Valerie Day

Here is a photo of Valerie Day performing with her band Nu Shooz.

More Parade Photos

Another Parade Photo

Her ribbon says 3rd place. I wonder what she did to win it.

St. John's Parade

The 40th annual St. John's Parade was earlier this month. Over the next few days I'll post some pictures from it.

Back at last

Early last week, Anika, my three year old daughter became violently ill. Then Summer, my wife fell sick, then it was my turn. It was a pretty awful week, but we are all well on the mend now and all on antibiotics. These next few days I'll be trying to get caught up on my work.

A couple of weeks ago I rented a perspective control lens. This lens allows you to use tilts and shifts to alter the focal plane. Most often this type of manipulation is done with large format cameras, but I wanted to try it on my full-frame DSLR. For a while I've been fascinated by the potential for using tilts to enhance selective focus in portraits. You can see a couple of photos experimenting with this.

The first one is of Anika. The effect is subtle here, but you can see the plane of focus cut across her eyes. In the next image the lens was able to be used to isolate her while sitting at a table with Summer.

I also went for a bike ride with my camera and tried to experiment with "false miniaturization" which is an optical illusion created by using selective focus to make your mind see subjects in an image tiny models. I discovered that the angle of view is just as important as the use of selective focus. You can see that in the image looking up at the bridge there is no miniaturization. However, the illusion is achieved nicely while looking down from the bridge onto a condo complex.

It would be interesting to try to incorporate this illusion into photographs of people. I'll have to work on that.

The Easter Bunny Coming to Portland (from last month)

Time is going by so quickly, I forgot to post that I saw the Easter Bunny early last month.

Tree at TSD

While I was in Texas I stopped by to visit the Texas School for the Deaf where I worked during the 96-97 school year. It was strange going back. For one thing , It's a closed campus now and I had to go with security and get a tour from a staff person. Walking through the grounds was a little like walking in a ghost-town. All the kids were in class during my mid-day visit, so everything seemed empty. When I was working there, the whole campus was under construction. Only a few of the new building were finished (including the dorm where I worked). Now the whole complex is not only complete, but lived-in, aging, no longer new. It's quite nice, though; much nicer then when I was on staff. All the plans that seemed to be distant dreams back in 1997 are now fact -- the new cafeteria, auditorium, and media center. New huge school buildings now house the classrooms that used to be scattered in small, dilapidated structures connected by covered walkways. One thing I always loved about the campus was the live oak trees that had been meticulously spared during the construction. There was one right outside the dorm where I worked. I could stare into its upper branches from the office. I looked at it for months before I finally brought my 4x5 camera to work and photographed it. The small image was the result of that picture taken 10 years ago. The larger image is the biggest reason I wanted to visit that campus -- to see that tree again, and photograph it one more time.