The End of an Era

so my car finally kicked the bucket yesterday......in a spectacular way....heres how it went...

tuesday night kayla complained that it was running weird so i decided to take it up to work to check it out the next morning.

driving to work wednesday morning and it overheats before even getting to the bottom of the canyon. so i pulled over and called up steve and asked him to pull me up the canyon.

so while im waiting for steve to get there i got out and hooked up the tow strap and kinda checked things out under the car....and there was coolant was leaking out of the exaust. for those of you that dont know....that should never happen...like not even a little bit. so i think....thats not good....o well.

then steve gets there and we begin our journey up the mountain. if you have never been flat towed before...i dont recomend it......its dark and im 10 feet off the bumper of steves car and because i have to keep slack out the strap i have to do the braking for both cars around corners.....kind of a weird feeling. and since im so close steve cannot use his brakes or i will run into his car.......so we come up on a rock slide....he swerves to miss the rocks and i cant see whats going on and go right over a nice size one....and blow out a tire. by this time im so mad at this car i could have lit it on fire right there but because its a water shed up here i decided to not do that and just go the rest of the way with a flat tire.

about 20 minutes later we get to the shop and i plan to start the car for a second and drive it in the shop.....but no....the battery was dead........more thoughts of fire

so i go get a jumper pack and get the stupid car running and drive it in the shop and decide to check it out a little bit. so i pulled number 2 sparkplug already expecting what i saw......aluminum dust stuck to the end of the plug.....awesome. so i cleaned everything out of the car(all the way down to taking off the wipers) and called the junk yard and set up the tow truck to come get it tomorrow.

after emptying the car of anything of any value(emotional or monetary) i started it up and drove it back outside....with the one spark plug out. after a very tense ride from the shop to the parking lot i pick the final resting place for the old escort and shut her down. and then what happens? well the icing on the cake...duh. i hit the button to roll up the window and the drivers window slows...stops....makes a crunching noise.....and falls down..........hysterical laughter and more thoughts of fire.

so after its all said and done......about 4 years ago i bought a 2001 escort for 200 dollars, put 30,000 miles on it, got many fun road trips out of it....and now its on a flatbed truck on the way to the junkyard and I have 275 bucks in my pocket and nice warm fuzzy memories of a car that totally earned its keep in my book.

you will be missed escort.......barley....but never forgotten

Project SLaRpack complete

This past week kayla and I managed to finish the backpack project between visiting with my mom and working and eating and watching fireworks. all that we had left was the bottom and center divider. I decided to ditch the cut up towel and fork over 7 bucks for quilters batting.....



The batting was just alot better for padding than the towel and it provided a good way to take up the slack in the fabric it was covered with. I didnt take many pictures of the making it process....cause...its pretty simple.....cut out cardboard....stick squishy stuff to cardboard.....cover it with fabric. The only problem we ran into was the velcro......it kept messing up Kaylas sewing machine. but other than that....it was fun. And now its done and holding stuff.....so mission accomplished!

The center divider before squishy stuff



The center divider before fabric



The final product! not too bad.....right?









Hopefully Ill have somethingelse cool to show everyone soon. untill then....dont die, ok?

My first attempts....

First I want to say that this isnt intended to only be about photography.....thats just what Im interested lately.

So the last qouple days have been really fun for me cause Kaylas dad left us with his Nikon D80 and Ive been taking advantage of the situation! I wanted to try my hand at capturing water drops......holy crap thats not easy. I had to start by figuring out which of his lens would work best. I started with the 70-300mm since it has a macro setting....but since it has to be locked in from 200-300mm to take advantage of the macro....it was difficult at best. being that zoomed in meant that I had to be back about 40 inches. And I later realized that the container for holding the water makes a big difference. I started with a small coffee mug......really hard to get a level view....everything looks like Im just standing over it looking down cause if i got too low the rim of the mug got in the way.

My next try was with a large clear bowl....much better. So armed with the 18-55mm lens and a large bowl and some colored paper i started giving it some real effort. Probly the hardest thing was getting the drops in the same spot every time since i just had a little medicine dropper. Once I mastered the use of the dropper I started taking some shots.....and I couldnt figure out why the drops and splashes were out of focus everytime......then I understood. When I set up the camera I simply focused on the surface of the water where I planned to photograph.....well that close up my depth of field was really short....so when the splash moved up it went out of focus.....

After some re-adjustments and using the tip of the dropper held above the surface of the water and focusing on it I started to get much closer to what I wanted. I also tryed experimenting with different colored paper under the bowl for different effects. Still not as perfect as I would like but it was fun if nothing else. One thing I hadnt thought about was how many shots it took to get a good few.....out of all the different combinations of light and lenses and positioning I only came up with a few that I thought were ok. they sure do look amazing when theyre full size (which, at 10.2 megapixles, is larger than my 37 inch monitor) and cropped...but you get the idea.









After I cleaned up all the water on the table I wasnt ready to be done so I got out my rock crawler and tryed some poses. I quickly learned that the flash is evil with most pictures.....It just makes the whole picture look.....point-n-shooty. So I tuurned out all the lights and used my little LED flashlight.....it was so fun!!!















Do you have any idea how hard it is to time a drop of water with a shutter button?!?!?!

Making things is way better than buying them

This past sunday morning I got the urge to make something....thats a pretty regular thing for me.....so I went to the good old internet and started thinking. I got sidetracked really quickly and found myself looking at camera bags on ebay......then I thought...."I have a backpack...and some other stuff.....lets do this"

So I set out to make my own version of this.....





I chose this one because it has all the features I would want from a backpack (lots of storage for lenses and multiple cameras, a tripod holder, and a laptop holder) but mostly because I have one almost like it already.....A laptop storage area, a place that a tripod can go, and a big fold flat front area that is just begging to hold some sweet old film cameras. So the adventure began....



It was hard to find a good way to make the sides of the front pouch stiff. Then I remembered the universal building material.....cardboard. Luckily the trip to Costco the day before ment an abundance of boxes was happening out by the recycling bin. I grabbed the biggest one I could find and started cutting.



I cut it down to the general shap I wanted and tuck it in the backpack and traced the final cut line.....crap.....I need 2 pieces. Two pieces meant that another problem would rear its ugly head.....how to stick them together.....and then the other universal building material.....yep....duct tape!



Its a good thing we had that pretty green-blue duct tape.....otherwise I might look like a redneck trying to make something......

Then to add some padding I cut up an old towel and stuck it to the cardboard.....

And the final step for this phase of opperation SLaRpack >:) was to enlist the tallents of the lovely Kayla. She made a nice cover for the cardboard shell. She also sewed some velcro onto the inside so we can put dividers in the bag to keep unrully cameras from rough-housing while inside.


You would think, though, that in that huge collection of fabric that takes up a considerable amount of kaylas room, that she would have something better than this.....



personally I think she was holding out on me.....theres probly some really nice black waterproof stuff in there somewhere....o well.

Heres a picture of the talented lady at work



after she had it all finished up we made some final adjustments to take the slack out and put it inside my backpack.....




Not bad for a couple hours and no money! Next step will be to make the dividers.

There is just a different kind of satisfaction you get from making something versus buying it.....I cant explain it.

Its amazing what you can learn from the internet

Today at work I spent all of my time looking at the internet....since there was nothing to fix. I stumbled on this site Photo.net and wow was that fun! Basically its a Photobucket more for photographers. They also have neat articles and learning material......so Im kind of addicted to it now. I found this really neat article on "Photomacrography" as they called it.....I have heard it more commonly refered to as "Macro". Macro is taking pictures of thing really close-up and personal......and in my opinion is really facsinating! There are a ton of different approaches to this different kind picture-takin and I was supprised at how simple yet ingenius some of it was......for instance....It is common practice to simply mount a telephoto lens backwards on a camera to take a really close up picture. If youre interested in reading more........Photomacrography. After taking a short stroll through the sites gallery I began feeling really excited about taking a picture of something at space-bubble-puncturing-range.....Unfortunately I was already pushing my luck by sitting on a computer at work......so I sat there some more. Through much searching of amazing pictures I found a ton of people that just do Macro.....thats all they do. And they have some really interesting pictures! this one is a photo of the week from a few weeks back.....







......Is that not the coolest thing you have ever seen?!?!?!? I need a nap.

So after a long day of hard work on the 'net I came home and did some modification to lympie then decided to find a manual for Kaylas camera cause I cant figure it out. A quick search on google yeilded a PDF file of the full manual. But the manual didnt have what I needed...so back to google. Amazing.....simply amazing.....every question I could come up with, google had an answer to. I even managed to find and download a manual for a camera I dont even have.....

Its time for some Sole searching......

wow........remember how I said that I have an undying hatred for my career?............that hatred has been strengthened today. I have not had any cars to work on for 3 days with the exception of a side job that I brought in myself on friday. Why would anyone willingly go into this industry? Judging by how crappy it is on this end....its no wonder the whole thing is falling apart from the top down.........but on a side note........I got some new insoles for my work boots and my feet and back are very happy with me again!!!






anyone need their car worked on?

The Olympus Trip 35

This past weekend Kayla and I went yard saleing and we came home with some sweet loot! She found a bag of yarn :0 for 50cents at the first one. Then we stopped at this good sized moving sale that was full of swords and knives and an axe....like a battle axe. I found a really nice tripod for 10 bucks.....high for yard sale prices but it was brand new and its a good brand. our last stop was at this cool looking house that was set back from the street hidden in trees and bushes.....the chairlift porch swing should have been my first sign that was a good stop. they had a ton of cds for 1 dollar a piece......some of them were burned though but i couldnt bring myself to say anything even when kayla bought two of them. they also had lots of outdoors equipment....and camera stuff. and thats where i saw it.....sitting on a table mixed in with old cups and unwanted arts and crafts projects........a SWEET old camera! i picked it up and showed kayla and we both fell in love with it....i mean...look at it.....





we both milled around some more trying to decide if it worked or not....and weather they would want too much for it. Finally when we were ready to go I asked if they knew if it worked or not....they had no idea. Then they said they would take 2 bucks....SOLD! weather it works or not...it just looks cool.

So we get home and kayla gets out her Nikon and tests out the tripod with it. And I imediately go get a pair of pliers ( and a small screwdriver and some cleaning supplies. I fixxed the bent filter ring first with the pliers. Then I cleaned all the 70's dirt out of it. Meanwhile, Kayla researched the new family member online. She found a way to determine the build date of the camera....ours was built in February 1968 in Japan. She also found out the camera uses no batteries, instead it uses a solar cell in the front of the lens to meter light and automatically adjust the appeture.....they could do that in 68?! She also found opperating instructions....which is good because we might never have figured out the camera was acctually not working.....but have no fear! I have screwdrivers and Q-tips!

So for the first time in my life I took apart the lens of a camera.....let me tell you...that is an amazing little piece of human engineering! and after a panic attack thinking i had lost a tiny detent ball i got it all apart to find that the appeture was fine....it had just gotten stuck from years of sitting in a box....i unstuck it, cleaned everything, and....after 4 attemps....got the camera in working order again! Then today I replaced the old rotted light seals with some new ones I made. I have to say...i am amazed with the pictures this thing can take! It is so simple too...just pick the focus area and click......nice quality vintage pictures.....and for much less than a trendy Holga.















O and just last night we decided to name the trusty old camera "Lympie"