many photos that I thought could have benefited from this technology, but at the time of their "taking," I did not use a tripod or take a bracketed set of the images.

A couple of weeks ago, after a sleepless Friday night (back pain), I grabbed my camera and bag and got ready to go somewhere local and take some early Saturday morning photos.

My wife wakes early, and came with me, and we ended up on a walk around a local marina that I like to visit for its beauty.

I ended up trying my hand at HDR with this scene at Melbourne Harbor Marina in Melbourne, Florida.  It's located on the mainland where Crane Creek meets the Intracoastal Waterway.  (Our local section of the Intracoastal Waterway is officially the Indian River Lagoon.)

Anyway, it's certainly not a great photo, but I found that I tend to like my HDR photos a little less harsh than many others I have seen.  Many seem to have the "HDR look" screaming at me.  I also added a little softness to the photo to give a bit of the dreamy quality that helps the photo impart some of the emotional impact I felt walking around a beautiful area on a beautiful morning.

Stress-free DSLR Sensor Cleaning

I've never been afraid of the coming days when I knew I'd have to do some serious dust removal on my D90 sensor despite the many, many, many, many articles on the interwebs on just how delicate a job this is.  So freaking delicate a job that you should pay to send your camera off to have a "pro" do this for you.

Maybe it is because, as a digital engineer who has worked hands-on on outrageously expensive electronic prototypes for fifteen years, I have lost the fear of working on something that cost a mere $800.  (I know that was a terrible sentence, but I don't feel like rewording it.)

For nearly the entire year of 2011, as I languished at home on long-term disability with my back, I kept my eye on certain items on the internet, eBay, Amazon, etc., that I wanted to buy as Christmas presents for my family and myself.

My thoughts were thus, these items that I had identified, would, over the course of the year, be found at a fantastic price somewhere before Christmas.

I was largely successful in this, and sure enough, we had a very "lean" Christmas that was in fact pretty good because of my "great deal" purchases spread throughout the year.

One item that Santa brought me was a Promaster CCD/Cmos Sensor Cleaning Kit.


My electronic sensor cleaner built into the D90 finally was unable to remove several stubborn dust specks that appeared in my shots enough that I was sick of editing them out.

So a couple of days after Christmas, I opened the sensor cleaning kit, read the instructions a couple of times to be clear on the process, and used the little rubber tipped thingamajigs to touch to the D90's sensor and then to touch to a little plastic looking pad in the kit to deposit the offending dust.

I did this enough times to cover the entire surface area of the sensor and used one of my "studio" backdrops for small items (a pale poster boards from Michael's crafts store) and verified quickly that the offending dust specks were, in fact, GONE.

So, if you aren't afraid to clean your own DSLR sensor, and know you don't really need the "wet" type sensor cleaning, I can personally highly recommend the Promaster CCD/Cmos Sensor Cleaning Kit. The link there takes you to the one page instructions with photos so you can see the kit and how easy it is to use.


Doing this yourself only takes a few minutes, literally, and you're done for a while.


This kit is about $35US on Amazon, and I set an ebay search for one and got mine for less than $20, shipped.  If you need it NOW, it's worth the full $35 in my opinion, but patience, and careful internet searching for this kit can get it to you for a good bit cheaper.  Mine just happens to be the Promaster brand, but the same exact kit is also sold under other brand names as well.


About the photo:  As a kid, one of my very favorite Hot Wheels was the Red Baron.  Several years ago, there was a release of larger, more detailed versions of Tom Daniel's custom hot rod designs.  This version of his Red Baron shows the backdrop I use for small items, and nary a dust blob in sight.


I know it's not a great photo, but I have begun my long-avoided reading and experimentation on photographing in a portable studio setup with a multiple wireless flash system.  For a landscape and outdoor photography guy like myself, this is an area of photography that I'm definitely having to learn to crawl, pull up, and walk all over again.  It has been fun so far, but I know I have a long way to go for dramatic lighting.


But this Red Baron photo was so nice and devoid of dust blotches that I was totally excited.

My First Photo Outing In Way Too Long

Lovely Wife and I went out for what was for me, my first photo excursion in over a year, yesterday, October 1st.

It was a beautiful, sunny, windy, Florida day.

I didn't last long, my cruddy back and gimpy leg saw to that, but if you're out during the "golden hours" of the day, then you can find good visual stuff in a very short time.

Living in Florida helps with finding beautiful stuff to photograph.

Pieces of a Kodak Pony IV Camera

I took my Kodak Pony IV camera apart a few weeks ago.

With my back in such bad shape, I can only work on things a little bit at a time, and I happened to receive a Sigma macro lens from an eBay purchase while my Pony IV was still in pieces.

I couldn't resist a few closeup still life shots to try out the lens and see just how close this thing would focus and to start figuring out how to light macro shots.

These are a couple of shots of the pieces of the Kodak Pony IV I learned photography with.

The Kodak is now back together, cleaned inside and out, and working nicer than I've ever had it work for me.

Gold Rolex Oyster

My father worked on off-shore oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico in his career.

He was born in 1934, growing up during difficult times in America, and in a poor part of Louisiana.

He was of what I consider to be the last generation that a man or woman would work for one company most of their lives.

Working off-shore, seven days on the drilling rig, and then seven days off, he ended up missing a lot of holidays and birthdays. He was there for a lot of them, but not for a lot of others too.

There were times, like working for any company, when he had to swallow his pride and keep his mouth shut to keep his job when the company would try to take advantage of him or others.

Then, when he had twenty-something years with this company, they called all the twenty-plus-year employees to a big banquet in New Orleans.

The company presented to him and all the other long-timers, a gold Rolex watch.

I don't know if it still is, but for decades, the official United States time was determined by an atomic clock at the US Naval Observatory.

So after he was given this watch, and I'd talk to him on the phone (from Dallas or Atlanta or wherever we were living during those years) I'd ask if the Naval Observatory has called yet that day to get the official time from him and his Rolex.

It wasn't something he left in a box, he wore the watch daily up until he died in 1994.

I took a few photos this week with my new/used macro lens.

You can see a few nicks and marks here and there.

Those nicks and marks are from him wearing one of the only tangible representations of all the years of hard work he put in, as well as not being with his family on some important days.

Some people would think he was being pretentious wearing a Gold Rolex, and sometimes complete strangers would say something like, "I wish I could afford to buy and wear a gold Rolex!"

He would always tell them, "I didn't have the money to buy one either. This was given to me by the company I worked so hard for, for so many years. I wear it because I EARNED IT."

That never failed to shut them up.

I don't wear it as much as I'd like to, mainly because my wrist is way bigger than his was, and even at the last notch, the watch is too tight to wear for more than just a few minutes.

One day I'll go ahead and plunk down the money to have an extra gold link or two put on the watch so I can wear it more.

But I look at this watch a lot, and suffer wearing it on important days for me and my family.

It helps me remember that he's with me in spirit on those important days to me and my family.

New (to me) Lens! Sigma 50mm f/2.8 AF-D Macro lens, Nikon mount

In 1976, when I was 13, I found a camera box in a "catch-all" closet in our house.

I opened it up, and there was a Kodak Pony IV 35mm camera in it's leather case with accessories!

I had a Vivitar 110 pocket camera that I used, but this looked like a REAL camera.

I asked if I could use it, and my parents said yes, if I learned how myself. Because they hadn't used it in so many years that neither one could tell me how to work it.

Over the next few months I checked out library books from the junior high and high school as I finished 8th grade and entered the 9th grade.

I learned f-stops and shutter speeds and film ASA (now ISO) number.

I've enjoyed photography for 35 years now. Sometimes passionately and sometimes I let my cameras gather dust as my family responsibilities (and my kids) grew.

This week, I bought my first true macro lens.

I use a Nikon D90, and I bought a used Sigma 50mm f/2.8 AF-D Macro lens from a man on eBay.

It's an older model, but this thing gets to life size, 1:1, at it's closest focus point.

I've used screw on close up filter sets from time to time, but this lens opens up a whole new world for me.

It might be an older lens with older technology as compared to the latest aspherical lens, super-multi-coated, hypersonic motored lenses from Nikon, Canon and even Sigma and other 3rd party lenses, but I'm LOVING this thing so far.