Ben & Kathy - Final Edits!

Some final edits from Ben and Kathy's shoot at Kanapaha Botanical Gardens here in Gainesville.  They did a great job handling the hot, humid, rainy, bright sunny weather.  Ah... summer in Florida...

Maggie & Todd Engagement Shoot

At long last, here are a selection of processed shots from Maggie and Todd's engagement shoot in St Augustine!

Thanks for a great day, guys!  Can't wait for the wedding next month :)

BBA Challenge - Focaccia!

I can't believe this worked.  


For Bake-A-Palooza Spring (er, summer) 2010 I decided to make a bread.  At previous BAPs, we stuck to sweets, until last spring when I broke out the Herbed Savory Cheesecake from Cookwise, which turned out to be a huge hit.  As I've been working through the Bread Baker's Apprentice, I decided it would be good to give the focaccia a try.  I'm really only somewhere in the Cs, but I wanted to do something savory but cinnamon rolls were next on the list... so I just picked something that sounded good :)

This bread was surprisingly easy, and I do think the fact that I was able to use the weekend to work the dough was definitely advantageous... not to mention the fact that the entire State of Florida is a giant proofing box right now (90+F and 100% humidity).  The dough rose beautifully.  


I started the poolish on Friday evening, letting it sit for about 3 hours before I covered it with a damp towel and aluminum foil and refrigerated it.  I pulled it out to get back to room temperature after Saturday morning's shoot with Ben & Kathy.  After it reached a reasonable temperature and all of the ingredients were combined by hand (i.e., with my bare hands - no utensils or mixers involved!), I did a series of three foldings and risings on the marble countertop in the kitchen.  This dough did not take any kneading at all.  


The herbed oil was made from fresh rosemary, oregano, thyme, and basil that I have growing here at the house. I followed the instructions and did two sessions of dimpling and oiling before putting it into the oven, which was heated to a ridiculous 500F.


When it came out, it was just beautiful and smelled great.  I was so excited that I finally achieved the correct crumb that I had to point it out to half of the attendees.  :)  It was a favorite at Bake-A-Palooza, even if it did turn my kitchen into a furnace.  In June.  In Florida.  Oy.

Ben & Kathy at Kanapaha Botanical Gardens

Things have been busy!


Here is a peek at Ben & Kathy's shoot at Kanapaha last weekend.  The weather did not cooperate, unfortunately... we tried to avoid the afternoon heat and rains, but we got rained on anyway.  And then it was crazy humid.  B & K were great sports, though.  They put up with some severely tropical weather to get these shots!!!


I ordered Photoshop and Lightroom to use on my fancy new iMac on May 18... and they still haven't arrived.  It's really getting frustrating that it is taking so long, not to mention the fact that I have photos from three or four shoots from the last few weeks that I have to work on!  Rumor has it that they have shipped... hopefully they'll arrive soon.  I just can't take it anymore.  So, all the shots posted here since the middle of May have been Straight Outta Camera without any processing/adjustment.  Please excuse them for being dark/light/crooked/etc. as a result :)

Armadillos

Good old Dasypus novemcinctus.  They totally didn't care that I was stalking them with my giant camera...

Maggie & Todd Engagement Shoot- Sneak Peak

Here are a couple from Maggie & Todd's engagement shoot over the weekend at St. Augustine and Anastasia State Park.  I have only taken a quick pass over a few photos so far (read: converted from RAW to jpeg)... I'll be getting the new 27" super-awesome iMac next week, so I'll wait to process the shots with the new machine.

Can't wait for the wedding in July!

Citizens Co-op Farm Bike Tour

Well, I guess it's been a while.  Things have been busy at Prioria, and I've been putting in 9, 10, 11 hour days almost every work day for three or four weeks in a row now, so a lot has fallen behind in my non-Prioria life :)

At long last, here are a couple shots from the Farm Bike Tour organized by Citizens Co-op here in Gainesville.  We paid a small fee and then had a guided bike tour of something like 10 local farms of a variety of types.  There was the ethnobotany grad student garden at UF (my favorite of the day), some community gardens, an enormous patch of land that used to be primarily blueberry fields now trying to clear out some of the overgrowth, a small commune-style garden (my second favorite - they had an accordion player!), a couple of home gardens (one with chickens!) and a garden maintained by the students of a local middle school.

The total ride was about 14.5 miles and took all afternoon.  Fortunately, most of the places we stopped had some refreshments for us, including such wonderful treats as minty fresh lemonade and fresh sugar snap peas.  At each garden, someone explained goals, methods, and plants to us and gave us the opportunity to ask questions. The day ended with a celebration at what is soon to be the home of the newly-established Citizens Co-op.  Fortunately, it is within walking distance of my home and work, so I'm thrilled to have it downtown.

All in all, it was a lovely afternoon.  We even got some free shirts for doing the bike ride, and Bo seems to be wearing his quite a bit these days (which is fine, I think it looks great on him!).

--> Also <--

It's May and therefore time for the second annual Eat Local Challenge!  Check out Hogtown Homegrown for more info!!!

Pinhole Experiments

Last night I decided to finally give the digital pinhole thing a try.  For those of you that aren't familiar with pinhole photography, it is the simplest type of photography out there.  You can make a film pinhole camera with a roll of film, and empty film canister, a matchbox and some black tape.  Pinhole images (at least the uber-rudimentary kind) are generally at least a little bit blurry, may have some vignetting (dark areas around the edges), are made with a long exposure (usually at least a few seconds), and have a pretty specific feel to them.  I want to say 'vintage', but I'm not sure that's the word I'm looking for.  Anyway, I think right now there is a trend to create images using old-school technology in conjunction with new dSLRs, and the digital pinhole thing is just one example.  There is a pinhole group on flickr if you'd like to see more.  Maybe I should start one at SmugMug. :)  Of course, all kinds of 'distressed' and old-school imitations can be created in Photoshop or whatever, but that's just cheating :)

So, onto the process: I took the body cap to the camera (it's a 40D in case anyone cares) and drilled a small hole in that then sanded down the edges to make it nice and clean.  Then I cut a square from an aluminum drink can and colored it black on both sides with a sharpie.  I used a pin to make the tiniest hole I could through the metal (next time I'll cut the can, make the hole, then sand it down and lastly color it black to make sure the hole is really even and clean).  At first, I affixed the pinhole to the outside of the body cap, but I decided to put it on the inside of the body cap instead and that seems to have helped the final result in terms of sharpness and light interference (having inside the cap is like having a lens hood and I think helps bring out the vignetting a little bit).  The exposure for the image below was somewhere in the 10-20 second range, I believe.

I know I still have a lot more to learn, but here is the best of yesterday's first attempt.  I did adjust levels/curves and saturation, and yes, that's most likely pollen on my sensor O_o (it's pollen season here, absolutely everything is covered in yellow).  All of the shots came out very limited in tonal range; probably about 1/3 to 1/4 of a normal histogram.  I was shooting in low, even light. I would like to try it with some brighter light and hopefully get a little more tonal variation in there so I won't have to adjust levels/curves.

If you have experience with digital pinhole photography, please feel free to comment!

Horse Pens 2010!

Horse Pens 40.  It's a boulder field on a plateau in northeast Alabama (between Birmingham and Gadsden) currently owned by the Schultz family.  It is on of the best places to boulder in the Southeast and is only one day's drive from Florida (note the sarcasm).  The place got its name because it was originally part of a 160 acre area claimed as a whole unit divided into sections of 40 acres.  The boulder field is located on the 40 acres used for horses, hence Horse Pens 40.

The Schultz family does still keep some horses on the property as you can see in my previous post.  Many of the areas of the park are off limits to protect the Native American heritage and natural beauty of the area.  Mr. Schultz is very serious about this and will take you on a long walk with his ever-present gun and giant knife if you decide to break the rules, so I wouldn't recommend it. ;)

Every year, the SCC (Southeast Climbing Coalition) hosts the Triple Crown Series bouldering competition.  Sloperfest, as it is affectionately termed, at HP40 is one of the three comps in the series.   Much of the rock is sandstone, which results in many "slopey" holds rather than something you can actually grab onto; you basically slap at the rock, hope your hand sticks, and "whale it up", humping up the rock on your belly in order to top out.  It's great fun... and only a little frightening knowing that if you fall mid-hump that you're going to lose all your skin on the way down.

Sloperfest usually takes place in early March and is smooshed together with something reminiscent of a music festival.  This year it was in the 20s at night but the days were just lovely.  I have discovered the joy of fleece sleeping bag liners.  Wonderful things.  Changed my life.

This year Bo and I decided to actually give the comp a try rather than just tooling around on a couple problems.  I reached my goal of sending enough problems to get to the second half of the  score sheet (woot!).  Bo, however, placed third in his age group and won a little prize (including new shoes!), which I think is just awesome.  I'm much more excited about it than he is, but that's fine with me. :)

I didn't take too many pictures because I spent a good amount of time climbing and spotting.  Most of the pictures I did take are of Bo.  Go figure.

And the requisite sun star shot:

Horse Pens 40!

Just a quick update today:

Last weekend was Sloperfest at Horse Pens 40 in Alabama and my fingertips are still recovering.  I spent more time climbing than shooting so I didn't take a ton of shots, but that's what I drove all the way up there for in the first place, right?  Just for the record, my Bo-man kicked ass up there.  :)

I'll get the HP40 shots up tonight (more people shots this year) and then will have more of the girls from the previous weekend up following that.

And because every post needs a picture, here are a couple of my favorites from last year.  These are straight outta camera (SOC) as I recall and admittedly could use some love:

See the full gallery here.

Lindsay

I had a shoot with a number of girls over the weekend, it was great fun.  Here are some shots of the lovely Lindsay.  I just loved that hood, it gave the images a great feel.  And check out those eyes!