Category Archives: Photography

No, I Didn’t Buy a J-24, Today Was J-Daze!

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2008 J-DAZE J-24 Regatta

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 J-24 Regatta

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 J-24 Regatta

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!

Spindle by Dustin Shuler (1989)

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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…

High Dynamic Range (HDR) Imaging

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HDR #2

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.

I really hate my Nikon Coolpix S9

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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.