This jaw-dropping Milky Way galaxy pano is now on my iMac

| October 9, 2013

The U.K.’s Royal Observatory Greenwich and National Maritime Museum awarded Mark Gee’s photos showing the Milky Way galaxy as it lights the sky at Cape Palliser, New Zealand lighthouse this year. The photo (click for VERY large) was made by stitching together 20 individual images to create this panoramic photo which as the Space.com article […]

A couple bolts and a couple volts

| June 27, 2013

Impressive super cell photo from Nebraska (www.tonightssky.com) about a week ago. The photo is a sandwich of 2 shots about 9 seconds apart at f/22, 2.5 sec and ISO 100 according to the tech info shared on G+.

An Oahu, Hawaii photo that was too beautiful not to share

| June 20, 2013

Karen Hutton of KarenHuttonPhotography posted a gorgeous photo from Makapu’u Lookout in Oahu, Hawaii yesterday that makes me want to return to Hawaii. (our 2006 trip) Her description was nice too: I could almost see the curvature of the earth on the horizon… it was dizzying! And wonderful, and blue, green, gorgeous and stunning. I […]

Looking good — well at least the bride and groom were!

| May 3, 2013

The first 50 professional wedding photos from Shuey Mills Photography have trickled in to be reviewed. I know I’m not suppose to be sharing the previews, but can’t help myself and will include two, ok THREE since they are so good (but here were a few photos from our guests – thanks for sharing on […]

Can you tell which image was computer generated?

| March 9, 2013

    Do we need “real” models nowadays? All of these images were computer generated. Computer artists have the ability to generate realistic looking images that look as good as most retouched professional photos. (click for larger) LINK

Archive: 40 year old photos of our house and dog Skippy

| February 13, 2013

I’m on a roll in posting a few old photos and still in the reminiscing mood, so figured I’d archive a couple more black and whites. These are from my home darkroom when I started photography as a hobby in junior high school. We’re starting to pack things back in boxes again so the boring […]

Engagement proofs for Drew and Katelyn are ready

| November 15, 2012

In keeping with the last couple days of family and personal posts, my daughter and future son-in-law shared their engagement photo proof pages (slide show) from their recent photo session with Shuey Mill Photography. The weather on Sunday afternoon was perfect for the shoot and it helps that the two of them are photogenic. Katelyn […]

A missed high school reunion and scanning old negatives

| October 7, 2012

Vintage Converse All-Stars from 1977 – note the untied shoelace before it became the style! I was a “geek” before there were “geeks” … if being a  photographer for my hometown newspaper and for my high school yearbook counts? Friday nights were spent shooting games and then zipping to the darkroom to “soup” the film […]

SILVER & LIGHT on Vimeo

| October 3, 2012

Large-scale wet plate photography video (below). SILVER & LIGHT from Ian Ruhter / Alchemist on Vimeo.

Smartphone photography with the new Apple iPhone 5

| September 22, 2012

The Apple iPhone 5 camera makes for a substantial improvement over my previous smartphone’s camera and so I was anxious to experiment with image quality and play with a few of the hyped features. Since I’m upgrading from the nearly “extinct” Palm Pre, running a rooted webOS install, any modern smartphone camera would have been an […]

Smartphones are making me rethink taking pictures

| August 23, 2012

I’m still amazed at the notable improvements in cellphone cameras since my Palm Pre was release a few years ago. Here’s an attempt (after a slight crop) to see how images look when a close up was taken with my wife’s new Samsung Galaxy S II Epic. I can see Brenda and I are not […]

Using the GoPro to film dolphins underwater

| August 12, 2012

Beautiful! Thanks for the link Steve.

Supermoon and a green pool on Cinco de Mayo

| May 5, 2012

   A late in the evening couple of photos to mark Cinco de Mayo. First, the warm winter and spring … and late opening of the pool for us … gave a bit more growth to the pool water than what I find inviting. Yuck. But it has already improved with a little cleaning, pumping […]

Interesting site that compares camera size

| January 28, 2012

Perhaps my favorite site for comparing cameras and reading reviews is dpreview.com, but it is not the same as trying or spending a few hours with different models in person. Most of us amateurs don’t really have that luxury or even the time. DSLR users rarely switch systems and may not have a full appreciation […]

Fooling around with the Kodak Playsport Zx5 in camera mode

| November 1, 2011

Kodak Playsport Zx5 macro focus testing (click for larger) While shooting some video with the Brenda’s Kodak Playsport Zx5 this past weekend I thought about the excellent autofocus camera on the new iPhone 4s and decided to test the macro focus on our my wife’s all-weather camcorder; if the lighting and distance is right, it […]

Who doesn’t love a sunrise photo, even when from space

| October 25, 2011

Sunrise and sunset photos have always been favorites of mine … this one taken by astronaut Ron Garan from space and posted on G+ is no exception. His photos of meteors plunging through the earth’s atmosphere  were made even more interesting with the addition of sound … although kind of eery (video below).

Photoshopping photos before there was Photoshop

| October 22, 2011

Since I go back a few years in photography (pre-digital by a few years) and did my share of dodging, burning and sandwiching with film and paper in the darkroom, I’m well aware of what photographers did to enhance photos … but here was one I must not have remembered. The Life Magazine photo during […]

Yes it is an ad, but the Rube Goldberg Machine is impressive

| July 25, 2011

Since I didn’t finish a longer winded write up last night that I had planned for this morning, I’ll just include a rather impressive Mousetrap style advertising web video below; it took a lot of creativity and work. This is our Photography-themed Rube Goldberg Machine. We hope you all enjoy the clip! Watch our video […]

Photography: Eclipse of the moon photos from South Africa

| July 12, 2011

In keeping with my previous theme of photography and space, my sailing acquaintance Fred Roswold currently working on his sailboat in South Africa posted his photo the June eclipse of the moon. His did a little Photoshop composite work after taking a series of shots 10-20 minutes apart. Great image Fred. The settings, for any […]

Photography: The night before the Shuttle Atlantis launch

| July 12, 2011

Most Internet savvy shutterbugs have seen photos or read about Trey Ratcliff, particularly those who are paying attention to High Dynamic Range (HDR) imaging. Trey Ratcliff has published many gorgeous photos and posted this one of the Shuttle Atlantis sitting on the launch pad the night before lift-off. (click image to left and also see […]

Linda A Sandbo and her beautiful seaside photography

| June 6, 2011

In a conversation with a sailing friend last week, I happened to correspond by email with an acquaintance — talented photographer and liveaboard sailor, Linda Sandbo. I wanted to highlight a link to her work on my blog … and with permission she sent me a most appreciated photograph. I wish I had half the […]

Moonlight over Encore

| May 17, 2011

Spending a quiet night aboard Encore under a full moon during a still evening and high tide.

Eye-Fi SD X2 cards play nicely with the Apple iPad

| April 21, 2011

I’ve enjoyed my older Anniversary Edition Eye-Fi SD card for a couple of years now and have appreciated the way it uploads photos to my waiting computer via my home wi-fi access point. I’ve been watching Eye-Fi innovations and have often thought how much much more convenient it would be to have photos uploaded directly […]

Pondering an upgrade to my Canon DSLR … someday

| March 29, 2011

I continue to be impressed with the Canon DSLR cameras and their ability to capture some pretty impressive video. Alexandra Erickson added this to her Vimeo blog in January when northwest Oregon was experiencing flooding. Sandy River Flood from alexandra erickson on Vimeo.

A misty sky and a Cincinnati area “Supermoon” photo

| March 20, 2011

Although my ‘supermoon’ photo from Saturday night isn’t one of the better ones from across the country, I did head outside to admire the “brightest moon since 1993.” The moon appear in its full phase just 50 minutes shy of the orbit that brings it closest to the earth … perigee. According to what I’ve […]

How-to: Shattered — but that is not the point

| January 18, 2011

I dropped one of our juice glasses on the hardwood floors this morning and it really shattered into small shards of glass … hopefully I’ve swept up them all. I was surprised at how small the pieces were, but then that’s really not the point of this post. Really it was just an opportunity to […]

Test encode 2 – Canon 5d mark II

| October 23, 2010

My friend Jeff and I use a shared folder on Dropbox to send files to each other and this morning he send me a short ‘portrait’ oriented video clip while on his trip to North Carolina. I chuckled when opening the file because by default it is in a “landscape” format (sideways), then wondered how […]

Test encoding a 30 second video from a Canon 5d MarkII

| October 18, 2010

My friend Jeff is a very fortunate amateur photographer since he is one of the few who own a fantastic Canon 5d Mark II. Although I only had a few minutes to play with it over lunch the other day, I enjoyed tinkering with the buttons and menus (there’s a big learning curve). He has […]

Something about this photo bothers me ;-)

| June 20, 2009

Belated post. It’s an interesting photo included for my Audubon ‘birding’ friends. Yes it is a tweaked photo. 😆  I’m dating it as a Saturday entry which I missed this week.

One year in 40 seconds video by Eirik Solheim

| April 24, 2009

While checking on our neighborhood gazebo project live webcam, I ran across a neat time lapse video by by Eirik Solheim — One year in 40 seconds. He has another one that covers a year in 2 minutes in his backyard in Norway, which I enjoyed as well. His 2009 should be of even higher […]

Ice and Snow this past week in Ohio

| February 16, 2007

Here are couple more photos (click for larger) while heading up Interstate 71 just south of Columbus Ohio this past week. The storm was pretty impressive as it first coated roads, trees and house with a thick coat of ice followed by snow. From Columbus south the February 13-14 front started with ice and then […]

Desultory - des-uhl-tawr-ee, -tohr-ee

  1. lacking in consistency, constancy, or visible order, disconnected; fitful: desultory conversation.
  2. digressing from or unconnected with the main subject; random: a desultory remark.
My Desultory Blog