Project 365 : Eye of Minolta

Once again, I’ve missed a few days on my Project 365. Tonight, I return to a favorite subject — my father-in-law’s old Minolta film camera. This camera is a treasure trove of fun images. Tonight, I elected to focus on a simple front-on image of the lens. I love the gearing and the mechanical feel of this camera’s appearance.

I captured this image with my Canon 7D and Canon 100/2.8 macro lens, finishing it in Lightroom through some localized adjustments.

Pi

Ever since President Obama had pizzas from Pi Pizzeria delivered to DC, we’ve been wanting to try it out. It was a dreary day yesterday, and a trip indoors made sense, so off to the newly opened restaurant in Kirkwood we went.

Now, I’m not a huge fan of deep-dish pizza. There’s usually just way too much cheese for my tastes, and after a slice or so, I’m usually full, and a little too sloshy from all the dairy squeezings running around. With some trepidation, I ordered a deep dish with pepperoni, sausage, basil and minced garlic… and it’s dang near the best pizza I’ve ever had! These guys are using some kind of cornmeal crust for it, and it’s just crazy good. The sauce was chunky and sweet, and amazing. If I had three thumbs, they’d all be up.

Sio and I split a piece of apple pie afterwards. She had vanilla ice cream with hers, while I had caramel apple ice cream (made locally by Serendipity Homemade Ice Cream). That ice cream had to be the most unique ice cream I’ve ever tried. It had a crazy salty finish to it with every bite, so much so that you would swear there were tons of peanuts in it. This was quite a compliment to the apple pie, which was delicious, too.

This is definitely a place I’ll be coming back to!

Project 365 : Night at the Drive-In

After a couple of days off The Project, it was time to get a little creative. I’ve been disassembling more electronics, and one of my latest conquests has been an XM Radio. The big screen on the thing intrigued me, and I thought it would be cool to transform it into the big screen of a drive-in theatre. I found a bunch of small toy cars, and arranged them as though they were viewing the picture. But what to put on the screen? I had no way to drive it electrically, so I decided to “scribble” on it with a laser pointer. I’ve got no idea what those little guys are watching on the screen, but it sure seems like gibberish!

I made this image with my Canon 7D and Canon 24-105/4L lens. I worked the image Photoshop CS4E, using Nik Viveza and Nik Color Efex Pro’s Color Process filter.

Project 365 : What Tangled Web We Weave

Today, I spent the day working in the room we affectionately call The Dungeon. This has been a storage area and general junk collection point for the house. With me shooting more macro work though, I started realizing that I needed a little studio for in-house work. A lot of cleaning up later, and a little bit of reconfiguration, and I have the beginnings of a little studio.

As I cleaned up, I found an old picture frame that had a really cool spiderweb in one of the valleys of the wood. I thought it would made a great HDR shot, so I set it up, and starting firing. This image is made up of seven shots, from three stops under to three stops over the middle of the road. I made the images with my Canon 7D and Canon 100/2.8 macro lens. I brought the RAW images into Photomatix and combined them to make the image you see.

New Gear : Tracks Sherlock Travel Staff

Last week’s hike in slightly sloppy conditions pointed two things out to me. There was beauty to be found in the mud, and I needed a hiking staff of some kind. Late in the hike, I slipped in some mud and almost went down with my camera and backpack of lenses. That wouldn’t have been good.

I did some research this week to find out more about staffs. I knew I didn’t want trekking poles (pairs, used like snow skiers use their poles). I’d seen a ton of wooden ones while we were out west a couple of years ago. Those looked nice and would make a good home for the hiking medallions I’ve been picking up during our travels, but I wasn’t sure that that would be the right answer for something versatile in the field.

The more I looked, the more I realized that there weren’t great differences from one staff to the next. My needs were pretty simple — adjustable height, spike on the bottom for sloppy conditions, and a basket to keep from sinking up too far. With that in mind, Becky and I went to the Alpine Shop in our neighborhood to look for a staff. We were helped by Andy, who made me feel right at home, and frankly, was built like me, so I figured he could give me some real world advice about what I was getting into. He did, and I ended up walking away with a Tracks Sherlock Travel Staff.

This is a pretty slick tool with some nice features above what I was looking for. First off, it breaks down into three component pieces, and comes with a sack to carry them around. For the long haul trips I’m used to, that’s a great feature. A wood hiking staff wouldn’t be collapsible, meaning I’d have to find some way of carrying this long pole in the Jeep. With the Sherlock, no problemo.

The Sherlock sports a walnut knob for gripping the top of the staff. While that’s nice, what’s nicer is that it screws off, revealing a kinda long 1/4″-20 screw for mounting a camera atop the staff for use as a monopod. My only complaint here is that the screw thread is long, perhaps by as much as a quarter inch. That length is probably needed for the knob, but seems a little dangerous for a camera. I’d hate to keep up with it, but it might make sense to carry a little washer as a spacer when using the staff as a monopod.

The Sherlock also has a removable foot, revealing the spike I was looking for. The foot’s kinda neat, leaving a paw print behind as you move along, and seems useful for hard surfaces. The spike is ginormous, and appears to be quite useful as a weapon should your need to stab something or for picking up trash along the trail.

This thing really seems to hit all my design points, and then some, and I believe it’ll be quite a nice addition to my hiking!

Project 365 : Sign of Spring

With spring training underway, and having watched my first Cardinals game of the season today, I thought turning my attention to one of my bats was appropriate. This bat was one of the two I had customized during our visit to the Louisville Slugger factory and museum last year.

I made this image with my Canon 7D and Canon 24-105/4L, finishing it in Photoshop CS4E and Nik Viveza.