Events

As threatened, I've gotten a public photo page at SmugMug (http://punzunltd.smugmug.com). You can now browse the few that I've published so far, and possibly even buy one. It's not incredibly impressive right now as I don't have full-size copies of much yet. That will change, though. I'm having a lot of fun with Adobe Lightroom and its one-click integration with SmugMug, too.

Eleven-month-old German Shepherd Dog Rex watches his mom carry in the barbecued chicken yesterday in Chicago: ISO 3200, 1/125 at f/2.5, 50mm prime

Northbrook, Ill., sometime in late April 1986:

In May 1986, I went to Boston with my school choir (all 130 of us, plus chaperons) and took about 240 photos. Here's one of them: When I got back home, I printed the shot. This took about five hours, and some help from Mr. Sylvester, the photography teacher, because instead of Photoshop I used an actual darkroom, with an easel and Ilford #3 paper. Here's the result: Now, in 2011, I've finally scanned the negative, and in about 20 minutes with Adobe Lightroom, produced a reasonable facsimile: Not only...

South Pond, Lincoln Park, Chicago, 1:27pm:

Monday night I played around with one of my favorite slides from 1986. Today at lunch I rescanned the slide at 3600 dpi, after giving it a good dusting, and with the scanner's Kodachrome corrections. Here's the result: For comparison, here's my previous attempt, using the 1200 dpi scan I made during my first pass: The differences are much more apparent at full size, especially since the top photo's dimensions are nearly four times longer than the bottom one's. Public Garden, Boston, 10 May 1986....

As I play around with high-dynamic-range imaging, I remembered a photo I took in 1991 while driving through North Dakota. I remember taking about a bunch of bracketed shots because of the scene's wide exposure range. Last night I looked for the image and found that one of the two negative strips covering the bracket is gone. Not only gone, but I wrote a note to myself in May 1992 on the negative holder pointing out that it's gone. Without the full bracket, an HDR image won't work. Fortunately, I have...

A strong storm system just to the south of Chicago is drawing cooler air into the city from the northeast and the lake. At the moment we have some truly delightful weather: winds north-northeast at 35 km/h with gusts up to 62 km/h, visibility 5 km in mist, temperature 7°C with a windchill of 2°C. Says WGN's Tom Skilling: The last time it was even close to this cool on a May 26 was a half century ago in 1961 when a high of 9°C occurred. The average high this time of the year is 22°C which puts the day's...