An Quick Alaskan Follow-up...

A non-disclosure agreement (NDA) prevents me from saying too much about my recent project up in Alaska, though I highly doubt that my clients would be all that concerned if I were to post a few quick images that were taken as I traveled around getting from location to location.



This photo to the left shows one of the (many) planes that ended up being our primary means of transportation around the State.




An image than was taken while flying through the Alaskan Range... Shot at about 10 o'clock at night. Sunset wouldn't happen for another hour-and-a-half.




Flying over an active volcano (Mt. Spur) as we headed towards Anchorage.









This is my (very poor) attempt at a Galen Rowell-like image. Please, if you have the time, check out his website... He was the absolute master of mountain photography. Myself, I am just a student in training.






Nearing the end of a seventeen hour long day... Tired, hungry, and very much in need of a drink... Special thanks goes to Steve Rychetnik of Sprocketheads for grabbing this shot.

Greetings From Alaska!

Just a quick posting to let you all know that I'm up in Alaska right now, and that I've been bouncing around the State like some sort of spastic pinball.... Crazy flights in very small planes (with no bathrooms onboard). I'll be up here for a few more days, and then I head on back home to Portland -- the land of fine wine, warm weather, and gasoline that costs less than $4 a gallon.

In the town/city of Nome (where I was earlier this week), gasoline was selling for $4.29 per gallon. Ouch...

I've been told that $8 per gallon is common in some of the more remote villages, and I'll be able to confirm this information firsthand tomorrow (Friday), as I'll be headed out to some of the native areas around Bethel.

Hopefully, more info and postings will follow soon, though I highly doubt if I'm going to have any sort of decent Wi-Fi (or cell phone) coverage while I'm off into the wild.

Matt

BarCamp Portland... Today

For those of you in the Portland area who feel like swinging by BarCamp today (Saturday, May 3rd.), both myself and photographer Aaron Hockley will be doing a set of very loose, very informal workshops at 3 o'clock and 4 o'clock this afternoon.

Though we won't have any sort of set structure to the workshops (that's kind of the idea behind BarCamp), Aaron will likely talk about camera techniques and street photography, while I'll likely talk about stuff that's a bit more gear oriented (i.e.: DIY equipment, and lighting).

BarCamp will be taking place at CubeSpace, 622 S.E. Grand Ave.

If you're a reader of this blog and you do swing by this afternoon, please, take some time to catch up with me and say a quick word of "Howdy."

Matt

A Quick Catch Up...

Least anyone think that I've abandoned this blog, I just wanted to let folks know that I've been absolutely slammed for most of the past week. Free time is kinda' in short supply -- at least, the sort of free time needed to write detailed postings -- and so I really haven't been able to type out anything substantial in quite a while. I do hope to remedy this soon...

Just as a quick bit of catch up:

1) Right now, I'm doing some work with a local (and well known) animation company here in the Portland area. What I'm actually doing with the company isn't all that interesting, though I have been able to see some interesting things -- especially in the arena of lighting and lighting mounts. Animators are the Kings and Queens of DIY gear.

2) In theory, I'm set to be part of a camera/lighting workshop at BarCamp Portland tomorrow (i.e.: Saturday) afternoon. Unfortunately, I don't have a specific time, as most of the details will probably end up getting worked out tonight. Do check in with the BarCamp website, and do swing by if you have the time. I'll be demonstrating some of my lighting mounts, the DIY Christmas Tree Light Ringlight®, along with some basic techniques for working with off-camera strobes. If you're a reader of this blog and you do stop in, please, say "Howdy!" I'll be the tall guy who kinda' looks like Richard Gere.

3) My $24.69 prescription sunglasses arrived yesterday, and they are absolutely perfect. I will have MUCH more to write about this later on.

That's all for now. More will follow...

Matt

Waaaay Off Topic: Purchasing Cheap Glasses On-line.

Once again, I need to beg your forgiveness for the lack of recent postings... A combination of tax season, picture taking in the rain, visits to the doctor, and some interesting experiments involving polyurethane resin castings (of my DIY lighting gear) have kept me away from the computer for much of the past week. And though it's good to step away from internet on a fairly regular basis, the health of a blog is dependent on semi-regular postings and (in theory) postings that are interesting to read.

I doubt very much that anyone is interested in my tax payments to the IRS. I also doubt that anyone wants to hear me moan and groan about shooting in the rain (or my resulting trip to the doctor's office). I do plan on doing an article about polyurethane casting techniques sometime in the future, and I guarantee that it will be an be of interest to anyone building their own lighting gear.

What I would like to talk about in this post -- and it's almost completely unrelated to photography work -- is the high cost of prescription glasses. For those of you who don't wear glasses, well, feel free to click through to some other blog or website (a list featuring some of favorites can over on the right hand side of this blog). For those of you who do wear glasses and you absolutely hate the high prices that they command, please, read on...

Myself, I've been a glasses sufferer wearer since the 5th grade (yikes!), and I now have more than three decades worth of experience with prescription lenses. My eyes are are bad enough that I absolutely have to wear glasses (I'm rather near-sighted), and I've become resigned to the fact that my prescription needs an updating every two years or so. Typically, I get my lenses changed out with each new prescription -- again, every two years -- though I usually end up keeping the same set of frames for about four years.

As those of you who also wear glasses are probably well aware, new lenses can be kinda' pricey. My most recent set of prescription lenses (transition bifocals) cost about $240 U.S., though insurance did knock the price down to $110. Additionally, frames are (in my humble opinion) priced obscenely high, and a decent set of "fashion frames" at the typical optical shop can cost anywhere between $100 and $250. Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!

Interestingly (to glasses sufferers wearers at least), National Public Radio recently broadcast a fascinating segment by author/commentator Daniel Pinkwater, in which he talked about a purchase he'd just made -- a set of "modern, hip, cool and sexy" reading eyeglasses. Though the glasses would normally have cost around $140 at an optical shop, Mr. Pinkwater was able to purchase the pair for about $14 (including shipping and handling) by Googling the phrase "cheap glasses," and then browsing his way through the various search results. Just to clarify this a bit, below you'll see a partial screen capture that I did just a few minutes ago using the words "cheap" and "glasses."

Again, this is just a partial screen capture. In reality, there are dozens of results that will come up using these two search words, and there's also an excellent blog (entitled "Glassy Eyes") dedicated to the search for good cheap eyewear.

Myself -- after having listened to the NPR segment and doing my own research -- I placed an order for dirt cheap prescription eyewear late yesterday evening. For the longest time, I've been wanting to get a set of prescription sunglasses; something that I can keep in the car or just have around for a bright and sunny day. The thought of paying 100 or 200 dollars for a set of darkened specs simply nauseates me (I sicken easily), but via a quick and easy internet search (and Mr. Pinkwater's use of a site entitled Goggles4U), I was able to buy a pair of "modern, hip, cool and sexy" shades with single vision prescription lenses for the "modern, hip, cool, and sexy" price of $24.69 -- shipping and handling included. Yikes! That's some bargain!

How will the glasses turn out? Hmmmm... Not sure... Though I'll be sure to give a very full report once they do arrive and I've had the opportunity to give them a bit of a full test drive. In theory, they're not set to arrive here in town for another ten to fifteen days. Again, I'll be sure to give a full report once they do arrive. If these turn out as well as much higher priced "designer eyewear" from a local optical shop, well, I certainly sing the praises of the purchasing glasses online. Obviously, if the glasses don't turn out well, then I'll be sure to give the heads up on that too.

Miserable Weather = Stuck Filter

The weather here in the Pacific Northwest has been pretty awful for most of the past week (the proverbial "raining cats and dogs" sort of stuff), and -- as luck would have it -- I've also been on a magazine assignment which requires me to spend most of my days outside, standing in the rain.

I'm fortunate enough to have a decent-sized collection of shower caps (stolen borrowed from hotels) that I can use as DIY rain covers on my camera, though the constant downpours are starting to seep through these covers, and my camera has been getting mighty, mighty wet at times.

Thankfully, the mechanical and electronic parts of my camera are still functioning quite fine, though I did end up with a tightly stuck filter/adapter ring combo that was really quite annoying. I'm pretty sure that all of the recent rainfall and moisture had somehow worked its way along the edge of my adapter ring, and then made it stick -- as though superglued -- to the polarizing filter that it was screwed in to.

Stuck filters are a royal pain-in-the-butt, and I'm always a bit afraid that -- if I attempt to force a stuck filter -- that I'm going to strip out or cross the threads. Fortunately, various laws of physics (i.e.: expansion, contraction, and thermodynamics) can be made to work in a photographer's favor, especially when a hair dryer (set on low) gets applied to the edge of a adapter/filter combo. Not only will the pair dry out as they were heated, but also -- and I think that this is the key -- they will expand at different rates as they were heated, allowing one item to separate from the other.

Will a hair dryer always solve the problem of a stuck filter or adapter? Errrrhhhhh... Probably not... Though it's a very good first start when trying to separate one stuck item from another. Certainly, it's worth trying out, provided that you're in the sort of location or situation where there's easy access to a hair dryer.

Matt

Blog 'n' Beer

Is it juvenile on my part to post the above photo of me pounding down a beer?

Uhhhhh... Yes. Extremely juvenile.

On the other hand, it's been kinda' a long week here in the Global Household, and the beer that I was drinking (a mighty fine Collaborator Ale) went down mighty smoothly. A special thanks does need to go out to Mike and Matt at East Burn for keeping the beer flowing while I was taking pictures of their establishment. I also need to thank the folks at the "table next to the outside wall" for some great conversation and for taking the picture that you see at the top of this post. Sorry that I can't remember all of your names (honestly, I'm awful at remembering names), though I'm sure that I'll see you around town. For such a medium-sized city, Portland can seem like a mighty small town.

I did want to make a quick note and let you -- the readers of this blog -- know that you can also buy me a beer (or a cup of coffee) by going over to the "Donate" button on the right-hand side of this page. I recently added this "feature" to the site, and it's an attempt on my part to reduce the expense incurred while drinking beer (or coffee) as I research and write material for the blog. Just to let you know, here in the Portland area, about $1.60 will buy a good cup of coffee, while somewhere in the range of $3.50 to $4.50 will buy a nice craft ale. I should also mention that thousands upon thousands of dollars are required to purchase a shiny brand-new Nikon D3 camera, and any donation more than $5.00 will go straight into the Nikon D3 fund. If you're on an RSS feed (and many of you are) you might not see the button, and so -- if you're in a donating mood -- feel free to pop on over to the home page of this site to check out what all is going on over there.

Matt

P.S.: As a quick technical note, the photo at the top of this post was partially illuminated with my DIY "Barf Bag Flash Diffuser". It's kinda' fun handing that thing over to some random person and then watching the look on their face as I explain just exactly what it is that's covering up the strobe.

Yup, that's kinda' juvenile on my part too.

*******************************************************
UPDATE
*******************************************************
My whole-hearted thanks goes to "Andy in Taos, New Mexico" for buying me a beer. If I make it to Taos in the semi-near future, I'll make every attempt to return the favor.