Critter Cam Gets the Ghouls

I set up my critter cam tonight, Halloween, hoping to get a few trick or treaters. But we usually don't get any in our neighborhood. Maybe it is because we turn off all the lights in the house? A couple of ghastly bubble-brain ghouls looking for more than candy showed up. They seem to have noticed the infra-red radiation from the camera. Thankfully they didn't destroy the camera. They certainly had an effect on the image, distorting some of them.

It Is Not Your Grandma's Halloween

A friend and I wanted to have a little fun on a friday night and chose to take a stroll through a Halloween costume store in Kansas. It was fun. Far out costumes, masks and weird statues of demented humans.

You may be asking how come the images look so weird? Well they look normal to me, at least that is what it looked like last night.

Really?

Yes. Maybe we shouldn't have eaten at that famous fast food place that can make you gain lots of weight if you eat only there for 30 days in a row! Maybe it messed up my brain.

Really?

No, just kidding, it really looked like this.

Really?

No, you got me, not really. Just my warped brain and an accident using Photoshop many years ago. Photo lesson time: take any photo, bring it into P.S. and choose the curves tool. Then start pulling the graph around slowly and to the extremes. Amazing things happen. Try it.

Photographers in Movies

Ed Sullivan worked as a columnist in the 1930's. He got the idea for a movie and submitted the story to a Hollywood studio, naming his movie "There Goes My Heart". The movie was made and released in 1938. It starred Fredric March as a reporter trying to get a photo of an heiress played by Virginia Bruce. He misses the chance as she sneaks away from her yacht, wanting to be on her own in the real world. She gets a job at a department store and makes some new friends. One scene shows her at an ice skating rink, where she wins some sort of skating competition. Remember, this is a screwball/romantic comedy, it does not have to make sense. A newspaper photographer still trying to get the photo uses what appears to be a 4x5 Speed Graphic on a tripod to take her photo. An excited spectator knocks his camera over(I think it is Fredric March as the reporter). In the film, the knocked over camera is never shown, just the photographer upset by what happens.

The reporter falls in love with the heiress and at the end they live happily ever after, as they used to say!

See more scenes from movies.

Working For You - Not Appropriate?

I watched local news on WDAF-TV this morning and was surprised to see their slogan, "Working For You", used in a unusual way and maybe inappropriately.
This first shot is what one would expect.

Then in a story following the traffic report it was used this way.

The slogan really worked badly with this story.

And then a story on the Muslim mosque near Ground Zero in NYC.

Then they used a shot of the 9/11 attack to end the story.

Later in the news, this story was shown with the slogan changed.

Here is another local story that just does not seem to work with the slogan.

Later several national stories thankfully did not use the slogan. One example.

Someone in the control room wised up, and didn't go with US Swimmer Dies Working for You

I Am Wireless

I am a wireless photographer. I recently acquired a very cool/nifty Eye-Fi Wireless SD memory card. It has a wi-fi transmitter built in. Insert it in a camera after setting it up on a computer with a wifi router and it will transmit the photos to the computer as they are taken by the camera. Pretty amazing.
I tried it with my Panasonic G1 Micro 4/3 camera and it worked as advertised. I really wanted to use it with my Critter Cam/Trail Cam, so I would receive photos as they are taken for my "Critters on My Deck" gallery. I put the SD card in the critter cam and it worked. Pretty neat. I can be sitting at the computer and watch photos of those raccoons on my deck pop up on the desktop. They are then written to a folder/directory of my choice.

Here I am interviewing crow with a wireless microphone as the critter camera takes my photo and transmits it to my Mac.

Later that evening owl came by to be interviewed, the critter camera switched to infra-view and sent this photo to my Mac.

Here is the Eye-Fi SD card, a reader that comes with it and a SD to CF card adapter that I need to use it in my Nikon D300 camera.

Here is the Eye-Fi SD card being inserted into the Panasonic G1.

This is what a photo from the critter camera looks like as it is being downloaded onto the desktop of my Mac.

If you want to see what is inside the Eye-Fi card go here.

The Peculiar Critter Cam

I loaned my critter cam to a friend who lives in the country near Peculiar, Mo. He said he was sure there were coyotes and other animals roaming around his place. These shots are the first he obtained after placing the camera near a pear tree. Several coyotes and a possum came by during the night.

The "sabre-tooth tiger" appearance of the coyote's eyes was created by the slow shutter speed of the IR Critter Cam. Credit: Creative Critter Cam Pix by Lee Ward.

See more Peculiar pix at my wildlife galleries.

Who Says Wine Has F-Stops?

Two bottles of wine were brought to my attention recently. The first is called Fisheye, by the Fisheye Winery in Soledad, California. A couple of friends pose with the bottle. And yes the photo was made using a fisheye lens! I am not sure of the focal length or f-stop, but it was good. The winery has fun with words, saying: "At Fish Eye, there's no pinkie raising,  Brie eating, wine spitting gobbledygook." and "This wine jumps out of your glass!"

The other bottle was a Leitz wine. I could find no connection with E. Leitz, the maker of the famous Leica camera. This photo was made using a Leica Vario-Elmarit lens! The Josef Leitz estate is located in the town of Rüdesheim in the Rheingau wine-growing region in Germany. It has been run as a part-time business since 1744, and it was only in the 1950's that Josef Leitz concentrated exclusively on wine. No time for taking photos, too busy making wine!

Going by the label this could be F/3.0 wine :~)

Sign of the Times

I shot this one with a bit of luck. I saw it ahead of me as I drove west on 79th Street in Johnson County, Ks. I moved into the left lane and started to catch up with the truck. Just as we both got to Metcalf Ave, the driver of the truck suddenly changed into the right lane and did a right turn on red heading north, but I was blocked from lane changing by another car. I had to wait through a long light, before I could continue west, turn around and turn north on Metcalf. Just a half block north, this truck had pulled into a parking lot. I pulled in, parked and walked to the truck. The driver was sitting in the truck. I told him I thought this was one of the funniest signs. It made my day. He said the company uses the slogan so "people don't forget us".

10.10.10 Still Life

I decided to shoot a still life photo at 10:10:10 AM on 10/10/2010. To make the project a bit more difficult, I chose to use my critter cam to shoot the photos.

I arranged the props on my deck a bit before 10am. Wouldn't you know, the critter cam got this shot of my butt as I put the props in place! Not part of my plans, Jesus seems amused.

I put the last literal prop in place. It is prop camera in my camera collection that was used in a play!

Finally the time came and I triggered the critter cam with a wave of my hand, and it was only 1 sec off, taking the photo at 10:10:11. Damn!

I decided to get a shot of me to prove it really happened, so I sat in the chair before the magic minute was over wondering if the darn critter camera was even working!

I will try for perfection next year, on 11/11/2011!

I saw this on the CBS Sunday Morning show, they thought it interesting enough to talk about 11/11/11 too.

10.10.10

Today is Oct 10, 2010 (10.10.10). Raccoon visited my deck this morning and was noisy knocking over a plastic owl I put out on the deck now and then. It doesn't scare anything away. Raccoon also investigated my critter cam, turning it slightly but not knocking it over. Up close shots of raccoon are out of focus and overexposed.

Sign of the Times

Lawrence, Ks 10/4/2010

See More Sign of the Times