Author Archives: Tom Harold

Sharpening Up

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Take notes, kids. There will be a quiz next Thursday.

Take notes, kids. There will be a quiz next Thursday.

Witness, a moment in time during tonight’s meeting of the Photo Venture Camera Club. Gripping, eh? I thought so. Nothing like a video slide of High Pass Sharpening to get you all up on the edge of your seats. A week ago I went to my first meeting for the club. I’ve been taking pictures for, um, well, a long time now – three years maybe? – and I’ve never gone to something like this.

They say that timing is everything, and I’ve showed up for this club at the exact moment that I was ready for it. Man, my photo software went down last night, and tonight I asked if someone could help me, and half an hour later I am SET, man! This is the first photo I’ve ever processed with iPhoto versus a much more basic program I was using called Picture Project. This is basic stuff, kids, really basic stuff, but it’s a step forward for me, and it’s going to be doing me a lot of good in the future. Hopefully you will be able to see the results as the year progresses. This makes me very happy, as previously there’d been a pretty big zero in my learning area on digital photo processing. This is good stuff. Very good stuff.

Toys and Prayer

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Getch'er ministries an' yer toys right here, folks...or maybe it's clothing and toy ministries?

Getch'er ministries an' yer toys right here, folks...or maybe it's clothing and toy ministries?

Taken on my way from one place to another. I drove through a part of town I have no reason to drive through, and now I want to go back just to see more stuff like this.

On a crappier note, my photo software has decided for the first time in two or three years to (&^*^&$% quit on me. I had to jerry-rig this setup to download the photos, which will NOT work if I have to do more than twenty or so pics. I hope to have this resolved before long, but if photos suddenly stop showing up here, you’ll know why. I’ll keep taking them, I just won’t be able to post them until I have this crap figured out.

Kinda Ratty-Lookin’

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No, it's not a real rat. They're just relatives. Read more below.

No, it's not a real rat. They're just relatives. Read more below.

I went for a short walk near my house this evening, and even though we’d had some pop-up showers, I figured it was a good idea to bring the ol’ Nikon with me. There’s a canal down the street (remind me to tell you sometime the interesting history of how they dug it and then the railroad came through a few years after and rendered it obsolete), and I figured that at the very least I could maybe get some ducks or people or people feeding ducks or, well, something!

I was shooting at the aforementioned ducks, as they are a common sight along the canal, when from almost directly below me at the base of the bank I heard a splash. I looked down, figuring that maybe I’d get lucky and there’d be turtle, but it sure wasn’t sunny enough for one of those to be out. What did I see instead, but a muskrat! Now, this isn’t like a moose or a bear or even a deer, but I’d never in 39 years of living in the area, ever seen a muskrat in the canal, and definitely never seen one up close. It demanded my full attention, and now, whether you like it or not, it’s demanding yours as well. Enjoy!

All the Cool Kids are Doing It

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My niece riding her bike where it's very shady and I have few shutter speed options.

My niece riding her bike where it's very shady and I have few shutter speed options.

I had tons of pictures for today. Many of them were far technically superior to this one, but this one is fun. I gave my niece the camera a little while after I took this photo, and she proceeded to pretty much just flail around with it and shoot a bunch of nonsense while going, “Oh yeah! Oh yeah! That’s it!” like she was a Hollywood star photog or something. Thing is, I looked at all the pictures later, and hers are much more fun and cooler than the ones I tried to do *just right*. So, here’s one of the ones I did that I really liked the feel of. Where, like my niece, I was much more loose about how I was shooting. As seemed to suggest, it’s just for fun. I showed her how to hold the camera, but she gave me a lesson in perspective.

Oh, and believe it or not, I had another pic with a little more drama to it, but it involved yet another car accident near work – ambulances, police cars, the whole nine yards. I was even taking a different route home! Maybe I should start taking the bus.

It’s Hot in There

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The photo quality is bad, but it was better than yet another flower pic.

The photo quality is bad, but it was better than yet another flower pic.

The photo quality on this one is pretty terrible. Wanna guess what’s going on? I’m not telling, but if the pic was better you might be able to figure it out. Maybe it’s a little more obvious than it seems to me that it would be. I didn’t plan on using this photo at all. In fact, when I shot it I was sure I wouldn’t use it, but I have tons of flower photos from today because I was doing tests with the white balance setting and seeing how it affected colors. I just gave you a flower a few days ago. I’m not going to start repeating myself within the first week of this mess. So, you get a really dark picture of…something.

Gen, thanks so much for all your comments. You rock.

Class Ride

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Jeff has a '66 Ranchero. Jeff gives me a ride. Jeff earns my eternal gratitude.

Jeff has a '66 Ranchero. Jeff gives me a ride. Jeff earns my eternal gratitude.

Today I was hanging out with some friends and end up talking with a guy I’ve spoken to a handful of times over the past year or so. I didn’t know much about him except that he does auto body work and has a nice old Ford. Today while we’re talking he says a couple of things about art and I got, “So…you do art work?” He chuckles and says, “Um, yeah. I graduated from [noted art school].” He adds that he’s done some work for the governor and “this boat. I built a boat. It’s over by…” and he gave the general description off of a given highway. I couldn’t picture it, and he says, “You wanna to see it? I was just about to take off.” I agree, we go out to the car, and I realize that I’m going to get a ride in this:

1966 Ford Ranchero

1966 Ford Ranchero

I dig old cars. I dig old hot rods. This car is both (okay, it’s a truck and not a car, but whatever), and he drives it regularly. It has a 289, front disc brakes, and a 5spd manual transmission, plus the uber-groovy Torque Thrust mags. It was awesome. He drove me out to the site where his sculpture is located, and we checked it out. It’s a boat in a water runoff area. The height of the water in relation to the boat is sort of a measure of how well the area is functioning, plus it makes a statement about the intended use of the area and its necessity (the area was formerly just a dumping ground for trash). I would have a pic of that, but the weather was too bad to get a good shot of it.

Anyway, pic a day for today resulted in two pics, but I figured you would’t mind, ’cause that truck is just so cool.

Little Light

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First thing I did this morning. Well, after writing, which is the real first thing I do in the morning.

First thing I did this morning. Well, after writing, which is the real first thing I do in the morning.

I came up with the idea to shoot this while I was doing my morning pages from the Artist’s Way, an exercise I’ve been doing just about every single morning for getting on close to a year now. I usually light a candle while I’m writing, and it seemed like a decent idea. I don’t like the way it turned out. It’s rather dark. I wanted it to have that nice candle-y glow to it. Guess I’ll have to do some research on how to make that happen. For now, here’s a dim view of a candle for ya!

More Fun with Insanity

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I shot this on the way home from work. I was doing about 20mph.

I shot this on the way home from work. I was doing about 20mph.

I took some more photos at work today at lunch, but I like this one better. There was an accident off to the side of the road, and I grabbed the camera off the floor and just shot out the window as I drove by just to see what I would get. It’s not masterpiece, but I like it. Something is obviously happening here.

I’ve officially gone over the deep end, people. I’ve lost my mind completely. Not only am I apparently going to start shooting and posting one picture a day, tonight after work I went to a photography club meeting for the first time. It was a trial, but, unfortunately, I really enjoyed it, meaning that I want to start going again, meaning that I’ll want to shoot more pictures, hang out with more people, enter some contests, try and get some work, have a generally awesome learning experience. This could be serious. I could die of exhaustion in the next two to three months. Drag racing, writing, photography, sculpture, acting…yep, dead soon. However, I’ll be very happy when I go.

That reminds me, I found out I got a speaking part in the zombie movie (8 Wheels of Death – remember that!)! Woohoo! I get to be “Dad” and fight off zombies with a severed roller derby referee’s leg! How much fun is THAT?!?!?! You wish you were me, admit it.

Lunch Break Photography, and Insanity Begins

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Shot out in front of my office while on lunch.

Shot out in front of my office while on lunch.

I am most certainly losing my mind. I have been doing photography for the past two years or so, but last week I bought a photography magazine just for the heck of it, just because it caught my eye while I was looking at car mags and trying to figure out which of those I’d like to do work for.

Then I’m on the web, looking up photography stuff, finding online communities that are sharing their stuff. Then I’m reading about this “One Picture a Day” project that some people have done, and it’s sounding cool.

Right. Sure. I totally need ONE MORE THING to add to my list of projects, and this “one more thing” has to be done every single day!

Anyway, here’s the first nail in my coffin. Pretty nail, isn’t it? I shot it yesterday at lunch. It was raining, and I wanted to take a picture, so I went out in the middle of a break in the drizzle (a break that conveniently occurred right on my lunch hour), and took this photo. Some day I’ll learn how to use Photoshop Elements and tell you long and boring stories about how I “adjusted the levels” or “worked on the saturation a bit.” For now you get, “I took this today.”

I ask, Quinn answers!

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If you’ve read the blog rabidly for some length of time, then you know I’m a fan of Quinn Cummings. She writes a blog called The QC Report, which is both witty and insightful. I have had numerous occasions where I tried valiantly not to spit coffee on the keyboard while laughing at one of her entries. You’d think I’d stop drinking coffee while reading her stuff, but I’m a slow learner, and I also refuse to quit drinking coffee, even for short periods of time.

Quinn’s writing isn’t limited to her blog, however. Her book “Notes from the Underwire” has just been published, full of the same humor and self-deprecation as her blog. As part of her self-promotion, Quinn has offered to answer questions from whatever random bloggers send them her way. After deciding that she really didn’t mean to include little people like myself, I abruptly changed my mind one night at around 1am and decided I’d send something her way. Lo and behold, she really answered it!

Keeping it all in the spirit of Thatstom, I asked her a couple of quesstions about creativity…and toast. Click here to enjoy her answers. You might also want to pick up a copy of her excellent book.