why we work -- journal

Monday, September 29, 2008

The label said "Do not drive or operate machinery," - There was no warning about the dangers of using Photoshop while under the influence.

Sunday, September 28, 2008

Sunset tonight - the top floor of the Hancock glowed pink in support of the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure which was on Saturday.

Friday, September 26, 2008

This morning I was up at the unfortunate hour of 5:30, but I was rewarded with this photo op of a waning crescent moon almost punctuating the Hancock building.

Then an hour later I was treated to a beautiful sunrise. It's interesting to notice how much the sun has moved south in just a few weeks.

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Sunrise - beautiful for sure but damn I'd like to be able to sleep past this in the near future.

Monday, September 22, 2008

Went back to the sunflower patch on Sunday. Spent about a half hour and took about 50 pictures - here are the faves so far...

Saturday, September 20, 2008

Sunrise on Thursday

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

I was minding my own business today, hunkered down working on some last minute video for that project and I heard an unusual thunk. A (seemingly suicidal) finch had flown into the sliding glass door and was now belly up on the bistro table on our terrace.

Now of course this happened when Andy is traveling, and on a work at home day when I was home to witness the whole horrific event. He was clearly going towards the light (breathing a little, but legs curled and twitching), so I began to concoct a plan to get building maintenance to remove the tiny yellow carcass. This would mean changing out of my work at home outfit though, so I paced around for a bit feeling horrible about this dying bird (closing the curtains didn't help either).

Then all of a sudden I saw a flutter through the curtains - he righted himself ! Meanwhile, Andy sent me a link for birdmonitors.net (leave it to me to deal with this issue by using the damn internet!). I was relieved to learn that stunned birds might look dead and that they are usually fine after a couple hours. I called the hotline, and a very helpful woman explained that as long as it wasn't in danger of being stepped on or attacked by another bird, it was probably in a good place so there was no need to try to contain it in a box. She also said that if he hadn't improved in a few hours, I could call back and they would send a volunteer over to pick it up and take it to a rehab center.

I was quite pleased when it eventually opened its eyes and even more pleased when it turned its head to look at me when I walked over to check on it. I had to run out for an errand at lunch, and when I returned it was gone. PHEW.

Both cats slept through the entire ordeal, by the way.

Enough of the yammering, here are the latest HDR experiments.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

The weather finally improved, providing a beautiful sunset reflected in the skyline this evening. Still experimenting the the HDR technique.

And here's a high contrast black and white version of the same image. The street lights at the bottom get blown out, but the buildings look almost silver. Will figure out a way to salvage it somehow...

Monday, September 15, 2008

For those who don't know, the back side of our building is on the Chicago River, which was about two feet from overflowing into the basement on Saturday.

They finally opened the locks to the lake and the water level subsided a bit by Sunday, but usually there's a LOT more room between this sign and the river.

Ready for blue skies any time now...

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

As predicted, it is near 11pm and I am still hunkered down. I am one with the desk chair.

I did take a break around 9 to go eat some potstickers out on the terrace and I also took some photos to try an HDR image at night. Turned out quite wild, almost looks 3D.

My free time for the day is over :) I won't likely extract myself from this chair again around 11pm, but until then here's a little more rambling on the topic of HDR.

This is how sunrise pictures usually turn out if you trust the cameras program mode.

And this is how they turn out once you adjust the exposure.

And here's the HDR version, which in this case is three exposures - the "correct" one and then plux and minus 2 exposure values.

Tuesday, September 09, 2008

HDR attempt #2. Hopefully tomorrow am will provide more subject matter because this is my one alotted work diversion with the recent insane schedule.

Monday, September 08, 2008

One of the things on my to-do list is to experiment with high dynamic range (HDR) photography. It boils down to using a set of images taken at different exposures to compose a single image. Here's my first attempt.