czar craver

One of my friends wishes that she could buy the country of Lichtenstein. It is not for sale, and even if it was, she could not afford it. But did you know that I briefly conquered the former Soviet Union? I decided to give it up, because they actually speak a different language there. It is not just English with a funny accent. Who knew?!

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This weekend, S2 laid out a bunch if Lego people. (He has been studying the World Wars in school.) He asked me which group would win if they had a world war. Nobody. The strongest force he had was the bad Star Wars guys. They had a larger force and far more firepower than any other group. I didn't want them to win, so I stayed up Sunday night, typing out a strategy for the good guys to win. That way we would have the least amount of losses (even among the enemy) and it wouldn't come down to the evil emperor and a couple Super Battle Droids as the sole survivors.

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I like building Legos with him. He likes when I use those newly built pieces to play with him. I guess this was meeting him somewhere in the middle.

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I have a brother who is really good at strategy. I wonder what he would think of the plan I constructed.

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Oh, and I was kidding about overthrowing the former U.S.S.R. You know that, right? The pic came from funphotobox.com.

door to door photos

In his post called Abridged Version, David McMahon said does not crop his images or modify them in any way. I'm stunned!

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I have taken A FEW pictures that I thought came out half-decent, but when I get to post-processing, even the good ones get a little somethin-somethin. Nothing EVER turns out perfect for me. It's a little too light, a little too dark, lopsided, too close, too far, blurry, colored funny, etc.

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But I still take the camera with me everywhere, and persevere with this experiment, because I believe I have the capacity for a noticeable improvement in photography. That, plus it is virtually free to take lots and lots of pictures and try different things with a digital camera.

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My point though, is that I am awful. I brought proof...

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One day, I took a different route home, and I noticed a beautiful door. I wanted to take a picture of it, but it was dark, and I didn't know the people, etc. After a few days, I just got my camera ready, and when I came to that stop sign, I took the shot and drove on. (Did I just do a "drive-by shooting?") It's the picture on the left. Welp... from that first picture, I knew that I would need a tripod, a much longer exposure, and a better angle. On another night, I prepared the camera settings a block early, cracked the window open just enough to create a makeshift tripod and when I was ready to shoot, I momentarily shut the engine off. (Another drive-by shooting!)

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After downloading the second picture, I saw that the overhead porch light was waaaay too strong, so I cropped most of it out and applied a graduated tint to compensate for its harshness. Voila! Now, you can actually identify the intended subject!

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A question: What about photo-ethics? If nobody's home, and I don't include their faces, names or address, do I still need to ask permission to shoot their door like this? Does anybody know? (I don't even think anyone was home at the time.) What would YOU do?