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The Black Laser

Kicking it with one aspect of my family – 2/22/2009

I was hanging out with Mike and Leah and Charlie and Juli and Sienna at Mike and Leah’s house and I decided to shoot some photos of my little niece. She is adorable, right? YOU HAD BETTER SAY YES.

Here are a few nice’ns, including a rare group shot of me and Juli.

Here are the rest – Kicking it with one aspect of my family Gallery – 2/22/2009

Portola Valley – 2/16/2009

Here’s some photos I shot while hanging out at my mom’s when I was in California. Nothing serious. There were more from this day, but they sucked BALLS, so I’m not going to share them. I shot a few more days wandering around town, but I haven’t had time to clean those up yet, so look out for one or two more posts of PV shots. I will make a gallery of all three sets when I am done. Fun times!

As much as I love my superduper 5D Mk II, it really has a hard time with skies. I think it is really ugly when the blue channel clips and you get this band of cyan around the horizon just before it goes full white. It’s really hard to fix if you’re even half a stop over and ruined a number of my photos completely. They had some detail left in the high highlights, but because the blue channel was clipped so far beyond the red or green channels, they photos were basically worthless. Ruined.

Maybe I’m being too picky, but I don’t think so. I have no problem with the idiosyncrasies of optics or noise in high ISO shots, but when I know highlight exposure can be and has been done better, I get a little frustrated. I envision one thing when I take the shot, and then another, worse thing is revealed when I try to make it look nice. It’s a characteristic of digital capture, true of audio and images alike, that once you hit the peak value the level clips HARD, resulting in noise and crud that no one likes.

It makes me long for the soft, organic clipping of highlights in a film exposure. One day we’ll have digital exposures where the high end rolls off smoothly like it has for the last hundred years on film, but we’re not there yet. I will post some examples of the bad clipping when I get home, but it almost makes me too mad to think. RAGE!

At least I got a handful of photos I liked from this day. The next two days of shooting were much more successful, so expect a better selection there.

02 – Darkness Wails

The cave stretched out dark and long ahead of the little band of travelers now irretrievably lost.  The light of their torch sputtered and wavered in the unearthly gusts rising from deep within the ground.  The bottom of the cave was slick with bat guano, moisture, and some slimy substance they tried not to think too much about.  Death sat heavy in the hot dark air around them, suffocating, threatening.  And then from behind them came an unnatural wail that drove itself through their heads, scraping at the fragile walls of their slipping sanity.  

“What was that?” one asked.  

“The wind?” another answered.

“It must be.”

“The wind.  It must be.”

They knew that it was not the wind.  They waited to hear if the wail would come again, but it did not.  They continued their trek through the sweltering shadows toward the perceived source of the wind.  The wind must signal a way out of this pit, they had reasoned.  Where the air moved they would find their salvation.  Where the air moved there was life.  

Brilliantly miserable science fair entries

I was in a few science fairs in my day, and I’m pretty sure I fucked up every entry I made. I blame not giving a shit. Oh well. Can’t change the past. So It warms my heart to know that the spirit of “Why am I doing this stupid crap?” is still alive and well in the youth of today.

41 Hilarious Science Fair Experiments.

This is old, but worth sharing. Here are some of my favorites.

moonbabies

plantsandpop

exercisingeffect

Moon Babies? For serious? Too great. I foresee Moon Babies in the future of The Black Laser.

The Black Laser Icon gallery – posted for your enjoyment!

Matt Toder commented to me this morning that it would be fantastic is there was a place where you could view a collection of all the icons I’ve made for the rotator script on the right side of this page. Never one to deny a great idea, I’ve done just that. Now you can see large versions of all The Black Laser icons by either clicking on the icon to the right OR on the link down below.

The Black Laser Icon Gallery

Awesome! Thanks, Matt!

Gardner vs CA Prop 8

Gardner has some very strong feelings on the passing of Prop 8 in California, the roots of which will become quite clear when you watch his video. And rightly he should. It’s an important issue back in my home state, one which has ramifications across the entire country. It’s a battle between rationality and fear, between fairness and cruelty, between allowing people dignity as human beings and taking away their rights based on the misinterpreted words of someone who I am pretty sure would have been in support of gay marriage.

I think my feelings on the whole thing are clear. It is not right for people’s rights to be taken away. Whatever you feel about gay marriage, the issue has deeper implications on our society and the casual erosion of our civil liberties over the last decade. Laws should definite people’s rights, keep people safe, and act as a guide for society to run smoothly; they should not REMOVE A RIGHT THAT HAS ALREADY BEEN GRANTED. Imagine if a group of people put an item on a ballot to take away women’s right to vote, or turned black people back into property. Totally absurd, right? Proposition 8 was the same thing, all in the misguided name of “religion” and “morality” and “family values”. What a crock of shit.

westboro

When I see fundamentalist Christians up in arms about issues like this, I have to wonder, “Have you ever read the Bible? Did you hear the message of Christ? You know, love everyone and all that jazz? Do you remember the part where Jesus was all, ‘Hey guys, don’t pay attention to that OLD Testament. I’m the hot NEW TESTAMENT’ and yet all of your fear-mongering, hate-spreading nonsense is based on like four passages buried deep in the Old Testament?”

GUESS WHAT GUYS, GOD DOESN’T HATE FAGS. I grew up Catholic, attended Catholic school between Preschool and 12th Grade, have a great-uncle who was a priest, a great-aunt who is a nun, and I’m pretty sure that the Christian God is a God of peace and love. He doesn’t hate anyone. At all. Anywhere. That’s the whole thing: GOD LOVES EVERYONE. Even if you don’t believe in God (I don’t), you have to admit that Christians believe that God loves everyone. No questions asked. Anyone who calls themselves a Christian and acts in a contrary way is wrong.

Also, God doesn’t hate science, so you guys can drop that idiocy too. Evolution is real. The Earth is older than 6000 years old. I mean, really, saying, “Well Gee, the world is very complex, so there’s no way that it wasn’t designed,” is not only stupid but it’s just plain bad logic. It’s all metaphor, people.

/rant.

Anyway, check out Gardner and help our brothers and sister get their rights back in the state of California.