Blog

  • Unmark version 2020.1 has officially rolled into master today. This is a huge milestone with tons of new features and improvements. It has been running on Unmark.it for months and purrs like a kitten. Unmark is still my favorite app I use every single day.

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  • I’d like to shoot a photo for an album cover.

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  • Jeremy asks what our favorite photo is. Very hard question. But I’d have to choose Disfarmer #41383.

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  • Nick Carver is giving away 2 seats to his online light metering for film photography course for those that may not be able to afford it.

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  • Exposed root – April 2020

    Exposed root – April 2020 If you walk through the same forest for months and months – you begin to notice the details you’d normally miss. Also on Flickr, Instagram.

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  • I hope my comprehensive crash reports that I’m sending to Twitter a few times per day are helpful for their team. See example.

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  • Micro.blog for Teams

    Manton Reece: Today we’re launching a new feature on Micro.blog: support for multi-user blogs, so your whole team can write posts on a shared blog. We think it’s going to be great for small companies, families, and schools, with everything from shared photo blogs to podcasts. This is a big update. You may remember that […]

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  • Flowers – May 2020

    Flowers – May 2020 The above image is a digital positive created from a paper negative. It was handcut from Ilford photo paper, shot, developed by me last night. I also used it as the subject for my first contact print. You can read the behind-the-scenes story here on my blog. Also More also on […]

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  • My first contact print

    Above is my first ever contact print. A contact print is when you lay a negative (film, paper, tin, glass) onto photo-sensitive paper and shine light onto it to expose the paper. You then develop that paper into a positive print (or what you’d think of as a normal photo). This is a milestone in […]

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  • I also backed up my site locally – including media and database – something I do not do often enough.

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  • Me, laying down, waiting in line for tickets to Star Wars in May 1999. Image Credit: Times Tribune Archives

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  • Birds on wires – January 2020

    Birds on wires – January 2020 Somehow these images got clogged into my drafts and never published. These pigeons roost above and below a nearby highway bridge. They were enjoying the sunset when I captured these images.

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  • What I saw somewhat recently #64: April 30, 2020

    Are you enjoying these links? I know I am. Light week. Mostly because I’ve been very busy both professionally and on my photography.

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  • Jeremy’s post on Star Wars has me thinking; now that the Skywalker story is “finished”, I wish they never made the prequels or films 7, 8, 9. I’d like the original trilogy to stand on its own, keep Rogue One and Solo, and have a new trilogy based on Rey without any ties back to […]

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  • An interview with artist Marc Taro Holmes

    Late last week I published an interview with Marco Taro Holmes, one of the original members of Urban Sketchers, on my now 10-year old web site The Watercolor Gallery. It was a pleasure to interview Marc and a lot of his answers epitomize the reason I built The Watercolor Gallery in 2010 – to inspire […]

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  • Photographing the same location over and over

    I’ll likely touch on this topic in an upcoming pandemic powered Podcast episode. Albert Dros, 2017: Sometimes the area where you live would not be motivating to photograph because you see these things everyday. However, when I started photography I began to see the world (and my home area) in a different way. I started […]

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  • A few houseplants – April 2020

    A few houseplants – April 2020 On Sunday morning I decided to quickly set up a photo shoot for my current houseplants. Here are just a few that I liked. The others didn’t come out the way I wanted due to a few limitations. So I’m hoping to do another photo shoot in the near […]

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  • Podcast: Photographing Mic & Nics – January 2020

    Mic & Nics Photographing Mic & Nics – January 2020 Recorded January 15, 2020 You may recognize this building. I wrote about how I practiced my light metering with it. Well, I also recorded myself on a different day shooting it with very expired film. The filmstrip In this episode of the podcast I chat […]

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  • Repost: Brent Simmons on what happens after a pandemic

    👉 Brent Simmons: I keep thinking how the 1918 pandemic was followed by the Roaring Twenties.

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  • What I saw somewhat recently #63: April 23, 2020

    A few links to expand (or shrink) your mind.

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  • Magic Leap blaming COVID-19 for why it has to lay off 1,000 people is just a terrible bit of messaging. They have raised nearly $3B. And they can’t raise any more right now. And the FB deal fell through. So they have no choice regardless of this pandemic.

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  • The horrific and avoidable loss of life notwithstanding I believe many will wish quarantine life to continue when things begin to open up once again. I know I may be among them.

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  • Over the river – March 2020

    Taken with Ansco Speedex on expired Kodak Tri-X 400 Over the river – March 2020 I love how this tree hangs over the river. I’ve photographed it many times and assume I will many times more. This particular image is a re-scan of a negative. I learned a slightly different way to scan and edit […]

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  • Rail side – March 2020

    Taken with Ansco Speedex on expired Kodak Tri-X 400 Rail side – March 2020 I’d forgotten to publish this one. It is from the same expired roll I shot Sweeny’s Bench and the Studebaker on.

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  • What I saw somewhat recently #62: April 17, 2020

    A few things I bumped into recently:

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  • Common Merganser takes flight triptych

    Common Merganser takes flight triptych – April 2020 Sort of a triptych I suppose. I wish I had set the camera to a much faster shutter speed but I just didn’t have the time.

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  • Instagram’s TOS

    Allen Murabayashi, CEO of PhotoShelter, regarding Instagram’s TOS: The language is typical of many photo sharing sites (including PhotoShelter), so in that sense it’s unremarkable. The company needs the ability to redisplay images, and wants to be able to have, for example, an image appear in the app, within an Instagram Story, and on the […]

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  • Wildlife from recent quarantine walks – March/April 2020

    Looks to me like a red and grey squirrel mix Male Cardinal Male Mallard Sparrow taking flight Freshly flowered Forsythia Possible bilateral gynandromorph Cardinal (male and female) Nuthatch Chipmunk Male Garter snake Common Merganser Turkey Vulture Nutchatch Wildlife from recent quarantine walks – March/April 2020 I’ve been shooting mostly digital during our as-often-as-possible nature walks […]

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  • Wolfram Physics Project

    Stephen Wolfram continues to make me feel lazy: Today we’re officially launching our Physics Project. From here on, we’ll be livestreaming what we’re doing—sharing whatever we discover in real time with the world. (We’ll also soon be releasing more than 400 hours of video that we’ve already accumulated.) I’m posting all my working materials going […]

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  • Programming is a super power.

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  • Creating a bedroom camera obscura and making a paper negative

    I’d been wanting to make my own camera for several months. Something simple like a shoe box pinhole camera. But then quarantine happened and I stumbled across Brendan Barry’s YouTube video about turning a room in your house into a camera obscura – and making a paper negative and positive print. I thought with the […]

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  • What I saw somewhat recently #61: April 9, 2020

    Some links for your edification:

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  • Podcast: Seven Tubs in winter on 35mm

    My friend Carl, painting plein air oil, on 35mm Seven Tubs in winter on 35mm Recorded January 13 2020. In spring 2018 Eliza and I walked Seven Tubs and I photographed the area on my Google Pixel 2 XL. On that visit I created a vivid, punchy set of photos that showcased the pop of […]

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  • I’ve crossed a big milestone with my photography during quarantine. I’ve moved on from the how, and am now focused on the why.

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  • As I mentioned, I created a PHP script that I can run on my Mac to move thousands of files into new directories based on their created date. It extremely fast compared to my previous solution. If anyone would like to improve it, please do!

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  • 35mm film in a Medium Format camera

    Ansco Rediflex, expired 35mm Fujicolor Superia 400 35mm film in a Medium Format camera From the same roll as my 2020 avatar are these select exposures of 35mm film hacked into a medium format Ansco Rediflex. What you’re looking at isn’t normal. The Ansco Rediflex is a medium format camera which, when invented in the […]

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  • Writing PHP for the first time in well over a year. I need to move thousands of photographs on the Mac and automatically sort them into folders by their created date. In the past I used complex apps to do this. Turns out a few lines of code is all I need.

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  • Indoor Voices

    Remember when I opined that blogging may see a surge with all of this quarantine stuff? Indoor Voices – a new blog (on blogspot!) from over 80 quarantined writers. Kottke covers it far better than I can here. A few weeks ago, writer Kyle Chayka Tweeted “I predict a great Blogging Renaissance,” to which also […]

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  • My 2020 avatar

    Shot on 35mm film retro fitted into an Ansco Rediflex Quarantine has me trying all sorts of experiments. One of which is retro fitting 35mm film into an old Ansco Rediflex medium format camera. It produces some interesting results (I’ll post a few in the coming days). But I’ve wanted my 2020 avatar to be […]

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  • Podcast: Talking gear and settings for shooting film – December 2019

    Canon Rebel G, expired Kodak Color Gold 400 Canon Rebel G, expired Kodak Color Gold 400 Talking gear and settings for shooting film – December 2019 Recorded December 24, 2019. In this episode of the podcast I discuss the gear I took on this trip, why I have them, the settings I use, how I […]

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  • Truck @ 40mph – March 2020

    Konica Autoreflex T, expired Kodak Pan X film Truck @ 40mph – March 2020 Like all of my photos, there is a story behind this one. My boss gave me a camera as a gift. And I shot some really old expired film through it. This was one of my favorites from the roll. More […]

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  • I had no idea Kenny Rogers was a large format film photographer. Even in the Hall of Fame for it. Gorgeous work. Talented man.

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  • NetNewsWire is the best RSS workflow on any platform

    John Gruber: It’s exactly what I want in an RSS reader, and it has changed my daily reading habits significantly. It is, in a way, a return to what NetNewsWire was before the NewsGator acquisition of it and FeedDemon. Both NNW and FD were my go-to ways of subscribing to every interest, person, web site […]

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  • Podcast: My first day shooting only film – December 2019

    Canon Rebel G, expired Kodak Color Gold 400 Canon Rebel G, expired Kodak Color Gold 400 Canon Rebel G, expired Kodak Color Gold 400 My first day shooting only film – December 2019 Recorded on December 23, 2019. This episode is packed with nostalgia for me – even though it was only 3 months ago. […]

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  • Cameron Moll \”returns\” to his site

    Cameron Moll: BUT. But, my dear friends. After years of neglect, what a rush of joy seeing this site breathing again! What a privilege to be back in the author’s seat! Why did I ever leave in the first place? Oh that’s right, I been busy with life. Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps the blogosphere […]

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  • Cameron Moll \”returns\” to his site

    Cameron Moll: BUT. But, my dear friends. After years of neglect, what a rush of joy seeing this site breathing again! What a privilege to be back in the author’s seat! Why did I ever leave in the first place? Oh that’s right, I been busy with life. Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps the blogosphere […]

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  • Cameron Moll \”returns\” to his site

    Cameron Moll: BUT. But, my dear friends. After years of neglect, what a rush of joy seeing this site breathing again! What a privilege to be back in the author’s seat! Why did I ever leave in the first place? Oh that’s right, I been busy with life. Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps the blogosphere […]

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  • Cameron Moll \”returns\” to his site

    Cameron Moll: BUT. But, my dear friends. After years of neglect, what a rush of joy seeing this site breathing again! What a privilege to be back in the author’s seat! Why did I ever leave in the first place? Oh that’s right, I been busy with life. Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps the blogosphere […]

    Continue

  • Cameron Moll \”returns\” to his site

    Cameron Moll: BUT. But, my dear friends. After years of neglect, what a rush of joy seeing this site breathing again! What a privilege to be back in the author’s seat! Why did I ever leave in the first place? Oh that’s right, I been busy with life. Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps the blogosphere […]

    Continue

  • Cameron Moll \”returns\” to his site

    Cameron Moll: BUT. But, my dear friends. After years of neglect, what a rush of joy seeing this site breathing again! What a privilege to be back in the author’s seat! Why did I ever leave in the first place? Oh that’s right, I been busy with life. Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps the blogosphere […]

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Writing helps me think more clearly and to form or transform my opinions. I write about what interests me such as blogging, photography, technology, social media, and my personal creative projects.


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