Aperture Stacks Rock

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kSo, it's not ground breaking stuff here. None at all really. But some Fridays, you can't help but state the obvious: The Stacks feature in Aperture kicks ass. Really. Sure it's pretty obvious in the motorsports stuff. Knowing that I can rattle off a long sequence of shots, turn on the auto-stack feature when I import and then quickly scan the sequence for which image captures the best moment. But I've also been using it for dealing with bracketed exposures on some architectural work I've been doing. Get the timing right on import and you have all your bracketed frames from each shot, nicely organized to edit or to create into an HDR.

Maybe this'll be part of a new tradition? Obvious Fridays.

(And the photo? Yeah. That's from some work I shot while at Duke University Press for their Journals Ad Catalog.)

Waiting in Dallas

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We're off to Jackson Hole. Specifically the portion of our trip spent at DFW. It's a nice enough airport. I mean, the runways are paved. So that's a good thing. Checking on email and then off to find a cold beverage.

When the Metal Hits the Road

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Hoosier Cord Took a break for the day, picked up the Integra Type R from its legendary lair and hit a local event with Triad Sports Car Club at the Sanford airport.

It was, by all counts, a long and hot day in the sun. But getting six shots at a 90 second course proved to be too much for the tires I showed up. After my fourth run we had cord showing and it was down hill from there. The photo above is the bottom of the hill. I should be perfectly clear about a couple of things:

1. Hoosier tires kick butt.

2. The Type R is brutal to front tires.

3. These tires had been pounded on pretty good at several, prior events.

4. Did I mention the Type R is brutal to front tires?

I took the picture on location with my G9. It's a great little camera to "have around." It usually gets tossed into my laptop bag or tucked into whatever I'm bringing with me.

Lots of design work on my plate and some writing for the Sky2x site. Busy days ahead.

Laura's Most Excellent Nia Adventure

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Earlier this month a couple of important things happened. One, Laura had a birthday. That's a lot of fun with the usual birthday stuff. With dinner at what's apparently becoming one of our favorite restaurants: 18 Seaboard. The other big event that same weekend: Laura arranged to teach her first, full Nia class. Since getting her white belt earlier this year, Laura had taught a few songs in some classes, but her birthday weekend would mark her first full class instruction. I stuck around for the first three songs and took pictures. The class was held at Triangle Dance Studio and while it's a great space for any sort of dance or movement activity, it's pretty tough to shoot in. Without flash. Actually, the full length mirror would make it tough to shoot with speedlights as well.

Enough with the photogeeking. Here's the pictures.

2009 Blytheville Pro Solo

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DS 86 Lifts a Wheel During the Super Challenge So we're back. Last weekend made the trek to Blytheville, Arkansas to run the SCCA's Pro Solo. This year, just like last, I'm co-driving with Jim Feinberg. We had fantastic weather even if it was a bit on the warm side. The car was handling perfectly both days—well, until the Super Challenge on Sunday that is. With a one two finish in class—Jim taking the win by less than 3/10s of a second, both of us were bound for the Super Challenge. Unfortunately, I was a one and done in the challenge, but the upside is that I went back to paddock, grabbed the camera and photographed a few of the runs.

Speaking of which I'm trying to figure out if I'm going to post up motorsport stuff here. Maybe if I shoot a particular race, or big event. But for the most part they'll probably end up living over on my Fotki account.

Sunday Brunch Road Trip

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Rocky Knob on the ParkwaySo a few months ago I managed to catch up with my old friend Sean. And we'd talked about catching up while he and his family were visiting his parents in Virginia. Seems like as good an excuse as any for a road trip. Destination, Chateau Morissette for the world's latest brunch.* The ride up was fun, with a scenic detour to check out Floyd, Virginia. Yes. There is a Floyd, Virginia. And they look to have quick the homegrown music scene starting to pick up there. In the course of the few minutes sitting in front of the Floyd Country Store to have a cup of coffee and borrow a WiFi connection to reroute us to the restaurant, I think we saw at least four people walking around toting guitar cases.

So, Yes. Either a burgeoning music scene or the little reported on fourth installment of the El Mariachi films. Since absolutely no one we saw looked at all like Antonio Banderas or Salma Hayek I think the safe bet is music scene.

Curiously enough, the Google took us on a beautiful, scenic gravel road to get from Floyd to Chateau Morissette. Washboard roads and SA Konis make for an entertaining drive. After brunch we did the wine tasting—which was nice if a bit rushed since we were one of the last groups to get into it.

We said our good-byes and then hit the road with a small detour to Rocky Knob and decided that we need to consider more trips to the Parkway this summer, if for no other reason than to enjoy the scenary and escape the heat.

*I have to confess, the world's latest brunch was pretty much our fault, I needed to figure out if I could ditch on a local autocross so Laura and I committed pretty late to actually making the trip.

Rogers Alley

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Sometime last week, I got a call from Steve at Greenfire Development, asking if I could shoehorn in a quick shoot of the residential units at the almost, actually, really close, to finished Rogers Alley complex. I managed to get over there for a couple of hours Friday morning before another meeting. Here's a sample. I'll have to edit the rest of the set and deliver the finished files to them this week. I have to say that the spaces really do kick ass. Great use of space with lots of nice natural light.