wbeem's photostream  

Spaceship Earth is the centerpiece of Walt Disney World’s Epcot. All of the parks have something like this one, which means it’s often a perfect backdrop for people who want to take their snapshot to say “I was here.” In fact, just as soon as I setup for this shot and was about to press the shutter, a woman jumped in front of me with her child and ordered her husband to take a shot.

I get used to that happening and have developed a sense of patience, though perhaps I mutter things while I’m waiting. Of course, it would’ve taken less patience if her husband didn’t say “OK, now let’s get one more.” If you’re going to interrupt someone else’s photo, you need to get in and get out. That’s why it pays to know how to use your camera.

No harm done, though. Their child wasn’t paying attention and frustration caused them to leave. That’s the lesson that helps me stay patient. Everyone leaves, so just wait a few minutes.

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Who can resist a path to a nice sunset under the palm trees? You can just imagine the ocean breeze and convenient cocktail service. There’s only one way to survive the Winter months, and that’s to avoid it. You can’t stop the snow, but you can leave town. Go someplace warm and learn a new definition of “chill.” Relax. Watch the coconuts grow. Watch the sunset. Forget about putting chains on your tires.

Forget skiing. Hurtling down a mountain on a pair of sticks is an unnatural act that’s fraught with danger. Did you ever notice there are no songs about skiing, but there are plenty of songs about the beach? Go ahead, sit there with a drink in your hand and your toes in the sand. It’s only natural.

There’s a reason I was born here.

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Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas Nevada

Slot machines used to play in the key of C, since it was thought to be a pleasing sound to the human mind. Busy carpet patterns were intended to keep your eyes up so you could see the games. I’ve been thinking about the subtle ways that people are manipulated by others lately, and it’s fascinating. I’m just not sure if I’m paying more attention to prevent being manipulated or to learn how to do it better to others.

Decisions, decisions.

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If there’s no other life out there, it seems like an awful waste of space. Maybe that’s why we’re so fascinated with stories of adventure in space. It seems we dream about going to new places, encountering new species, pissing them off and having glorious battles that put our Mother Earth in danger until some famous Hollywood actor comes along and almost single-handedly saves our skins.

What I don’t understand is why we just don’t shoot the Hollywood bad-ass into space first so we can avoid the whole “Earth in danger” phase of the script. Of course, the problem now is that all of our bad-asses are too old for that kind of thing anymore. The actors we send into space now will try to teach the aliens how to get in touch with their feelings.

We’re doomed.

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Last night, I decided to try using my Nikon Coolpix P7000 to get some auto-exposure bracket shots for HDR images. Think of this as a Proof of Concept experiment. The P7000 is capable of shooting brackets of five exposures, which is generally sufficient for HDR. Since my Nikon D700 seems to attract unwanted attention at times, I was curious to see if anyone paid attention to me using this setup. Also, I wanted to test the quality of the results.

The good news is that it’s significantly lighter! If you’ve ever lugged around a full-frame camera with an f/2.8 zoom lens, you know it comes with some heft. In comparison, the P7000 was lightweight and packed a zoom range equivalent from 28-200mm on a full frame camera. The trade-off for that is that it has shutter lag and the zoom control is a bit twitchy, I never got it exactly where I wanted. The other issue is that it’s a pain to focus. In fact, I preferred the bracket I shot just before the one I made above because it didn’t have that family posing for a picture. Then again, it was also slightly out of focus. That’s why I had to grab another set.

A recent firmware update fixed a complaint many had about this camera. You couldn’t use the auto-exposure bracket with the self-timer. Good news, folks. Get the new update from Nikon that shipped in December for the P7000. I set the self-timer for a 2-second delay and then it faithfully ran through it’s brackets.

I think my experiment worked. Nobody approached me or commented about my camera. Tourists didn’t ask me to take their photo. Nobody kicked me out of the park. Other than needing to work a bit more on the mechanisms of the camera, I’d rate this experiment as a mild success. While I don’t want to replace my D700 with a point & shoot, it seems like a viable alternative when I want to fly a little under the radar.

Please visit the blog at williambeem.com