Snipe Hunt?

Taking off later today to meet up with Dutch and head to Arizona. We're taking a couple of dogs and will be on the hunt for the famous, elusive Jackalope! I've never seen one, and Dutch hasn't hunted them in a long, long time. More than 25 years, in fact. Everyone's seen pictures, of course, and.. um..

Oh.. hold on a second..

It seems I've made a mistake.

I'll get back to you on this in a couple of days.

The Most Awesome Set-up Video Comes From...

The University of Alaska - Fairbanks "Nanooks" hockey team...



Who knew?

Scanners! Seger!

Hartford, CT. 1980. Went to this show with a friend from Michigan who once had a conversation with a bus in Ypsilanti. Long story. We were thirty-something "business types" who ended up standing on the seats in the Hartford Civic Center screaming for more. The friend dropped off the face of the earth several years ago, but Seger is still going strong.

This was scanned from the original Fujichrome slide, and modified using Picnik. If my memory is correct, it was shot with a Leica CL w/ 90mm Leitz tele-Elmarit. From about the 30th row. Center.

UPDATE 1/28/11: Am I prescient, or what?

Off The Wall.

Search terms that bring people to this blog:

OK.. Victoria's Secret I get. But the Beck thing? WTF? And what they get when they see the Beck post, is just the Esquire Magazine photoshoot image I grabbed from the Google to illustrate a post on a completely different subject. Go figure. Ah well, it's all traffic.

Scanners! How He Got His Name.

Another black and white image from the last great (but money losing) Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival. Born Vernon Harrison in Rayville, LA, he performed under the obvious moniker of Boogie Woogie Red.

This is one of only a handful of pictures of Boogie Woogie Red you'll find on the internet. Don't know why, but you better enjoy it!

Scanners! Boogie Chillen.

Live, at the 1974 Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival... in exile, Mister. John. Lee. Hooker. The event was held hostage by the new Republican Ann Arbor City Council, and was moved to Windsor, Ontario. Yeah, Canada.

From the original black and white negative. Colorized and Posterized.

Scanners! Popcorn and Ice Cream.

A puzzle? Here's a puzzle: I wonder if anyone (hey Bob G.) knows if that guy down in front is who he looks like. His flash is bigger than his camera.

Some great late Sixties technology on display there. For a while I thought that gentleman to the right of the light had a Kodak 110 Instamatic "pocket camera", but then I noticed the silver chain and realized it's probably a Minox "spy camera", although it may still be a 110 film cartridge version judging by the size.

I wonder if they still do these "Camera Club" shoots?

Gonna Choke!

 This must be a joke!

OMG, No!  It's Hoke!

U of M has completed its metamorphosis into Notre Dame.  I'm pretty sure the Oregon Ducks or the TCU Horned Frogs will welcome me, provisionally at least, as a fan, while the Wolverines wander in the wilderness for the next dozen years or so.*

If I don't have a stroke.

OBTW.. you can say goodbye to #16.  Here's the new coach on the spread offense:

"When asked recently about the influence of Oregon’s offense, Hoke subtly revealed his disdain for the tactical shift Michigan experienced under Rodriguez. He is convinced that modern spread option offenses can be counterproductive to the core values of smashmouth football and are, therefore, to be avoided. 

  

“Right, wrong or indifferent, when you’re zone blocking all the time -- when you’re playing basketball on grass -- you practice against that all spring, you practice against it all fall and then you’re going to play a two-back team that wants to knock you off the football,” Hoke said. “I don’t think you’re prepared. 

  

“I think there’s a toughness level (required in college football). I still believe you win with defense. That’s been beaten into my head a long time, but I really believe that. The toughness of your team has to be the offensive front and your defensive front.” 

Whoop-dee-doo! Our own version of the Neanderthal in Madison.










* And, of course, I'll be a fan of wherever Rich Rodriguez ends up. And you can take that to the bank.

Scanners! Time to Embarrass the Kids Again.

..and give a little tutorial on Picnik in the process.

If I were to begin at the beginning, then we'll have to go all the way back to 1965, (or possibly 1964.. the memory's a little fuzzy), and you bring the first girl you ever loved to your backyard, where Dad has conveniently set up a pool. When that girl is in that fine turquoise bikini that she made with her own hands, you grab Dad's Argus 75 box camera, and pose the girlfriend all over the yard.

Fast forward to 2011, and you're still living the good life with that first girl you've ever loved, and you still have all those old 3½ x 3½ inch color prints from oh so long ago. And you've got a scanner to bring them into the 21st Century.

Enter Picnik, an ap that showed up last Summer some time on Google's Picasa. It's an online editing tool that has a free version, (which, being cheap, is the version I'm using... of course), and a pay version, which I've promised myself to check out. Eventually. It's loaded with most of the standard editing tools for exposure, sharpness, red eye removal, etc.) It also has a lot of creative stuff, some of which were applied to the image above.

So the first step in the process is to convert the original color file to a black and white file using Picasa, because I want to color the image myself. After sharpening and increasing contrast with Picasa, it's time to upload the image to Picnik. There, the image was colored using the paintbrush available with the Tint Option. Once it's colored, it's converted to what Picnik calls "Lomo-ish" appearance, which shifts the colors somewhat.. (making the skintones an otherworldly, John Boehnerish orange hue), and adding the "light leak" shadowing of the margins.  It also increases the contrast.

The last step is to use the "Museum Matte" option for a presentation appearance.  Then the image is saved back to the computer where, using Picasa again, I created the collage which appears above.

The Stuff that Scares the Bejeezus Out of Dem Baton Rouge Coonasses.

UPDATE: But wait, there's more!