This post isn’t about a dog, or photographing dogs . . . really. This dog is actually the constant companion of who the post is about, Stephanie. I recently photographed a few pieces of her artwork for her, more of which can be found on her site Stephanie Dwyer Designs.

And, I know the title I referenced is actually The Treachery of Images ( or “La trahison des images”).

The tracking models are not consistent yet but that is only in matters of degree. The storm is hitting Florida. But given its trajectory and the shape of Florida, a very minor change can mean the difference between hitting Naples and Hitting St. Pete. The official track track has it coming ashore in Ft Meyers but the probability cone stretches from the Everglades to Tallahassee. UKMet’s model is perhaps the most distressing, having it stay just off-shore as the storm cruises North wrecking havoc all the way up the coast. That one also takes the storm North to Atlanta, so I’m betting that’s how it will go since it will make my life the hardest.

I have to say though that I do think this is neat timing, a nice bookend to my life here in Florida. That is, there is a hurricane coming to exactly where I live on the very last days that I will be living here. That is pretty cool. Its like nature is giving me a going away present.

He’ll be the first artist to exhibit in the new Student Union up at Mississippi State, which I think is super cool. here is a link to his post about it. And below is the poster. Go see it! Support awesome people!

I just finished laying out an 11″x17″ poster for the show . . . there are clearly different skills involved in good graphic design versus good photography, but I can afford my own labor.

If any of the five of you that read the blog regularly would like to print your own posters and go on a poster-hanging spree, here are the digital images:
CMYK tiff with .25 in bleed (32,015 Kb),
RGB jpg with .25 bleed (6,568 Kb),
RGB jpg without any bleed (6,109 Kb and perfect for your color inkjet printer).

Or you could just swipe the small image at the top and post it on your blog, myspace, facebook, etc.

Jerri and I have been together for about 10 years, married for the last 7. I guess I have had so long to get used to how she is, that sometimes I don’t properly appreciate how great she is. For example, when I told Jerri that I wanted to get up at 2am to drive to Starkvegas and take some night photos and sunrise photos then immediately turn around and drive home, she didn’t even act surprised. When I asked her to go with me and help, she didn’t hesitate. When I actually woke her up at 1:30 am this morning . . . ok so she is never happy when she wakes up, but she got up and helped me load the car anyway. She then helped me lug equipment all over State’s campus, and chase color in the clouds.

A few days ago, while I am sure I could have been productive . . . I instead made digital dupes of some old negatives. I think most of them are from 1997 or before, but I wasn’t very good about dating my work until we moved to Savannah (1999?). One day I will go through and digitize all of my old work, but that goes at the bottom of a very long list of “one day” items. In case you are wondering about the “breaking my own rules” thing, I haven’t done anything to most of these images and I wouldn’t call them print-ready . . . and I normally have a rule that I don’t show people anything I wouldn’t print and display, but these have a certain nostalgic value to me without them being quality work. Hopefully no one will judge my current photographic skill by the quality of things I shot ten years ago.

The two people shots below are considerably older. Both of them pre-date my move to medium format, which was probably 95 or maybe 96. One of them is on “safety film” which means it was probably taken during a photography class I took where we had to test different film and developer combinations. The European medium-format shots are all from an eight-week backpacking trip in the summer of 97 (the edge fogging is from the length of time I carried the film unprocessed combined with multiple xrays).

Don’t get me wrong, I was way excited about the new animated movie. The Clone Wars, done by that guy who did Samurai Jack was awesome. Better by far than any of Lucas’ recent attempts. Hell, I wanted that guy to have done the recent trilogy. So, a new animated action story looks great. I’m sure that Lucas will much it up though.

But that is not what is annoying me right now. No. I am annoyed by a single line said in the advertisement for the new animated feature. Apparently Skywalker is the key to the defense of the republic (I actually love the idea that he is both the savior and destroyer of the republic). Anakin Skywalker is, at least in military circles, remarkably well known according to these stories. In terms of recognition he is basically General Patreus. And, he is well known in exactly the group of people who are fighting The Dark Side, aka Palpatine. So, how come, 20 years later NO ONE in rebel command goes “huh, this kid, from the same planet, must be related to Anakin Skywalker.”

Sure, this is more of the same. “Its the old complaint, sire. How can, in a galaxy that large, the same 6 people be responsible for everything? Really? C-3PO was built by Darth Vader?” This is, by now, an old refrain, one well made fun of. George Lucas should be stopped.

Something that I now wonder about though. Lots of people knew about Anakin Skywalker. Lots of people know about Darth Vader. How many know that Skywalker became Vader? How many know that Skywalker turned and brought about the fall of the old Republic. I mean, if more people knew this, it could make for a very interesting story about Luke’s involvement in the rebellion. A ton of people would never fully trust him because they would be worried that he would turn, like his father (and in some of the books Luke does actually turn for a while, I haven’t read them, mind you but I have seen them referenced).

Lucas is a hack.

I have a photography exhibit that is currently on display at the Mississippi Art Center (former Mississippi Museum of Art) until August 17. The show is a collection of my landscape and cityscape photographs from throughout the Southeast. From September 8 through October 26 the exhibit will be on display at Mississippi State University’s Art Gallery on the second floor of the Student Union. (The MSU show will contain a few more images than the Jackson show.) All of the photographs in the show are printed as 18″x18″ editions of 10.

This project is supported in part by funding from the Mississippi Arts Commission, a state agency, and in part, from the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency. Special thanks to the Greater Jackson Arts Council for their help in organizing the show.

Below are a few photos of the Art Center installation:

I’ve previously posted about HDR here on the blog, but it has always regarded taking multiple exposures of the same scene and combining them. This time I have been experimenting with using multiple raw conversions of a high contrast portrait to create an image devoid of any noise artifacts (or maybe devoid of most artifacts). Both of the above images were created from three conversions of the same raw file, using 2 stops of exposure difference between each file. I then converted the resulting hdr images down to 16 bits using Local Adaptation and curves. I would specify the radius and threshold settings, but I have found the radius varies with resolution, and threshold varies with each image (tending to be between .5 and 2).

The lighting for this was a large softbox camera right slightly above the subjects eyelevel, a black nonreflector camera left (as close to the subject as I could get without it in frame), and a kicker light behind the subject camera left feathering onto the background about a foot above the subjects head.