Random Ren

Working Out in The Time of Quarantine

Fri, 10 Apr 2020 08:29:59 +0000

Went a little stir-crazy being cooped up inside with the kids, so I decided we should get some exercise and make a quarantine workout video. It’s mostly for laughs (I have a full set of bumper plates downstairs), though some of these exercises did make me pretty sore for a few days. The kids really liked the “front squats” and “deadlifts”, so I definitely recommend those if you are strong enough to do them safely. The TP also made a surprisingly good wall ball :-) Just a quick note: the bleach bottles were refilled with water (don’t do that with actual bottles of bleach). Have fun with your kids and get some good exercise, but please don’t do anything that puts your kids in danger. Our healthcare system is overwhelmed enough without people injuring their kids trying to imitate a stupid YouTube video.

Music:
“Same Time” by Spence

The video is licensed CC-BY-4.0, so share it, remix it, or use it however you like, just give credit where credit is due.

Making Your Own Foam Soap

Mon, 23 Mar 2020 12:29:59 +0000

I have been making my own foam soap for years. Now that we are in the midst of a pandemic, everyone should be washing their hands regularly, but with cleaning supplies being limited, I thought it time make a short video showing how to take a little bit of dish soap, and turn it into a lot of hand soap. One big bottle of dish soap like I show in the video is enough to last my family at least six months of regular hand washing. There are certainly other people who do this, but we should all be sharing information freely in this important time in our history, so pass it around and be safe!

Infants - Poorly Engineered

Sun, 19 Jan 2020 15:29:59 +0000

This is a re-post of something I wrote in 2014 when I was a stay at home dad with my first son.

“From an engineering perspective, infants are poorly designed machines. They have a loud error-fault alarm that’s constantly going off and highly irritating to the operator and coworkers. They must be refueled almost hourly, but the fuel port is poorly designed and often gets backed up, leading to explosive fuel discharge all over the machine and the operator. They spew toxic waste, requiring a catchment basin that must be cleaned and replaced every couple hours to prevent corrosion on the waste port. And they have an easily clogged air-intake manifold that must be constantly monitored to prevent system shut-down. Whoever designed these things should be fired. When is the EPA going to get involved and help find a green alternative to these dirty machines?”

To all the parents our there, stay strong… it gets better!

Kids Kayaking in a Puddle

Sat, 21 Dec 2019 08:43:59 +0000

So what do you do when you have record rainfall, and you are a stay at home dad with two active kids?

Take them kayaking of course… in the field near your apartment. The rain overwhelmed the drainage system in our apartment complex, so the field became a shallow pond. I just threw on my drysuit, put the kids in their snowsuits, and away we went. The “pond” was only about shin-deep, which was great because I could follow them around in case they needed help. We played around for about half an hour, letting them both have several turns, before everyone was cold and it was time to go in. Enjoy :-)

Death, Grief, Suffering, & Euthanasia

Mon, 04 Dec 2017 08:43:59 +0000

My dog died recently after being with me for over twelve years. He died because I had him killed. He was not actively dying of any acute condition, his heart was in good shape, he was not terribly overweight, he was not losing his mental faculties, his olfactory sense was as sharp as ever, and as far as I know, he did not have any malignant cancers. All that being said, he was completely def in one ear and mostly def in the other, his cataracts were so bad that he couldn’t make out faces or even see more than a few meters away, and his arthritis was getting so bad that he could barely walk or take a shit. Def and blind, sure, whatever; but the arthritis was causing him great pain and suffering. The pain medications were no longer effective and his quality of life was decreasing rapidly. I loved that dog like a son, and I made the moral decision to end his suffering. I found a vet who would come to my home, and scheduled his euthanasia for the next day my wife had off work. The vet gave him some medications to take away his pain, then after a few minutes she gave him a lethal dose of barbiturates to gradually stop his breathing and eventually his heart. He died in my arms without any pain or suffering.

Which brings me to the first point of this post: I ended his life because he was in pain, not because he was already dying. I could have extended his life for probably another year or two, but that would have been a selfish act on my part and a disservice to him. I could have picked him up and put him in a wagon to carry him outside several times a day. I could have held him up while he urinated and defecated. I could have cleaned up the inevitable urine and feces when it was so excruciating that he could no longer control his bowels. I could have given him regular baths to clean all the feces out of his hair from where he just laid in it because he could not get up. I could have hand fed him and held his head over a bowl of water so he could drink. He would have accepted my help and suffered until something finally killed him. Being a dog means that he was not aware of his own mortality. He was not aware that there was an alternative to the pain and suffering. I could have kept him alive, in pain, and utterly miserable, but why? I would not be preventing my sorrow, only postponing it. Death sucks, but it’s an inevitability no one can escape. Why would I torture a loved one and prolong their agony just because they had not yet been stricken with a terminal illness? If you have a pet who is suffering, and pain medications are no longer enough, help them out! Let go of the selfish desire to keep them with you and say goodbye.

Fortunately, the law allows a person to kill their dog whenever they see fit. I wish we would have been together longer, but at a certain point it became cruel to keep him alive. The grief is hard to deal with, but the decision to put him down was an easy one. I loved that dog like a son, and when I could no longer take away his pain with medications, I took away his pain with death. He died comfortably, with dignity, in his home, and surrounded by loved ones. We should all be so lucky.

Which brings me to the second point of this post: Why the hell do we not allow euthanasia for people? California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Vermont, and the District of Columbia all have Death with Dignity laws, but how about the other 45 states? How can you claim any sense of morality when you force people to suffer until they finally reach a slow and agonizing death? Hospice helps relieve some of that suffering, but we still force people to wait, prisoners on a sinking ship, until their bodies eventually give up. No one, doctors included, quite knows when a person in hospice will die. Patients have to wait around, in pain, dealing with the fear and uncertainty of an impending death. It’s cruel to the person dying and it’s cruel to their loved ones. When my wife’s grandmother was dying of cancer and had been admitted to hospice, my wife had to endure the anguish of a loved one dying for months, with no certainty of when it might happen. Eventually her grandmother died alone, without any family members able to get there in time. That’s just wrong! We as a society have determined it more humane to euthanize an animal rather than allow it to suffer a slow and agonizing death. Why then is it illegal for a human to end their own suffering? The only justifications are based on religion, which has no place in law or government.

So to the state lawmakers in Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming: by not taking action to correct the law, you are directly responsible for the pain and suffering inflicted on terminally ill patients in your state. Your lifetime risk of dying of cancer is 1 in 4. Do you really want you or your loved ones to die a slow painful death? Do the right thing and make it legal in all 50 states.

Linux Photo Editing Workflow

Thu, 12 Dec 2013 08:43:59 +0000

This is an archive of a post from my previous website. I am reposting it here with some updates.

Photography is a hobby for me, but like most of my hobbies, I am not one to skim the surface. I tend to learn as much as I can to become proficient in those things I enjoy. While not an expert in all things photography related, I have had many conversations about cameras, techniques, photo editing, and anything else photography related. I am also a bit of a Linux geek. I have even talked to a number of people about Linux as it relates to photography, but that is nothing compared to the amount of time I have spent on Google, on forums, or talking to other Linux geeks trying to figure out how to make things work properly. I thought it was about time I gave back to the community by placing some of my solutions online where they would be searchable by other photographers using or considering a switch over to Linux. When I first started trying to use Linux for my photography, I ran into many problems, but it has gotten much easier to work with as the OS has matured. Most of my experience has been with Debian based OS’s, so my advice will be understandably Ubuntu/Linux Mint-centric, but most of this should still be applicable to Debian, Fedora, openSUSE, Arch Linux, Gentoo, or whatever Linux flavor you prefer. Many of the programs I recommend have also gone cross-platform, so much of this advice will be applicable to Windows and Mac users as well.

My Linux story:

First a little background… I am not a super computer geek. I am not a programmer and I rarely write code. I can work with the command line if I need to or have a good reason to, but I generally prefer a nice GUI. I am, however, open to trying new things. A friend in college first turned me on to Linux in late 2003. Windows 95 was sucking pretty bad (was it ever good), and my friend offered to install Fedora Core 1/Red Hat 9 for me. We backed up all my files to an external HDD (not too hard since I only had a few Gigs of data at the time), installed the new OS, put all my files back on my computer, and I was a happy camper.

A couple years later I got a new computer and it came with Windows XP. At the time, I had no experience installing Linux by myself, and it was more hassle to wipe the computer and start over than to just use Windows, so I stuck with what I had. I upgraded computers again, and again just used what it came with. Well, as is inevitable with windows, the spyware, Trojans, and viruses stacked up, and my computer screeched to a halt. It was early 2008 and one of my roommates at the time was running Ubuntu on his laptop. He said I should give it a try, and having someone else around who was knowledgeable in the OS, I decided to give it a go. I downloaded the Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) ISO, burned it to a CD, backed up my files, and said F.U. to Windows. I played with it for a couple months until 8.04 (Hardy Heron) came out, did a clean install, and rocked that for a while.

It was around this time, I started to get into photography. I was having some issues with not being able find the programs I needed to manipulate the images the way that I wanted. I was also having trouble getting dual-screens to work with the 26″ monitor I had bought for photo-editing, which was a bit of a deal-breaker, so I sold that computer and got an iBook G4 because I heard they were great for photo editing (also, one of my other roommates who repaired Mac laptops gave me a good deal). After using OS-X for a few months and having nothing but frustration, I decided to go back to Linux. I sold the G4, bought another laptop, wiped Windows and installed Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex). Fortunately 8.10 included some critical updates, and I was able to get the dual-monitors working (after plenty of frustration of course), so I was in business. Since that time, I have built numerous computers, installed numerous variations of Ubuntu/Debian/Mint, tried more programs than I can remember, and learned many lessons along the way.

When to upgrade your OS:

The first lesson I would like to stress as a photographer is don’t be in a rush to try to latest-greatest version of the OS. Unless you have a specific reason to upgrade (such as a program that is only available for the latest OS), then stick with the LTS releases, and upgrade every two years instead of every six months. Your computer is a tool that you want to use to edit photos, not something you want to spend all your time upgrading. Once you have a good workflow, you can focus on the art without having to learn the technical details of how to do what you want. Any time you update your OS or your photo-editing programs, there is always a chance that something will break. It’s better to stick with what you have than to spend time fixing it, or even worse, having to change your work-flow because some program you use no longer works properly and you have to find a different program for that purpose. By all means, do the security updates and update those programs that interact with the web (browser, email, ftp client, etc.), but unless it’s broken, leave it alone.

Which version of the Linux OS:

~~I am currently running Linux Mint 13 MATE Edition (which is based on Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin).~~ I switched over to Mint because I hate the Unity desktop environment and Gnome 3 shell only sucks marginally less IMHO. Linux Mint absorbed the Gnome 2 project under the new title of “MATE” and is maintaining and updating that desktop environment, for which many people are grateful. While it is nice not having to install all the codecs and such every time you install a new OS, the main reason I went to Mint is the Gnome 2 desktop. This comes with its own issues, and I will probably be forced to move to Gnome 3 eventually, but it’s working for now, so I’ll take it. If you don’t mind Gnome 3 shell or actually like Unity [gasp], then Ubuntu is a perfectly good option. 2017 update: apparently I am not the only one who thinks Unity sucks hard. Looks like Ubuntu is abandoning Unity in favor of Gnome 3, which is exactly what Mint did years ago. Debian or LMDE are great for people who need a very stable OS or have a computer with limited resources such as a netbook, but as a photographer, sometimes you need programs or libraries that are not available in the Debian repositories, so that has the potential to cause problems. There are any number of other Linux OS’s out there (all good in their own ways), but not having much experience with any of them as they relate to photography, I will avoid further comment and leave you to try whatever you want (but that’s the nice thing about open source – you have the ability to try anything you want, and it’s all free :-)

2017 update: now running Mint 17.3 Cinnamon on my photo-editing machine and it’s been great. I switched over from MATE to Cinnamon a couple years ago, and everything just seems to work better with Cinnamon. I must also commend the Mint Development Team for moving to LTS-only releases. No one wants to be forced to upgrade their OS every six months.

Calibrating your monitor:

One of the first things you are going to want to do as a photographer is to calibrate your monitor. You will need some hardware for this, but fortunately you can get that hardware for a much better deal than you could less than a decade ago. Color calibration tools used to cost several hundred dollars, but there are now several good options at reasonable prices. Personally, I have a Pantone Huey because it was the only reasonably priced option available when I started all this, but there are several good options out there these days that should work fine with Linux. As far as software, if you are running Gnome 3, you can use Gnome Color Manager to create an ICC profile for your monitor-videocard combination. Before Ubuntu moved away from Gnome 2, it used to work flawlessly, but under MATE I had issues with it. 2017 update: Gnome Color Manager seems to work flawlessly under the Cinnamon desktop. There is also another option called ~~DispcalGUI~~ DisplayCal which I have used before and had success with. 2017 update: in addition to changing the name, it looks like the program has matured significantly, so if GCM doesn’t work for some reason, defintiely give DisplayCal a shot. You also have the option of using the back-end for both these programs directly: ArgyllCMS. Argyll is cross-platform, so if you are moving from Mac or Windows, there is a good chance you have already used this program. All these programs should be available under your distro’s repositories, but if not or you need a different version, they are easy enough to find. The third option, if you are running a dual-boot machine, is to simply calibrate the monitor under your other OS and import the ICC profile into Linux. However you decide to do it, once you have your monitor properly calibrated, you should not have to re-calibrate for some time. The color response on monitors can change over time (its a hardware problem, not a software problem), so it’s generally recommended that you re-calibrate every so often… when you upgrade your OS every two years or so seems to be a good time.

Getting photos off your cards:

As a photographer, you are probably all too familiar with downloading the photos off your SD or CF cards before you start sorting and editing. This can either be a simple or complicated task depending on how you go about it. One program that I use is Rapid Photo Downloader. I initially tried this program because I ran across it and thought “why not?” I did not think much of it at the time, but now I don’t know how I managed without it. This program allows you to download all the files from your cards, re-name them using any number of criteria, save them to a folder, and many other abilities as well. It simply automates an entire process, saving you time and effort from something so mundane. I rename using date and time so that my photos get organized chronologically, even if I am using two cameras. I also have it unmount the card once it is done, which is a nice feature, especially if you have several cards you need to download from, it just saves you one more step. There are too many features to list here, but suffice to say that I am a big fan of this program and highly recommend it to anyone using a digital camera.

Sorting your photos:

As any photographer knows, sorting through all the crap to find the good images is one of the most time-consuming tasks. There are any number of programs available for this (including gThumb, Geeqie, F-spot, etc.), ~~but the one I use is FastStone Image Viewer.~~ It is a program I found back in my windows days (I think I first started using it in version 1.x), and I still have not found anything that matches the functionality that this provides for the purposes of sorting through all your photos. It is a Windows program (freeware, but not open-source), but every version I have tried runs just fine under every version of WINE I have ever tried, so I don’t feel bad for including it here. I can easily view and scroll through my RAW images using the arrow keys on they keyboard, view images full-screen by pressing the Enter/Return key (you can scroll through images in full-screen view), and delete images by simply pressing the Delete key (even in full-screen view). Using this program, I can sort through a couple hundred images in only a few minutes, easily deleting all the images that are out of focus or just plain crap. With subsequent passes, by toggling back and forth between photos that are similar to each other, I pick the best few images and delete the inferior ones. In very little time, I can have a large collection of photos narrowed down to just the best ones before I even start messing with them. There are some glitches here and there, and not everything works flawlessly under WINE, but for the simple purpose of sorting though your RAW photos, it’s fantastic. It works just fine on Linux via WINE, and it will obviously work on Windows, but considering that WINE is also available for OS-X, I think this is a tool that every photographer would benefit from, regardless of what OS you are using. I am hopeful that one of the native Linux programs can eventually provide the same functionality, but for now this works just fine.

2017 Update: I finally found a native Linux application for sorting photos! XnView MP is a fantastic program that does essentially the same thing that FastStone I.V. did, but without all the glitches associated with running under WINE. It too is FreeWare (for private, educational, or non-profit use), not Open Source, but I’ll take it. If you make money with your photography, you need to buy a license, but the licenses are relatively cheap. It’s also available in Linux, Mac, or Windows, so you have no excuses. The ability to scroll through RAW photos, in full-screen mode, using the arrow keys, and easily delete the crap photos is just essential for a good workflow. This fits the bill perfectly!

Adjusting your Photos:

These are probably the programs that photographers are most familiar with. These are the Lightroom-type programs for adjusting the values on your raw files before you export to JPG/PNG/TIF. Unfortunately the good folks at Adobe like to embrace their inner duchebag by refusing to port Lightroom (or Photoshop) to Linux, so that is not an option unless you can get it to run under WINE, on a virtual Windows machine, or on a dual boot machine. You could also try installing the software that came with your camera under WINE, but this is usually pretty buggy. I shoot with Canon, and for years I used an older version of Digital Photo Professional that came with my Rebel XTI because it still worked better than anything at the time, but I have since moved to native applications because they are more stable. I tried using UFRaw (it also works as a plugin for GIMP) for a while, but at the time, the adjustments were not all that great, so I looked elsewhere. I’m sure it has improved (that’s what open-source does after all), but I have found other programs I like better and see no reason to change. One program worth mentioning, even though it is closed-source and will cost you money, is Corel AfterShot Pro (formerly Bibble Pro). I started using this after I moved away from Digital Photo Professional, and it seems pretty good ~~(I still use it)~~, but considering the quality of some of the open-source options these days, it might not be worth the money when you can get something comparable for free (I would like to commend them for porting it to Linux though). Another option that I tried way back in its infancy and seemed pretty promising is RAW Studio. I heard that it has come a long way, but have not tried it, so I can’t comment further. The program I currently use is RAW Therapee. This program used to be closed-source until the source-code was released under the GPL in 2010, and has since become the favorite of many photographers on all OS’s. I can highly recommend this program, regardless of what OS you are running (since it runs on all of them). All these open-source programs should be available under your distro’s repository. With several good open-source options, there is little reason to go with a closed-source program for adjusting your RAW images. Adobe Lightroom can suck it.

More advanced image manipulation:

Like I said earlier, you are not going to find Adobe Photoshop running well on Linux under WINE, so unless you have a dual-boot machine, you are better off with some of the native options. The go-to program in Linux for more advanced photo editing is typically the GIMP. It does most everything you need it to, and if it doesn’t, there is probably a plugin that does. It’s been around forever, simply because it’s such a great program and there’s not much else like it. It’s also cross-platform, so you can use it on every OS. Unfortunately GIMP can only handle 8-bit images, so if you really need to work with 16-bit or greater, a program to consider is CinePaint. While not as mature as GIMP, it is still a great program and well worth having around. Getting it installed and working can be a bit challenging (especially finding all the dependencies), but once you do it works well. 2017 Update: As of version 2.9.2 (released 2015) GIMP now supports greater color depth, so you can use 8, 16, 32 (32 is native), or even 64 bit for those scientists analyzing telescope data. Since CinePaint was essentially just a fork of GIMP with greater color depth, there’s really no reason to use CinePaint anymore.

For stacking images from a bracketed exposure, you should check out Luminance HDR (formerly QTPFSGUI). It works well and gives you many options in both creating the HDR and tone-mapping it back into a LDR image, which is what gives you the cool effects. 2017 Update: It now supports RAW formats, so you don’t have to convert into TIFF first, which will both save you a step and give you higher quality finished images.

If you need to stitch some photos, edit perspectives, or do some focus stacking, your tool of choice is going to be Hugin. You can stitch vertically, horizontally, or even tile several images to make one large one. You can do perspective corrections such as to remove or simulate a fisheye effect, give a tilt-shift effect, or even skew your photos for artistic effect. If you are into macro photography, you are going to love the ability to focus-stack your images, giving a final image with the entire subject in focus where you might normally only get 0.1mm DOF. There is also a program called Enfuse, which can be used through Hugin, and allows for some HDR-like effects without actually creating an HDR. I’m sure there are many other good programs I’m missing, but these are my typical bread-and-butter.

Watermarks, resizing, reformatting, etc.:

Once you have your images the way you want them, then comes the tedious task of re-formatting them, re-sizing them, adding watermarks, and applying any kind of boarders or effects you might want before you post them on the web, print them, send them to clients, or whatever you are going to do with the photos… or you could just use Phatch. Phatch is a nice simple program that does all that stuff that would have taken you hours to do to each individual photo and does it with just a couple mouse clicks. You can save different action lists for everything you might conceivably want to do to your photos, then all you have to do is open the appropriate action list, select a folder or file(s) you want converted/watermarked/etc., and it does everything for you, even saving them in a sub-folder to keep you nice and organized. This program uses quite a few powerful command-line tools as the back-end, but makes them all nice and user friendly with an ultra-simple GUI. I started using it back when Stani was first developing it and you had to get it though his PPA, but it is now a mature program and widely available in the main repositories. It is also cross-platform, so you can use it on any computer, regardless of OS. I really can’t say enough good things about this program, and if you aren’t already using it, you are missing out.

Backing up your files:

Now of course spending all this time editing your photos would not be much use without a good backup solution to make sure you still have a copy if when your hard-drive dies. There are numerous fantastic backup solutions available for Linux, but the one I use the most is Grsync. It is simply a user friendly front-end for the powerful back-end command line tool rsync. It works on a file-system-level, so it’s easy to back up your whole computer, just the folder with all your photos, or backup one external HDD to another HDD. It’s also incremental, so you can easily do a quick backup after every photo-editing session, and unlike drag-and-drop, it won’t be a major pain if there is an error midway through. Looks like it is now cross-platform too, so that is good news for the Mac and Windows users as well.

That’s about it. Please let me know if there are any programs you particularly like using in your photo-editing routine, or if you have any suggestions.

Cyclops Caving

Mon, 01 Oct 2012 08:43:59 +0000

This is an archive of a post from my previous website. I am reposting it here for posterity.

So it’s been over two years since my last post. Suffice to say that I have not been doing a lot of photography the past couple years, and what little I have done, I have not gotten around to posting. I did however, take a photo trip into Cyclops earlier this year.

Cyclops is a wild cave in Southwest Virginia that a group of us cavers have been exploring and surveying for several years now. The cave contains well over 4 miles of surveyed passage, with a vertical extent of over 250 feet. Trips into the cave tend to be long, often lasting 12-15 hours. The entrance to the cave is tight and difficult, requiring full vertical gear and a lot of effort to get into and out of. For a caver in good shape, just getting into the main section of the cave requires close to an hour of crawling, squeezing, and rappelling, including eight different drops between 20 and 40 feet in mud like cookie dough. Getting out of the cave easily takes twice as long because you’re already tired, it’s all up hill, and climbing muddy ropes sucks.

At this point I should pause and mention a couple things about cave photography. One challenge is that, other than the very entrance, there is no light in a cave. I’m not talking low light, or even like night time, I’m talking NO LIGHT! Any light that enters the camera to create an image is going to come from your light-sources. Some people prefer strobes, other people use bright lights over a longer exposure, while others use some combination there of. The difficulty is further compounded by the dark browns and grays found in caves that tend to absorb most of the light you shine at them. Whatever light-sources you chose, in large passages, it’s going to take a lot of light to fully illuminate the room. This usually means a lot of strobes or lights, and a lot of batteries to power them.

I should also mention that caves tend to be very hard on gear. They are muddy, wet, dusty, humid, and full of hard, often sharp rocks. Traveling through caves often requires climbing, crawling, squeezing through tight spots, and sloshing through water and mud. All the gear we take into the cave must be able to withstand the abuse we put it through, and even then, it tends to wear out quicker than we would like. Camera gear is simply not made to stand up to a cave environment, so we need something to put the camera in that can take the abuse while keeping the camera safe… Enter the Otter/Pelican Box! Unfortunately, these durable waterproof boxes are fairly bulky, making them less than fun to haul through constricted passages. With all this in mind, it’s little wonder that lugging camera gear into and out of the entrance series is usually pretty low on the priority list unless it’s a dedicated photo trip.

Well, earlier this year there was a request to get some photos of the lower sections of the cave that had never been photographed before. I volunteered, found two ~~suckers~~ courageous gentlemen to help me lug all the strobes and batteries, and we set a date of March 3rd.

Zeb and I arrived the night before to find the ground fully saturated and the rain still pouring. Zeb’s truck got stuck in the mud, but we were fortunate enough to not get blown away by one of the many tornadoes that caused so much devastation that night.

The next morning, we met up with Aaron, got gear sorted, and after getting Zeb’s truck un-stuck (thanks Wes), we finally got into the cave about lunch time. We made good time getting into the cave and were into the main passage in just about an hour. After taking some time to rest and have a snack, we got about the business of taking some pictures. For the first shot, we photographed the fountain – a fast drip/waterfall in the middle of a 40′ tall dome that is creating some nice stalagmites. I used three powerful strobes for this shot – two to the right of the camera, and one directly under the fountain in a large waterproof bag.

Once I was satisfied with the first shot, we headed down into a side passage to get some shots of a small waterfall, which, after so much rain over night, was flowing pretty well. This shot included one strobe to the lower right of the camera, and one strobe on a human light-stand (Zeb) to the upper left.

We then turned around and got another shot in the low passage down stream of the waterfall. This was shot with one strobe further down the passage, pointing back upstream, and another strobe above and to the left of the camera.

After that, we packed up the photo gear and headed for the “Rapture River.” We climbed up to “Prometheus Junction,” took a left, headed down through some enormous bore-hole and took another left into a crawling passage. After about 100m of crawling and climbing through some tight passages and canyons, we started to hear the roar of the “Rapture River” We came out to the edge, clipped into the safety line and rigged in for our 30-40′ rappel into the canyon. Once we reached the bottom, we found a stream passage that was well above normal flow… like 20x what it had been last time I was there. After clipping into the safety line for a quick peek over the lip of the waterfall, we determined that rappelling off the next drop would be a great way to get hypothermia and die, so we decided to head upstream to capture what we could. We got to the upstream sump and got a picture there. For this photo, I used two strobes to the right of the camera, one strobe underneath the camera, and some light painting with my homemade 2000 Lumen headlamp to fill in the dark spots.

We then turned around and shot behind us looking down the canyon. I took this shot using one strobe on top of the rock next to Zeb, one down the passage pointing back upstream, one under the camera, one on a human light-stand (Aaron) to the left of the camera, and my headlamp to fill in a couple shadows.

We then headed downstream to capture a nice drip formation. This was shot with a strobe on a human light-stand (Zeb) down the passage pointing back upstream, two strobe to the left of the camera pointing up and down, and some light painting for the shadows.

We then got a couple shots from the lip of the waterfall, pointing back upstream with Aaron dangling on rope. For this shot I used two strobes up the passage pointing back downstream, one on a ledge to the right of the camera, one in my left hand above and to the left of the camera, and using my headlamp for some fill. All this while dangling off the edge of the drop with a camera in one hand and a strobe in the other. It was a tricky shot, but a fast shutter speed and having plenty of strobes made it work.

The next two shots are pointing downstream at the drop. Aaron is on rope just out of frame, pointing a strobe (in a waterproof bag) back up at the lip. Zeb is holding another strobe, pointed back down the drop, and there are strobes to either side of the camera. Again, the camera is handheld with a fast shutter speed.

Having captured about as much of the “Rapture River” as we could considering the water level, we packed up the camera gear and started climbing out of the canyon. We made our way back to the borehole and decided to use all the strobes to light up the world for one last shot before we headed to the surface. This shot used all six strobes that we brought, as well as all of our headlamps. I used a radio shutter release so we could all get in the picture. I’ll let you figure out where all the strobes are in the picture.

Once we finally got tired of climbing all over the passage to adjust the strobes, we called it good and packed up the photo gear. We started our muddy journey back to the surface, and within a couple hours, we were all safely back at the cars and changing into clean clothes.

Thanks to Zeb and Aaron for all their help. You guys rock!

P.S. Click here to snipe your used gear on flea-bay: Auction Sniper

Throwing Water

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 08:43:59 +0000

This is an archive of a post I did some time ago on my old website. I am reposting it here so it will live on. Enjoy!

So it has been a long time since my last post… my apologies. I have been working hard on editing my enormous backlog of photos. I had literally thousands of photos that needed to be sorted out, not to mention all the post-production work. If you look through my galleries, you will notice that there are almost twice as many galleries as there were before. Please check them out if you are so inclined. I am finally done with most of my backlog, and seeing as it has been a while since my last serious photo shoot (way too long in fact), I thought I would dive back in with something fun and highly experimental.

I had been experimenting in the past with taking pictures of water in mid-air. I put my camera on a tripod with my 70-200mm (f/4 L) set to 200mm so I could set the camera as far away from the splashing water as possible. I then set up a tripod of bamboo to serve as a target to throw the water over (otherwise you would have difficulty getting anything in focus). I set a high shutter speed and as narrow an F-stop as I could given the available light (for better depth of field) to try and capture the water in sharp detail. I had taken many pictures that I thought were great at the time (it’s been over a year), but after looking back through them with a now more critical eye, I decided none of them were good enough.

Yesterday I decided it was time to really give it a go and see what I could come up with. I got my camera all set up on a tripod just inside the doorway to the building and clamped a 2×4 to the staircase railing outside to serve as my target. Unlike last time when I used a cable release, this time I used one of my radio-triggers inside a ziplock bag, giving me freedom of movement and protecting my expensive gear from the water. After changing into a bathing suit, I spent the majority of the day using a pint-jar to throw water at the end of a 2×4, much to the confusion of all the bystanders. After throwing jars full of water for hours on end, and filling up an 8GB memory card, the sun (my light source) was setting and I was getting pretty hungry, so I decided to call it a day.

After eating dinner, I was looking at the images I had taken, and really wanted more contrast. I liked the images, but in many of them, the sky was distracting from the subject matter. I decided I would throw some more water, but this time use a strobe to illuminate the water, giving me a completely black background and highlighting the subject. I set up my camera as before and clamped the 2×4 to the railing. I then went about creating a Frankenstein lighting contraption that I could clamp to the door. With one of my strobes, a radio trigger, a piece of wood, a few screws, an enormous zip-lock bag, some ball-bungees, and some quick-grip clamps, I made my super professional-looking “waterproof clip light”… awesome. After several more hours of throwing water at the end of the 2×4 and a now sore back, I had amassed another 4GB of images. Counting the number of buckets of water I used over the course of the day, I figure I threw over 100 gallons of water at the end of a 2×4… anything for art, right?

Coming back to my studio today, I went about the task of sorting and post-production, narrowing 1038 images down to 19 of my favorites – such is to be expected when you have such an experimental process. While the day and night images have decidedly different looks, I think the feel of the images is similar, and so I am including them all in the same series. I call the series “Throwing Water”. Let me know what you think.

Thanks.

Bell-Mouth Spillway Exploration

Mon, 19 Apr 2010 08:43:59 +0000

This is an archive of a post from my previous website. It was the most popular post I ever did, and was the 5th ranked result when searching “bell-mouth spillway” on Google, as well as containing some of the first photos you see when doing a Google image search. With that in mind, I am reposting it here so it will live on. Enjoy!

Before I get into this story, let me give you a little background. There is an entire group of people out there (I happen to be one of them) who call themselves “Urban Explorers.” We get a thrill from checking out the hidden-away, man-made structures that most people never get the chance to see. From abandoned buildings, to storm drains, and everything in between, we enjoy finding out more about what is and what once was by exploring the remains of forgotten human accomplishments. Now don’t get us confused with the punks that vandalise abandoned buildings. Sure, what we do might be viewed by some as trespassing, but our purpose is simply one of innocent exploration, and once we leave, we leave with everything the same as when we arrived. Just like in other outdoor sports that I participate in such as hiking, kayaking, or caving, real Urban Explorers try to practice responsible Leave No Trace Ethics. As we say “Take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints, & kill nothing but time.” We do it purely for the exploration and discovery that comes from seeking out such places. With that said, please read on.

I should have posted this some time ago, but I have been pretty overwhelmed with work and not gotten a chance to finish editing the pictures until now. A while back, me and a group of other Urban Explorers ventured into the depths of a bell-mouth spillway. What is a bell-mouth spillway you might ask? It’s a giant concrete structure forming a hole in the ground. Check it out on the good old Wikipedia here:

Bell-Mouth Spillways on Wikipedia

So after meeting up that morning and driving out to the location (and no, I’m not going to tell you where it is), we got all geared up and made our way to the edge of this behemoth. most people just decided to use a boat and paddle into it from the bottom, but three of us with vertical experience decided to rappel into it from the top. After rigging ropes, we got over the lip and started rappelling in from opposite sides. I of course took my camera with me, locking off my rappel rack and taking pictures every 50′ or so. How deep was this thing? Well, my rope is 360′ long and there was only about 30′ of rope at the bottom. After taking into account some rope length for rigging and going over the lip, I would estimate it was right around 300′ deep. Not too shabby. We were clearly not the first people to rappel into this thing… not only were there bolt anchors in both sides of the spillway, but there were also rope grooves worn into the concrete lip just above the bottom. I see these types of grooves pretty often in caves where the rope has widdled its way through the stone, but I think this was my first time seeing them in concrete.

So we get to the bottom, get off rope, and start exploring this huge tunnel in the earth. I would estimate the diameter of the tube at right around 30′ in most places. This thing is seriously huge! Somewhere near the middle of the tunnel, there is a junction where the auxiliary dam release comes in from the side. After taking some pictures at the junction, we head up the junction tunnel about 100′ to where the auxiliary release tubes are. There is a massive 15′ tall concrete barricade between us and the release tubes, so we go about trying to find a way to get over. We agree that using any kind of grappling hook risks damaging something (which would both be against our ethic, and pretty stupid when in front of release valves at the bottom of a 250′ lake), so we set about trying to make some sort of rigid structure to climb over with. We find some metal pipes (they look like hand rails) within the debris in the main tunnel and bring them back to the barricade. After several failed attempts, we put together a Dr. Seuss looking ladder-type-thing, and using my spider-monkey skills, I manage to climb to the top. After getting some rope and vertical gear thrown up to me, we get a few more people up top and take some pictures. The scene is just spooky with water hissing out of the rivets of the release tubes from every angle due to the immense pressure it’s holding back (a quick calculation reveals over eight atmospheres of pressure!).

After getting some good pictures near the release tubes, we head back out to the main chamber to facilitate our exit. Before we go, I decide to take some pictures of the tunnel in both directions to later process using HDR (high dynamic range). Everyone else (including my dog Taro) decides to takes the boat out the bottom and walk up to the top. Not wanting to pass up the opportunity to climb a perfectly good rope, I decide to climb back out the way I came in. The drip-line was brutal and by the time I got up the first 80′ or so, I was already soaking wet. Whatever, I don’t believe in misadventure… only adventure :-) After 300′ of rope climbing, I was at the top and ready to de-rig. All in a good day’s work.

Here are some pictures from that day:

Asheville Ice-House Photo Shoot

Wed, 07 Apr 2010 08:43:59 +0000

This is an archive of a post from my previous website. I am reposting it here for posterity.

OK, so I’m a photographer. I shoot fine art nudes. As a result I am always looking for people to model. Last week, I was fortunate enough to find someone interested in modeling.

I had recently discovered a fantastic abandoned building here in Asheville. I think it was an old ice house or something. Most of the rooms were insulated with layers of cork and Styrofoam. There were huge refrigeration units that once carried refrigerant up to the cold storage rooms. I’m not sure how long the place has been abandoned, but there are plants growing inside the building, walls are falling down, some of the floors have fallen through, and you can pretty much enter from any side of the building. Perhaps not the safest place for a photo shoot, but I’m not a person adverse to a little danger, and besides, the place is visually stunning.

So I meet up with the guy who had agreed to model, we drive to the building, and I walk around for a while trying to decide on the first shoot. I decide to get him in a window/portal of some kind and shoot back into the large room. I want a dramatic look, so I throw a strobe directly behind him as a back-light, rigged up with a radio trigger. I decide to shoot with my 100mm f/2.8 macro because I just love how sharp that lens is.

Once I get the images I want, we start looking for other great visual backdrops that I can juxtapose a human form against. The building is so complicated and there are so many options, that I don’t have a hard time finding great landscapes, but rather have a hard time deciding which ones to shoot in the limited time my model has available. We shoot several more scenes, but he’s on a schedule so we have to stop with just a few images. I pack up all my gear and we part ways.

A couple days later I am delighted to get a call from my model. He says he had fun at the last shoot and would like to model again. I have an unpredictable schedule, so of course I try to make things happen as soon as possible. Within a couple hours, I meet him back at the ice-house and we get ready for another shoot.

I start by re-shooting an image I did not quite get to my liking the first time. The light is harsh and the shadows dark, so I bracket my exposures in hopes of making a good HDR to level everything out. I work on a couple shots, trying some different ideas until I’m convinced that I have the images I want.

I decide I want to move upstairs into some of the old refrigerated rooms. Of course there are no windows so the rooms are dark, cold, wet, and of course dirty as hell. I do allot of cave photography (or at least I did before White Nose Syndrome) so I am used to shooting in totally dark environments. On the one hand, you can’t see what you are doing, you are entirely reliant on your own lighting, and you have to use a laser to get the camera to focus, but on the other hand, you can completely change the way things look by how you set up your lighting.

After several shots in the large room and managing to not get my model injured, I decide to shoot down one of the hallways. It’s filled with boards and old cork insulation, but at the end of the hallway, there is a chair facing the wall… damn creepy. I set up my lights, get him to sit in the chair, take a few shots, and one of my strobes decides to stop working 😥 My model has other obligations anyways, so we call it a day.

Over all it was a pretty successful shoot. The model had fun, I got some great images, and no one got injured or arrested for trespassing.