So, it looks like I’ve been away for a little over a month. Strange, I actually thought it had been much longer. I guess I’ve just had an enormous case of life lately. Heather was sick, then I was sick, then Linus was sick, then I was sick again. And through it all I’ve just been sick of being in front of a computer. Work has picked up quite a bit, so when I do manage to set aside some derisory amount of free time, I generally would rather be doing something more relaxing (e.g. reading a good book). But I digress…
Our little guy is one year old today! It’s been an unbelievable year with this little tyke. I don’t think I even came close to imagining how awesome life could be as a parent. Linus is happy and healthy, and honestly, I think those two things could sustain me until the end of my days. So happy birthday big shot!
Caribou put on a fantastic show last night at the First Unitarian Church. If you want the poetic version check with Rubens, but I will say this: Drums. I’ve been having a bit of a love affair with all things rhythm lately (still dreaming of Mahogany’s bassist) and the dual drum kits last night were almost worth the price of admission. Snaith (as pointed out numerous times elsewhere) has a talent not only for crafting beautiful melodies, but also for banging out a mean backbeat. When he and Brad Weber were going at it simultaneously, everything else had no choice but to fall into place, and it did. Most shining example of the merits of having two drum kits right up front; Sandy, which they played pretty early in the set.
Now for the gripe, and I’ll keep it brief: There wasn’t enough material from Andorra. Rubens said it best when he described the show as a “greatest hits.” I know Rubens was reveling in the older songs, but I was expecting/hoping for more from the latest album. With that said, it was great to hear them play stuff that I missed when they came through last time. It was especially nice to hear a song like Crayon, which I just assumed I’d never get to hear live (and performed perfectly I’ll add). Here’s hoping that when they tour for the next album, we’ll get to hear more from Andorra. 
You can see the rest of the pictures I took in this Flickr set.
This one was an absolute bear to stitch. In the future I’ll avoid shooting directly beneath massive amounts of intersecting utility lines. The bulk of the stitching went pretty quickly, but cleaning up the wires in Photoshop took forever. This is also my first attempt at using Photomatix to get a tone mapped image from three different exposures. I’m unimpressed with most of the tone mapped images that seem to be tickling everyone’s fancy currently. I was attempting to accurately recreate the scene rather than make the digital equivalent of a black velvet painting. Overall I’m pretty happy with it, but I still want to continue to tweak my settings a little bit. Right now I’m going to go tweak my pillow.
Be sure to see the interactive version too.
First up, the Manistee Riverwalk. That’s the last of my panos from Manistee. Unfortunately our last trip was so short, I had little time for snapping pictures while we were there. You can see the interactive version over here.
Then there’s the Challenge of Champions. Wow. What to say about this one. I had sore legs for a week, and not for the reasons which may be alluded to by the photo. This was a paid gig; It was a day’s worth of taking pictures of men, women and children beating on each other. At the end of the day I managed to take a few pictures of my own for the pano. Interact up in here.
Other items of note:
- Crazy busy weekend - If I didn’t answer your email, it’s because I’m a jerk - but I’ll get to you soon.
- Romer’s will be here this week!
- After very Autumnal weather last week, we’ve enterered right back into Summer misery with temps in the 90’s.
- Sleep is for the week!
- Who needs TV when you have comic books?
- Who needs friends when you have the internet?
- Who needs sleep when you have pictures to stitch?
Another fine show prompted by Rubens. I only found out about this a couple hours before it started, and it was pleasant surprise to say the least. Lullatone hails from Nagoya Japan, so it’s probably safe to say they may not be back around here for a while. The show was very intimate, interactive, and joyful. If you’re not familiar with their music, check out their website. There are also a few tracks to be heard on their Virb page.
You can see the rest of my photos in the Flickr set.
Back in May I purchased a new fisheye lens and a new pano head so that I could shoot higher quality panos than those I got with my last camera. Nearly four months have passed, and I’ve finally gotten a chance to start working on some of these new images. This is my first decent image with the new camera/lens/rig/software, so it took a while to get it all working smoothly. You can see the full-res image on Flickr, and an interactive version here.
This was shot in Manistee, Michigan on the shore of Lake Michigan (right about here). It’s a bit melancholy for me, as it was taken on what surely will have been our last visit there. We spent a few holidays there during the Winter, but not nearly enough time in the warmer months. My mom and sisters live in Delaware now, so there’s very little drawing me back to this tiny coastal town, and I’ll actually miss it.
In other news: I’m incredibly tired, and yet this is the only time of night/day that I can get these sorts of things done, so I blog at 1:30 in the am. I’m going to go check to see if there are any bats in my basement then I’m off to bed. Cheers.
Past blaster! It’s been nearly two years since these were taken, and almost as much time has passed since they had a home online. James asked about them recently (recently as in a couple of months ago), so I figured it was about time I get them posted again.
Click on the images for the QTVR, or see the full-res photos in this Flickr set. If you’re feeling adventurous, try both.
I added some more georeferenced (geocoded, geotagged) photos of Phoenixville from last week. You can ignore the entire set here.
I’ve been pretty enthused about geocoding images lately. Granted, I was already a fan a of geotagging my images using Flickr, but the idea of recording a photo’s location data via GPS and embedding it directly to the EXIF data is just so much cooler. I’ve been strolling around with the now discontinued, but perfectly capable Garmin ETrex Legend C. I’m downloading my tracks and mapping the location to my photos using the time in the EXIF header with the fantastic, free app GPSPhotoLinker. It’s certainly much easier, and faster than trying to manually map each photo, which is exactly why I only had a handful of geotagged photos up until this point.
You can see my first set of images taken around Phoenixville and coded using this technique here, or on my Flickr map. There’s also a link on each photo’s page that will allow you to view the location on Google Maps or fly to the location using Google Earth (which you surely have already installed right?).
You can also read a lot more on the subject including other techniques for coding/tagging your photos here and probably a gajillion other places on the web.