Inquiring Minds: Wounded Cat Calls
Posted by latoga | Filed under Uncategorized
…from something that (most likely) isn’t a wounded cat. That is what I’m trying to figure out.
There are a number of serious wildlife shooters who regularly read my blog, so I’m asking for help from the community. What kind of animal cries out loudly at night or early evening and sounds like a really loud wounded cat?
What ever it is, it has been frequenting my neighborhood for a few months now. We regularly hear this creature, usually at night, crying out loud enough to hear it over the TV or computer. Tonight I heard it just at dusk. And I’m really curious to identify what type of animal it is.
Anyone out there have an idea?
To help narrow down the choices, it would be something that is native to the “far east bay” of the SF Bay Area. While we have a number of stray cats in the neighborhood, none of them can make a cry this loud (and luckily, what ever is making the sound hasn’t caused any of our strays to go missing…). We did spot a coyote on our hill side early one morning…could this be the source?
Post your thoughts and references. Appreciate the help!
Tags: Backyard Wildlife, Help
Cal Berkeley Football Fails in Water Conservation
Posted by latoga | Filed under Uncategorized
Yesterday, while visiting the UC Berkeley campus, I noticed how Memorial Stadium is wasting water despite the fact that California is in a drought. While we were taking photos of the tree-sitters at UC Berkeley, I wandered into Memorial Stadium where the Cal Bears were wrapping up a practice. Luckily the stadium was open as I also needed to use the restroom.
The men’s restrooms at Memorial Stadium are similar to the restrooms at most stadiums, where the urinal is designed, for lack of a better term, as a large trough to facilitate quicker flow through the bathrooms (pun intended). Above the urinal trough is a pipe which trickles water into the trough to continually flush it.
What I found most disturbing, was that the water to flush the urinals was running! On a Saturday with no event being held at the stadium. Considering that our governor declared a statewide drought in California last week and that EBMUD has required mandatory water rationing for many weeks now, I was disappointed to see this collosal waste of water by UC Berkeley. I can’t begin to image how many thousands of gallons of water get wasted in the Memorial Stadium bathrooms if the urinal water is running all the time (something that I’m assuming based up on my personal observations).
Whoever is responsible for the Cal Berkeley Football Memorial Stadium facilities is definitely failing in water conservation!
Tags: Cal Berkeley, California Drought, Water Conservation
Indiana Jones and the Leibovitz Photo Shoot
Posted by latoga | Filed under Uncategorized
My wife brought home the latest issue of Vanity Fair today which features a cover photo of Indiana Jones (from the upcoming Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull) shot by Annie Leibovitz. Leibovitz was allowed to take portrait photos of the characters and some of them are featured in the Vanity Fair article Keys to the Kingdom along with a video of the Annie Liebovitz photo session and individual Q&A with both Steven Spielberg and George Lucas (all worth the time to read and watch).
One of the interesting aspects of the Leibovitz photos to me is how they seem to be following that “edgy” or “almost surreal” look that is popular. I had experimented with the edgy look a few month back (see Not for Everyone, The Making of Not for Everyone, and Lover’s Locks). My work was going well into the surreal zone, where Leibovitz’ seems to be balancing just this side of it.
These photos have the quality that they grab you and make you look closer because there is that something there.
Tags: Annie Leibovitz, Indiana Jones
Winter Abstracts
Posted by latoga | Filed under Uncategorized
A slide of winter abstracts that were taken last year during a visit to Cornell University. My wife was the one who noticed the patterns that the ice ladened branches made when viewed in front of a street lamp.
(This is a test of the professional grade photo hosting service from FocalPower. Click on the image to open the slideshow in a lightbox. FocalPower’s lightbox displays the largest image possible for your current browser’s current size.)
Updated 1/14: Due to my travel schedule, I didn’t have time to create a new post and make the cut off date for Jim Goldstein’s My Favorite Photos From 2007 list, but I wanted to update my submission post to share a few more of my wife’s favorite photos of mine from the past year (she’s always had the better judgment anyway)…click through for larger versions.
Side Blur: Thanks Jim for coordinating this project! It’s not until you do something like this that you really get a sense of how much photography you did in a year. My New Year’s Resolution revolves around the fact that there was more shooting that I did, but I never got around to the post production work to publish them online…this year my goal is to minimize the delays between shooting and publication. (and maybe catch up on the backlog?)
Tags: 2007 Favorites, Abstracts, Winter
The Making of Not For Everyone
Posted by latoga | Filed under Uncategorized
In my last post, Not For Everyone, I showcased a set of remixed photos using a new technique that I picked up. After asking for everyone’s guess on the technique, here is the secret.
The technique is from Matt Kloskowski’s Photoshop Lightroom Killer Tips blog: Surreal Edgy Effect.
seanmcc guessed the technique right in the comments of the original post. There were also multiple people who referred to this as the “Dave Hill” technique. While Matt doesn’t call it that specifically in his video demonstration, if you look at Dave Hill’s website, you can see that he must use some of the similar principles that are applied in this technique…but that is just the start. I have also come across a few other photographers who have a style similar to Dave Hill’s, but not exactly the same. Of course, I came across them in one of the few photography magazines I would pickup every so often while traveling…and now I can’t find it — I still wish magazines would do a better job of indexing their issues on their websites!
Here is one of the images from the remix side by side with the original:
There were a number of people who commented that this technique is “too over done”. While that is true, that is also the point. If you watch the video on how to do this, you will see how easy the basics are. Don’t rule out trying something new. I’m planning on experimenting with this on a few more photos in the near future. You never know when you will find the perfect photo to try this on…there is always next year’s zombies…
Tags: Matt Kloskowski, Technique
