Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"Bin Laden has published various goals over time. They mainly consist of destroying America's economic might - which worked well against the Soviet Union - and reducing American influence around the world.

"So far we've done a good job of fulfilling his goals."

-- Kevin Lyda, 2007-07-03 (responding to a review of an analysis of why terrorism doesn't generally work)

"Bin Laden has published various goals over time. They mainly consist of destroying America's economic might - which worked well against the Soviet Union - and reducing American influence around the world.

"So far we've done a good job of fulfilling his goals."

-- Kevin Lyda, 2007-07-03 (responding to a review of an analysis of why terrorism doesn't generally work)

The festival yesterday was kind of fun and pretty; I would have enjoyed it a lot more if I had gotten enough sleep the night before and had been hurting less. My objective for the day was met -- please the audience and the folks who asked us there -- so the day goes in the 'win' column. And I found somebody selling dried lavender, and got some cool photos (I'm hoping the infrared ones come out; so far I've only looked at the digital shots of course).

But ow, I'm paying for it today. I'm a wreck, physically. I'd concidered getting dropped off at the drug store last night and walking home from there, as there are a few things I need to pick up (none all that urgently; more that I wanted to cross them off my to-do list), but it's a good thing I didn't try after all. Today hurts badly enough as it is.

Going to 3LF rehearsal tonight could be challenging even if my housemate (whom I'd be catching a ride with) is going tonight.

I'm a little nervous about trying to develop the IR film (Kodak HIE). So far I've only used one developer, and only developed a couple kinds of film (Kodak Tri-X and Ilford HP5 ... and I might have done a roll of TMY or something, but I forget), and I've got to go look up what developer is recommended for HIE. I might just hand it over to the lab I usually use, but if I remember right, he said he hasn't worked with IR film, and the lab that I used to take my IR film (and my extreme high-speed BW film) to has gone out of business because too many of their customers switched to digital. (I was happy with the work both labs did, and continue to be happy with the surviving lab, but the reason I found the now-defunct one in the first place was that the other lab suggested them the first time I went asking about developing IR in Baltimore, and they turned out to be absolute wizards at printing BW from the rather marginal negatives I sometimes handed them.)

I'm also concerned that the film itself may be damaged because it was such an old roll (and I've heard that IR film is more susceptible to age and heat damage than most other film), so the IR I shot yesterday is going to be a real roll of the dice on all fronts (starting with the fact that shooting IR is largely guesswork in the first place because most meters don't measure those wavelengths, and the extra complication that the lens I have that fits the red filter I've got doesn't have an IR focussing mark so I had to guess how much to compensate the focus).

The festival yesterday was kind of fun and pretty; I would have enjoyed it a lot more if I had gotten enough sleep the night before and had been hurting less. My objective for the day was met -- please the audience and the folks who asked us there -- so the day goes in the 'win' column. And I found somebody selling dried lavender, and got some cool photos (I'm hoping the infrared ones come out; so far I've only looked at the digital shots of course).

But ow, I'm paying for it today. I'm a wreck, physically. I'd concidered getting dropped off at the drug store last night and walking home from there, as there are a few things I need to pick up (none all that urgently; more that I wanted to cross them off my to-do list), but it's a good thing I didn't try after all. Today hurts badly enough as it is.

Going to 3LF rehearsal tonight could be challenging even if my housemate (whom I'd be catching a ride with) is going tonight.

I'm a little nervous about trying to develop the IR film (Kodak HIE). So far I've only used one developer, and only developed a couple kinds of film (Kodak Tri-X and Ilford HP5 ... and I might have done a roll of TMY or something, but I forget), and I've got to go look up what developer is recommended for HIE. I might just hand it over to the lab I usually use, but if I remember right, he said he hasn't worked with IR film, and the lab that I used to take my IR film (and my extreme high-speed BW film) to has gone out of business because too many of their customers switched to digital. (I was happy with the work both labs did, and continue to be happy with the surviving lab, but the reason I found the now-defunct one in the first place was that the other lab suggested them the first time I went asking about developing IR in Baltimore, and they turned out to be absolute wizards at printing BW from the rather marginal negatives I sometimes handed them.)

I'm also concerned that the film itself may be damaged because it was such an old roll (and I've heard that IR film is more susceptible to age and heat damage than most other film), so the IR I shot yesterday is going to be a real roll of the dice on all fronts (starting with the fact that shooting IR is largely guesswork in the first place because most meters don't measure those wavelengths, and the extra complication that the lens I have that fits the red filter I've got doesn't have an IR focussing mark so I had to guess how much to compensate the focus).

I haven't done much with the relatively few digital photos I shot yesterday, but I did get around to editing the macro shots:

Hmm. Too bad there is't away (AFAIK) to use an image as the cut-tag text, since I want to use this small image as a teaser to get y'all to click through to the larger pics that I thought it'd be rude to not lj-cut, and it'd seem oh so much more clever if the small version and this paragraph didn't appear in the 'full' view of this entry...

I did shoot these on slide film in an SLR with a macro lens as well, but I don't expect the slides to be significantly better (unless I want to blow them up much larger); other than the kludgey macro technique, this is a subject that plays to my digital camera's strengths. (It's a 2.1 megapixel point-and-shoot.) The big advantage the slides should have is the lack of vignetting -- the entire frame should be bright, instead of looking like the camera was pointed through a tunnel. (I think the vignetting comes from the wide angle-of-view on the built-in lens -- when I reverse a 50mm lens in front of a 135mm lens on an SLR, I don't see any vignetting; reversing a 50mm in front of another 50mm shows some vignetting but nowhere near as extreme as on the digicam.)

I haven't done much with the relatively few digital photos I shot yesterday, but I did get around to editing the macro shots:

Hmm. Too bad there is't away (AFAIK) to use an image as the cut-tag text, since I want to use this small image as a teaser to get y'all to click through to the larger pics that I thought it'd be rude to not lj-cut, and it'd seem oh so much more clever if the small version and this paragraph didn't appear in the 'full' view of this entry...

I did shoot these on slide film in an SLR with a macro lens as well, but I don't expect the slides to be significantly better (unless I want to blow them up much larger); other than the kludgey macro technique, this is a subject that plays to my digital camera's strengths. (It's a 2.1 megapixel point-and-shoot.) The big advantage the slides should have is the lack of vignetting -- the entire frame should be bright, instead of looking like the camera was pointed through a tunnel. (I think the vignetting comes from the wide angle-of-view on the built-in lens -- when I reverse a 50mm lens in front of a 135mm lens on an SLR, I don't see any vignetting; reversing a 50mm in front of another 50mm shows some vignetting but nowhere near as extreme as on the digicam.)