Happy Birthday to You

Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday dear D
Happy birthday to you...
...and many more

BABY CANDY!!!

Not really, though that would be delicious. Maybe not candies made from babies, but, you know, like candies made by babies. The candies themselves would be really, really small. They would sell for a fortune because babies can only make like one candy a day... most of the time they are sleeping, eating, making-the-number-two, and being cute. So they can only work for like 5 minutes at a time and 15 minutes a day... Let me know if you think there is a market for Baby Candy. Wait... might people get confused and think Baby Candy is candy for babies? I think I might have to hash this plan out a bit more. Anyway...

Meet Kendal. She's awesome. I real trooper. She likes me. I like her. Good job Jon! Try to let Val handle the moral development of this one. K?

Run to the Capital

DC was AWESOME!!! If you think you don't need to visit the capiti-capital, you are flat wrong. It was amazing. We're talking Lincoln, Jefferson, Washington all over the place, The White House, The US Capital Building and The Smithsonian Museum vol. I through X.

So the Capital building has a brand new visitors center full of documents, statues, and lines of high school students. Pretty cool. I even saw John Muir's signature, but I couldn't take a picture of it. That would have been a huge breach in national security. But I'm not bitter; it was cool just to see that unmistakable dome, all hugantic and white! It looked just like it did in The West Wing, only in high definition.

Of course the Smithsonian rocked so hard!. There are like a bigillion museums, each one with a bigillion artifacts... That's like... quick! what's a bigillion times a bigillion.... two bigillion artifacts. Too much to see in a few days, but we did go to The Natural History Museum and The American History Museum. We bypassed the art museums because Jon hates art.

We spent one night walking the mall late, late, late with Griff. That was so cool and totally unexpected since D and I had no idea he was interning in DC. The monuments at night were so cool... except I kept getting told by security that I couldn't use my tripod at the monuments. How ridiculous is that! That's like saying, "No tripods in Yosemite National Park" since the monuments are part of a national park.

But DC was also somber and sobering. The Metro crash that just happened, happened on the same line D and I took after our late night with Griff. And an officer, Officer Stephan T. Johns, was shot and killed at the Holocaust Museum the day we arrived. I hope no one takes offense to me posting these; it was hard to take them and I have thought and thought about whether to post them. Sometimes I'm just amazed at what humans do to each other and it doesn't seem right not to acknowledge what happened or to avert our eyes. Hopefully these make it harder for people not to realize that this was a real person.

I close with a friendly reminder... be good to each other... be tolerant... be understanding... be caring... Find more room for love and less room for hate.

Phil

It's been too long. I've been busy putting together a class, getting some research done, trying to get a few manuscripts published, but I finally made time to shoot some photos. This is my lab-mate Phil in a laminar flow hood. This is where the in vitro magic happens. More at my flickr including a shot of my ugly mug. I'm hoping to get more time to shoot more grad students. They always have such cool projects and one of the things I really love about being a perpetual student is talking shop about everything from plants to presidents.






Phil is using in vitro systems to look at differences in germination, growth and development of an orchid species that is found from Florida to Canada. He's finding some really cool responces to light and temperature throughout the specie's range including differences in bioaccumulation, resource allocation and rate of corm formation. Look for him making the big time soon. He hopes to be graduating in December.

A Chill is in the air

I am back into the semester, so there isn't much time for photos. I miss those lazy days of winter vacation. What will I ever do if I leave the ivory tower for the real world where years aren't split into semesters?

Well it's been cold in FL, a little too cold. Makes me miss those hot Tucson nights when the temp dipped into the lower 90s and the days got into the 110s (but it was a dry heat... like that matters). Man was it hot. Now with Florida's budget issues we keep the thermostat in the lab at a cool 70 degress, though I swear it's colder. It just has to be colder. Here are a couple of warm weather images from my trip to Tucson, AZ last summer.

Purple Jumper

Well, school starts back up tomorrow. Break was good and I had lots of time to shoot photos, but it doesn't seem like I have enough time to shoot anymore. Oh well I can always fall back on science.

D and I did an impromptu shoot in our backyard. Across from the lot from where we live is a swampy area blocked off by an old wood fence, sort of. We spent our last weekend of vacation getting grumpy about going back to work and I had been thinking about this set up for a while. I finally got bored and crabby enough to spring into action.

A single Vivitar 285 hv fired high above bushes at 1/4 power for the first two and low, under the brush for the last two. I wanted to get strong shadows, ans so positioned the flash close to perpendicular from D. 18-55 mm lens at about f 4.5 for all shots.

New Year, New blog

To have some New Years fun, I set up a photo booth in my hallway and bribed my friends with booze, cookies, and baked almond stuffed dates wrapped in bacon (want the recipe? It's almonds, stuffed in dates, wrapped in bacon, that are baked...they're healthy because they are baked). Bravo everyone for putting your game faces on and appeasing me.

The set up was simple: single Vivitar 285 hv bare 1/4 power (a tad hot) bounced low off a wall camera left. Fill provided by the hallway mirror camera right. Video is below. Try to ignore the seems and pay attention to the fun that was had with a single strobe and an entry level Canon SLR. Quick. Dirty. Fun.

More polished photos are available here.



A single flash makes the group shots tough and it feels like having just one more flash would make me an exponentially better photographer, but the truth is it won't and I still throw out lots of images because they are out of focus, poorly composed, or incorrectly exposed. For now I do my best with a single flash and creative friends.

I am still learning the ins and outs of balancing light. For these images I wish I would have used a faster ISO (1600 instead of 800), leaned more heavily on the low ambient light and used the flash to just light up my subjects. But space was tight, I mean we were shooting in a hallway next to a bathroom, so I have relied instead on the awesome attitudes of my willing friends. Happy New Year.