Ken's Blog

I have been putting all of my comments into the pages where I post my photos, which kind of makes this blog redundant. So I'm going to quit doing the double duty and just point you, the 2 or 3 people who are not bots and have ever seen this page, to my picture pages, here, and stop editing this blog. It's free blog software and so not all that great anyway. My ISP doesn't even offer it anymore, so if it died I couldn't even reload it.

Whatever, go here and have fun!

Ken

I added some pics I have that didn't really go with anything else, but that I like. They're here.



Also, I skipped one entry, my Historic Folsom trip. It's here.

In the show "The Mentalist", they sometimes use backdrops of the Sacramento River and the Tower Bridge. I've always wondered if they actually shoot there or if it's just green screened. I was in the area today so I took a side trip over to take a look. I think it's all green screen. But the area is kind of nice.



The rest are here.

The Three Stages theater(s) at Folsom Lake College had a tour today. I got some fairly good shots.



I'd been in one of the stages a few times, but not the other two. Plus we got a nice tour of backstage. Makes me want to get back into theater.

The rest of the images are here.

In the same spirit of the Bakersfield pics, here's the other half of our trip. Atascadero, CA:



This is my wife's home town. It's a nice place. Even for squirrels:



The quizzical look on his face is basically "WTF are you doing?" The rest of the pics are here.

This is out of order. Sue me. I didn't get around to doing anything with the Santa Anita pics until today.

Every year on the day after Christmas we go to opening day at Santa Anita raceway in Arcadia with my sister and her family unit from New Orleans. They are into horses, so it's fun.



No big winners this year. Or winners at all, I think Stanley (my sister's SO) won a couple of races, but nobody came out ahead. The one race where two longshots hit first and second we hadn't bet in. Naturally.




After the races we all went to Dave and Busters next door
to watch the Saints cream the Falcons. All in all, a good day.

WHO DAT!



Oh, the rest of the pics are here.

We spent part of the holidays in Bakersfield. And we went around town taking pictures, too.



The rest are here. Including a couple of Bakersfield High School, my Mom's alma mater. North High, MY alma mater, is all fenced in now, so I didn't get any shots there. Maybe next time.

When I did my final in Photography 101 (back 100 years ago), I did a set of photos where I went out at night, and just opened the shutter for several seconds and aimed at whatever light was around. They came out really cool, if I do say so myself.

Now, in the modern era where we not only have color photography, but it's digital, I did it again. Only this time not on purpose. I was shooting with my flash off camera fired remotely, and a few times this evening I accidentally shut off the remote firing and just got several second exposures. Still cool, so I put them up here.

The bots are back. So comments are gone. I will probably not bother to turn them back on again.

On December 10, there was a lunar eclipse. I hauled my sorry butt up at 4:00 am to go shoot it. I went up to a hill that's above the city to try to get out of the lights and have less obstructions, and it worked pretty well. A while after I got there some other photographers showed up, so I wasn't the only one who knew about that spot. Plus there were some lesser people (those without cameras). I didn't point out to them that they were lesser...



At about 4:45, just as predicted, the moon started its disappearing act. And a light cloud bank moved it. It didn't seem to affect my pictures too much, but it was there.



By 6:30 it was gone. It's hard to take any kind of meaningful shot of a black sky.

It started to come back as the sky lightened up. Here's the last shot I took before packing it in:



The rest of the images, along with their time stamps, are here.

Folsom has many bridges, here are two I shot today:

The Historic Truss Bridge:


The Rainbow Bridge:


The Truss Bridge has been all over, you can read about it here, and the Rainbow Bridge here.

The Powerhouse is on my list of places, I got a few shots of it from the street, but not enough to do an entry on. Someday...

I went down a bit south of Folsom the other day, to a cattle loading whatever it's called pen thing that's at about... well, who cares where it is. I pass it occasionally, and only once was it being used. I wanted to see what I could do with it. Here it is:



Continuing in the "I don't usually like black and white or sepia tone" thread I started a bit ago, I drained all the color out of this, then further added tweek to it by adding grain. I wanted it to look old and weathered. I think it works.

I have turned comments back on for this entry. If the bots continue to attack, I'll turn it back off. So if you're a real person, have at it! (Edit: They came back, so it's off.)

We went to the Folsom Tree Lighting ceremony in Historic Folsom tonight. I took a bunch of shots, but it was really too dark. I tried a few things, and salvaged some of them on my computer. They're not that bad. I need to work on low light photography.



This was the tree just after they lit it. The album is here.

Back in the day, I did almost exclusively black and white photography. This was due to the photography classes I was taking at a junior collage being mostly black and white, and that, I suspect, was due to the expense. Also, black and white was a lot easier and more forgiving than color, which is good when you are also learning how to shoot photos as well. I eventually learned color photography as well, and can attest to the differences. If you screw up a black and white print, you just say "huh" and toss it. If you screw up a color print, you anguish over the effort wasted and precious part of your life lost, and try to convince yourself that it's still worth mounting and/or framing, cuz hey, it's art!

It's tough to go back to black and white after getting into the world of color. Let me illustrate: Show of hands of people that prefer black and white TV? Show of hands of people that even HAVE a black and white TV? Colorizing old movies is sacrilege, and while that may sound contradictory, it's not for a couple of reasons. One, it's how they were originally made, and two, they're OLD MOVIES! Black and white movies look aged, which is cool, cuz they are.

I feel the same about black and white photography. It works when the subject or photo is old, or supposed to look old. Same for sepia toning. It (usually) doesn't do anything for me unless the picture is supposed to look aged. So I have rarely even hit that button on my camera or in software.

Today I went to Lembi Park, which is strewn with old parts from the powerhouse, or railroad, or something I'm too lazy to look up. (EDIT: apparently it's gold dredging equipment) They are old, so I figured I might as well play with my "sepia" option in software. I am not displeased, but then I mean for them to look old. If, of course, you ignore the chain link fences, paved roads, cars, and other anachronisms.



I got one of one of the scoreboards for the baseball fields that I did in b&w and sepia. They actually look pretty good:



I really don't think a sepia toned Kia or Xbox would really work, but these shots work for me. The entire album is here, color and otherwise.

There's a big body of water behind Folsom High School, called Willow Hill Reservoir, which I've been meaning to go check out for some time. I did it today. There's a park behind it, which is part of a new neighborhood back there, and it's quite nice. This is the back side of Folsom High across the water.



The entire album is here.