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29 March 2008 Inside Lick Observatory's Great Refractor Dome Nestled atop Mt. Hamilton just east of San Jose, Lick Observatory, which has nothing to do with tongues, is home to several telescopes, including this gigantic refractor. This is one of the neatest interiors I've seen in a while. Visited last Decemeber, but hadn't been there since I was a kid, and it's still neat! There's a very windy road leading up to it, and I have childhood memories of trying to spot the wrecked cars that had driven off to their doom whenever we drove up. This photo is of the first telescope built on the site, which was constructed between 1876 and 1887. The body of James Lick lays entombed beneath. Beat that for ambiance!! The entire floor that you see raises and lowers so that the eyepiece of the telescope can be at eye level for the astronomers. You can see the counterweights along the walls. The telescope itself is balanced so that a single person can just grab hold of it and drag it around to point it at the right place. All in all, a neat place to visit. If this quicktime doesn't work for you, you can view interactively with shockwave. Also, you can visit this image on flickr, or see an alternate projection of this image here. |
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16 March 2008 Iraq Body Count Exhibit You can just make out a thin strip of red flags in the distance. A sign nearby reads: "Each white flag represents at least 5 Iraqis, Each red flag represents 5 Americans killed as a result of the 2003 invasion of Iraq." As of March, 2008, iraqbodycount.org estimates about 85,000 civilians have died from violence in Iraq since 2003. This was an installation at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon, March 2008. You can learn more about it here. If this quicktime doesn't work, you can View interactively with shockwave. You can also visit this image on flickr. |
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3 March 2008 The Quiet Before the Storm What a way to go! My second go at an enfused panorama. Much more ghosting that my first attempt, but pretty easy to clean up. If you don't have quicktime, you can try to view interactively with shockwave. |
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3 March 2008 A 24-hour Comics Jam This was one of many such events hosted at illustrator and graphic novelist David Chelsea's place, in July of 2006, in the spirit of of 24 Hour Comics day, where cartoonists have 24 consecutive hours to create a finished 24 page comic. I've managed to get one done on time, not this time around, but the previous year. At this jam, I opted to chicken out and just take photos. Surprisingly enough, some of these comics even turn out pretty good! Photographed with 30 photos from this thing. If this quicktime doesn't come up, you can try to view with a shockwave viewer. |
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2 March 2008 Get Your Walnuts Here This is another of my older panoramas from 2006 made with 30 photos taken with this thing. The tree is a huge black walnut tree near Lincoln High School in Portland, Oregon. This kind of tree is great to have near curbs, because the huge walnuts that drop off the branches will often make a memorable resonant thump on unsuspecting cars and passers by. You can view with quicktime or with shockwave. |
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1 March 2008 Stone steps near the Portland Rose Gardens This is the very first spherical panorama I ever made, stitched together from 30 photos in June of 2006. I finally managed to convert it to a computer viewable format. It shows neat stone steps leading up to the Rose Gardens in Washington Park, Portland, Oregon. |
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27 February 2008 Old Panorama of Eagle Creek Here we see the shadow of the Creature of the Punch Bowl, shortly before it mauled my leg. With the assistance of Adam and Mike, I managed to escape, and you can see my empty shoes left as a reminder to others. In any case, this is one of my older panoramas that I converted to be computer viewable. |
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26 February 2008 First Thursday at the Pony Club Behold the Pony Club, one of the Everett Lofts in downtown Portland. It shows strange comic art, and sells various odd comics. |
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26 February 2008 First Thursday at the Pony Club, by the refreshments Here we see a large drawing by Theo Ellsworth protecting the crackers from Dylan. |
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24 February 2008 Sunrise over the Hawthorne Bridge I was on my way to work the other day, and on the Hawthorne Bridge, the sunrise really struck me. |
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24 February 2008 Sunset over Portland So anyway, at the end of the day, even with my brain scrambled from the day's events, I happened to notice a really striking sunset! The photo really doesn't do it justice. I probably should have waited another few minutes for the glow to spread more across the sky. |
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20 February 2008 Total Lunar Eclipse Over the Willamette President Bush today decided to blow up a falling spy satellite, but missed by about 60,000 miles, and hit the moon instead! It turned completely red for a while, but suffered no permanent effects. He told reporters that, "Well dangit, the moon is just an easier target to aquire that some puny little space junk!" But seriously, owing to a freak atmospheric phenomenon, the moon in the photo appears to be much larger than it actually is. To the right and up a little from the Hawthorne Bridge, you can just barely make out the Orion constellation amidst all the jpeg compression clutter. |
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18 February 2008 Foggy Morning on the Willamette This photo was taken one foggy morning just after the first big storm of winter, December 2007 in Portland. When I try to view this photo with Freepv on Linux, for some reason the top photo is 1/3 smaller than it should be, and tiled 3 times, leaving a huge black rectangle floating in the sky, and I have no idea why. Seems to work for real quicktime on other machines, though. |
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14 February 2008 Parkour in the Park Some of the first Portland parkour for 2008. Present were Julian, Tim 1, Tim 2, Monkeyjunta, Oni, Adam, and me, hiding behind the camera. This could have been a fairly good panorama, but I forgot to take enough photos of the reeeally long shadows that day, and of the people after they landed. The shadows I drew in are just silly, but I'm tired of working on it!! I do like the trees, though. |
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8 February 2008 At the table with the Friends of the Nib For First Thursday of February, 2008 at Floating World Comics in Portland, Oregon, Jim Woodring and the Friends of the Nib came down from Seattle to sit around and draw cartoons. I happened to be passing, and took this panorama hand-held.. |
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2 February 2008 Inside Lick Observatory's 120 inch Reflecting Telescope Dome Aside from the hideous moire pattern on part of the dome that I'm too lazy to process out, this panorama came together reasonably well. They also had a short video that visitors can view about how the telescope was brought up mountain on the very narrow winding roads and assembled in the dome. |
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26 January 2008 My Grandma's Backyard This panorama is my first attempt at building a panorama from multiple exposures. Each section is built from two photos: one light and one darker, which are blended together using Enfuse. There are various other ways to combine exposures, but enfuse is fast, easy, and has adequate results (so far!). I also have to keep reminding myself to make sure I focus on the right area!! My final photos straight down focused on the tripod rather than on the ground. GRRrrr! |
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20 January 2008 Max light rail stop at 4am So this is what a MAX stop looked like at 4am just after the winter solstice of 2007, while I was waiting for the train to take me to the airport. |
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15 January 2008 Outside the 120-inch reflecting telescope at Lick Observatory Here's a qtvr of the dome containing the 120 inch reflecting telescope of Lick Observatory at sunset. |
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6 January 2008 Presents, and the World Wide Panorama At one of Santa's way stations, this was my contribution to the 2007 Wrinkle Tribute event of the World Wide Panorama, a great repository of thousands of total panoramas from across the globe. |
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4 January 2008 Outside the 36-inch refracting telescope at Lick Observatory During my winter travels, I took this picture of Lick Observatory on top of Mt. Hamilton in California, overlooking the haze covered Silicon Valley. |
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1 December 2007 Keller Fountain Parkour Some parkour in Portland, including Seattle based Tyson Cecka. |
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24 November 2007 Marquam Bridge This is my first successful attempt at making a spherical panorama with a fisheye lens. It was stitched together from 12 photos, taken hand held, but with a plum bob hanging off the camera lens to help reduce parallax errors. |
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