Photography
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Some remodeling work
As Dave says here, we’re remodeling this blog a bit, starting with the title image, which for the last few years has been a portrait of me at work, drawn by the fashion illustrator Gregory Wier-Quitton. My likeness online is not in short supply. Here’s a sampling from a DuckDuckGo image search for my name:… Continue reading
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A Santa Barbara itinerary from ChatGPT
I asked ChatGPT for a three-day itinerary to give visitors to Santa Barbara. Here ya go: Day 1: Start the day with breakfast at the Shoreline Beach Cafe, which has a beautiful view of the ocean. After breakfast, head to Knapp’s Castle for a scenic hike and exploration of the ruins of a 20th century… Continue reading
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A workflow challenge
I shoot a lot of pictures. Most are from altitude (such as the above). But lots are of people and places; for example, here are a few I shot at DWebCamp last summer with my new Sony A7 IV camera (to which I migrated last year after many years shooting Canon): Importing and curating photos… Continue reading
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Remembering Bill Swindaman
That was Bill Swindaman on the last day I saw him: June 2nd of this year, at a gathering of friends from the best community I’ve ever known: a real one, of friends living in a place. The place was called Oxbow, and it was a collection of mismatched houses on a short dirt road… Continue reading
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Places
Let’s say you want to improve the Wikipedia page for Clayton Indiana with an aerial photograph. Feel free to use the one above. That’s why I shot it, posted it, and licensed it permissively. It’s also why I put a helpful caption under it, and some call-outs in mouse-overs. It’s also why I did the… Continue reading
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From Hollywood Park Racetrack to SoFi Stadium
Hollywood Park Racetrack is gone. In its place is SoFi Stadium, the 77,000-seat home of Los Angeles’ two pro football teams and much else, including the 6,000-seat YouTube Theater. There’s also more to come in the surrounding vastness of Hollywood Park, named after the racetrack. Wikipedia says the park— consists of over 8.5 million square feet (790,000 m2)… Continue reading
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On windowseat photography
A visitor to aerial photos on my Flickr site asked me where one should sit on a passenger plane to shoot pictures like mine. This post expands on what I wrote back to him. Here’s the main thing: you want a window seat on the side of the plane shaded from the Sun, and away… Continue reading
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Lens vs. Camera
I did a lot of shooting recently with a rented Sony FE 70-200mm F2.8 GM OSS II lens, mounted on my 2013-vintage Sony a7r camera. One result was the hummingbird above, which you’ll find among the collections here and here. Also, here’s a toddler… …and a grandma (right after she starred as the oldest alumnus at a… Continue reading
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A happy 75th anniversary
My parents (that’s them, Eleanor and Allen Searls) were married on 17 August 1946, seventy-five years and two days ago. I would have posted something then, but I was busy—though not too busy to drop something in Facebook, where much of the readership for this blog, plus the writership of others listed in my old… Continue reading
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A storage crisis
The best new phones come with the ability to shoot 108 megapixel photos, record 4K video with stereo sound, and pack the results into a terabyte of onboard storage. But what do you do when that storage fills up? If you want to keep those files, you’ll need to offload them somewhere. Since your computer… Continue reading
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Comparing cameras
On the top left is a photo taken with my trusty old (also much used and abused) Canon 5D Mark III. On the top right is one taken by a borrowed new Sony a7Riii. Below both are cropped close-ups of detail. The scene is in a room illuminated by incandescent track lighting. It is not… Continue reading
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Making useful photographs
What does it mean when perhaps hundreds of thousands of one’s photos appear in articles, essays and posts all over the Web? It means they’re useful. That’s why I posted the originals in the first place, and licensed them to require only attribution. Because of that, I can at least guess at how many have… Continue reading
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On Dion Neutra, 1926-2019
The Los Angeles in your head is a Neutra house. You’ve seen many of them in movies, and some of them in many movies. Some of those are now gone, alas, as is the architect and preservationist who also designed, or helped design, many of the buildings that bear his surname. Dion Neutra died last week, at… Continue reading
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On Amazon, New York, New Jersey and urban planning
In a press release, Amazon explained why it backed out of its plan to open a new headquarters in New York City: For Amazon, the commitment to build a new headquarters requires positive, collaborative relationships with state and local elected officials who will be supportive over the long-term. While polls show that 70% of New… Continue reading
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An evacuated view on the #ThomasFire
Here’s the latest satellite fire detection data, restricted to just the last twelve hours of the Thomas Fire, mapped on Google Earth Pro:That’s labeled 1830 Mountain Standard Time (MST), or 5:30pm Pacific, about half an hour ago as I write this. And here are the evacuation areas: Our home is in the orange Voluntary Evacuation… Continue reading
Broadcasting, data, Family, Geography, Life, Photography, problems, ThomasFire, Travel, tv, weather, wildfire -
The passive usefulness of public photography
While I’m recovering more slowly than I’d like from some minor eye surgery, reading is too much of a chore; but searching for stuff isn’t. So here’s a list of articles and postings leveraging public photos I’ve shared, Creative Commons licensed to require only attribution. Always interesting to see where these turn up: Why Indigenous Civil Resistance… Continue reading
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Everybody should have a surprise birthday party as surreal and wonderful as this one
The scene above is what greeted me when I arrived at what I expected to be a small family dinner last night: dozens of relatives and old friends, all with of my face. For one tiny moment, I thought I might be dead, and loved ones were gathered to greet me. But the gates weren’t pearly. They… Continue reading
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Dear Apple, please make exporting “unmodified originals” easier. Thanks.
23 February 2023—I just noticed for the first time that dragging and dropping photos from the Photos app into a directory (folder) on my Mac now retains EXIF data. If I right click on a photo exported that way, the displayed exif data is no different than the data in a file exported as an… Continue reading