The Family Pic

April 30, 2007

So here’s a good family picture.

True, Eliza looks a little demented, but you should see the other one - where she looks loaded.

Don’t have much else to contribute at the moment, although I hope to soon.

Just been a little crabby the last ten days, with a short temper and all the usual stuff. Interstingly, this seems to happen to me every spring.

What can you do.

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Shoppin’ a-Poppin’

April 24, 2007

Sometimes I wonder if I’m deluded putting up little links to buy all my work online.

But you gotta start somewhere.

So now - for your shopping convenience! - the offerings at the main Inflight Shutdown page have been expanded to include all sorts of images, plus my personal favorite item: the ten Photographing Lebanon images from the show printed up with all the uptight fanaticism I can muster and presented in a beautiful archival folio case.

Stop by! We’d love to see you!

Art just makes the loveliest gift. Don’t you know someone who’d love to have more art?

Posted in: photo chatter 2 Comments »

25 years!

April 17, 2007

We celebrated my folks’ 25th anniversary this past weekend. First stop was a family photo - we’ve really never had one done “professionally”, so it seemed like a good time. The photographer was a jolly fellow and my overall feeling was that I was being photographed by Dom DeLuise. Good at what he does, though - you can’t be a grumpy old poop and get a “performance” out of your subjects. Which, of course, explains why I’d be a miserable failure at that kind of thing.

Then it was off to a pleasant lunch at Shady Glen - a local restaurant where we first met Nancy about 26 years ago (my Dad met her at jury duty). We won’t mention that it was a different location of the same restaurant…

The plan that my sister and I concocted covered the photo shoot and dinner, but what about the afternoon hours? Oops. As we planned on heading up to Springfield for dinner at a long-time family haunt - the Lido - it seemed natural to spend some time prowling around Western Massachusetts. My suggestion was the Summit House atop Mt. Holyoke, but unfortunately it was not yet open for the season. Instead we headed for Mt. Tom, the site of the above photo.

My brother-in-law Bill is standing in front of some ancient stone-crushing machine. Nancy is that tiny figure in the background (the hill was a bit steep and squishy), and my Dad, my niece Eliza, and my sister Karen are on the left.

Man, do I love the wide angle lens on that camera.

Anyway, once we’d worn out our welcome at the state park we headed to the site of the old Mountain Park that has sat abandoned since 1989. All the old rides were moved out years ago, and vandalism coupled with periodic fires had been working on the rest of it. There are two Polaroids that I shot a few years back when Melissa, Baha, and I visited the ruins at my website. Bet it won’t be too tough to guess which two are from the park.

This time around there was ample evidence of recent activity - lots of mulching (see above), dirt-moving, debris-clearing, etc. Apparently a local entrepreneur bought the land but has been tight-lipped about his plans. A rather enigmatic sign stated “see you summer ‘07 - Mountain Park”. What does it mean? No one seems to know.

My Dad had a good time trying to figure out where everything had been before it was torn down. Above he appears to have isolated the location of the old bandstand, where as a young lad he went to see Duane Eddy in all his twang-y glory.

Not much else to see in the way of ruins. There was a neat path on the ground from some kind of kiddie driving ride, but most other evidence of rides of yesteryear was long gone. Some concrete and stone structures remain from an old mini golf course, and not surprisingly the patches of astroturf that remain were just as green as when they were installed more than twenty years ago.

Above you can see a bit of one of the old mini golf stuctures in the background, along with one of the only really stable looking bits of the whole area - an ugly picnic pavilion that stands ominously watching over the back quarters of the park.

Above is the old sign directing people to the Mt. Tom Ski Area. In the summer they ran an alpine slide that was later augmented with a water slide and a wave pool. Many, many summer memories from the Ski Area. Unfortunately, New England’s shifting weather patterns and the general tame-ness of Mt. Tom dictated that it eventually had to close. I don’t care much about the skiing, but the Alpine Slide was just too cool. My escapades on the slide are, I’m finding, more legendary than I remember…

Happy 25th to my folks!

Posted in: photo 3 Comments »

Busy Bee

April 11, 2007

I have been incredibly busy this week, but salvation is on the way - day off Monday!

Anyway, I’ll find something interesting to post soon, but at the moment, sadly, I have to get back to work.

Posted in: filler No Comments »

I Dig Art

April 5, 2007

A precious package arrived today from Dan McCarthy.

The work is so incredible - I think I’m feeling a little dizzy.

They need to be framed elegantly and professionally, so unfortunately they’ll stay rolled up for now, but they are so wonderful I can’t even begin to describe.

Great art rules.

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back to the drawing board

April 4, 2007

Did you ever think you were pretty damn good at something, only to find out you were potentially going about the entire process back-asswards and could learn a thing or two from an expert?

So much for my Photoshop prowess.

I attended a talk by Dan Margulis, a Photoshop guru, where he described some basic color perception issues and many little ways one might go about dealing with them. All of which appeared to offer a degree of control, accuracy, and flexibility previously unavailable from my established skill set. Oh, I think I’m pretty good at getting a nice print, but there are little compromises I made that I don’t think I will have to make anymore once I get in the swing of some of his methods.

With that in mind, I marched right out and spent too much money on one of his books. It also occurs to me that everything I might have learned about color theory in college went in one ear and out the other due to my stubborn attitudes about shooting in black and white, so it might be to my advantage to do some reading on that as well..

None of which is a problem, of course - it is well established that finding more ways to be obsessive about these kinds of things has never really been a problem for me, and all info is good as long as you know what to reject.

One silver lining was when someone asked him what Photoshop offered today that was an improvement over past versions, and he confirmed what I’d suspected for some time - in terms of color correction and image adjustment there is nothing that he does now that couldn’t have been done way back in Photoshop 3.0 (with a couple of minor exceptions).

I have always believed that I could go back to a much simpler version of the software and still have all the tools I need - I kind of wish there was a way to customize current versions so that you didn’t have so many doo-dads sitting there taking up memory. Oh well.

Posted in: photo chatter 1 Comment »

Art Makes a Great Gift

April 2, 2007

Did I happen to mention that I joined the world of e-commerce?

That you can now go to my site and effortlessly acquire my work?

No?

Well, come on by!

The postcard image from the Lebanon shows is available in a limited run of 10 matted/framed prints, and there will be more up soon! (sorry, 1/10 has already been acquired)

Art makes great gifts!

Posted in: photo chatter, plug 6 Comments »