We sometimes like to have a candle at the dinner table. I have always wondered why candles don't smoke much until you blow them out:
And the chaotic patterns made by the smoke are intriguing as well.
I'll post a little piece on the technical aspects of photographing smoke in the next couple of days over on curtisjudd.blogspot.com. Oh, and if you ever need a little help making better images of the things you want to sell on e-bay, drop on by for a quick how-to on product photography.
DD taught EV how to make origami wreaths and then DD alerted me to the potential for a color study photograph:
Technical details over at time and light.
DD organized a contra dance that took place at the old church tonight. Back in the 50s when they built the dam, they moved the church to what is now a state park and then a couple of years ago, renovated it. Nice venue.
I couldn't help it. Halloween lends itself so nicely to spooky lighting so we just had to do more light painting. EV did a very nice job designing the face for our jack-o-lantern and also made an impressive haunted mansion:
Tonight we had a go at light painting DD's books. I changed things up a little because the room with the books was not totally dark. This time we made a 15 second exposure at f/22:
Camera Club last week featured a talk by legendary sports photographer David Black. And while his sports resume is quite impressive, I was most inspired by his more recent work with light painting. The main idea with light painting is to take a long exposure (e.g., 30 seconds) in the dark and "paint" in the details you want to highlight with a focused light source. In this case, I experimented with DD's tiny flashlight and some of EV's drawings on the floor of the closet.
This closet has also been used for recording podcasts. I guess closets lend themselves quite nicely to creative pursuits.
Not surprisingly, we have an aerospace theme going with EV's art. And obviously I need a little more practice to get the complete effect but I am pleased with the texture and aged feel this gave the paper. More to come.
These last two days consisted of pretty much just driving. I'm glad to be home and find the girls well. From the last show in Kansas, here is another shot from stage right:
Thursday didn't get a blog update for two reasons: 1) we received tickets on Wednesday evening for the U2 360 degree show in Houston. The show was IN CRED IBLE. Unfortunately, unless you have a press pass, you can't bring anything more than a point-and-shoot camera. Some day I should probably get one of those. And 2) at about 6:00 AM the next morning we got a call in our hotel room from the front desk along the lines of, "...we think your car was just broken into..."
Sure enough, someone smashed in the front passenger window and got away with about $4,000 worth of gear. Fortunately Cary is a veteran at this touring business and had the gear insured.
So we spent the better part of what was supposed to be a sleep-in day fixing the damage. First Cary called the police to file the report. The officer came and had him produce a list of everything that was lost. Cary called up the the auto insurance and glass repair places. I scoped out the locations of the closest Guitar Center stores. Cary called the closest store and gave them the list of items, asking them to have it ready for when we arrived in the early afternoon. Actually purchasing the gear was the most painful part because, evidently, guitar center doesn't usually process orders that big. That took a ridiculous two hours.
But overall, Cary considers this the universe's way of providing him with the updated gear he had hoped to eventually get. This outlook numbed the sting and made for a reasonably pleasant day.
We made our way to one of the Dallas Guitar Center stores to pick up a couple of additional items that the Houston store didn't have in stock and then made our way to a hotel at the airport. After a little dinner, Cary quickly set everything up to make sure he had all the kinks worked out before Friday's show.
On Friday morning and afternoon we drove to Parsons, Kansas for the Labette Community College's yearly Labette Idol music competition. Cary was booked to provide the entertainment after the contestants performed and before the judges made their final decisions. The new looping rig presented some problems during the sound check but Cary got them worked out in time for the show.
The venue was a rather impressive restored community auditorium that seats about 1,000. A decent sound engineer, interesting lighting (in a good way) and a mixed, appreciative crowd made for a good show overall.
Today brought us to a community college just outside of Houston Called Lone Star College. The audience was enthusiastic and the stage was nicely situated. Cary rocked the house, as usual, and made some new fans.
Tonight we're off to the U2 360 degree show at the stadium here in Houston that apparently seats 70,000 people. This is going to be incredible. And next time we see U2, it'll be Cary opening for them.