BillBlevins.com :: Mostly about 2.4mR sailing

Spindle by Dustin Shuler (1989)

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…

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.

Ice Man

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.

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.

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!

JPG Magazine

My friend Howard Owens pointed me to Scott Karp’s blog which has a link to a $5 off special offer for subscriptions to a print magazine called “JPG”.

What? A print magazine? Absolutly. The print edition is the counterpart to the online site at JPMag.com where visitors submit their photography work.

I bit. I now have a tripod and a custom box coming along with the next 24 printed editions.