Overall a very good weekend. Saturday, Ariesna and & hung out with our friends Bryon & AWelkin. We shot a ton of pictures1 of AWelkin in a couple of her excellent suits. We also learned that velour makes an excellent burr magnet, so don’t go tramping through wood areas wearing a velour cape (especially don’t go off trail in such a thing). Sunday, Ariensa & I just enjoyed a lazy day. Mostly we just hung around the house and did a whole lot of nothing. Though we did go to the grocery store for some reconnaissance on the tea party she’s planning for October. Oddly enough when we got to the store, I noticed a flyer on the community bulletin board inviting people to the world’s biggest tea party. *shrugh* Odd timing that. Oh and the reason this post is called what it is, has to do with a startling experience I had Sunday morning. After I took my shower and was going through my morning toiletries, I caught sight of something moving by the bathroom window. I turned to look over and realized we had a wasp crawling around on the inside of the window. *shudder* I quickly finished up and got out of there. Ariesna dug up the bug spray and then we took care of the little invader. Nobody got stung or anything really unpleasant like that. It’s just if there’s a specific time you don’t want to see a wasp; it’s when you’re standing around nekked. *grin*

1 Some were digital, some were 35mm. When all the film has been developed, we’ll select some of them to send off to the magazine who requested the photos. Once I have clearance from the AWelkin & the magazine people, I’ll post some of them to Flickr.  Though we also have a couple more shoots to do, so don’t expect to see those photos any time soon.

It’s been a good week for interesting links…
From Pukka:

Not from Pukka:

Surprise, there weren’t any links from Pukka this week1 but I did run across a few worth noting:

  • Google Moon: “In honor of the first manned Moon landing, which took place on July 20, 1969, we’ve added some NASA imagery to the Google Maps interface to help you pay your own visit to our celestial neighbor.” Zoom all the way in to find out one of the moon’s secrets.
  • PhotoMuse: “An ambitious project to create one of the largest freely accessible databases of masterwork photography anywhere on the Web, a venture that will bring their collections to much greater public notice and provide an immense resource for photography aficionados, both scholars and amateurs.” Found via the New York Times
  • Hacker Erased Spammer’s Database

1 Come to think of it, I’m not sure he was even in the office this week.

Sam Javanrouh runs one of the best photography sites that I visit, but unfortunately of late I’ve not had the time to look at his site. This evening I decided to make some time and I’m so glad that I did. While browsing through the archives, I ran across a link to a color correction guide that details exactly how Sam cleans up his images for presentation on the web. Very, very nice. It looks extremely helpful for Photoshop users…. Now I just need to see if I can replicate his techniques in GIMP.

Wet Leaf

Ariesna and I went out walking today. Partly because I have a couple dozen rolls of unused film collecting dust, but mostly because AWelkin will get a chance to see Iwahara-san & Keki-san at a conference this month. Why is that important? Well, they were fabulous to all of us who went on the trip to Japan last summer that I feel the need to extract some hospitality vengeance upon them. 😀

Around 1pm, we headed out and started today’s walking/photography adventures. We went over to the Iowa River & Power Company’s parking lot and I started taking pictures of the river, some trees the remains of the dam1. However the main reason we were there is I’d heard from a co-worker that there’s a big nest of eagles in that area. We’d probably been there about half an hour without seeing anything when some other people came up with binoculars. From what we could overhear them saying; they were coming to try and see the eagles too. So I asked them about the eagles and they pointed the nest out to us2. We chatted with them for a couple of minutes and they mentioned some other areas around town we could go to look for eagles. Then we started walking away and spotted an eagle a bit further up the river. I probably shot 15-20 pictures using my 35mm camera and I know some of them weren’t focused that well. Hopefully, at least one or two will turn out nicely. We left shortly after that and went to a couple of the parks over in Iowa City and then down by the Iowa River and the UofI’s Art museum. It was a lot more walking than we usually do, but it was a good time.

I only ended up using about 2 rolls of film (~50 total photos) but I also took some shots with my digital camera. The image attached to this post (and now added to the Gallery) was the last photo I took today, as we walked back to the car. I’m starting to feel a bit tired, so that’s all for now.

1 They’ve torn a good chunk of it down, but I’m pretty sure the plan is to rebuild it.
2 To give credit where credit is due, Ariesna had spotted it but from the description I’d gotten; I told her that was too small to be it. Besides, we hadn’t seen any eagles near it or anywhere on the river.