kelseybacon.com

Our house sits at an angle rather than at True North.  On the compass, it is approximately 13 degrees.  In more lay terms, it is nearly North, but the front door points just a little to the East.  In even more simple terms, it means that as of TODAY, there is sun shining through the North facing windows of my house and onto my computer monitor.  I am going to be putting up with this for the rest of the summer now!  Actually, it should be only till about the 9th of August since that is the same number of days after the Summer Solstice as we are before it now.  Let’s see if that simplistic calculation works by putting a reminder into Outlook, shall I? 

A new friend has been added to my Facebook account from years gone by.  Andrea Sheppard looked me up and asked if I remembered her.  I did…  I had thought of her not two weeks prior!  We met and sort of got to know each other a very tiny bit when we were kids, but then spent years not talking to each other.  You know how it is to be a kid.  We were in the Broomfield pressure cooker too, so that didn’t help!  Despite the fact we never talked, there was nothing not to like about Andrea.  She was just going her own way.  So, all of a sudden we are kids again, picking up where we left off when I went to her grandma’s house in the fifth or sixth grade.  I am happy.  It is one of those situations where if I could go back and change it, I would.  Now we can, so we are suddenly chatting and getting on like old friends.  Well, life is too short not too… 

Kelsey

I have just made the changes to the size of the text column and the colours of the background and the post titles and blog title.  I was looking for something with a bit more contrast and that captures the feeling of sunset, or that late twilight period a bit more.  I think the blue of the background gets that while the orange brings in the colours of clouds during sunset.  Hopefully the extra text width will translate into more picture space too! 

Today we went to Pat’s house to water the plants, then walked along the canal towpath to come home.  I shot some pictures, all in camera raw format.  I have set up to be able to manipulate the RAW files, so it is high time I use that new found power! 

I have not written in a journal properly for some time now.  I suppose it is because I have just been lazy about it.  But do I want to admit that in a public forum?  Probably not?  So I will have to get out a paper journal and write it down there. 

We are meant to be filing paperwork for visas, but we have just been so tired lately that it has been impossible to fill it out and check for accuracy on these important documents.  On Monday, for example, Kiry had a bad belly and yelled for seven hours or so straight.  I could tell it was nothing serious, but as it turns out, she is a bit of a wimp.  She puked up in the afternoon and that was the end of the yelling.  But it left my nerves in a bit of tatters. 

Every moment I have had free for the last week I have had my camera in my hand.  It has a new lens on it and I have  not been this excited about photography for years.  It is a Nikon 50mm f/1.8.  That 1.8 means everything on this baby!  I can get such shallow depth of field and shoot indoors in very low existing light.  I have been so stunned by this lens (for only £119) that I am now seriously considering another prime.  It is too much to get a telephoto.  But a few primes can add up to what I need and get me a great start on portraits and maybe a wedding or two.  I need money from this so I can afford the good lenses in telephoto.

I cannot believe it is April already, and the end of it at that!  Where have the last 2 and a half months gone?  I have of course sold off some of the Hasselblad gear, and have moved into a basic Nikon set-up.  By basic I mean I have a decent camera and some basic lenses, though I have just picked up my first Prime, a 50mm f/1.8.  Wow!  Was that ever worth the price!?  It is the most perfect lens I have ever owned apart from my Hasselblad 80mm.  The shallow depth of field has been so amazing and such a treat and a pleasure to work with in the week since I bought it.  I have to admit that it is difficult to figure out just what I want to get next; a new flash for location work, or another prime lens for architectural work?  I have my eye on a 20mm f/2.8 that should prove wonderful for buildings, weddings, and for some indoor shots, especially in these small British homes.  Whatever the case, I am sold on the 50mm!  Here are some samples!

I ask this question because I get occasional e-mails from Classmates.com, telling me that someone signed my guest book.  Naturally, almost everyone on there is a stranger to me.  So I wonder, am I more forgetful than I remember, or do these people actually remember me? 

Or is it just Classmates pairing random people who might actually have known each other in order to cause me to log in to see the ads on their page and increase their viewers, and hence their potential ad revenue?  ‘Cause let’s face it, the site is crap, and I hardly ever go there. 

Just a question… 

There is a dude with a video of a guy getting run over at a Monster Truck Rally at this link:

http://jallen285.blogspot.com/2009/01/monster-truck-accident.html

Don’t go and see it, whatever you do. But if you do, remember kids, this is why you should always look BOTH ways before crossing the Monster Truck Rally! You may remember this story. It was the guy who was promoting the safety of Monster Truck Rallies just after a part flew off and hit that kid in Seattle. This guy must have had a bumper sticker on his car that said “My other Karma is a Monster Truck!”

Far away thoughts sometimes fill my mind like clouds on a stormy day.  They are dreams, not of being someone else, or being someplace else, but of doing something else.  I dream of changing the landscape each day, of doing what makes me happy and of making a substantial enough of a living at it that I can come home after half a day of work and be with the ones I love.  I dream of being able to move my family to a better neighbourhood, and of being able to spend time with my friends.  The centre of all these thoughts?  Photography. 

I wish only to be able to photograph things, to see them in a new way, and to capture that vision for others to see.  It could be a dream car, a dream girl, or a nightmarish scene in an old house, but be it what it is, I want to envision it and capture it and share it with the world.  I want to escape shame and capture the sights that my mind conjures up without the judgement of narrow minded people and short sighted ideas.  I am not talking about making dirty pictures, but making creative ones!  I am on about seeing outside the box, and capturing images that spur the imagination to seeing things in a new way, unconventional to modern society.  Why shouldn’t  a cop and a prostitute be seen dancing on the ceiling of a basement room?  Don’t they do that in their own way now?  How about a priest and a choir girl?  How about a crucifixion with a bull on the centre cross?  Whatever the idea, how about truly creating it in a hard format that others can experience?

I often find that the true medium when expressed fully is judged for content that is in a single image what a book might be with all of its chapters and words to tell of a single controversial thought.  If the story is too harsh or stirs too much inside other people then it is rejected under the form and label of pornography, or some other thought limiting broad brush that paints the black swath of censorship across it, hiding it from the view of others who might judge it fairly. 

The thoughts swirl around like a hurricane, and with them comes the force of the hurricane.  For the rebellious, the wall against which we beat our heads only makes us want to beat our heads harder against it, knowing that one day it must be beaten down, and we must be free! 

Kelsey

This is a source of pain for me throughout my life.  When I was a kid it was neighbourhood kids in packs chasing me around for being the new kid, which I often was, of because I was a little different to them, which I always was.  Was I that different?  No.  Mostly I just never understood the pecking orders, and did not adhere to them.  Stuff that in the grand scheme of thing just don’t matter. 

Currently neighbourhood kids are a nuance because out house is down an embankment.  The road is almost up to the ceiling of our living room, so when we look out the windows, the fence out front prevents most of our view of the road.  That also means that when a ball is kicked off the road, it almost invariably hits one of our living room windows.  We were out in the street for three years or so asking the kids to please go find another place to play, or just kick in the uphill direction because when they did, the ball would not pound someone’s window. 

Finally a year of quiet has passed us with the ball issue.  But that is just the ball.  Some years ago we were out in our back yard as a family; one of the rare times we go out because we are much more inclined to be indoors due to weather or preference, or disgust with the idea of our neighbourhood.  I saw the little girl who lives behind us looking through the back fence.  After a while I looked again, and she was still there. 

I said “Hi Charlie, ” to her, and she vanished.  That was a starting point of her harassing our home or our family every time we saw her, and sometimes when we did not see her.  For example, my wife was pregnant last year, and on crutches.  As we walked a few streets over, Charlie came past us in the other direction.  We ignored her for the most part, except to avoid stepping on her as we went.  Her little nine year old eyes met mine for a second and she said, “fucking twats.”  That is an example of a typical encounter with her.  We have also had to deal with her standing out in front of our house yelling obscenities to our windows, and when we try to chase her off, she and her family use the excuse that it is a public street and she can play in it.  Her parents stand behind whatever she says, so if she says she was not, then she was not.

Fair enough, you would think this is just a matter of bourdon of proof.  Try filming something or taking pictures in the UK if it is off your property.  You will get everything up to the accusation of being a pervert for taking a picture of a child throwing stones at your windows.  Sadly, I know this from personal experience.  I am told I can put in security cameras, but if they can see the footpath (sidewalk) in front of my house at all, then that is not allowed.  Where do you think the kids are when they throw things at our windows?

So what now?  I have mud pelted all over my house, and as of yesterday at 3:30PM, they have upgraded to eggs.  The most aggravating thing is that fir the first time in a long time I actually saw a silhouette of a child in the act.  I could not tell you if it was Charlie, or if it was another boy who is pissed off at JJ because he pushed JJ into his little sister, and now says that JJ pushed his little sister.  Or it could be Dylan, as he is really the only one in our house that makes contact with anyone who lives in this neighbourhood. 

Or it could have just been for fun because our windows are so easy to hit. 

Kelsey

Worcester, England

Oh good, the end of the world is finally drawing near (again!).  As it turns out, at the winter solstice in 2012, the Aztec calendar runs out, so that apparently means it is the end of the world.  So I am very seriously considering the possibility that the world may actually end on the 31 December 2009.  After all, that is exactly when my calendar runs out.  Really, what makes the Aztecs so damned smart?  Who says the guy in the sweat shop who made my calendar is not smarter?  He certainly is a lot more contemporary, and has a lot more of an idea what is going on nowadays than the Aztecs could have known.  Nostradamus was not an Aztec was he?  There was that whole war against America thing that Orson Wells talked about which was waged by a middle easterner just before the end of time.  Could that guy have been Osama Bin Laden? 

Well, what ever the case, the end of the world is undoubtedly here, just like it was when Hale Bop last passed, or in 1890 when Joseph Smith was supposed to have seen the face of Christ, but instead, Polygamy was dumped in favour of statehood for Utah, or 1975 when the Jehovah’s Witnesses sold their houses because Heaven was full of its 144,000 (Don’t bother asking them, I am sure they forgot this little fact by 1980), or the year 2,000 when God or something was going to shut off all the traffic lights and we were all going to die in 18th century darkness.  (Oh how terrible that all the cause of the problems suddenly correct themselves by shutting themselves off.  Kind of like suicide bombers.)

But just in case, I am NOT going to cash in my retirement account and build an End Of The World shelter under my house.  I am somehow sure that the Aztecs knew nothing of our time just as I know nothing about the robots at the end of A.I. that were on an archeological dig in the ice when they found David.  I like to keep on plodding along till the great big bus of time kicks me off the mortal coil however it does. 

I have had the D300 for 18 days now, and have seldom had the chance to get outside with it.  That is mostly because of the extreme cold temperatures here in Britain for the last couple of weeks.  I don’t think it is too cold for the camera, or for me.  It is my six month old baby girl I am concerned about. 

One of the big changes from the Sony or the Hasselblad has been the addition of more settings than the standard B&W or Sepia settings the Sony had.  (Obviously the Hasselblad required a change of film for these results.)  The D300 has quite a few setting that affect the colouring of the image, and some require me to shoot in those settings, while others can be edited in camera post shooting.

Naturally, if you forget what you had set in the day before, and you walk all the way up Fort Royal Hill, shoot some pictures, then walk down again with a hungry baby howling for food, well let’s just say the results may not be what was expected. 

I have now got hold of a Polarizer filter for the lens, so that should help out with sky; window, water, car, and other shots.  Also on the way is a spare battery to prevent me running out of power in the middle of a shoot.  I also have a spare CF card now.  I got an 8GB last week.  I ordered an Extreme IV from Bigpockets.co.uk, but they sent me an Extreme III.  It doesn’t give me the full speed of the camera, but I can hit 6 frames per second for 15 shots running before I get lag.  I will still keep my eye open for an Extreme IV, but I got this one with a partial refund for the wrong item sent at only £5.00, so I can’t much complain. 

Though my lens is low end, I figure I can get started with it, it makes a great travel lens, and it is low cost if anything goes wrong bashing it around.  Further, I can rent for this camera at a reasonable price.  Plus, it has a decent wide angle view to it for those round town shots I want here in the UK before we leave for America.  Here is an example of a shot I took just over the road from the Slug and Lettuce in Worcester. 

Again, it is not a perfect lens, but for my personal photos, it beat waiting another year before I can afford high end glass, leaving me with nothing to photograph with.  There are a lot of people out there who are great photographers that advise people to go for good glass first, then worry about a high end camera.  I took it in, then felt I needed a camera I would be excited enough to buy glass for.  Plus, it had to be able to last long enough, not just against future upgraded models that will be released, but also physically in the demanding environments I tend to end up in.  We are headed from rainy England later this year towards the deserts of Nevada, and California.  The Mojave is no mystery to me, I know it is a hell on earth for gear like this.  The D300 has good seals and is water resistant.  I think that will help.  I don’t have the advantage of being able to run back to a car in a sudden downpour.  I am usually on a bike, or worse yet, on foot. 

So there are a few tings I need to work out for myself before I can give a full view of how happy I am with this beast.  Mine came out of the box with a dead pixel that I will need to resolve under my UK warranty.  That means I will likely spend a week or more without it when I am willing to give it up for such a repair.  I need to be sure to get in the habit of checking my shooting settings for every new subject, and I should set up the custom shooting styles for what works best in the situations I find myself in.  All that done, I think I will be able to give a good review of the camera.

Following are some shots I have down with the D300 so far.  Some are with a Gorilla Pod DSLR.  Some are with on-camera flash ( I do not yet have an attachment flash).  All are with my hundred pounds eBay lens.  Many are hand held.  Most are shot at ISO 200 because I like clean shots, and I use tripods to make them rather than high ISO’s most of the time.