Everywhere

I see hawks all the time, every where I go. Do why do I still stop to take their picture? I don't know...

Black Hole

I'd hoped to find something interesting inside this rather craggy hole in a tree at Mom and Dad's house, but it was empty. Oh, well, a boy can dream, can't he?

Go Away!

This osprey was a little bit upset that I interrupted his seafood dinner. Sorry, sir.

Little Blue

After I was through shooting the funeral procession, I wandered back towards my car, taking the long way around, which involved going under the 41/301 bridge. On the far side, there's a little park that celebrates the restoration of a small area of estuary, and it was there that I found this little blue heron. Little blue's are usually pretty skittish, but this guy let me get some nice closeups before he flew off. I know he's not really blue, but he's not exactly black, either. I think the people who got to name some of these birds often went in rather fanciful directions.

Fare Thee Well

I often find myself stumbling onto photo opportunities by accident. As I drove through downtown Bradenton this afternoon, I noticed that there were cops blocking some of the side streets. When I came back around, I realized they'd blocked off the whole bridge, so I knew something was up. I parked the car, grabbed the camera, and started heading in the direction of the action. I asked a Channel 8 photographer what was going on, and it turned out to be the funeral procession of the Bradenton Fire Chief who recently passed away from a heart attack. I believe that half the police in the city, and more than half of the fire trucks were part of the procession, convoying across the Manatee River bridge from Bradenton to Palmetto, heading for the Manatee Civic Center.

The remains of Mark Souders were transported in this 1926 fire truck. You can see a better view of the truck below.

The route was lined with a few well-wishers, many of which had brought their own flags.

And here's a nicer view of that old fire truck after it delivered it's precious cargo. Always keep your camera with you, and if you see something that looks interesting, stop and take some pictures! That's your lesson for the day.

Ye Olde Publix

I have been remiss in not stopping and taking this picture before, but I have to take it in the morning for the light to be on the building, and that means I have to get up early in the morning, and I rarely do that if I don't have to work. But Saturday I got up and got out, so here you go. It may not look like much more than another Publix Supermarket in a strip mall, but this store is special. This is the oldest Publix that's still in existence. First opened in 1955, this is the only store left from those days. Those of you who aren't from Florida (or a little bit of Georgia now) may not be familiar with Publix, but it's king of all the grocery stores down here. So I figure it's just a little bit special that we happen to have the oldest one right here in Sarasota. The very first Publix was in Winter Haven, I believe, and they are headquartered in Lakeland, but any of the early ones there are long gone. I just wish this one looked like some of the Publix's I remember seeing when I was little. Or like this rebuilt one in Orlando.

Comparison Shopping

On Christmas Day, there was a discussion regarding what the difference was between yams and sweet potatoes. As the signs above indicate, the answer is about $0.70 per pound. Case closed.

The Green Flash

I want you to look really close at the picture above. I snapped this last year on Memorial Day, then forgot to post it. It's the sun setting, just moments before it sinks below the horizon. It's that little spot just to the left of center. It should be orange, but if you look closely, it's not. Here, let me blow it up for you.

Here's a way-zoomed in view of the picture above, way bigger than I should blow it up, but I want you to see what's there. The sunset has actually turned green. It's called a green flash, and it's a rare by-product of some interesting atmospheric phenomena. Some people claim to see it all the time, some folks claim it doesn't exist, but here's the photographic proof that I shot with my own camera.  Note how the image of the sun seems to hover above the waters' surface, not actually touching it.  That has something to do with a temperature inversion near the surface of the water.  It's causing an optical illusion, channeling the light in odd ways, and scattering all the yellow, orange and red light, leaving only the green.

This is a detail from the next frame I shot, showing it's still green, only there's less of it.

The frame after that, still green, but nearly gone. There was nothing at all in the following frame.  These photos all show a timestamp within one second of each other, and my camera can take about 8 frames per second, so I suspect this series of pictures runs less than a second.  I don't recall if I had it on high-speed capture or regular.  I usually leave it on regular because it gets touchy on high-speed and I end up with a dozen picture of the same thing.

And this is the frame that precedes all of them, before the sun reached that critical spot where all but the green colored light is scattered into the atmosphere and lost. If I were just throwing a green filter on it, then this shot would be green, too.  For the technical minded, I shot these handheld with a 7D and a 400mm lens (626mm it says, with the EF-S sensor).  Whenever I've been at the beach hoping to catch a green flash with tripod and all, it never happens...

Little Black Squirrel

I don't know why I find black squirrels to be so fascinating. I guess it's because the ones we have in Florida are all grey, although I think they have red ones further up the peninsula. I shot this guy in DC, same as this other one I showed you, and I've tried to take their picture when I've seen them in Ohio, but never gotten a good shot. Isn't he cute? I just want to throw acorns at him. According to Wikipedia, black squirrels were introduced to DC at the very beginning of the 20th century.  Who knows if that's true or not, but it's an interesting story.  If you spot a black squirrel in an odd place, you can add it to the map here.

Make War, Not Love

Here's another site from the river cruise of DC last April. This time it's the National War College, located on Ft. McNair along the Washington Canal. I guess you're not really looking at the college, you're looking at Roosevelt Hall, which houses the college. You can see the US Capitol to the left of the building, but it's really far away. The telephoto lens makes it look a lot closer than it really is, plus it sits on a bit of a hill (yes, there really is a Capitol hill), so it tends to tower over everything for miles around. If you hope to have a long and fruitful career in the military, you'll probably wind up here for a while.

RMS Titanic

Did you know that Washington, DC, has a memorial to the men who died on board the Titanic? I didn't either, but if you spend enough time there, you'll find out that DC has a monument to everything and everybody. I spotted this monument from a boat while taking a cruise down the Washington Canal and the Potomac River last year when I visited for the Cherry Blossom Festival. I was thinking about that today, and remembered that I had thousands of pictures I never shared after my trip. In the springtime, there's something to do and photos to shoot almost each and every day, so I don't get them posted in a very timely manner. I think I only posted pictures from my first day or two in DC, then totally skipped out on the last day or two. And that was when I took this cruise up and down the channel and the river, where I spotted this monument on the shore. I learned that it used to be much closer to town, but was moved in the sixties to make way for The Kennedy Center. That's progress, I guess. Keep in mind that this sculpture was designed and built in the late twenties, then dedicated in the early thirties, so it greatly predates a certain scene in a certain movie you may have seen...

Ladybug, Ladybug

Back on New Year's Eve, when we celebrated Christmas this year, I broke out the new Macro lens and tried to shoot some ladybugs as they ran around on the hand of one of my nieces. I need lots of practice shooting with the limited focus range of this lens. Maybe I need to practice on dead bugs instead of ones that are trying to run away...

Ibis Aloft

I got a couple of semi-decent shots of some glossy ibis coming in for a landing back on New Year's Eve. A farmer down the road from Mom and Dad's house had put out some bread for his cows, and these guys were coming in to try and grab some treats. They kept circling and I kept shooting, trying to catch the flashes of iridescence as they got into just the right angle. The camera was also having trouble keeping them in focus, so most of my shots showed blurry birds and focused trees, but these two came out OK. I need to do a better job of looking to see what my settings are before I try to shoot something like this. I'm sure a faster shutter speed and a different focusing algorithm would have yielded much better shots. I'm never going to get on the cover of National Geographic at this rate.

Look, Up In The Sky

Let me see. Over the years here at the blog I've brought you lots of things that fly. You've seen fighter jets and prop planes, helicopters, biplanes, planes that are nothing but wings, Air Force One, Marine One, a couple of space shuttles, the first airplane ever, Thunderbirds and Blue Angels, some hot air balloons, crazy people jumping out of perfectly good airplanes, all kinds of birds from cranes to eagles, owls to kestrels, magnificent frigate birds to scissor-tail kites, even rays that try to break the surly bonds of earth, but this may be the first blimp I've brought you.  (Nope, I'm wrong.  Saw the same one back in 2006, I just forgot about it.) No idea why it was flying over Brandon as I was driving down the interstate this afternoon. We had a bowl game in Tampa over the weekend, perhaps it was here for that. Gotta love Snoopy, even if he is schilling for MetLife.

The End Of Christmas 2010

OK, this is it, the last Christmas share of 2010.  We're having our family Christmas tomorrow, so I'll be busy with that all day, and I'm tired of having to work on these things every night.  Not only have I tried to post something every day since Thanksgiving, I've been recording these since the beginning of September, so I've been at this for a while.  Not that it isn't fun, I enjoy it quite a bit, but I need to take a little break.  Don't worry, though, the Christmas should be back in July with Christmas in July.  For now, I'm closing with a random record pulled from the leftover stack of stuff.  The folder I created for my Christmas vinyl this year has about 1900 songs in it, and as of this record, I've converted a little over 1300 of those to MP3.  They only become MP3s when I'm done with the recording and the artwork, so that means I've finished up roughly two thirds of what I started.  That's a better average than most years. Much of what I record is stuff that I can't share, since it's on CD or available for legal download somewhere.  I enjoy recording all sorts of records, so I usually record what looks interesting then check later if I can share it or not.  Now I need to go through and put artwork with all those leftover albums that I've got in there.  But this is the last one you'll see, at least for this year.  Please have a Happy New Year and download The Canterbury Choir-While Shepherds Watched (MGM 10" E147, Mono, 1952).  Hope you enjoyed all the music this season!

1. Angels We Have Heard On High
2. While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks By Night
3. Away In A Manger
4. O Holy Night (Cantique De Noel)
5. In The Bleak Mid-Winter
6. What Child Is This? (Greensleeves)
7. Coventry Carol
8. We Three Kings Of Orient Are


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One Last Remaster

Before I finally finish up with the 2010 Christmas sharity, I have one last remastered recording for you.  I remembered that my old share of this Ethel Smith Christmas record came from some vinyl that had been played pretty long and hard.  There's a reason you're supposed to change those needles occasionally, folks.  I think this copy was in much better shape, but it's still not perfect.  This isn't my favorite collection of Christmas music on the organ, but it's not bad.  Please be my guest and download this new and improved version of Ethel Smith-Christmas Music (Decca DL8187, Mono, 1955).  This record was later reissued in an abridged version on Vocalion entitled Silent Night-Holy Night.  That's the cover you see down at the bottom. Oh, and the original issue on 78 and 45 EP had yet another cover, you can see that one here.

1. Silent Night
2. It Came Upon The Midnight Clear
3. O Holy Night (Cantique De Noel)
4. The First Nowell
5. Oh, Little Town Of Bethlehem
6. Angels We Have Heard On High
7. Adeste Fidelis (O, Come All Ye Faithful)
8. Hark! The Herald Angels Sing
9. White Christmas
10. God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen
11. Good King Wenceslas
12. Jingle Bells

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Another Indulgence

Once again, you'll have to pardon my straying from the pure and simple and into the realm of whatever distracts me for the moment.  I ripped another 78 tonight, and this one is a whole horse of a different color from last night's affair.  Pinning down a date for this one is a bit tough, though.  I found 1908, 1910 and 1911, all of which I'm sure are correct, but I'm not certain exactly which release or take I've got here.  This is a massive single-sided 12" record that spins at 78 RPM on the Victrola label.  After I'd played with the EQ, I did a bit of compression on it, so it plays at something closer to a uniform volume all the way through.  Before I did that, the quiet parts were really too quiet, and the two loud spots were too loud and had what I think was some sort of groove wear in them, too.  I think it sounds better now.  But I just can't get over the fact that this record is 100 years old and I played it!  And to think I almost didn't pay the exorbitant sum of $3 when I found this at the thrift store.  That's way too much for an old 78!  Please be my guest and download a sample copy of Ernestine Schumann-Heink, Contralto With Orchestra-Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht (Silent Night, Holy Night) (Christmas Hymn) (Victrola 88138).  Again, comments, critiques, suggestions, complaints, concerns, all are welcome.

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Big thanks to all of you who gave me some feedback on yesterday's post.  I tried using the EQ software from the ClickRepair folks, but I didn't think it sounded as good as the stuff from Audacity.  I didn't know enough about it to change the default settings, so I'll have to go back to it at some point once I have a better idea of what I'm doing.  I did notice that when I ran this file through ClickRepair, it had to do a lot less work than the one from yesterday, so maybe that crack was adding to the noise.  I still need to work on cleaning these things before I record them.  I'm still a little afraid of them, so I am treating them like eggshells.  I think I have the tracking force set at 2.5 grams.  The needle itself on the tonearm looks to my eyes to be cocked a little to one side, but I don't see a way to adjust that.  I wonder if the tonearm itself is bent?  That's what I get for buying pawn shop record players.  And as far as taking pictures of the labels instead of scanning them, I'll have to give it a try.  Maybe I can make it work for something that small.  Shooting LP covers that way never works out very satisfactorily.  I'll try to post a before and after sample soon, too, as soon as I get a better handle on what I'm doing.

Minor Indulgence

So, couple of weeks ago, I finally found a nice, modern turntable that spun at 78 RPM.  It was at a pawn shop and the price was pretty good, even without a headshell or needle.  Of course no place local had a needle that would work on the old records, although the guy at Sam Ash tried to tell me I didn't need a special needle.  (He also told me there was a cartridge in the package I bought, but it was just a needle...  Moron.)  So I ordered a cartridge and it arrived today.  I've been playing all evening, figuring out how to remove the old RIAA curve and put a correct curve in place, how to strip out the low frequency sounds, how to remove some of the surface noise without stripping out any of the sound.  All things I do with my usual album recordings, sorta, but all completely different on these records.  So the first recording I got into a pretty decent shape was a square dance version of Jingle Bells that I grabbed the other day from the Goodwill Bargain Barn just before it was thrown in the dumpster.  It's even cracked, but I couldn't hear it in the recording.  I think I did a pretty good job of it, but I'd love to hear some critiques from those of you who have more experience in such things.  I recorded in Audacity in stereo, removed the clicks in ClickRepair, which mixed it down to mono, then back to Audacity for removing the RIAA curve, then some re-EQing.  I don't remember exactly what I did or didn't do to get this final version, since I went back and forth so many times.  I also didn't scan the record 'cause I think it's not gonna do that crack any good to sit on a scanner bed.  Anyhow, please give a listen to Carson Robison And His Pleasant Valley Boys, Calls By Lawrence V. Loy-Jingle Bells (RCA-Victor 10" 78 RPM 20-1832, 1946).  Lemme know what you think.  good, bad, indifferent, whatever.  I want to learn to do this right.  :)

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Lundstrom 2

As fate would have it, I found a second Christmas LP from The Lundstroms in the archives, so I had to record it.  I'm always one for complete sets.  So if you downloaded the first one, you have to download this second one.  There are probably more, but they'll have to wait until I find them.  This is The Lundstroms-Colorado Christmas (Tempo/Message R-7230, Stereo).  I wonder if I could get a collection of Christmas songs featuring all 50 states?  Hmmm, I can think of quite a few just off the top of my head...

1. Jesus Christ Is Born
2. Colorado Christmas
3. Beauty Of The Snow
4. I Can Hardly Wait Till Christmas
5. Now I'm Not Lonely At Christmas
6. Why Isn't Everybody Singing Allelu
7. Sing Along Christmas
8. Christmas Medley
9. Christy's Christmas Prayer
10. I Needed A Savior To Care
11. Our Love Is Like The Mountains

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Lundstrom 1

I was trying to remember why I ripped this LP and I'm having a bit of a hard time of it.  I've got dozens, no, hundreds of Christmas LPs put out by religious groups, from church choirs to monks and nuns to high schools, you name it.  So why this one?  I think it's because I saw a track by The Lundstroms on an Andy Cirzan mix once, and that immediately makes it something I need.  Problem is, I don't remember which track it was, and this is not the Lundstroms only Christmas record.  But give this one a listen, maybe you'll find something on here that you like.  I'll keep looking to see which track was used by Mr. Cirzan and on which comp.  This is The Lundstroms-Christmas With The Lundstroms (Tempo R-7198, Stereo)

1. The Messiah Has Come
2. I Know How
3. Didn't He Shine
4. Christmas Medley
5. O Holy Night
6. Country Christmas
7. Daddy Will Be Home For Christmas
8. Mr. Snowman  (This is the one that sounds the most like something Andy would use, so maybe this is the track...)
9. Little Stranger In A Manger
10. It's Christmas

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