I’m just back from the desert, and boy are my arms sandy… We gave our friend/my fellow Photoshop PM Bryan O’Neil Hughes a solid send-off to his single days, I think. Word to the wise : RV+sand = elephant+tar pit; oi vey. Sadly, I didn’t manage to see a real live Adobe Photo Shop [Via]. I did, however, find a great deal on California real estate in Trona. (Hope you like sulfur… and breaking your windows just to cut your wrists.) Ballarat Bob was MIA, but we caught up with our friend, the Mayor of Ballarat, along with his even more grizzled (!) dad–keepers of Charlie Manson’s truck & black helicopters; here’s a small gallery.
Their one-room building (famous for $2 cans of Milwaukee’s Best–which will taste good to you when it gets hot enough) also features a photo I really love. I don’t know a thing about its subject or its history, and I always choose not to ask. Sometimes it’s good to savor a little mystery.
In a photographic vein, and starting with Death Valley:
- Author & photog Ben Long is just back from the park as well, and he’s posted a gallery of terrific shots.
- If the boys of Ballarat were ever to go digital, they might like the Kodak 1881: a digital camera as vintage locket. [Via]
- "You just had to run": TOP relays an anecdote from Steven Spielberg on catching the dawn for Empire of the Sun.
- Author Will Self has documented his writing room, festooned with Post-It notes. (I feel like he’s got a physical version of my copy of Contribute, from which I write this blog. It’s a warren of ideas and links, jotted in blurbs, competing for too little time.) [Via]
Hrmmm. Beautiful images.
[Thanks. 🙂 –J.]
However, Autoviewer prevents one from looking at EXIF data.
[Ah, but it doesn’t! It lets you right-click/Ctrl-click on images, then choose to open them in their own windows. That’s a parameter that can be enabled or disabled for each gallery. –J.]
What hardware are you shooting with?
[I was shooting with my Rebel XT, and Bryan Hughes (fellow Photoshop PM) was using the team’s 1Ds. I believe he had an 85mm 1.8 lens mounted, while I was using a 17-85mm f4. –J.]
Hey John
Thanks for the info on Trona. I had family who lived there in the 60’s & 70’s; they may still be there. I visited Trona in the summer of ’71. I’ll never forget the heat; it was 113 degrees.
We had left our luggage in the car and the toothpaste seperated into “something you wouldn’t want to brush your teeth with.”
Thanks again.
Deb
[Heh–sounds delicious, Deb. I think the town used to be a pretty different beast–always a salt mine, but one where people didn’t resort to ripping off pieces of their houses to burn them. Now it’s starting to feel post-apocalyptic. –J.]
Thanks for the great pics! Looks like it was a memorable trip.
[Cool, thanks. I’m frankly just glad to have that RV off our hands–too much mass, too much liability! –J.]
Hi John,
A couple of month’s ago you wrote:
At the 29th of april I was in Death Valley shooting panorama’s…
Youy can find them here
[Hans, you are a terrible, terrible man. 😉 Great shooting & thanks for the link. Just don’t tell me you were just in Brazil…! –J.]