The Assistant’s Journal

Thanks, Ken Rockwell.

More than once while roaming the internet in search of answers, I have would up on Ken’s site and read his candid, well-written reviews. As the employee of a cheapskate, and as a semi-professional cheapskate myself, this helpful guide/rant made me smile. I may put pieces of it on a cross stitch sampler someday.

The New York Times has a neat feature up showing David Burnett’s photos of onlookers at the Apollo 11 launch. Well worth looking through, and, as he comments, proof that you should never throw anything away. Frame #14 is my favorite (but you’ve got to work for it a little) — what’s yours?

Microsoft has a spiffy new technology that made the rounds on the blogosphere a month or so ago. They asked Joel to shoot the Statue of Liberty for a Photosynth, which you can see here. (Internet Explorer only — sorry Mac users.)

I’ll play along, I guess: On October 3, the link/image above will re-direct you to a story James Nachtwey has been working on. It’s rolling out in multiple media channels to show how powerful news photography can be in the digital age. Bloggers, get your own badge here.

Reading about this reminded me of a trip to DC from a couple of years ago. One of my sideline jobs takes me to DC every few years, and when I’m there I try and stop by NG, (a) because it’s a thrill to be in the heart of a working magazine, and (b) to put faces with the people I work with via phone and e-mail.

After making the rounds, I had some time to kill before my plane left, so I camped out in an empty editing room. My visit happened to coincide with some house-cleaning at NG, and a few pieces of equipment were in the room, claimed by various folks:

Gotta love a salvager!

Curious about what constitutes fair use of photography? Rob Haggart — one of my favorite photo bloggers — has put together a pretty good best practices statement on his website. Most of the time, especially if it’s for personal use, asking permission is all it takes.

This is completely un-related to photography, but my electronics enthusiast husband made the Make blog today. If you’re into electronic music, check out the link — his project is third down from the top — and www.thebasementscientist.com for more.

So there’s this legend that tornadoes will never hit Lincoln. There are a few versions of it — one attributes this to the bishop (we’re the seat of the diocese), one to Bob Devaney, and the more sensible ones to geography. I’m beginning to think that they’re all horse hockey.

The sirens went off again tonight, so I’m in the basement listening to our brand new weather radio. (It got here today, just in time.) Apparently good portions of the highway a mile or so from our house are under water. This is by far the craziest early summer weather I’ve experienced on this end of the state.

Anyway, while I’m killing time waiting for the warning to expire, here’s a velcro strap alternative from reader Richard:

I have a comment on the velcro strapping mentioned in your blog. Double lengths of adhesive-backed Velcro would certainly work for straps but would be a bit stiff. A much better solution is available from REI. Called Quick Tape it is basically the same think in a flexible design that can be cut to length. It comes in regular and heavy-duty.
See the link. http://www.rei.com/product/618739

Looks neat, and at under $1/foot it’s not too terribly priced.

I grew up in western Nebraska, where summer storms whip themselves up to ferocious proportions over relatively flat expanses of land. I’ve probably spent time totaling two entire summers huddled in the basement watching the Weather Channel as tornadoes ripped through our county. Compared to some of the stuff I’ve seen out west, Lincoln’s storms are relatively mild. At least, that’s what I thought until this year.

The Sunday before Memorial Day, this happened in my back yard.

Then last week, I came into work and found this in the driveway.

The same night, a friend’s house in Aurora — which they haven’t fully moved into yet — got hit with a tree as well. Compared to a lot of the destruction between Kearney and York, a couple of trees on the ground isn’t much, I guess.

We don’t have cable and are generally pretty oblivious to any weather not immediately outside the window. My mom called last night to warn us that something nasty was headed our way. Tornadoes don’t usually hit Lincoln, and in ten years of living here I don’t think I’ve heard the sirens go off once. They went off last night, though, and that was enough to scare us into the basement. Hank the dog chewed on a bone whilst Amos and I shopped online for a weather radio.

For those of you unfamiliar with them, weather radios tune to specific frequencies that broadcast only about the weather in your area. Those stations also have some sort of magic emergency signal that can actually turn on your radio and alert you to anything particularly awful that’s going on. It’s the perfect thing for us, and I’ll actually feel a bit better once it arrives.

I checked the paper this morning to see how bad things got last night, and the first reports are not terrible. However, those of you in Nebraska should check the batteries in your flashlights and make sure you unplug your electronics when you go to bed. It looks like we’re in for more of the same tonight.

Photographer John Harrington has done a series of videos to help train new hires about his kits. Interesting to watch. I am, however AGHAST that there are no lens back caps or body caps present in the D3 camera kit. Even Joel uses those. I wonder how Harrington keeps his sensors from getting absolutely filthy.

Joel and I have talked about this before, but it’s worth repeating. With digital photography, crucial things (like CF cards, card readers, and USB cables) are often very tiny. If you forget them, though, you’re just as hosed as if you would’ve forgotten your camera.

One thing digital makes somewhat easier, though, is getting to the archive. I had to dig into the film yellowbox archives yesterday. (Yellowboxes — so called because it all used to be processed by Kodak, who packed slides in yellow boxes — are the not-even-close-to-selects from a shoot.) It involved moving 30 pound boxes around, well over my head, and wrestling with a cramped film room. Heck of a lot messier than pointing and clicking.

Happy 2008, dear readers. The studio news:

* We’re now and all-Apple studio, save a pieced-together Windows server for non-vital data. I *heart* my new dual-screen workstation. (Had been using a five year-old Dell running Win2K with a CRT monitor. Now I can actually work with, you know, pictures.) Going from Mac at work to PC at home has really messed up my mad keyboard shortcut skillz.
* We now have the capability to do wide-format prints in-house, thanks to Epson. The new printer’s ink cartridges are the size of BetaMax cassettes, and I’m not even close to kidding.
* Former studio helper David Story is now in Antarctica — you can read more about him here: Link

News from Joel’s world – he recently finished up shooting on an endangered species story (slated, I believe, for ‘09), and just returned from another assignment in Africa (due out yet this year.) As far as we know, has no new flesh-eating parasites, and for that we are most thankful. We left his gear out in the truck overnight in hopes that freezing temperatures would kill off any hitchikers.

Personal news: Amos and I bought a house back in August. It’s a nice older place in a historic neighborhood and we love it. We also got a dog named Hank, who is a basset hound blue heeler mix. (Yes, weird, I know.) He looks like a basset hound wearing a blue heeler sweater. Here’s a photo of him pretending to be a fennec:

The lighting in that photo is provided by my beloved’s latest on-the-cheap invention — shop lights modified to hold lighting umbrellas and controlled with boxes intended to vary the speed on routers. He’s been tinkering with video and wanted to experiment with shop lights. At $6/light (including stands) plus under $50 for the rheostats, it’s a cheap way to play.

All for now — I’m running extemp draw at a speech meet and Round Two is about to start.