Photography
29
Aug 09
EF1 Tornado hits Canandaigua Yacht Club
Canandaigua Tornado, originally uploaded to Flickr by SailorBill.
Boats everywhere!
An EF1 tornado scored a direct hit on the grounds of the Canandaigua Yacht Club in Canandaigua, NY on Saturday afternoon, August 29, 2009.
There are trees down everywhere. Power lines were also down because the poles had been snapped in half.
Several boats were sunk in the mooring field with just the masts or a small portion of the hull showing. But the major damage was done in the parking area where “Shark Park” was a total mess. I don’t think I saw one Shark that was unscathed.
J-24′s were tipped off their trailers or blown across the lot.
The whole Vanguard 15 fleet was blown off the end of the parking area and most were in the water by the beach and underneath the North dinghy rack which landed on top of them.
The pavilion was off of the foundation and will have to be seriously repaired before it can be safely used again.
Wow! For a storm that reportedly lasted only 90 seconds, it caused a major mess. No one was hurt, so there is some good news.
Cleanup begins as soon as the insurance companies do their documentation.
More to follow… There is a post on the Canandaigua Yacht Club homepage with a note to stay away until Tuesday and to keep checking the site for updates.
I’ve posted damage photos on Flickr.
8
Aug 09
This little guy followed me all morning
Blurry iPhone shot of the little fawn that followed me down Oatka Creek for about a mile this morning. His mom and sister stayed quite a ways back in the woods but this one was within 20 feet the whole time.
19
Nov 08
Tucker LOVES Snow
Tucker, originally uploaded by sailorbill
Tucker would stay outside all day in the snow if we’d let him! Funny that inside the house we think he is so clean and white – that is until you see him against the pure white snow!
19
Nov 08
Grace and her red ball
Grace, originally uploaded by sailorbill.
Grace has managed to find every toy we forgot to pick up before it started snowing. We’ve had about 10 inches in the past two days here in Fairport, NY. Both Grace and Tucker LOVE the snow!
9
Oct 08
Time Warner Cable “PhotoShow” live in Rochester
Time Warner has partnered with Roxio to use their PhotoShow program to allow the public to upload photos, create a slide show and then publish them on a local TV channel at no cost.
This free version also hosts the finished “show” for people like me to post to a blog like this test I that did today.
The site will also email the show to your friends and another option is to order the show on a DVD. Premium members (paying members) get additional slide show styles, borders, music, transitions, etc.
Neat. A few of my friends have already tried this out and I’ve received several invites to their shows on local Rochester channel 822. I had to try it out too.
Oh, don’t forget to click the button below the show above to turn on the groovy music (also free).
30
Jun 08
2008 Flying Dutchman Cannonball Regatta
2008 Flying Dutchman Cannonball Regatta, (Photo by Bill Blevins)
Flying Dutchmans sailing, with crew hiked out and approaching the windward mark on Saturday, June 28, the first day of the 2008 Cannonball Regatta held at the Canandaigua Yacht Club in New York.
6
May 08
Shuler’s Spindle shown in Wayne’s World movie cut down
UPDATE with photo by Andrew Westel from MySuburbanLife.com on an old post I did on Berwyn’s “Spindle” sculpture by Dustin Schuler:
Passing cars paused at a stump of cement in the middle of Cermak Plaza Sunday afternoon, seeming to pay tribute to what used to stand in that spot — Berwyn’s Spindle sculpture, which was abruptly torn down Friday night.
While some of the city slept, construction crews removed the piece of art that had become an icon in the city during the past two decades it stood in the plaza. Since Friday’s removal of the of art, someone scrawled a makeshift epitaph for the piece — “gone baby gone” and “see ya” — on the concrete block in which it once stood. (Read the full story and take a poll here).
Other interesting details can be found on the SaveOurSpindle.com site including links to an apparent spoof EBay auction (that has already ended) and a video of a guy who has a tattoo of the “Car Kabob” on his stomach.
3
May 08
No, I Didn’t Buy a J-24, Today Was J-Daze!
2008 J-DAZE Regatta, (Photo by Bill Blevins)
I took the Skeeter out this morning and photographed the first few races of the 2008 J-Daze J-24 Regatta that is being hosted by Canandaigua Yacht Club this weekend on Canandaigua Lake in Canandaigua, New York.
(I secretly wondered how many times Canandaigua could be used in a sentence. Now I know.)
2008 J-DAZE Regatta, (Photo by Bill Blevins)
I watched the first few starts and they seemed to have about 35 boats on the line. I measured steady winds at 11 mph with some puffs to 14. (The racers will say it was much higher.) It was a perfect day for racing with an occasional sprinkle of rain but the predicted storms held off until the evening after racing was finished.
Everyone looked like they were having good times – even the folks that ripped a headsail on someone else’s rigging – The collision was near the bottom of the course as the boat that rounded and was heading back upwind on port tack and tried to thread the needle between a whole lot of boats coming downwind.
That’s racin’!
2008 J-DAZE Regatta, (Photo by Bill Blevins)
I may try to wet the hull on my 2.4 Meter tomorrow and see if I can pace on the outside of the race course with J-24s. More storms with heavy rain are moving through this evening but tomorrow is looking like it will be another great day.
All of the small versions of the photos and a slideshow are posted over at flickr.com and I’m going to give Pam and John (Albatross J-24 #3024) a disk with the full-sized images if anyone wants a print from the higher quality photo.
2008 J-DAZE Regatta, (Photo by Bill Blevins)
Feel free to leave a comment and tell about the Saturday afternoon races, the party, Sunday’s races and the results!
16
Jul 07
Spindle by Dustin Shuler (1989)
Spindle 1989 by Dustin Shuler, originally uploaded by sailorbill.
Artist Dustin Shuler’s “Spindle” located in the parking lot of a Berwyn, IL strip mall in the Western suburbs of Chicago may be removed permanently and replaced by a Walgreens according to a story published by the GateHouse News Service.
“The ‘Spindle’ may or may not be maintained,” said Michael Flight, president of the management company. “The current ownership would have to spend a tremendous amount of money if they relocated it. The current ownership is not sure what they would like to do with it at this point.”
Back in February, I was heading into the western suburbs of Chicago from the city when I saw the sculpture off to my left and I slammed on the brakes, did a u-turn and shot a few photos.
To be replaced by Walgreens. Hrm…
7
Apr 07
High Dynamic Range (HDR) Imaging
I finally bought a tripod this morning and now I have the ability to make multiple images of the same scene. This allows for experimentation with the HDR tools in Photoshop. It seems somewhat weird that my first experiment was of the Kodak building in downtown Rochester, NY which I happened to pass on the way home from the camera store.
21
Jan 07
Ice Man
Ice Man, (Photo by BillBlevins)
One lens at a time, I’m rebuilding my camera bag! Here is a shot with my 70-200 f/2.8 that just arrived.
I also noticed that the Flickr to Blogger Beta crops the images, so you’ll have to pop over to my photo gallery to see the full frame.
28
Dec 06
I really hate my Nikon Coolpix S9
Ok, I’ve given my new Nikon Coolpix S9 digital camera a month of constant use and I’ve decided that I really don’t like it. I’ve had a lot of cameras over the past 20 years since I first began a career as a photojournalist. A Nikon fan since my first FM (which I still own and it still works), this model doesn’t cut it.
Here’s a picture shot in “Auto”. It was the third in the sequence of six blurry shots.
Sad. That was a funny moment.
(If you have to know, my wife and I traded photos of our Christmas presents instead of the gifts because we were visiting in Alabama and traveling by air. I photographed and gave pictures of the wrapped gifts instead of the unwrapped gifts. After the laughter wore off, I gave her the pictures of the unwrapped presents.)
Here is a photo taken on “Auto” outside at about 3 p.m. in the afternoon. I was standing still. The little sailboat was moving, but not that much!
I’m going to keep the camera because it is very small – my top feature at the time I bought the camera – and based on confidence in my experience, in cases where I absolutely need a good photo, I’m pretty sure that I can adjust the settings and hold still enough to make a usable image. However, I wouldn’t recommend this camera to anyone.
When I want a digital image and it counts, I’ll stick to my Nikon D200 or my wife’s old Canon Elph.
29
Nov 06
Popular cameras used with Flickr
Use the Camera Finder on Flickr to see which cameras are being used to post to the popular photo sharing site. The Nikon D200 is starting to get some traction. The Nikon S9 is really taking off. Christmas season may put it at the top of the Nikon list!