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Sunday’s lightning storm (not my personal favorite, but the FB friends/family seemed to like it best):

The day after:

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It’s just an aside, but I honestly thought of taking pictures based on feline-travel: follow my cat for 15 minutes, take pictures.

Sadly, he made it about 12 feet, laid down, and there he remained until the time expired. *fail*

//wished I had a dog at that moment. Dogs like to go places.

cd; plama wrote earlier that the spirit of the theme was to travel 15 +/- 1 or so, and take pictures. Pics in that spirit are good, whether new or archival.

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What everyone else said, plus:

My 10th reunion was a bust–staged by the ‘popular’ (and mostly highly religious) clique; for the popular and religious group (no alcohol was served, mind you); most of us left by 9pm and gathered at the nearest pub. Being the shy and geeky guy, I stayed there for about 30 minutes and went home.

But the 20th was put together by a person whom I really didn’t remember much (because I was a major pothead in high school), but who remembered me well and bugged me to attend until I finally relented. She stalked me on MySpace when MySpace was at it’s peak and I’d become a 2nd tier blogger with a semi-decent following. As such, I didn’t yet have a DSLR or know how to take a good picture, but I went with my P&S for the ‘photo blogging’ factor.

I had a ball. I took oodles of bad pictures which everyone was absolutely okay to have taken, and wound up becoming friends with a dozen or so people with whom I’d had no connection with in high school (we gather a few times a year for dinner, BBQ, etc.) Later that night, I went to jail (not a DUI–an expired warrant, charges were later dropped, it’s a whole ‘nuther story) but up until that happened, the camera helped me connect, regardless that I didn’t know what to do with it, and I had a good time and made some new ‘old’ friends.

The best picture of me from that night was my mug shot. 🙁

But the photo blog I wrote for the occasion was highly successful. Make lemonade, so to speak, and have yourself a great time! (But skip the getting arrested part, if you can. 😀 )

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Pictures of things going on at night (i.e., not the night sky itself, but events occurring during the night?)

If so, +11ty.

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To find old cameras for cheap, all you really need is time and enough communities near you to have a variety of garage sales every weekend… but garage sales can be as low as $1 each, so just stay alert.

I got the DP lens for $40 at a craiglisted estate sale, and now I spend my nightly breaks looking for another such find (no luck, of course). And at a couple, they’ve way overpriced. Every once and a while I get a good find, like the lens I converted into the faux-tilt lens. Most of the time, I ‘came for the photography equipment/found crap or overpriced trinkets/left disappointed.

But you never know, I keep looking. Some of my props come from garage sales/flea markets (no fleas, yet)/thrift stores–and add in dollar stores for props, too–they’re the bomb.

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Goodwill is iffy, it’s either really overpriced or really underpriced.

Herm…there’s something to do today (I’ve been wondering what to do today)…and I’ve been meaning to check out their albums for “Sleeve Faced”.

Grand idea! Thanks! 😀

Regardless whether it does or not (and if it did, you can fix it), it’s a beautiful creation, orionid, and you can always go back and fix it. For the 80’s hipster, maybe you could do a Rubik’s cube version.* 😉

charge a major premium, of course, and don’t use the word ‘Rubik’ so’s you don’t get sued.

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Purdy! But out of curiosity; with the green near the aperture affect the image (reflections, etc) in any way?

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I particularly liked stumbling across the NVC page–and seeing that 3 of 4 of my ‘best’ pictures, NVC-wise, were my entries for the ‘scanner as camera’ contest. What a gas–I purchased the dayum’d thing at the last minute, just hoping I could at least participate–and it’s my best showing ev-ar.

DO have Mopsy read your fortune–she’s prescient.

//hangs up Canon; decided there’s a future in scanmera photography instead….

ABTW, any ‘tips’ you might offer regarding my humble’r than thou website prowess would be welcomed–it’s obvious you have skilz beyond anything I’ve discovered. But I still like the images I’ve posted (regardless of the voter turnout), and thoughts on how better to display them would be welcomed. 🙂

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B’s:

http://fossilspringsaz.com/pics/2011/jul/20/stairs04sml.jpg
http://fossilspringsaz.com/pics/2011/jul/20/stairs05sml.jpg
http://fossilspringsaz.com/pics/2011/jul/20/stairs03sml.jpg (meah.)
http://fossilspringsaz.com/pics/2011/jul/20/stairs06sml.jpg
http://fossilspringsaz.com/pics/2011/jul/20/stairs07sml.jpg
http://fossilspringsaz.com/pics/2011/jul/20/stairs09sml.jpg

Number 6 was 73 stairs high. I was taking pictures when a father and daughter came along and the 5 year old girl said, “I can climb all those!” Dad said, “No, honey, wait for this guy–he’s taking pictures.” I told him it was alright–I was pretty much done. We got to talking, and he okay’d my taking a pic of her climbing up, which I really wanted to use for the contest, but didn’t see as a good vote getter (the backstory is they are the ‘Save our Stairs’ monument, dedicated to preserving their old steps with donated funds, of which you can see the plaques for the donors on the lower end of the steps–the ‘grafitti on the left, along with a plaque, explains it). That was too long to explain in the contest, I felt, but I do really like the picture, and mayhaps use it sometime in the future.

//she did make it up them 73 steps, and probably faster than I could.

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I got an ‘A’, so I can’t complain, but there’s a valid point here being made by ‘them slackers’ 😉 (I keed, you understand?)

Perhaps one’s ‘grade’ could be based upon a rolling ‘semester’ comprising the last 26 contests, or some such. Or at least designate it as a ‘participation grade’, as opposed to what a newb might think regarding the participant’s images versus their participation level–but even then, can we really justify orionid as a ‘C’ player, or U-Man as a B-? It’s akin to judging the top-of-the-class high school graduate by his/her junior high school grades when his/her parents were divorcing and s/he moved twice and had a lot of zits, or whatever might have been going on. “What have you done for us lately” comes to mind.

Personally, I’m just happy I have some stats to let me see how I’m doing, especially the ‘recently’ compared to the ‘annual’ and the ‘overall’, which was my general focus with following the trend on the FSM. It’s exhilarating to see that my recent stats are better than my past year, which are better than my total history–it tells me I’m improving as a photographer, and that encourages me to strive for continuous improvement in composition, execution, and contest picture decisions.

So again–thanks for the hard work. And that shiny apple on the table? It’s from me. But don’t let it bias you’re grades on my essays. 😉

//edit: my bad–it does designate it as a participation grade. So where’s teh beef? Still–hope the points made above have some validity.

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CISS, you are wonderful!! ty Ty TY!!

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Does this mean we can hunt them for sport?

Without a Canon to shoot, with what do you propose to take aim? 😛

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I actually got yelled at for bringing my Canon into the O.K. Corral in Tombstone–he pointed to the sign that clearly stated, “No Weapons Allowed”.

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I’m pretty sure the limits on uploading wouldn’t have increased to unlimited nor would the ‘economy’ space been increased from 5G to 10G (some year or two ago) and the upload/download limits be lifted entirely if they didn’t have the capacity to deal with the traffic. It’s not the only option, nor should it be to the exclusion of other forms of backup, but it serves my needs quite well.

In re to orders of magnitude, depends whether it’s binary or decimal based; I presume they have the raw data to have determined relinquishing the limits posed no threats, since they haven’t rescinded on those limits since then. But as I said–YMMV, and I’ll add no backup system is 100% guaranteed. If any were, they’d have a cornered market, and that would probably have led to being dismantled by the government for being ‘monopolistic.’

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I love the one with Atrus sitting on the bench looking ahead at the boardwalk.

Agreed (“waitin on mom”), and the “Contemplative Atrus”, as well.

I have/was/am told not to degrade my own photos, and I’ll suggest to you the same (even though I haven’t mastered that skill myself!)

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