Harry Potter, a short review, plus some details only my parents would care about

That's Emma Watson who plays Hermione. This is not my photo and I could find no info regarding copyright. I'd love to credit the photographer if I knew who he was. We'll have to call this one fair use because I'm doing a small review of her latest movie. I didn't much like it, but all the actors did a bang up job I'm sure.

We went to see "Harry Potter, The Half Blood Prince" and I'm disappointed. I don't give away plot details, but it seems to me that a lot of the fun elements of prior films in the series are all but absent. Certain characters who were high points of the earlier films, like Hagrith (Hagrid?) have only a tiny amount of screen time. I wanted to see more owls, for some reason the ghosts who were omnipresent at Hogwarts are now inexplicably gone, as in not there at all like they called in the ghost busters or something. No more shifting staircases or moving paintings-- most of the fun stuff, gone, just not there. That leaves teenagers supposedly going through angst of some kind-- sheesh, go rent "Fast Times at Ridgemont High". Even today it's a better film and you get to see how Sean Penn launched his career. Also, if you use your brain watching this particular Harry Potter, very little of it even makes much sense. Maybe they had to follow the book and the book is deficient, don't know, haven't read it.

Let's see. . . had a nice conversation with a bank officer today, a real human being. And you know, they all are, but some are slightly more human than bank officer. I used to be a banker meself, don't really miss those days. So it's Wells Fargo, and lately I have learned that it takes three trips to the bank to fix one of their mistakes. Quite a few mistakes. Got tired of that, not going back.

Missed the rodeo today, and I am curious, but it's hot out. Had a great meal at Trappers and said hello to one of our favorite people in town, Cindy.

Sheryl just sent off her query letter for her latest book. It's about us and a lot of other things. Some of my writing is in there too. Two big boxes of Reiki Bears went out in the mail, plus some of Sheryl's hand-crafted perfume. We sold two prints, one to England and one to California but we still need a new print supplier.

We are actually acclimating somewhat to the heat. Thank God we're not in Phoenix as it is even hotter there. Our long haired cat spends a lot of time sprawling out on the bathroom floor trying to stay cool. Our ghost kitty-- whom we have not yet named, still hangs about the house now and then, seems unsure of exactly what it wants. It's likely half-feral, or it could be all the way feral. Not all our household members want to adopt another cat, but it's not going away. Pretty certain that cat catches mice, and that's a good thing, especially as we are sleeping in the barn now to help avoid the heat. Mice like barns.

Of late I am in a growth spurt with the photography, but I am also getting ready to get more serious about collecting my short stories into book form. Sheryl inspires me there, to get things done and out the door. I am trying to inspire her that life's little ups and downs are not a good excuse to ruin your day on any given day. Whatever we do we try to do in accordance with the "highest benefit for all concerned." Therefore I don't really see how things can go wrong in the long run. God's plan, we give precedence to that over our plans.

I am still finding the Facebook experimenting to be a bit of a bust. Most of the people I know best aren't posting much on there. Many of the rest are posting nothing of interest or little of interest to me. Mostly it's the format, not the people. Twitter is probably worse.

That's all for now, I'd probably pick another movie to watch if I had the chance to do it over. This one just could have been a lot more fun.

Messing with the tone knob.

On our most recent roadtrip, daytrip actually, we went through Springerville, seen above, and wound up in Greer which is up in the mountains above Show Low, Pinetop, Lakeside about another 40 miles up. We're pretty enamored of Greer, how could you not be? It's a resort town.
This tells me that we like altitude in this part of the country, more than we like high desert. From what my climatology teacher told me a while back in college, altitude and longitude have something in common. I seem to find that I prefer sea level in the North, and high altitudes way down here in AZ. When we hit 700o feet we start to go, "yeah, now that's what I'm talking about." But when we were up in Washington, I'm sure I needed the climate moderating which came from being coastal-- too cold in the mountains there. My friend, Francie, went nuts over the picture above when I posted it to Facebook.


I just re-edited this one from our previous trip to Sedona, back In January I think that was.

Had a look recently at the photographer Sally Mann and her work. She did some really amazing large-format black and white photos of her family back in the 90's. Controversial because her kids ran around naked a lot. Later on she did a photo essay on dead bodies, and on civil war battlefields, using a very antiquated "wet-plate" technique. I think that the photos of her family are absolutely stunning. Later she got more into the "flawed on purpose" techniques to the point where she almost seems more enamored of the screw-ups than the work itself. If she had not taken the knock out portraits of her kids, I don't think she'd get the same kind of attention for dog-bones and decomposing bodies, incredibly under-exposed landscapes full of blur and dust spots, streaks and light leaks, but so it goes. She has however recognized that "picture perfect" somehow does not sell.

I'm trying to better understand fine art photography as recognized by the "experts" but so far, can't really. That stuff is all over the map. There does seem to be some prejudice towards large format film cameras and definite bias against digital photography. Other than that, I don't know but I will probably be looking into it a bit more.

Escaping the heat and going green,

Sleeping in the barn is much more comfortable than sleeping in the house these days. There's no roof insulation holding in the heat, just open rafters and the underside of the roof. The ceiling being higher, and there being several windows and two opposing doors which we block open makes for a cooler environment by the time we go to bed. There's also a little more privacy and separation from household noise.

It's odd that the much more well equipped and insulated house would be less comfortable in summer, when it is much nicer in winter. I used to think that insulation was the key to comfort, but it all depends on a lot of factors. Since it cools off at night here, we'd actually be better sleeping out in the open: except that it rains sometimes. So we're trying to emulate open air, but with a roof. Better yet would be a roof which actually reflects off heat energy ( in the Summer only ). I've always been interested in green designs and alternative energy. Used to read catalogs like "Real Goods" just to look at things like solar, wind, and green building techniques. Today there are probably better sources, haven't Googled it lately.

Another factor making the barn more comfortable at night: it's empty all day and has no electricity, no cooking, no refrigerator or other heat generating appliances, nor body heat adding to the overall ambient temperature. All of that stuff adds up. Even fans generate heat. Of course once we got out there the first thing I wanted to do was add a lamp to the mix-- it's all downhill from there.

Seems like us innovative humans are always wanting to add things, even when the real success is in the taking away.

Fields of wildflowers at 7000 feet

We had a great day taking photos at higher altitude. It was cooler too. I have to admit that my motivation waxes and wanes some, depending on external circumstances. That's me in the bottom photo, being happy in a field of wildflowers. I edited the photo but Sheryl shot it. The top photo is mine.

Consider this

Sheryl's most recent newsletter (it's mine too, but Sheryl is tending to write more of them) went through a few different forms before I was willing to approve it. Why? She's on a bit of a tear over a lot of social injustices going on right now. Like, I don't know how "right" it was for our government to go bailing out huge corporations with tax dollars. Like a lot of Americans, I think it looks pretty wrong, and yet I've seen some very intelligent arguments in favor of it from some people who frankly know a lot more about economics than I do. I don't think it's necessarily fair or right, but I can see our government recognizing that letting the economy go free-fall into severe depression probably would have been worse.

When it comes to knowledge of world economic affairs, I might as well be an infant (had to tie in with the photo somehow). But, sometimes we know when we need to take action and not just shrug our shoulders and go "oh well". When it's home, family and friends at stake we sometime must stand up and take action even if we don't think of ourselves as activists or all that political. So, we put out Sheryl's activist newsletter, and immediately got some rave reviews. People were grateful for our candid honesty and acceptance of the emotional and actional life as being just as spiritual and important as anything. We also had a couple people pull themselves off the newsletter list, which is kind of ironic-- because that's a pretty obvious protest too. Oh well, can't please all the people all the time.

I've been on Facebook lately, and the good part is that I do get some contact with a few old friends of mine. The rest is up in the air. I had some minor contact too, with a photographer whom I do not know but whose work I very much admire. He's not willing to share any info with me about the business of photography, or the art, or anything. He posts silly crap on Facebook all the time. For the record, it's mostly silly crap on Facebook anywhere you look. I'm usually very lucky, that when I decide to contact a person with a reputation, some degree of fame, they usually write back. Well not this time. He wrote back as a matter of politeness to let me know that he doesn't know what to say to other photographers when they ask the kinds of questions I was asking. He said maybe I could take a class out of Santa Fe. We were in fact thinking about relocating near Santa Fe as it turns out. This photographer just put his house up for sale too, and says he's trying to dig up some work for himself, so I have to wonder how well he is currently doing in the industry anyway. Nothing like somebody asking for business advice from you when you're getting ready to sell out and get the hell out of Dodge.


I once or twice had other photographers hit me up for advice, very enthusiastic-- some come across as babyish and seem to want almost a mommy who will lead them through everything step by step. Another came on so strong wanting to pal around with me and go out on shoots together, have his girlfriend model nude for us-- it was weird and I shut him down real fast. So, I sort of know what it's like to get contacted out of the blue about things you aren't making yourself available for.

You know one of the luckiest things is that when we do get clients for the spiritual healing practice-- they are like the perfect clients. We love those sessions. And we spent a lot of time making sure that we did indeed give the right impression about ourselves. We want most of all to foster growth and evolution, not dependency (ha! tied into the photo again).

Sheryl is not blogging much right now because she's working on a book. I'm supposed to be working on mine, but I'm still shaking off the writer's dust and continuing to focus on photography as well. We're all babes in the woods in some way, and even though I've published a lot of short stories and news stories I have never put together a book. Sheryl has put out three, but she's never had a close editor like me-- a veteran of many writers workshops, so ouch, growing pains, but at least we're growing up. (How many tie-ins to the photo is that now?)

Pie and Found Geometry

It was pretty damn hot today in Snowflake. We hung out at the park for awhile where there was some shade. I liked the look of the handball or raquetball court (I wouldn't know the difference). I considered doing a composite again, but really liked the underexposed version so I just fine- tuned it a bit. Flawed geometry, partly from the wide angle lens I'm using, and I left the rust stains in and some of the other oddness.

Sheryl and I both had the brilliant idea to have apricot pie with two scoops of ice-cream. It was barely enough for the two of us. We barely had lunch before we left home. Didn't really have dinner but took a nap instead and then woke up hungry.

Controlling dynamic range with layering. Also HDR, Stitching,

(The photo above is combination of two frames shot at radically different exposures, and then combined into one photo. The brighter frame was exposed at a 20th of a second, and the darker frame was exposed at a 200th of a second to show color and detail of the sky. That's a little over 3 stops difference between the two.)

Decided to finally try getting into using "layers" in Photoshop. I've only ever used it before to apply text to a photo. It turns out that in order to do that, Photoshop creates a transparent layer over the top of the image that you're working on, then you can type your text onto that layer. When you are done, you can "flatten" the image and save it as a JPEG or PNG or many other formats. You can also flatten an image at any point during editing and just keep adding layers, theoretically there isn't a limit to this technique. PNG is generally preferred for text, seems to give cleaner edges and it doesn't do the photo any harm either.

This time however, I wanted to merge the dramatic sky with the daylit foreground. The sky was much brighter than the foreground, so I took two exposures: one I metered for the foreground, and the sky was blown out and featureless. I held the camera as still as I could and then metered for the background (the sky). In that one the foreground was very dark, almost silhouette. I knew at the time that without using my tripod there'd be a good possibility of moving the camera just slightly, making it much more difficult to align the layers later on. For me, when I try something new I'm much more comfortable doing it kind of quick and dirty just to get the concept. So that's how I approached this. I also knew as I was shooting that the highly detailed tree against the sky would be a real problem. It was. And I did slightly move the camera which was a bigger problem. I settled for "strange" across the board in this photo, not worrying about getting it perfect. It's bizarre, and maybe even unproductive but when I set out to experiment I sometimes make sure that the final product would have been "born to lose." It's like giving yourself permission to really play around.

In the past I have had no interest in doing composites ( elements from two or more photos combined into one ) but I'm starting to loosen up. Even Ansel Adams did this, not in Photoshop but in the darkroom, manually combining two or more negatives onto the same print: not to do something silly like putting a dog's head on a pony, but to allow greater control over things like contrast, texture and sharpening of an image.

As to my "Old Technicolor" color scheme, well it could just be a phase that I'm going through. "Old Technicolor" combined three sets of film shot through filters, red, green and blue which were then laminated later. The result was a super dense negative with extremely rich and rather unrealistic color. I loved it. If you ever get a chance to see "Robin Hood" with Errol Flynn in a movie theatre, or "The Wizard of OZ" on film then you'll see what I mean. I was lucky enough to see Robin Hood on film for a Film Appreciation class and it left an indelible impression. I don't think it's the same on TV, not even in HD but it's still worth seeing.

My photo above reminds me of an HDR photo ( high dynamic range ) and that is sort of what it is, but not quite. HDR photos typically combine a whole bunch of frames of the same scene, always taken with a locked tripod and they span a much broader range of exposures in smaller increments, all the way from nearly black to almost entirely blown-out and over-exposed. The over-exposed shots are used to reveal detail only in the darkest shadows. The under exposed are to reveal color, tone and details in the very brightest areas. The end result looks dreamy and unreal in most cases. In a lot of cases it looks terrible, but some are trippy and pretty cool to look at.

If I were to make a prediction; pretty soon digital cameras will come with the ability to do HDR right in the camera with the touch of one button. Maybe not right away though. I haven't searched for an easy software solution lately, but I will some time because I think it will be a fun thing to have the ability to do. I admit that I'm hoping my next camera will come with HDR built in. Cameras today have a much shallower dynamic range than the human eye, but with HDR there is the capability of going way beyond what the human eye can see. The downside of course, is ugly, flat looking photos with no depth, no true sense of shape and form, unrealistic colors. . . they can look quite cartoonish. Light and shadow can be a delicate thing to mess with.

There are already some cameras which will stitch images in camera, but last time I checked the stitched images were not at full resolution which pretty much defeats the whole purpose of stitching. Stitching is not the same as layering. In layering images are laid over each other and combined through various means like removing areas of the top image to reveal the lower image. This can be done with varying degrees of opacity/transparency for some really great looking effects. Stitching is combining images edge to edge to create a larger picture. It's often used to shoot panoramic scenes. I haven't done that yet either but it looks way easier than utilizing layers well. There already is software which makes stitching pretty much a one button operation.

Muddy Water

Make no mistake, one of the easiest businesses to engage in, online or otherwise, is the get rich quick scheme. You know, those are the ones so easy to recognize because they always claim that they aren't a get rich quick scheme, right before all the testimonials about how much money so- and- so made the first month. The words, "I was able to quit my job" seem to crop up a lot. Today I looked up "How to make money with Social Networking" and I found an article. Among other things I pointed out that primarily it's Myspace and Facebook making money selling ads, and not the users of same. I also commented that while plenty of people sign up to these services to try to advertise themselves and make sales-- that NOBODY signs up to Facebook and Myspace because they want to buy stuff. In fact I would say that the vast number of people with the time to hang around on free online social networking sites are doing it because it's free entertainment-- cheaper than going out in the real world.

Ever notice how daytime television ads always assume that you're either unemployed, a housewife, or a kid home sick from school ? So I challenged the blog writer (nicely) as to whether he had ever actually made a sale via social networking. To his credit I got a very well thought out response. He said he had "made money" there, and he did it by creating an ad to promote something on the same social network which he was then paid for. Doesn't that kind of make my point? Ad writers get paid, and Facebook gets paid by anybody who runs an ad. Likely he's figured out how to get paid by touting how lucrative it is to self promote businesses on these sites, which is easier than actually promoting a business which actually produces something.

Consultancy is probably the one business in the world which does not have to show responsibility for results. Honestly, I have some experience with this: a consultant gets paid to say exactly what management wants them to say-- if management is paying them. Back when I was a Union man, our Union hired a consultancy firm to examine all the jobs/wages/responsibilities of our members. They came back with results that nearly everyone was due a significant raise in pay. What a great consulting firm that was. I'm sure we recommended them to the rest of the National Union. I'd have tipped them if I could.

Back when I worked at a failing bank, the consultancy firm hired by management said that management should squeeze more work out of fewer workers. I think I made seven bucks an hour for working my ass off at that bank. No Union.

Back to my earlier point, I'm not really knocking the guy who styles himself a marketing expert, maybe he's the best at what he does. I'm not linking to him either because he didn't ask for my critique. There's just something that bugs me about this stuff. Years ago, back when I was a reporter one of my first assignments was to go around and interview all the best/most popular businesses in Bellingham, WA. The basic question was "What is the secret of your success?". Now, for a few of them the secret was that they had cheated on the survey. But for nearly all the others, it was that they strove to be the absolute best at what they did. They didn't scrimp, cut corners or just try to get by. They all counted heavily on word of mouth and repeat customers. Not a muddy issue at all-- clear waters all the way. Now, these are brick and mortar shops, so part of the issue of being seen and recognized was already done for them. Part of success was in having a good location, or at least, good enough.

So, what does it mean if you plunk your printing business down in the middle of cyberspace amongst comments like "I'm so wasted right now" "LOL, me too" "I just ate 6 tacos" --- uh, you might want to find another street corner eh? These guys aren't looking to reproduce a manuscript, a brochure, or a run of posters, but one thing I can almost guarantee you'll get: a whole bunch of people asking you to give them a job.

Results not typical.

Came across this in one of my bookmarks, and it's all about successful use of the Internet for money making purposes. I'll have to read through it again to see if we've done absolutely everything on it and still not found the keys to the kingdom. At times these types of articles strike me very much the same as those late night TV commercials for buying "no money down" real estate. "Results not typical" is the disclaimer as soon as all the testimonials come on. We once attended a "web 2.0" seminar in Santa Cruz, our good friend treated us to it. Fortunately or unfortunately we were already doing everything that they brought up, and more. The Internet is a really big place, it's a world of it's own, and at times a very strange world. It was created for the free and unfettered sharing of information-- an educational tool. Now it's much more than that. We share a lot of free stuff, we also try to make money with the Internet. We make a little money with it. As Sheryl has been writing about: too little.

One thing I won't do is write about Michael Jackson (he just died) just because he just died. I was never a big fan. I don't comment around on other peoples blogs just to get myself noticed, I only comment if I really want to and am sincerely interested. There's a lot of sort of questionable stuff done in the name of self promotion. What's weird is that I'll now get a few hits because I said "Michael Jackson." If I said, "Micheal Jackson speaks from beyond the grave." There would probably be much more notice. Just for the record, Michael Jackson has nothing to say to me. Give me a break. Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson. Sure, Michael Jackson speaking from the other side would get some notice, but since we are on the subject-- just because a psychic gets accurate information that way, it does not validate the event as "true." I say that because Sheryl and I frequently read thoughts out of the minds of others. I do that a little more than Sheryl.

I've also been told that I "broadcast" into the minds of others. Personally, I think everyone is a transceiver of sorts. It would be an easy thing then, even for the most ethical psychic, to accidentally gather information from surviving relatives and just as accidentally tell them what they want to hear. Just my personal opinion, I'm uncomfortable with afterlife communications even though from time to time, we've done it, it comes up and we deal with it. But grieving relatives are just too vulnerable, and I think our primary job as survivors is to let go of the dead, reconcile in our hearts the impermanence of life. Which brings me back to my prior point of not just doing what is popular or likely to make us money. Even the word "Psychic" at the top of my blog was a compromise for me. There's a lot of abuse in this profession, deliberate and accidental.

As far as sharing just for the sake of sharing goes: in some ways our lives out here in the desert could be considered interesting, especially in small doses. So even though I'm not on twitter right now, and don't really "get" a lot of the social networking stuff, recently I am trying to understand the appeal of Facebook. My Myspace page still lies fallow. It's possible I could become a twitterer, though I prefer the term "twit." The horror for me is that it would come to replace real human contact.

Through what little social networking I've done, I managed to comment a few times on a very fine photographer's blog, Mark Tucker . He's one of those photographers whose work doesn't just impress me, it blows me away, especially if you visit his web page. So I eventually wrote to him ( he seemed accessible enough ) about the photography business. I wrote him again about another subject which he is obviously interested in, and is very current for him. He hasn't written back, and I noticed he hasn't responded to my few comments-- so either I said something wrong, or he doesn't know how to answer me quite, or he gets bugged by other photographers way too often to respond anymore, or he's too busy ( he doesn't look too busy right now ) or he never got my emails. . . there are some things about all this Internet stuff which I just hate. The etiquette is vague and unpredictable. Mark is slightly older than I am, and from the South. He might be doing the social networking stuff as a matter of business-- and gathering annoying buzz around himself which does no good-- Oh, well. Mark is kind of famous and I am kind of blunt. Not like movie star famous but I'm sure he's got a life and a business to run. He doesn't owe me anything. I sort of plan to write him one more time just to see if I annoyed him etc. Such is this "new" medium of communication.

Bang Zoom

Straight to the moon.