Frankfort 2022: Photos

 

An evening double rainbow captured with a fisheye lens. The second rainbow is hard to see - it's above the more visible one. 

A spider whose web was near one of the doors to the condo we stayed in. This was taken with a macro lens. 

While were in town, I signed a ten-year lease for these posts in Lake Betsie. The ropes are already attached, now all I need is a boat.

Photo memories from Frankfort aren't complete without a shot of the iconic lighthouse. 

Actually, this is the lighthouse.

One evening, we had a very silvery sunset. It was not what we expected to see, but it was very pretty in its own right.

On the last night, we had the best sunset of the trip, with the trademark orange colors.

Hummingbirds

 

We have a few hummingbirds that are regular visitors to the backyard feeder. 

A wide aperture doomed some of these hummingbird bodies to not be completely in focus, and I'll work on that next time. I was aware that I was shooting wide open, and knew this might happen, but for some of the shots, I needed the light to get a faster shutter speed. It's all about tradeoffs. (See the Wikipedia article on "depth of field" for more information on how aperture impacts how much of a subject is in focus.) 

All images were taken with an Olympus E-M1 Mark II with the 60mm f/2.8 lens. The camera was on a tripod between 2-3 feet from the feeder, and I tripped the shutter with my phone, which was connected via a wi-fi signal to the camera. 

FStoppers Article Titles

 Like many photographers, I regularly check out the Fstoppers website. It contains a wide variety of content for amateurs and professionals alike. 

During the pandemic, I've come up with some titles for imaginary Fstoppers articles that sound almost like real ones, and what's shown below is my final list. 

Fstoppers (Fake) Articles

Is the Sony E PZ 18–110 mm F4 G OSS  the Best Cheese Portrait Lens? 

7 Mistakes Photographers Make When Starting Fights on Airplanes

What Makes a Good Mud Photo? 

Three Tips for Using Off-camera Lighting During Tornadoes

Why You Should Be Using Extension Tubes for Landscape Photos

Creamed Corn Photographer Shares Her Tips

Using a 20-pound Sack of Rice to Save Your Camera After a Downpour

Behind the Scenes at a Piano Tuning Shoot

Should You Use Bar Soap to Clean Your Lenses?

Improving Low-Light Photography By Adding Light

Adobe Announces Discount Photoshop Version That Only Allows Actions Used in YouTube "How To Select Hair" Videos.

A Look At the New Fujifilm 1mm Hyperfisheye Lens

Using a Long Stick to Get A Drone off Your Roof

How To Remove Skin Blemishes With Windows Notepad

This Is An Article about Micro Four Thirds Being Dead Intended to Infuriate Micro Four Thirds Users And Drive Comments

The New iPhone Rumored to Have 11 Cameras And No Longer Capable of Calling People

All Of Your Photo Equipment Should Have Those Peak Design Red Disk Thingies Hanging Off Them

Which Is Better, Red or Blue? 

OM Systems Announces It's Not Legal to Use Olympus E-M1X On Anything Other Than BIF or Motorcycle Races

12 Things I Wish I Had Known Before I Started Stealing Film Cameras in the 1980s

Make Your Compositions Better By Leaving the Lens Cap On

Should I Stop Using Photoshop And Start Using Microsoft Paint 3D? 

A Beginner's Guide To Alcohol Flasks That Look Like Binoculars

FStoppers Reviews PetaPixel

6 Reasons Why You Should Always Do Free Work as a Photographer

6 Reasons Why You Should Never Do Free Work as a Photographer

Why I Sold My DSLR And Bought a Table Saw

How Not To Photograph a High School Football Team's Car Wash Fundraiser

Using a Tripod To Carefully Nudge Something Off A High Shelf

Traveling Light: The 32 Large Things You Should Always Have With You

If You Could Only Have One Lens, Would It Be An AF-S NIKKOR 80-400mm f/4.5-5.6 G ED VR?

What I Learned When I Listened To The Person I Was Photographing In A Thunderstorm

I Smashed My Mirrorless Camera With a Hammer And Never Looked Back

Super B(ow)logging Books

Here are some books that I've read in the last few years that were notable. Read one, or read them all!

Every Day is for the Thief
Teju Cole

A bittersweet homecoming to Nigeria for the narrator, who reconnects with people from his past, and is frustrated by the ubiquitous local corruption.   

The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World
A.J. Jacobs

I'm not quite done with this book, but it's a winner. The author wants to become smarter, so he buys a complete, printed edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, and reads every word. He shares some of the fun facts that he learns along the way, and shares the times that he attempts to inject his knowledge into everyday social situations. Can he one-up his brainy family members, and impress his coworkers?   

Good Clean Fun: Misadventures in Sawdust at Offerman Woodshop
Nick Offerman

You may know Offerman from the dry-humored characters he plays on TV shows, but he is also a first-class woodworker. He introduces you to his woodshop and his fellow craftspeople therein. His explanation of wood and woodworking tools is terrific. He's as good a writer as he is a comedic actor.

Going Into Town: A Love Letter to New York

Roz Chast

If you read New Yorker magazine, you know Roz Chast. In this book, she's written a guide to New York which is approachable and fun. She gives helpful information about finding streets and does it with her inimitable drawing style. She also wrote Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, a book about her experiences with her aging parents. I read it after dad was already in assisted living, and it made me realize that what we went through with dad was very common. 

A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never do Again: Essays and Arguments
David Foster Wallace

The essays in this book are well-written, and he has some pretty interesting essays about tennis, but the best by far is the one about his experience on a cruise ship (which was supposedly fun).

Fake Love Letters, Forged Telegrams, and Prison Escape Maps: Designing Graphic Props for Filmmaking
Annie Atkins

This is a fun book about the props you see in movies, but often don't really see. Stacks of papers on a desk, or a letter, or money, or tickets. The author explains how they're made, and how they take their job very seriously. 

Photoshop Restoration & Retouching
Katrin Eismann

Not a book you'd probably take to the beach, but a wonderful step-by-step description of using Photoshop to repair and restore digital images of your old photos. Most of the techniques I used to restore dad's military pictures I learned from this book.  

Goliath
Tom Gauld

I mentioned this book on my blog a long time ago, but it's worth mentioning again. My advice is to find all the Tom Gauld books at your library or bookstore, and take them home. His cartoons about books are the best. 

Sleeping Giants
Sylvain Neuvel

A science fiction novel about a very unusual weapon. It's a bit gory in places, but if this weapon was actually found, the story would probably play out in the way the book outlines. 

Through the Looking Glass with Squirrel Garbage and Nachos

 

At first glance, this looks like some archeological artifact from an ancient culture, but it's just something a squirrel left behind. It's about 7/8" long.

It's always time for nachos...

Who is it? 

Football Playoff Special Edition - Go Sports Team!

 

Dad didn't talk much about his service, but I remember his saying he'd finished first in his class in Engineer School in Eta Jima, Japan. 

NFL Prognostication

Going into today’s game, the L.A. Rams are 13-5. If they beat the Tampa Bay Bucs, they’ll be in the conference final. Matthew Stafford is finally getting the season he’s waited for. On the other hand, never bet against Tom Brady, no matter how old he gets. My prediction: The Rams' Aaron Donald  sacks Tom Brady with a clean hit, Brady is injured, and Matthew Stafford is traded to the Bucs at halftime, leading them to a win and an eventual Super Bowl title, while Aaron Donald and the rest of the Rams wonder what the heck just happened.

Fun Stuff

Atlas Obscura has a fun website that celebrates unique and unusual locations all over the globe. Here’s their list of such sites in Michigan. Time for a road trip! 

My dad had a Smothers Brothers album with this song on it, which I thought was hilarious. The lead-up to the song is brilliant. Interestingly, it looks to me like Shel Silverstein wrote it, but it's hard to tell for sure.

Porch Sittin'

1976, on the porch at S. Grinnell St.

At the time this picture was taken, it’s unlikely my brother had ever played soccer (no kids in Jackson really did back then), and I had not seen the 1976 Dino De Laurentis remake of “King Kong”. I still haven’t seen it. I think it was about a large ape who sets out from his homeland, seeking adventure with his tiny human wife while he pursues a career in New York City real estate.

This picture was created by taking a photo of a negative and using Photoshop to, er, un-negative the image into what's above. There was some damage to the negative which is visible on my forehead. My very crude setup for taking pictures of negatives was OK for a few frames, but it was slow. If I were to want to scan a lot of negatives, I'd buy a device like this instead of doing it with a camera.

After taking the photo of the negative (resting on a piece of glass with a desk lamp behind it), and cropping it. 

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Somebody Get This Guy A Shirt

 

Me at a PET computer, about age 10

In the picture above, I am posing at the computer, and not doing anything useful. This is the Commodore PET computer that lived on a desk in our dining room, then later on a desk in the basement. It had a cassette drive for storage, and later models accepted floppy disks. 

Dad wrote some programs on the PET in BASIC, and computer magazines back in that time had long code listings that you could type into your own computer at home, which he also did. I learned a little BASIC on the PET using a book Dad wrote, but didn't get very good at it until I took a programming class in high school. 

Dad had at least one more later version of the PET, one that had a larger keyboard and a cassette drive that was plugged into the back. This led to more computers in the house, such as a Tandy 1000, an IBM PC clone first sold in 1984. That computer followed me to college and I used it until about 1992. My printer in college was a Gorilla Banana dot-matrix model. 

What's on the Screen?

Dad had a little sign up on the wall above the computer, a shorter version of which I believe is showing on the screen in the picture above. It was a pseudo-German warning to those who might fiddle with the computer instead of taking it seriously. This whimsical prose was easy to find online - it has been enshrined on the "Blinkenlights" Wikipedia page. 

ACHTUNG!

ALLES TURISTEN UND NONTEKNISCHEN LOOKENSPEEPERS!

DAS KOMPUTERMASCHINE IST NICHT FÜR DER GEFINGERPOKEN UND MITTENGRABEN! ODERWISE IST EASY TO SCHNAPPEN DER SPRINGENWERK, BLOWENFUSEN UND POPPENCORKEN MIT SPITZENSPARKEN.

IST NICHT FÜR GEWERKEN BEI DUMMKOPFEN. DER RUBBERNECKEN SIGHTSEEREN KEEPEN DAS COTTONPICKEN HÄNDER IN DAS POCKETS MUSS.

ZO RELAXEN UND WATSCHEN DER BLINKENLICHTEN.