Road Trip

“You get what you get and you don’t throw a fit”

While we may not have enjoyed the end of summer heat, the spiders seemed to love it. The Golden Orb-Web spider was busy putting up webs that were between 4-8 feet in diameter. The female of the species would hang out in the center of these webs and was as big as my fist.

Looking At You

Golden Glow

Towards the end of my trip we took a drive into Tampa and visited the Florida Aquarium. What is unique about this aquarium is that it devotes a significant amount of it’s space to showing off and explaining the local ecology.

Alligator Friendship

Many people feel strongly about photographing animals in captivity. I understand both sides if the argument and really only have a problem with people misrepresenting where they took the photograph. I really like when you can find a way to include the enclosure into a good photograph. This was my take on a classic example of this.

Tank Silhouette

Eel Watching

After a week it was finally time for me to head back home. Every time I visit Florida I am amazed ( and a bit saddened ) at how people took a swamp and jungle and turned it into a state with the fourth highest population. If you take the time to venture out there are some very unique things to find.

Looking At You

In May I was able to get up early two mornings in a row and go to Myakka River State Park and go to a site my dad showed me to photograph alligators and other wildlife. The alligators did not disappoint and I was able to photograph them as well as some blue herons.

Dinosaurs and Dragonflies

Ripple on the Throat

The next day my dad came with me and he showed me another place in Myakka River State Park to shoot where I was able to get the sunrise photo that I opened this post with. While the alligators were not so cooperative on this morning, the birds were more than happy to pose.

Morning Break On The Dam

Blocking The Light

Myakka River State Park was a really neat place to see a lot of the wildlife and habitat that is native in a state that is more well known for their large cities and voting faux pas. Our family also visited Busch Gardens on that trip but I left the camera home that day, choosing instead to enjoy the thrill of the roller coasters. Heather and I had a blast riding Sheikra with it’s 2 90 degree drops. ( Video not shot by me, contains cussing, jump to 1:00 to start the ride. )

In the next post I’ll talk about the photos I was able to take in September.

We drove through the night, going to that weird place that people go to when spending 8 hours in a car together and finding our way back again. Eventually we arrived at Miller Motorsports Park just outside of Salt Lake City and I got my first taste of what was to come. Ford GTs, Ferraris, and Porsches lined the pits along side nameless prototype cars. Jeremy was kind enough to spend the morning explaining most of what was going on since I am not a race car enthusiast but I did think it was pretty neat. After lunch Jeremy went to go help in the pits and I photographed some of the final event: the Utah Grand Prix, a 200+ lap race that included all sorts of amazing cars.

Fast Flying Lizard

Speed down the Boardwalk

Jet Black

Chaser

We drove home after the race was done, driving through the night again and arriving back home just over 24 hours after we left. Knowing amazing people leads to amazing things.

So I photographed it.

Filled with beer cans, beans, apples, corn, plastic bottles; this fire was still hot to the touch long after people had left.

Hillside covered in trash. I used the large black bag at the bottom to clean up camp.

Organic matter littered the site. Just the thing that attracts and eventually kills animals like bears and coyotes.

Cucumbers

Apples

Apple eaten by animal(s).

Fish carcass found 4 feet from our tent.

And then I cleaned it up and hauled a bag of trash larger than what my family puts on the curb each week home.

To the people who do this: The words I have for you are not fit for print but I would be happy to say them to your face. There is a comment box below and while I will remove expletives I will not remove your comment, please explain to me why you think this is ok.

Oh yea ….

Not everything burned.

First stop was to see some old friends in Boston and Rochester. It was great to spend some time visiting them and catching up on their lives. In both cities I was able to take advantage of the spring weather and do some shooting, click the photo to see the rest.

Blue Fade, one of the images from the northeast.

Just a few short days after getting back I packed up the photo gear, added in some camping gear, and jetted off to Death Valley and Antelope Valley with my new friend, Jen Yu. I cannot thank Jen enough for inviting me on this trip. I had never been to either place and that, combined with a fun companion, made for a great trip.

Desert Gold, one of the images from Death Valley

And finally, last week I was back on a plane to New York. This time it was working with a client and the week flew by but I was still able to get some photos taken.

8:30 at the Shake Shack, one of the photos from New York.

I’m now home again, at least for the next 12 days, and am looking forward to catching up with people here as well as doing some photography locally.

First of all, the coolest thing about the flight was that we flew around a very active thunderstorm and I was treated to a spectacular light show out of my window. The thunderhead was below and off to the side of us so you could see stars above it and this massive mushroom cloud below with a very active lightning storm.

While in flight I looked up and noticed the path at the bulkhead was blocked by a cart pulled across it and the flight attendant was dutifully watching all of us. Shortly after that the pilot came out of the bathroom and started chatting up the flight attendant. I thought that was wierd but whatever. A little bit later the other pilot came out and did the same thing only he chatted up the flight attendant for much longer than the first guy. I hadn’t seen those guys leave the cockpit in flight since 9/11.

Finally, about half way through the flight, a flight attendant got on the PA and gave us all a very long and stern lecture about smoking on the plane and how it endangered us all. All I could think was “Who in the hell tries to smoke on a plane? That crap has been outlawed since I was a kid.”

Weird

In addition to Stepan and Oleg, who came with me last year, Jennifer Yu came with me to Monte Vista and proved herself to be an great traveling companion. I have heard that she is an excellent chef and seen the results in her equally excellent food and landscape photography. I met Stepan and his dad, Oleg, last year and was so happy they could come again. Stepan does some awesome development at Room 214 when he is not out climbing and shooting.

Like last year, ProPhotoRental.com was kind enough to let us use some of their professional gear including 500mm lenses for both the Canon and Nikon shooters. Without these long lenses getting close up shots of the birds would have been impossible. To be a bit more dynamic they also let me use a Nikon D700 and I’ve got to say that this is an amazing camera that I wouldn’t normally get to use unless I started selling prints. I only tried out the Nikon gear and being able to see the birds up close using the 500mm f/4 without scaring them off was great. As great as the 500mm is there are times when that much zoom was too much, which is why we also had a 200-400mm f/4 and a 70-200mm f/2.8 to give us a huge range both of which were also amazing lenses. If your shooting wildlife or sports or that guy you’re stalking that lives 3 blocks over I can’t say enough good things about these lenses and you can use them for less than 5% of the cost with a rental service like ProPhotoRental.com. Stepan, while waiting on the birds to do something took this great shot of the Canon 400mm f2.8 that ProPhotoRental.com let him use.

Reflect by Stepan Mazurov

I had two concrete goals with going to the San Luis valley this year; photographing the sandhill cranes and photographing the Great Sand Dunes National Park. I also had a couple of extra maybe goals of some sort of night shot and possibly going down to Colorado’s oldest mission south of Monte Vista but between all day shooting and getting over a cold I was too exhausted to do either of the maybe goals. Jen and I stopped at the dunes Friday afternoon on our way to Monte Vista and shot in the park and then drove out to the outer edge to shoot the dunes and Mount Herald at sunset. Jen has an amazing shot on her blog of this. Saturday morning all four of us, bleary eyed and caffeine deprived, drove out to the Monte Vista Wildlife Refuge and began a great day of shooting. Unlike last year, where we were snowed on at sunrise, we were treated to a great sunrise and plenty of sunshine all day. Our good luck lasted all through Saturday while we shot at a couple of sites and explored around for others and on Sunday while we all went out to shoot again.

Stepan, Oleg, and Jen all had to head back to Boulder on Sunday but I stuck around until Monday and, when it wasn’t snowing, I spent more time shooting the cranes. Monday morning I woke up to a bit of snow covering the San Luis valley and decided to head back out to the Sand Dunes did some shooting at the snow covered dunes. I love finding these little slices in time where something like this happens unexpectedly.

I had a great time with everyone and think I’ll be doing it again next year, hopefully bringing along old friends and finding new ones to join us. You can check out Jennifer Yu’s work at userealbutter.com and jenyuphotography.com. Stepan posts his work on flickr and his dad, Oleg can be found writing about electronics and micro controller firmware design at circuitsathome.com.

As I look through the almost 4000 shots I took this weekend I’ll be publishing one almost every day. You can find these here on the site as well as on my flickr page.

Sandhill Sunset by Jason Janelle

T-Shirt from first day. Full Disclosure

It’s been pretty quiet around here lately and for good reason but I think I am ready to write about what is going on. Anger, frustration, fear, worry, and depression dominated my days and nights until recently when I finally made a decision that I have been contemplating for at least a couple of years. But I’m getting ahead of myself, let’s start at the beginning.

Back of T-Shirt given to me

In February I started work for a very interesting company that, in the end, was a huge learning experience which I will eventually come to view as positive. In October my team was notified that we were being laid off, an action, I came to find out, that had been in the works for part if not all of my time there. I was offered an opportunity with the outsourcing company that was taking over but in the following week it became clear to the both of us that we would not work well together and I was laid off for the second time in a month. I knew this was my path and outwardly I tried to make the best of it but inside I was waging a battle against the darkness.

While my family circled the wagons and my friends piled on the encouragement I threw myself into job search. I sent out resumes and cover letters like I’ve never had to before to the limited number of jobs that were available. The truth of the matter became clear to me over the next couple of weeks as I saw very few positions available and even a few of the ones that I applied for rewritten for a lesser qualified person with a significantly reduced salary. At some point there were no more jobs to apply for and I needed a distraction.

A well timed conversation and fortune cookie provided just that. If you have ever played the fortune cookie game or “in bed” or “under the sheets” you will understand. If not, watch the first minute of this video.

And now that your all caught up and confused in multiple languages you can see my inspiration for starting inbed.me which has provided an interesting diversion between searching for jobs.

As November turned into December and we crept toward Christmas I realized that finding a job this close to the end of the year was a long shot. I decided to take the time and evaluate what I wanted to do and who I wanted to work with so that I had a clear idea of what to do about it. What came out of that was 2 part: 1) I enjoy working with and the work that comes out of tech startups and 2) Tech Startups do not need someone like me full time. The solution to part 2 is to spread my time around multiple startups, giving them what they need while giving me gainful employment. It’s an idea that I’ve had for a while now but never had the confidence to try but now that any excuses have been cleared away and I am surrounded by people who are willing to help me I think that it is time.

Out of all of this J Squared Consulting is being born to provide server consulting, monitoring, and response. I’m doing one of the things I love to do and by doing it this way, doing it with the people I want to do it with.

I would like to end this by thanking all the people who have helped me out over the last 3 months as I went through some difficult times including my family and friends who have all pitched in one way or another and made what could have been a disaster into something much better. I owe each one of you and look forward to the day I can repay your kindness.

The morning of the race I made my way to the approved viewing area and as I waited for the race to begin the rain that had been threatening all morning started to come down. Because the race is on public roads there are three cars that run the course before the race can begin ensuring that the course is clear. This was handy for me to get an idea of what my settings needed to be by shooting these pre-race cars. As the last car sped by I captured this example of motion blur which turned out to be one of the better shots of the day.

Motion blur shots are some of my favorite and can be tricky to get sometimes. It gives the viewer a feeling of the motion that is happening at the time of the shot while still keeping your subject clear. To do this your shutter speed must be slower than if you were going to shoot a photo of the moving subject and have it come out in focus. To compensate for this you must track the subject, a process where you keep the subject ( in this case the car ) in the same place in the frame while the shutter is open by panning the camera while your shooting. Because you want the subject to come out clearly it must stay the same distance away from you while the shutter is open, it also makes panning at a constant speed easier. Shooting in continuous mode ( where the shutter repeatedly opens while you hold down the button ) as your panning will give you the best chance of getting one good shot where the subject is clear. My photo of the car was one of ten that were shot in continuous mode. Some just didn’t have a good panning speed causing the car to be blurred as well, others had the car outside of the frame, this was the one that worked out. If you’re interested in practicing these types of shots, I suggest finding a bike path along a road where you can use both cyclists and motorists as subjects. Cloudy days can help you with slowing down the shutter speed without blowing out the photo or having to use filters. If you get something you like or have a question, leave a comment, I’d be happy to help.