Photography

I’ve been an amateur shutterbug for a long time. This tag is primarily for posts about photography and the associated tech.

Norwescon 32 Wrapup

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It took roughly a week to get here, but really, I don’t figure that’s too bad, given my usual photowhoreish ways. Trust me, if I’d been employed (i can haz job now, plz? kthkxbye) it would have taken a lot longer than a week.

Still and all, just a few minutes ago, the last of my shots from Norwescon made it up to Flickr. There are three sets, one each for Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, and, of course, there are many more pictures from other attendees in the Norwescon Flickr group.

Thursday

Weapon Policy, Norwescon 32

Thursday was a nice, low-key start. I hadn’t actually figured on going at all on Thursday this year, but seeing as how I have a lot more free time than usual right now, I figured I might as well swing by. I dropped Prairie off at work in the morning so I could have the car, and headed over to the hotel about noon. Thursday definitely feels like the “slow day” of the ‘con, and I didn’t end up taking very many pictures. Mostly just wandered around, checked things out, poked my head into a panel or two, and that was it. Five o’clock rolled around and I bailed out to go get Prairie from work and head home.

Friday

Group Shot, Steampunk Fashion Show, Norwescon 32

Friday I arrived just in time for my one planned ‘event’ of the day, the Steampunk Fashion Show, hosted by the devious minds behind the upcoming Steamcon. Lots of great outfits! Unfortunately, I felt like I was struggling a bit with the photos, as the lighting in the ballroom was horrid. I still managed to at least get decent shots of nearly everyone who made it onstage, so it’s not a failure at all…I’m just my own harshest critic, as always.

After the fashion show it was back to wandering, grabbing a few shots of hall costumes, and sitting in on a couple of panels. I jokingly tweeted that the “What is Goth?” panel turned into “Hey, we’re not at the clubs and can hear each other without yelling!”…which wasn’t entirely untrue, as there was much amusement that nearly everyone in the room already knew each other to some degree from the scene. We did manage to turn it into more of a discussion about how people found the goth scene, how it’s changed over the years, and where it may be going as the ‘elder goths’ give way to a new generation.

Seven o’clock was my self-imposed curfew that night, so out the door I went to rest at home and ensure that I’d have as much energy as possible for the next day.

Saturday

Jack and Lilly, Norwescon 32

This was the big day: rolling in around noon, rolling out whenever I was exhausted and had to disappear before I fell over. No panels for me today, Saturday is all about the costumes — and as always, such incredible costumes!

Featured above is one of my three favorites from this year. I’ve long blamed thanked Ridley Scott’s 1985 fantasy movie Legend, and specifically the scene where Darkness tempts Lilly with food, dance, and that incredible dress, for being one of my first proto-goth influences. I have absolutely no compunctions at admitting that as soon as I saw Jack and Lilly wandering around, I got a total con-crush on her!

My other two favorite outfits: Firefly/Senrenity’s Wash, impaled on the ship support beam and sporting a “Screw You, Whedon” sign; and the bounty hunter sporting Jar-Jar Binks’ head on a pike.

Screw You, Whedon, Norwescon 32 Jar Jar Hunter, Norwescon 32

Since I’ve been running the @norwescon Twitter account, at the suggestion of @empsfm, I’d kinda-sorta-not-very-competently organized a joint ‘tweetup’ for @norwescon, @empsfm, and @seattlegeekly. Since I hadn’t even thought ahead enough to have some sort of sign announcing our presence, a few people couldn’t find us, and it ended up being kind of sparsely attended, but I still had a good time chatting with Shannon and Matt from Seattle Geekly, @ghouligan (Barry), and @jacinda. Sorry to anyone who missed us, I’ll do better at this whole “organizing” thing next year!

After the tweetup and another few hours of hall costume hunting, it came time to stake out my spot for the post-Masquerade photo area. There’s always a limited amount of space and a lot of people who want to take pictures, so I’ve found that it’s best to start hovering in the lobby area around 6pm-ish. Sure enough, it wasn’t long before the t-shirt vendor started packing up and the official photography team started setting things up. My (not-so-)nefarious plan worked, and I was able to get a choice spot just left of the centerline behind the official photographers’ line of chairs.

And there I stood for the next three hours, as costume after costume paraded in front of us. So much great work on them all, from the hall costumes that were shanghai’d into posing to the Masquerade entrants posing for us after their time on stage. Of course, three hours is a long time to stand in one place and hold a camera up, so once the final Masquerade costume made it through, I stumbled away to sit and recover for a bit.

After some time to regain feeling in my arm, I started wandering, and spent some time running around with artvixn, helix90, and their friend Nell, who were on a quest to visit some of the hall parties. We made a swing through the Merchants of Deva party, then they all went off to find a rumored scotch tasting while I went down to the Saturday Night Hoedown, as I knew I had to drive home in a bit (oh, and I’m a total wuss drinker) and didn’t have much interest in the scotch.

The Hoedown kicked off (a little late, but I believe that’s par for the course), the floor filled pretty quickly, and I spent a good hour or so making laps around the outside of the dance floor with my camera. It wasn’t terribly long, though, before I really started to realize just how tired I was, and decided it was time to head home. Not long after midnight, then, I packed up, took one last look at the revelers, and bade another Norwescon goodnight.

DIY Bicycle Camera Mount

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Yes, there are already a ton of posts on the ‘net telling people how to do this, and I’m indebted to them all, as I read most of them when planning out my approach. Still — this is how I did it, so I’m going to add to the chatter. :)

Parts

(I really don’t know the technical names for any of these, I’m reading off the Home Depot receipt, so my apologies if I’ve flubbed a part name here and there.)

  • 1 basic reflector. I’d recommend one with two distinct screw placements, one for the actual bike mount, and one for adjusting the reflector (this makes sure you don’t have one assembly doing two jobs in the final mount). Reflectors may be easy to come by at your local bike shop, Cycle Therapy in Kent gave me two (well, a bag full, but I only took two) completely free of charge!
  • Drill and 1/4″ drill bit.
  • 1 1/4″ X 2″ coarse (20 thread count) bolt.
  • 2 small 1/4″ cut washers.
  • 1 1/4″ hex nut.
  • 1 large 1/4″ fender washer.
  • 2 large 1/4″ rubber washers.
  • 1 1/4″ wing nut.
  • 1 1/4″ acorn nut.

Assembly

  • Remove the reflector from the mount.
  • Drill out the open screw hole to a 1/4″ diameter.
  • Thread the bolt through, then secure it with one small washer and the hex nut.
  • The rest of the pieces attach in this order: wing nut, small washer, large rubber washer, large fender washer, large rubber washer, acorn nut.
  • Attach the mount to the bike.
  • Remove the acorn nut (put it in a pocket so you don’t lose it!) and attach your camera.
  • Use the wingnut to tighten the washer platform assembly snug against the bottom of the camera.
  • Go riding!

Photos

Camera Mount Step 1 Camera Mount Step 2
Camera Mount Step 3 Camera Mount Step 4
Camera Mount Step 5 Camera Mount Step 6
Camera Mount Step 7 Camera Mount on the Bike (rear)
Camera Mount on the Bike (front)

Results

And that’s it. Works pretty well, too — here’s the result of my first ride with the mount, just a short jaunt out and back along a section of the Green River Trail:

Ritz Cameras Closing 11 Washington Stores

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My former employer, Ritz Cameras, has just announced that they’re closing more than 300 stores across the country. Of those, eleven are based here in Washington. I’d actually heard a little bit about this through a former coworker whose store is one of the eleven, but I had no idea it was going to be this widespread.

The one bittersweet side effect to this for local photogeeks is that all these stores need to liquidate their inventory, so starting tomorrow, there may be some pretty good deals available if you happen to be close to a store that’s being shuttered. If I wasn’t unemployed right now, you can bet I’d be keeping a close eye on the sales…unfortunately, I don’t exactly have a lot of expendable cash at the moment.

Retail inventory valued at more than $50 million will be liquidated at the stores that are being closed. Store closing sales offering substantial discounts on all inventory at those locations will begin on Saturday, April 4, and are expected to continue until everything is sold to the bare walls.

Daniel Platt, senior vice president, capital markets, for Great American Group, said, “Long-time Ritz Camera customers as well as those with any interest in cameras, photography and video-related products will find a tremendous selection of quality, brand-name merchandise at greatly reduced prices. Shoppers looking for distinctive and unique gifts will find these sales particularly appealing, as well.”

Among the thousands of products that will be available at reduced prices are digital cameras and accessories, digital SLR compact cameras, digital frames, binoculars, camcorders and video accessories, and other popular electronic items.

Taken from this list, here are the eleven Washington state stores that will be closing their doors (looks like my store in the Northgate Mall was spared, but that’s small comfort):

  • Ritz Camera / Kits Cameras Columbia Center 6607 W Canal Dr Kennewick WA 99336-0000
  • Ritz Camera / Kits Cameras #72 Bellevue Square 266 Bellevue Sq Bellevue WA 98004-0000
  • Ritz Camera / Kits Cameras #77 Bellis Fair Mall 1 Bellis Fair Pkwy Ste 126 Bellingham WA 98226-0000
  • Kits Cameras Westfield Southcenter 172 Southcenter Mall Tukwila WA 98188-0000
  • Ritz Camera / Kits Cameras #14 Pavilions Centre 31507 Pacific Hwy South Federal Way WA 98003-0000
  • Kits Cameras One Hour Photo Westlake Center 400 Pine St #300 Seattle WA 98101-0000
  • Ritz Camera / Kits Cameras Downtown Woodinville 13804 Ne 175Th St #104 Woodinville WA 98072-0000
  • Ritz Camera / Kits Cameras #18 Everett Retail Center 910 Se Everett Mall Way #101 Everett WA 98208-0000
  • Kits Camera 1 Hour Photo Olympic Village 5500 Olympic Dr Nw Ste A107 Gig Harbor WA 98335-0000
  • Kits Camera 1 Hour Photo Kirkland Park Place 336 Park Place Kirkland WA 98033-0000
  • Kits Cameras Mill Creek Town Center 15407 Main St Ste 101 Mill Creek WA 98012-0000

This just hurts to see. Say what you will about the Ritz/Kits family — and I know they’ve got their fare share of detractors as well as fans — there’s a lot of good, knowledgeable, passionate photographers employed in those stores, and this has got to be affecting them in very uncomfortable ways. Best of luck to all of you.

Meeting N

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Last weekend, Prairie became the proud aunt of little N. After giving her some time to get used to being with her parents (and vice versa), we went over on Friday night to meet her. She’s definitely a cutie!

Meat My Valentine

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Meat My Valentine

Meat My Valentine, originally uploaded by djwudi.

We saw this at our local Safeway while doing our morning shopping, and I immediately cracked up. Disgusting, bizarre, and kind of creepy, all in one. At least it’s “guaranteed tender”!

Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone — or Happy S.A.D. (Singles Awareness Day), depending on your situation. Whichever it is, I hope you have a good one.

Links for January 29th through January 30th

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Sometime between January 29th and January 30th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

  • Do Humanlike Machines Deserve Human Rights?: "This question is starting to get debated by robot designers and toymakers. With advanced robotics becoming cheaper and more commonplace, the challenge isn't how we learn to accept robots–but whether we should care when they're mistreated. And if we start caring about robot ethics, might we then go one insane step further and grant them rights?"
  • On the Flickr support in iPhoto ‘09: From Fraser Speirs, author of the excellent Flickr Export plugin for iPhoto and Aperture: "I acquired my copy of iLife ‘09 yesterday and decided to dive deep on how Apple have implemented Flickr integration in iPhoto ‘09. Here are the results of my investigation. Be aware as you read that this is the result of a morning’s click-around investigation and not months of serious use. I will do my best to give an honest assessment of what is in iPhoto ‘09, and you’ve already read my full disclosure in the previous paragraph."
  • Google School: Find Images by Exact Dimensions, Make Wallpaper Search a Breeze: "Weblog Design Live uncovers the undocumented search operator (that's also new to us) and demonstrates how to use it. Just use the imagesize operator followed by the WidthXHeight in pixels." For instance, imagesize:320×480 goth finds iPhone/iPod Touch wallpaper ready 'goth' images (for a potentially odd interpretation of 'goth', that is).
  • White House Unbuttons Formal Dress Code: "The capital flew into a bit of a tizzy when, on his first full day in the White House, President Obama was photographed in the Oval Office without his suit jacket. There was, however, a logical explanation: Mr. Obama, who hates the cold, had cranked up the thermostat. 'He's from Hawaii, O.K.?' said Mr. Obama's senior adviser, David Axelrod, who occupies the small but strategically located office next door to his boss. 'He likes it warm. You could grow orchids in there.'"
  • Create Your Own Original Star Trek Story: The original Star Trek only managed to make 80 episodes before running out of Dilithium. Not enough! So we mixed up the show's most frequent plot twists, to create a foolproof Trek story generator.

Breadcrummy

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I’m all for giving attribution for the goodies people find on the ‘net, letting readers know where the information comes from, acknowledging that links to cool stuff don’t just spontaneously appear, but are usually passed on from person to person and website to website.

Unfortunately, sometimes the process of tracing those breadcrumbs back when you actually want to get a little more information is an exercise in frustration.

For instance:

  1. Boing Boing posts about a silly little photography gadget that they saw over at…

  2. LikeCool, who have a tiny little “via” link (that I almost missed as it was buried under a stack of Google ads) that links to…

  3. Gizmodo, who finally link back to…

  4. Photojojo, who actually sell the silly thing, and have things like tech specs, adapter info, and so on.

In LikeCool’s defense, they did link directly to Photojojo’s page in the text of their post, but I missed that link on my first readthrough (the forest green link text wasn’t enough of a contrast difference to the black body text to catch my eye on the first skim).

Would it be too much trouble to say “I read about this here, and you can buy it or get more info here,” instead of forcing your readers to jump through multiple hoops? By the time I found my way to the source page, I’d pretty much lost interest in it. Besides, it looks more creepy than amusing or useful.