Okay, I finally got around to taking some photos. If there is actually anyone reading this, I have been crying in my beer about being screwed over at my last job. All of these were taken with my Canon AE-1 on Kodak TMax 400.

This is the camera that I took the photos with

Here we go again

Well, I have decided that I am either selfish or my life is too full.

Case in point. This weekend, I had no time for myself. This is no one fault, per se, but them's the facts nonetheless. From the time I woke up on Saturday until I went to bed Sunday night I was involved in something. Does that mean that someone was with me 24/7? Of course not. For instance, I was able to watch 30 minutes of the football game last night when my wife went to bed early. There wasn't, however, that 2 to 3 hour block of time where I was doing what I wanted to do, by myself.

I also want to be clear about something else. The above statements do not mean that I was unhappy. I spent some wonderful time with my daughter early Sunday, and with my daughter and wife Sunday afternoon. There are just times when a person needs to be alone, and I do not have that time anymore.

Working for the Weekend

Gotta love a "Loverboy" reference.

The title should have been, "Time to work on the weekend".

Here is the deal. I spend most of my time during the week either driving, working or sleeping. My personal time at home adds up to about an hour and a half, of which, 30 minutes of that is eating dinner. I keep telling myself to get things done during the week, but after 90 minutes of fighting Atlanta traffic, I'm just not up for it. So, what does that mean for me? It means that I get to do all the stuff most normal humans do during the week on my weekend. That includes laundry, cleaning the house, maintaining the exterior, projects etcetra. That, along with trying to reconnect with my family leaves precious little time to do anything on a personal level.

Well, work is starting, so I will see ya tomorrow....

Thursday.......

It is nearing the end of the week. I can tell you that I have never experienced anything in my life quite like this. It feels as if my life is completely on hold during the week and I have to cram all my living into Saturday and Sunday.

My typical week day starts at 4:30 in the morning. I get up and ram down a cup of coffee down my throat. Thank you to whomever invented the coffee maker with a timer on it. Without that, I would have to get up at 4:15 so I could make coffee.

During that time I hope I need to use the restroom. I know it is silly, but when I have to use the restroom my lower abdomen hurts like crazy. Since I have an hour commute in the morning, have abdominal cramps can make for a long, miserable ride.

At 4:45 am I start getting ready for work. I do the typical stuff, shave, shower, get dressed, etc. That takes about 20 to 25 minutes. I then go downstairs, kiss my wife, who is now up, and make myself a cup of coffee to go and then I am off. I have to get on the road by 5:15 to 5:20 am to avoid all of the downtown Atlanta traffic. It takes about an hour to get to work. It should take 1 hour and 15 minutes, but I travel at about 80 mph on the freeway.

I typically get to work at 6:20 to 6:30 am. The owner doesn't seem to mind if we do personal things on the computer, so I check facebook, play Mafia Wars, and type this stupid blog. My work day starts at 7:00 am.

I work in the car business as a Service Manager. Well, really as a Service Consultant. The great thing about the car business is that it pays more than most, the bad thing is that the hours are long. I work Monday through Friday, 7:00 am to 6:00 pm. That is a long day, my friends.

I try to get out of work as close to 6:00 as possible to start the ride home. My typical evening commute is 1 hour and 30 minutes. I have only experienced one accident backing up traffic. The extra 30 minutes in the evening is just due to freeway congestion. I would carpool if I could, but no one around me is crazy enough to commute 60 miles one way to work.

I arrive home at about 7:30 pm and my back and left hip are screaming at me. I stretch out a bit and sit down for dinner. Now, my wife works as well, and she has a very demanding job. She works from 6:30 to 2:30 in the afternoon. Because it is physically demanding, when she comes home, she needs to take a shower, take a nap, and then sit and relax. I am okay with this, but it does mean that on the majority of the evenings I am either fending for myself or eating some sort of one pan meal. I cannot remember the last time I had a traditional meat, starch, and vegetable dinner during the week.

So, I eat until 8:00pm and then watch one hour of television. It is now 9:00 pm and it is time for me to start getting ready for the next day. This entails getting the coffee maker ready for tomorrow and making my lunch. All this takes about 20 minutes, and then it is time for bed.

Yep, life's an adventure........

Quiet Desparation

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desparation" - Henry David Thoreau

Well, if there was a quote that encapsulated my life, that is it. I will fill you in during the next few days, more of a cathartic experience for me and an educational experience for you.

I currently work 60 miles away from where I live. The job is okay, and the people are wonderful, but it doesn't change that I spend two and a half hours on the road Monday through Friday. Why do I work 60 miles away from where I live? Simple. I was fired from the job for which I originally relocated to Atlanta. I lived 15 miles away from that job. However, life moves on and time and tide wait for no man, so I had to find a job. The Lord blessed me with this job two days after I was fired. You can't beat that. The bad news was that my new job pays me half of what my old job paid me.

I work in the car business. The good news about the car business is that the pay is very good. The bad news about the car business is that the hours are very long. I currently work Monday through Friday, 7:00 AM to 6:00 PM. If it is slow, I can take a lunch. If it is busy, I work through lunch. Didn't we make fun of the Japanese culture for over-working? Well, I guess the joke is on us now. So, let's do the math. 2.5 hour commute per day. 10 hours working per day. 30 minutes getting ready in the morning and 15 minutes making lunch and coffee the night before. 7 hours of sleep per night. 24x5=120 hours. I spend 101.25 hours either sleeping, getting ready for work, travelling to work or working. That leaves 18.75 hours per week awake for personal endeavors. Now, 5 of those hours are lunch at work, so what I can do is limited at best. That leaves 13.75 hours during the work week for me. Also consider that my personal time in the morning is 20 minutes choking down coffee. That leaves 12 hours a week during the evening for me, or 2.4 hours. Woohoo. Hold back the excitement.

I will write more tomorrow.

So It Begins

So, I started this blog to be about my photographic experiences, since that is my hobby. I am going to take the train off the tracks for a few days and talk about my experiences in my previous job and why I feel that I was screwed.

I shout into the wilderness and am welcomed by the echo of my own voice.

I get the feeling that no one reads this, so I guess writing this is for my own mental health, which is important.

It all started back in 1998. I was working as the Parts and Service Director of Star Chrylser/Jeep. I had been working there since 1987 and had a great relationship with the ownership and the people working at the dealership. The only issue that was keeping the job from being perfect was that my commute was over 90 minutes long. That makes for a looooonnng day.

The string of events started when I received a call from the former General Manager of the dealership, Tony Albertson. Tony had also worked for the Star dealership group for some time, and was recently fired. he had started working for a company called CarMax. He was calling me to let me know how great this company was, and how, even though they sold cars, tthey did not do the usual car dealership nonsense. I was iintrigued, but I told Tony that I was happy where I was, there was no reason for me to leave a great job.

That was the first in a series of calls to try and recruit me to come to CarMax. Finally, curiousity got the best of me, and I submitted for an interview. I was impressed that they flew me to Atlanta, GA to interview me. "Why not just a phone interview?", I asked myself. I guessed they were serious.

Just how serious I didn't know. So off I went, feeling like the jetsetter I wasn't. When I arrived in Atlanta, I was put up in a nice hotel room.

Another Visit to High Falls

Yesterday was my last official day of vacation. No, I don't work on Sunday, but because I need to go back to work tomorrow, it is very hard to completely relax. I told my wife that I would like to go take some pictures, and she readily agreed that it was a good thing to do. There are a few places that I go to on a regular basis and one of them is High Falls, GA. It is a beautiful and picturesque place that I can't seem to get enough of.

This is a panorama stitched together of four different exposures. If the lighting looks a little of, I committed the most common mistake when shooting for panoramas, I let the camera set the exposure. These are the main falls, but there are more!


This is a wide angle shot of the falls. I took this with my Tamron 11-18. Here is something interesting. To achieve the "cotton candy" look of the falls, I used three neutral density filters stacked using the Cokin P system. The Tamron is so wide, the P system holder created major league vignetting on this shot. So, I cropped it!



This is a shot of one of the "mini" falls, as I like to call it. During the spring, this shot would not be possible because of the amount of water coming down the falls. However, in the summer, there are plenty of these little gems to see and shoot. This shot also taught me something about my camera. The Canon 50D internal metering system doesn't like the stacked neutral density filters and most of my shots came out under exposed. Luckily, I shoot RAW and was able to recover most of them. Next time I will use my light meter and then compensate for the filters.

I really like this shot. It is heavily processed as there is a telephone pole that somehow ended up laying in the middle of the falls. So, I had to clone it out.

I will go back to High Falls again, and hopefully I will have as much fun as I did yesterday.

Cuban Food in Asheville, NC

GGGrrrrrrrr.

I love Cuban food. I have ever since I have the chance to live in South Florida for a couple of years. I have been living in Atlanta since 2002 and have not been able to find good Cuban food.

This week I took my family up to Asheville, NC to visit the Biltmore Estate. More on the Estate in a future post. The night we arrived, we were trying to decide where to eat. We came across an ad on a local map for Havana. Yeah, I know, an original name for a Cuban retaurant. So, I piled the family in the car and off we went.

Havana is located in downtown Asheville near the Grove Arcade. There are plenty of restaurants and shops in the area, but don't get the shopping bug after six at night, as they roll up the sidewalks and shut the doors to everything except the eateries.

When we walked in the restaurant, I was worried. The place was very unassuming with a low drop ceiling and flourescent lights with paint the plactic covers in a attempt to give the room a tropical flair. The restaurant also has Bonnie's Little Corner, a tobacco and cigar bar that looks like you could light one up right there in the room. Now, I love a good cigar, but I would have been PISSED if someone lit up a stogie while I was trying to enjoy my dinner. My concern grew deeper when I pulled out my chair to sit down and it had that "this chair hasn't been cleaned in months" stickiness to it. However, I was determined not to judge the place to harshly as I have eaten in much dirtier places.

The server (is waitress politically incorrect?) came up and asked us what we wanted to drink. My family ordered Coke and Diet Coke, to which we were informed they only had RC products. RC PRODUCTS????? Are they still in business or have you been hording your soft drinks since the 1950s? Yikes! I order a beer, and they bring me my Miller Light in the bottle. No glass, just the bottle. I look around. I am in a restaurant and not a biker bar, right? So needless to say, I am now dreading having to order and am seriously considering paying for the drinks and leaving.

I look over the menu and order cheese dip with chips and crab cakes. My family loves crab cakes, so I risk it as I am concerned because I have never seen crab cakes on a Cuban menu before. the chips and dip come out first. The chips look home made. I take a small chip and put it in the dip. I am pleasantly surprised. The chips are light, tasty and crispy. The cheese dip was real melted cheese, not some white gooey premade slop. My family and I finish off the entire plate.

The crab cakes arrived next. They were fantastic. They had a nice crust on them and they were very flavorful. Now mind you, these were not the best crab cakes I have ever had, but they were very good nonetheless.

We ordered our main course next. Andrew had the Seafood Pasta, my wife had Lechon (Roasted Pork), Jessica had the Pasta Aux Champions, and I had the Palomilla Steak. Again, I became concerned again when the server could not pronounce my daughter's order, trying to say the "X" at the end of aux, but the food was good so far, so what? right?

Everyone thoroughly enjoyed their meal. My daughter's was the highlight and clearly the best plate of food that evening. Afterwards, I had Cafe con Leche and my family shared some cheesecake. Overall, I would highly recommend this restaurant.

Which begs the question. Why can't I get good Cuban Food in Atlanta?

I Love The Zoo!!!

I love taking photographs at the zoo. Sure, zoo photos can get a bit cliche, but I find it a challenge to take a photo at the zoo and turn it into something more than a snapshot of a captive animal.



Above is a shot of a Cassowary in a fenced in cage. The challenge was to try and show the bird as if it was in its natvie habitat. By waiting until the bird was far away from the fence, I could focus on the bird and the fence literally disappeared.

I have to wait awhile until the zebra decided to get totally in the shade or totally in the sun. Once in the shade, the shot was easy. I had to play with the white balance and the exposure in Lightroom to get the shot the way I wanted it.

To me, the key to great animal shots is to get close. I used my Tamron 200-500 lens with the camera on a monopod exclusively on this trip. Sometimes I missed shots because the lens got me a bit too close, but overall, I thought this was a successful trip.

This shot of the elephant is cropped for 8X10 printing, but that is it. The Tamron performed admirably this trip!

I saved the best for last. I had the exposure compensation dialed down to -1 EV to try and eliminate blown out highlights. This left the lion's eyes very dark. This was an easy fix in Lightroom, as I used the adjustment brush and dialed it up to +1 EV. I really love this shot, I hope you do as well.

Thanks for looking!

Scott

I love Zenfolio

I have most of my shots posted on Zenfolio. I love this site because it is very professional, they seem to listen to their customers, and they are cheaper than SmugMug. The latest and greatest offering is an embedable (is that a word???) slideshow. I am going to try it here. Here is goes....



I hope it works on this site!!!

Film Renaissance

I don't know if it is a desire to be different, or if there is just something magical about film, but I have been shooting a lot of it lately. Maybe it is because you don't get to see your shot right after you take it. Or maybe it is because you actually have a negative to show for all your work. I don't know, but I haven't picked up my 50D in a while now. My father gave me a Kowa/Six. The Kowa is a medium format camera made back in the 60s that doesn't have film backs, but loads like a traditional film camera. It came equipped with an 85mm lens (50mm equivalent on a 35mm camera). Because it has been out of production for awhile, the lenses are hard to come by. I would love something a bit more wide angle and maybe something in a portrait range, but right now I only have the 85. I started with a roll of Ilford Delta 100. I had some folks tell me that it didn't have traditional Black and White textures and tones, but I had already bought it, so I shot away. This first shot is one I actually snapped while stuck in traffic in Atlanta. Yeah, I know it is difficult to believe, but Atlanta has some horrendous traffic.

This shot I took on the way to work. I live in an area that is a mix of rural and sub-divisions. This size of shot really doesn't do the sceen justice.

It turns out that I love the Ilford and will be buying more of it soon!!!!

I had the opportunity to go to the NW Georgia Balloon Festival on Friday. Never having been to a Balloon launch before, I must say that I was impressed. Here are a few shots from the launch.

A couple of monochromes for you

I have become fascinated with Black and White photography lately. While this is not true Black and White, as I convert these shots from color digital files, it still forces me to compose the scenes in a different way.

Another from my recent visit to High Falls. I came across this bridge while I wandered along the hiking trails and drifted away from the falls. I was intrigued by the patterns of the wood and the colors of the path.

Last year my wife and I planted a pink dogwood in our front yard. This year the tree graced us with some blooms, even though the tree is very small. This bloom was at a perfect height for a macro shot.

So here it is!

Summit Racing

Today, my friend Rob and I went over to Summit Racing to take some shots of his 1963 Ford Ranger. He is very proud of this vehicle and it looks wonderful on display.

Snow on Angeles Forest Mountains

This photo was taken sometime back in 1999. I used to travel through Angeles Forest in California every day to and from work. Most days, I was just worried about getting home to my family. This day, however, I was rewarded with this beautiful scene. Converted to Black and White in deference to Ansel Adams.

The Impending Storm

This is one of my favorite photos. I took it last year using a Canon 20D and a Tamron 11-18 lens. I had to dodge the traffic that kept coming up and down the road to get this shot. I revisited this shot because I bought a new program called Topaz Adjust. I really like it and I think it added a surreal effect to this shot.

I had the chance to visit Zoo Atlanta with my daughter last Sunday. We had a great time and captured some great shots. Here are a few!!!!