Archive for the ‘photography’ category

Trivial Gallery v1.0.0

October 24th, 2008

I wrote up a little Perl script that builds a gallery out of pictures organized in folders in order to host a gallery on my DSL router running OpenWRT.

Try it here

Get it here.

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The Decisive Moment

October 8th, 2008

I contemplated using an original photograph to head this entry.  However, I couldn’t bring myself to do it.  Anyhow, words to shoot by:

In whatever picture-story we try approach the subject on tiptoe—even if the subject is still-life.  A velvet hand, a hawk’s eye—these we should all have.  It’s no good jostling or elbowing.  And no photographs taken with the aid of flash light, either, if only out of respect for the actual light—even when there isn’t any of it.  Unless a photographer observes such conditions as these, he may become an intolerably aggressive character. –Henri Cartier-Bresson.

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Rain + Public Transit Delay = Photography

August 21st, 2008
4 cheap

4 cheap

This morning, Sarah offered to take me to work when I told her I was riding the bus.  I declined, telling her that I was going to the Illini Union to work.  (I ended up watching Olympic womens’ soccer and working, but this is an aside.) “You must like riding the bus more than I do, ” she said.  I don’t mind riding the bus most of the time.  Most of the time, that is.  The morning commute was smooth.  I didn’t have to wait long for the bus and it whisked me to the doorstep of my office for the day, gratis.

Around 1:00, I got hungry and decided to go home for lunch and finishing my day’s work.   The bus comes at 1:21, according to the schedule.  I came out at 1:15.  Today is freshman move-in day; so, kids and their parents are everywhere.  Hence, traffic is a nightmare around campus.  I was not disappointed, the StopWatch marquee was displaying a 35-minute wait.  After I’d been standing there for a few minutes, it started to rain.  Then, it started to downpour.  Knowing that the StopWatch often gives you only 5-10 minutes warning when the 13 Silver line is coming, I elected to pull on my Gore-Tex and wait out the rain outside.  Gore-Tex is brilliant, except if you aren’t completely sealed in it.  After getting thoroughly drenched from the waist down, I went back into the Union hoping the A/C would dry me out a little bit.  It did.

The 35-minute wait came and went and the StopWatch reported “DUE” next to 13 Silver for a while before changing again to 15 minutes.  Gah!  It had stopped raining; so, I jumped at the opportunity to take some pictures of interesting people.  No sooner had I pulled out my camera than the gentleman in the photo above arrived at the bus stop.  He paced around nervously and it was hard to catch him facing me.  But, I was rewarded with an OK shot from the hip.  Nevermind that I’d accidentally left the sensor on ISO 1600 from last night.  Ooops.  At least it was fast.

So, I’m a little annoyed with MTD that the StopWatch can’t provide more accurate information.  I would have walked home had I known it was going to take an hour to ride the bus.  But, on the other hand, it was good to be out and about…

» Read more: Rain + Public Transit Delay = Photography