OK, so the sun has been out again, spring is in the air, and the snow is pretty much all gone.

It did, however, leave some wonderfully interesting artifacts in it’s wake.

Remember those sand-covered drifts of snow from last week?

Well, here’s whats left of them after the snow melted:

Like a little mountain range on the sidewalk by the seawall …

I finally have my .com domain name back!

After over a month of trying to get my former ISP, aros.net, to transfer my domain name to my new hosting provider, it’s finally done!

It’s a bittersweet reminder to me that good things don’t last forever. I miss the old aros.net that I knew and loved. Now, in their new location, with their new growth (and the technical, bussiness, and customer service growing pains that seem to inevitably accompany such growth), it’s just not the same anymore.

I really miss the good people I knew there. It was the kind of place where you could walk in and be instantly recognized by people with whom you could be comfortable enough to be on a first name basis. Back then, it didn’t take a month of calling and hanging on hold every day to get a response from the guys in tech support.

I miss visiting the old aros.net office in downtown Salt Lake. It was a warm and welcoming place. Now that I’m in New Hampshire, it would just be too much of a commute to drop by, say “hi” and “oh, by the way, while I’m here, let me pay my bill.”

Now that we both have new homes, it’s time for to go our separate ways. I wish them the best for their future in their new home.

Goodbye, old friend.

Yikes!

Three days after that 70 degree stroll on the beach … kites flying, bikini babes, bermuda shorts … a Nor’Easter moves in and dumps some more SNOW on us!

What a way to be wished a Happy St. Patrick’s Day!!!

Gotta document this, so out comes the cel phone camera:

First we had to dig ourselves out.

Then, looking across the boardwalk to the seawall, we found sand dunes … wait, are those snow drifts? Oh my! The wind was so strong that it blew sand off the beach up onto the snow drifts!

That’s not underexposure, it’s SAND embedded in the snowdrifts.

Here’s one, just for a sense of scale …

Check out this high tide! (This is the highest I’ve ever seen it here — due to the surge of the storm which has now moved offshore.)

More ice, drifting on the beach like miniature icebergs.

So prepare for the attack of the seagulls

and since there’s a nice stiff breeze, let’s go fly a kite!

The locals tell me this doesn’t happen often: The beach is frozen!

And when the beach is frozen you find icy splashes …

… and alien landscapes …

… and people sending messages in bottles …

… and no matter how you cut it, it’s COLD out there!

Of all the visual arts, photography is the most dependent on technology. It didn’t even exist until the mid-1800s, when the sciences of chemistry and optics made it possible to capture an image on a metal plate. Later, glass plates were invented, which led to sheet film, and then to roll film, and most recently to digital sensors.

At each successive stage of this evolution of technology, it has become quicker and more convenient for the average person to make a photograph. Also at each successive stage, while the absolute potential for technical quality has gone down (it is physically impossible for a 35mm transparency (slide) to contain as much visual information as a 120 (medium format) or 4×5 inch transparency, and the same applies to negative films, and digital capture can’t even come close to the resolving power or color gamut of medium and large format film), the average technical quality of the average photo made by the average camera user has gone up.

The technology has made it a lot easier and more convenient to make photographs. The average, every-day mom-or-dad-with-a-camera can now point, click, put a memory card in a printer, and have new material for the family scrapbooks, all within minutes.

With this heavy dependence on technology, especially in the digital age, a lot of discussion and debate arises over — you guessed it! — the technology. Which is better, film or digital? SLR or Rangefinder? Nikon or Canon? A lot of time and energy gets spent showing off and drooling over cameras, lenses, films, digital sensors, tripods, lighting systems, computers, printers and software packages.

What gets lost in all of that hullabaloo is that it’s not really the camera that makes the picture, it’s the photographer! Continue Reading »

Ever since the advent of digital cameras and PhotoShop, the debate has been raging about which is better, Film or Digital. Some say film will go the way of the DoDo, others claim it’s here to stay.

Almost invariably, when I introduce myself as a photographer, I get asked the question: “So, are you film or digital?”, followed closely by the question “Which is better?”. My answer to both questions: “Yes.” Continue Reading »

I’m primarily a film shooter — despite my experience with and affection for computer technology, film has a certain je ne sais quois, a visual quality that is difficult, if not impossible, to reproduce in a digital capture.

Nevertheless, I do have digital photographic equipment, and I have become quite enamored of my Leica M8’s visual qualities.

The M8, as well as the other digital cameras I’ve used (the Kodak DCS-760 and the Nikon D-200) all capture in a 3-channel Red/Green/Blue color format.

I work exclusively in black and white (for various reasons, which may or may not be a topic for another day), so I’m faced with having to digitally convert the color images produced by the camera into the black and white output format.

Over the years I’ve experimented with many different techniques for converting color to black and white, before finally settling on what I call the “dual Hue/Saturation Layer” method, which is both quick and flexible.

Continue Reading »

We had a nasty storm dump a lot of sleet and rain on us a few days ago, and what’s left over makes for some interesting shapes and textures.

Hey! I finally got my blog up and running! Can’t guarantee how often I’ll actually write something in here, but here it is, nonetheless.