I’ve got two new books available for purchase.
2010: The Year of Change, Volume 1 is a collection of photographs and stories from the first half of the year.
2004-2007: A Portfolio from the Archives is a portfolio from my first four years out of college. This book is more of a photo portfolio rather than a personal album.
I’ve been so busy lately that I haven’t been able to make any new posts. I wish I could tell you that I’ve been busy doing some sort of interesting research, but that’s just not the case yet. However, during my drive home this evening, I was given a nice treat.
My drive to and from school is about 25 miles, one way. This is a bit on the long side but nothing that can’t be done. I do sometimes envy those who can get up and walk to school, not using any gas while getting some exercise. However, my half-hour commute comes with great scenery as part of the package. I get to endure views of Moscow Mountain and the rolling hills of the Palouse in both directions, during the early light of the morning, and the warm evening light.
Tonight’s drive home, I got to stare at a very large moon cresting the horizon, and I wished that I had my camera in the car. And then I noticed something else. It looked like there might be a full moon tonight. As it turns out, I am correct.
I had beautiful light on the drive in, but as I said before, no camera on me. So when I got home, the first thing I did was grab the camera and the tripod and head to the back field to shoot the moon before it rose too high in the sky. Unfortunately, the moon was residing behind some light clouds, but the effect is still pure awesomeness.
As I finished up my shoot, I heard footsteps in the field, and in the distance, a large black blob slowly meandering its way to the road and to the next field beyond. I can’t say for certain what this beast was, but it was huge. I don’t think it was a moose because it didn’t seem tall enough, but perhaps a large black bear?
According to the Farmer’s Almanac, October’s moon is the Harvest Moon. However, other sources refer to the Harvest Moon as the full moon occurring closest to the autumnal equinox, which is in September. This year, we had a Super Harvest Moon, in which the harvest moon occurred on the equinox. How cool is that! Why didn’t I photograph that one? But by that naming system, this would be the Hunter’s Moon.
So Happy Hunter’s Moon.
In April, I briefly lost my camera due to a bent pin in the card slot. I sent it to Canon for repair and got the camera back in a week’s time. Unfortunately, during that time, I had scheduled a hike up Old Rag with Jon, my supervisor at the time. So, after a trip to Fed Ex, I stopped at the camera store and bought a couple rolls of film.
I’ve finally had the chance to get the old scanner out of the box and get this set of slides scanned and uploaded. While I enjoyed shooting with film again and getting some nice rich contrast and tones, I am reminded of why I decided to go digital: I hate scanning. I’ve grown tired of it. Literally. I used to fall asleep waiting for scans to finish and then slog through the process of correcting the images, slowly as my aging desktop can only handle about 4 photos open in Photoshop at a time. Color balancing is a pain because it’s not the same as a temperature white balance performed on RAW files. And then there’s the search for and fixing defects, scratches and specks on the film that the digital ICE either didn’t pick up or did a bad job of removing. It’s all time consuming, but not in the therapeutic sense that the tedious work in a darkroom is. No, sitting in front of a computer screen takes its toll.
I’m sure I’ll have some rolls of film to shoot in the future, but for now it’s primarily Digital again. So enjoy the last set of film for a while, as well as the last set from the East until I can afford to get back there.
