The Finest In Automotive Spy Photography

Several times over the past 25 years, I've been fortunate enough to be in  the right place at the right time to photograph upcoming automobile models on public roads, doing "real world testing".  Most often the vehicles are disguised, with outlandish extra body panels, or wild graphic paint schemes, designed to misdirect the viewer's eyes so as not to determine exactly what the shape of the car really is.  Other times, when they're closer to production, only the badging, and other identifying marks are stripped from the cars.


I first got lucky in Anchorage, Alaska of all places.  Engineers apparently experienced a stalling problem, and left what would later become the Subaru Impreza abandoned in a hotel parking lot, with the hood up.  I snapped away. I couldn't help it.  Those pictures ended up in AutoWeek Magazine.


Jump ahead several years, and I'm working as an independent representative for a firm which required me to visit a lot of backroads businesses.  I was in Livingston County, Michigan when a convoy of overly clad vehicles was leaving a rural gas station.  Again, I fired away, and again the images ended up in AutoWeek.  It was America's first look at the Oldsmobile Alero and Pontiac Grand Am.


Recently, I happened to capture images of the 2012 Audi A6 on nearby back roads.  These were brokered to several automotive online journals by the "Doyenne" of  automotive spy photography, whose name you would recognize instantly.


What follows, is the published account of my most recent discovery.  It was late at night, at a gas station in Abilene, Texas......

§    §    §    §    §    §    §    §    §    §    §    §    §    §   §

Our intrepid, tireless, ambitious, poverty-stricken, Instamatic®- toting, weasley, automotive paparazzi have been at it again.  Caught real world testing, without so much as a single fig leaf of disguise is Ford’s upcoming retro spectacular, the 2014 Edsel Redux!  (pronounced Ree-doo).

Word has been out there among the automotive cognoscenti for several months now, that this masterpiece of backward-thinking was in the works, but this is the first time it’s been captured on film, as it were, and we here at AutoLuddite were victorious in the bout of feverish bidding that ensued to be the first to present this image to the public.


Our sources in the industry tell us this fantastic retro-sled weighs in at an astonishing four-and-a-half tons, due in part to the extensive use of carbon fiber in the floor mats, and turn signal indicator.  Power to overcome massive amounts of inertia comes from the technologically advanced cast iron, straight 6 cylinder EcoBǖst, (pronounced boooost), engine, which produces upwards of 175 BHP when using 102 octane unleaded fuel.  Naught to 60 times are expected to be in the range of sometime before dark, therefore, no convertible model is expected to be produced.  Our sources tell us that an optional 3-speed manual transmission, mounted on the steering column (!), has never, ever been considered.

The designers have really outdone themselves in recalling the essence of the original, right down to the extremely wide white sidewall bias-ply tires, to the rust spots on the quarter panels.  One wonders why, with all of these styling cues resurrecting the marque’s illustrious past, the “toilet seat” was left off of the massive chrome grille?  Perhaps it will appear on a higher trim level model.  We can only hope and pray.


Unfortunately, prices are not expected to fall in line with those of 50+ years ago.  You can expect to pony up around $25,000 for a base model, to a staggering $55,000 for the super deluxe, although to be fair, that price does include your own personal dwarf mechanic in a satchel, so you will never have to worry about breakdowns, or even regularly scheduled maintenance.


The Edsel Redux will be produced in limited quantities, by Ford of Honduras, and for reasons known only to those at the very top of the Ford hierarchy, will only be sold through Kia dealerships.   We look forward to our first test drive!


- Peter S. Tingly,  AutoLuddite




....Y'know... I've been thinkin'... I might just could be wrong... about all of this.  Just sayin'.

Sagan Would Be Shocked.

I had heard it was BILL-ions and BILL-ions of times bigger than that.

(a scan of an old vacation slide).

Going Decidedly Retro...

...but I need your help.

Going to Palomas, Mexico on Wednesday for a couple of reasons.  I have a dental appointment.  I'm also going to get some new glasses, and I'm going to be looking for something similar to what I wore in the 60's while in the Navy.

The image on the right shows the same horn rimmed glasses I wore in high school, and for the first couple of years in the Navy.

While serving at the Naval Hospital in Philadelphia and attending Neuropsychiatric Technician School, most of us opted for the gold, wire-rimmed "Hippie" glasses.  That's the image on the left.  Your guess is as good as mine, all these years later, as to why I have these two images in my collection.  What was I thinking?

Anyway, both of these styles are still available in some form or another.  I don't know which one to pick.  There will be no difference in price.  FWIW, Margaret says the wires in the picture are "too big" - whatever that means.  Also, for those who know me, my scalp is kept very close cropped these days.  Also, maybe I'm not quite as svelte as in these pictures.

So help me out.. I don't promise to listen to you, but which way would you go?  Gold or Black? Here's a poll:

Dan would look best in
	Gold, wire rimmed "Hippie" glasses
	Black, horn rimmed, "Buddy Holly" glasses
	Contact lenses
pollcode.com free polls

Oh yeah.  Third reason I'm going to Mexico: Need to pick up a litre of Gran Centenario Reposado.

It Was Time.

My new boots arrived the other day, and not a moment too soon.  The old boots  (on right, as if I had to tell you), lived a long and productive life.  In this environment, three years is a long life.  The rocks and boulders in the nearby mountains that I hike are responsible for most of the gaping holes you can see.  It’s time to retire them.

I bought Hi-Tec boots again.  I’ll probably always buy Hi-Tec boots, because they’re cheap,  but more importantly, they’re unbelievably comfortable right out of the box.  In fact, that’s the stated  principle of the company: “Instant lightweight comfort”.

Speaking of lightweight.. I spent more on this pair of boots than on their predecessors… and their predecessor’s predecessors.  $85.00.  That’s amost twice as much, but the obvious trade-off is the weight.  The old boots weigh 3.5 pounds.  The new ones are a full pound lighter, and it was instantly noticeable this morning while out hunting with the dogs.

They’re also “waterproof”, which is probably meaningless where we live, because it’s obvious that it’s never going to rain here again.

So.. that’s my unsolicited testimonial.  If you’ve never worn Hi-Tec boots, you should give them a try.

I Can Picture it Now...

Getty Images

...millions of athletically-challenged iPhone owners flinging their iPhones over the back yard fence, and their iPads into the lake..

Horn of Plenty..

and to think there have been times when we've walked for hours and never got a sniff..



H/T Jim Heffelfinger via Dutch Salmon

Sooper Dooper Moon.

Everybody and their brother (and aunts, uncles, and nieces and grandsons, no doubt) took pictures of the closest "Perigee Moon" in almost 20 years. Why should I be an exception?

Now, every time I've shot the moon since we've lived here, it's been from the back porch, and I've caught it rising over the Little Florida Mountains which, you should know by now, are basically in our back yard.

I needed to find a new location to shoot from in this case, because I knew that once the moon got a few degrees above the horizon it would begin to look like any full moon. I needed the horizon in the picture when the moon was appearing to be at its largest. It was time to pack the little Montero and head up into the Little Floridas.

We were going to a spot about 2 miles east of the house, but the drive was more like 6 miles on fairly easy jeep trails. Our vantage point would give us unobstructed view all the way to the Organ Mountains east of Las Cruces... nearly 100 miles away! I had my horizon, and had only to wait for the moon to rise.

Problem was, I had no way of knowing exactly where the moon would appear. So we arranged it so we'd be there early. Real early. Not wanting to be rushing around at the last minute, we arrived at our lookout around 6:15. Moonrise was scheduled for 7:44!

I got the camera, with 300mm lens on the tripod, and wandered around with another camera and shot a bunch of pretty much forgettable ambience shots. I've been to this location many times before.

I took my position at the tailgate when there were about 20 minutes remaining before moonrise. Margaret thought my verbal countdown ever five minutes was overkill, but hey, that's how I roll. When I finally saw the glow on the still quite light horizon, I had only about 10 seconds to get focused in and start shooting. It moves fast, and yes, it really did look 30% larger than a normal moonrise:

Moonrise, W. Potrillo Mtns., NM

f4.0 1/8sec, ISO400

For a while.. meaning 2 or 3 minutes.. I was able to shoot on auto, and still get detail in the foreground, and also in the moon itself, along with its beautiful orange cast. Also, the whispy clouds add much to the drama of the image. Unfortunately, as anyone who has tried to capture images of the full moon knows, (and judging from the interwebz, that's nearly everyone) there comes a point when you have to choose between detail on the ground and detail in the moon. You can't have both. Again, as evidenced by the images on the internet, most of the people who shoot the moon, have no idea how to do it properly. If you let the camera have its way, you end up with a white disk in the middle of the frame that looks very much like an Alka-Seltzer tablet.

f8, 1/250th sec., ISO400

If you want a properly exposed moon, with lots of detail, you expose exactly as you would at high noon, because what is moonlight, after all, but reflected sunlight! At ISO 200, shoot it at f5.6 and 1/500th of a second. Or thereabouts. Just don't be looking for any details in the surrounding frame. To get that you have to "take one from column A, and one from column b", mix in a little Photoshop magic, and voilá...

Moonrise, Little Florida Mtns., NM

That image was taken from the old stand-by location.. the rear porch of the house.  After we'd used up almost all of the daylight up on the mountain, we drove back down as quickly as was prudent, and got set up on the porch in time to catch a second "rising".  Moonbats.

Another Spring Visitor.

The peach tree is attracting all kinds of insect life, from common houseflies, the metallic green sweat bees featured in yesterday's post, regular honeybees, and this solitary Pipevine Swallowtail Butterfly. I don't know where his friends are, but he's now thoroughly worked over the tree for the last 3 days.

Nectar

Another peach blossom image, but this time with Agapostemon virescens, (Metallic Green Sweat bees)

Some Good News After All.

Peach Blossoms

As reported previously, the palms are DOA, as is the fig, and much of the cacti, and presumably the oleander. Noticed yesterday that even the large Mexican Elder is brittle, and may be dead as well. All victims of either/or the brutal February cold snap and drought. But I've been watering the pines (now that all of our piping's been repaired) and I'm happy to report they're no longer golden in color, but are now more of a rusty red with a lot of pale green starting to show through! Best of all, as illustrated by the photo above, the peach tree has survived, and is blossoming. Some of the readers of this blog may have tasted the peaches from this tree last Summer, so you know this is very, very good news. I'm betting the little pecan is probably all right as well.

Paper Trail..

Everything but the Paper Cut: Eye-popping Ways Artists Use Paper | Fast Company - StumbleUpon

Between the Lines, by Ariana Boussard-Reifel

Having recently discovered StumbleUpon, I find that it is yet another exquisite time waster.  The above piece on ways contemporary artists are re-imagining paper is a great example.

This blog, and it's "sister" blog, Scanners! are both registered with StumbleUpon.  You can help create traffic when you click on the StumbleUpon logo. It's found on this blog on the right hand side in the subscription area, and on the Scanners! blog at the upper left side).  Increased traffic means potentially increased ad revenues.  Maybe.  Hey, it's worth a try!

UPDATE: As I continued my morning "Stumble", I discovered yet more amazing paper art.  To apply the term "painstaking" to this work doesn't even begin to cover it.

Yup. This is Depressing.

A mere 6 weeks separate these two images.  The palms all over town, and in Las Cruces look the same.  This makes me sad.

Hummers Rule!

Past 30 day count shows the hummingbird film is beating the former most viewed post here.. Dipshit Glenn Beck. I think I owe Soso Whaley one.

Consequences of a Changing Climate

Just a few weeks ago, these California Fan Palms in our backyard were snow covered, and still green.  Then the deep freeze hit.  More than 90 straight hours below freezing, with overnight lows around 0°F, and wind chills 15 - 20° below that.  Daytime highs struggled to make the 20’s.  A few days after the cold broke, I noticed that all the fronds had turned brittle and brown.  Then we had a day with brutal winds, and the crown of the tree just went over in a right angle to the trunk.  We don’t know if these palms are dead.  The experts say don’t trim or chop till Spring.. see if the plant can replenish itself from the roots.

We live in an area where the average January and February high temperatures are in the 40’s and 50’s, and overnight we might hit 20° on a bad night.  The plants aren’t used to what we have and neither are the houses.  We lost our water for 48 hours, and have some not-quite-essential pipes to replace under the house.. (the pipe supplying the outside faucets, and also the refrigerator ice maker-  the horror! No cracked ice for Margaritas!).  There’s also a tiny leak in the well house, although I’m not sure it’s related to the cold.  It took me several days to realize the consistently crowded parking lot at the hardware store wasn’t because they were having a giant clearance sale.  They were selling PVC pipe. Thousands and thousands of feet of PVC pipe.

Besides our palms, our prickly pear cactus are drooping, and even the acacia, and Mexican elder look sickly.  The Ocotillo always looks dead in the winter, so we’ll just have to wait and see on that one.  The only thing that looks unscathed is the all the goddamn cholla!

Most disturbing of all, is the plight of the Ponderosa pines.  At Christmas, they were green and thriving, lit up with our holiday lights.  Now they are sad and brown.  I can’t believe that the cold did this.  They’re mountain trees fer chrissakes!  I think they’ve fallen victim to the lack of moisture.  We haven’t had any appreciable precipitation since Summer.  We had a blizzard at the end of January, but because it was so cold and dry, the snow seemed more to evaporate than melt.  There was no mud. 
I’ve been watering the pines and the fig tree, (which also looks in a bad way), but so far they remain golden brown, and stand out on our hill like a beacon. 

Rain is in the forecast for Sunday.  It may, and it may not, depending on the wildly varied forecasts from the different online weather services.  These plants have been in the yard since the house was placed here in 1997.  I’d hate to have to start over.

It’s A Game of Keepaway..

Generally, a hound packing a hare back will walk, or at the most, trot. Not Willow. With the rest of the dogs hot on her trail, she came rushing back to show me the prize. With enthusiasm.

Not A Couple.

Ever wonder what would happen if your dog jumped a jackrabbit when a large bird of prey was in proximity?   Would the bird, (in this case a handsome Prairie Falcon) join in the pursuit?  Would it steal the prey?  I wondered the same thing!
I’ll keep on wondering, too, because the falcon  flew off just a second after I snapped this image, and a good half hour before we finally jumped a hare.   Ah, what might have been.

Darwin Day Is Upon Us..

One of the saddest things to have happened in the last couple of months was the decision by Pat Burns to 95% walk away from his Terrierman's Daily Dose blog. It's been a must read for me since being pointed there several years ago from Steve Bodio's Querencia blog.

Fortunately, Patrick's 5% is generally more useful than my 100% here, so I look forward to his too few and far between posts. Yesterday he posted this very valuable reminder that this coming Saturday, February 12 is Darwin Day! He also included this wonderfully subversive little video:


Evolution Made Us All from Ben Hillman on Vimeo.

This helps to raise my spirits some, which had been soundly dampened yesterday, by this deeply disturbing bit of news from NPR.

Chin up fellow secular humanists! All is not lost. Celebrate Darwin Day!
And hurry back, Mr. Burns.

The Best Super Bowl XLV Ad You Didn't See..

..unless you were watching Armed Forces Network in Afghanistan, or from a carrier in the Gulf..



Some find the fact that our servicemen don't get to see the real commercials on AFN as slightly un-American. I think I agree, but if all of the PSA's were this well done, they'll be all right.

"This is what we do.."

Just ignore, for a moment, the fact that Chrysler is now owned by FIAT (Fix It Again, Tony), and the US taxpayers... better yet, just imagine a Ford Focus ST, or Fusion Hybrid in the place of the Chrysler 200.. Or, just forget about the car completely, because the car's not what makes this, hands down, the best ad from Superbowl XLV:

Start The Revolution Without Me.

I find it interesting that in the midst of a revolution, someone in Cairo still finds the time to surf to this blog to look at the Victoria's Secret image.

This Is A Big Fuc.. .. Deal!

Doves, seeking shelter during the worst.
I feared for their lives.

For the last two days, we've had temperatures well below normal. For example, the normal high for this time of year is 62°F. We struggled to come close to 20°F. Probably 40% of the state is without water, us included. Many are without natural gas, and with power companies effecting rolling blackouts, some have been without power. The winds from the North on Wednesday and Thursday were strong enough to turn a trace of snow into a blinding
blizzard!

In our area, particularly, the homes are not suited to cold this extreme. We've been without water since Wednesday night, probably because the water line from the well building to the house is not buried deep enough. Fortunately, our well building is well insulated, so there was running water from the tap there.. we were able to fill some 5 gallon buckets to at least be able to flush the toilets. We've been spoiled here, and had forgotten the rules about opening the taps to prevent freezing.. besides, who could have imagined that we would break the record for low temps by a whopping 20 degrees?!

The dishwasher is full. The kitchen counters are full of more dirty dishes. Our bodies are.. well, enough said about that. We could use showers.

I awoke at 6:15 this morning to the sound very much like a dog getting ready to empty its stomach. I was afraid the drains were about to back up. In reality, it was the faucet in the bathtub, trying mightily to produce water! It would produce only a trickle, but a trickle was more than we've had for more than 50 hours. To compound the good news, the same was happening in the second bathtub. Not a drop from any of the sink faucets yet, but now that appears only a matter of time.

The forecast for the next 10 days is for highs in the 60's. That sounds a whole lot like normal to me, and the last two days will be but an ugly memory. Next Winter we'll know better, and I want a wood burner in the house!

The Hummers of the Summer of 2010

On an eye-bleedingly, bone-chillingly cold day in the middle of Winter, where the last two days set record low temperatures, and tonight promises to do likewise, I was inspired to finally put together a film from last Summer. I was probably complaining about the flies and the heat then.



I may have mentioned - more than once - that we had an unusually large numbers of hummingbirds around the yard last season. May this make you feel warm. (Not doing much for me so far...)

Echoes Of An Ancient Forest.

A fine example of ancient Juniper at the top of the Little Floridas. One of many.

Scanners!.... is moving!

I've looked at the amount of raw material I've got to work with, and decided there's more than enough to scan, modify, and install in its own blog, probably to be called: Scanners! oddly enough. Many images will be of a more, um, adult nature, so you'll have to show proof before entering. I'm sure it will be worth it. It's also another place to run the Google Ads, and hopefully increase the revenue stream.. only took two years to earn the last $100. You know what to do.

I'll let you know when the site's up and running!

Where The Peaks Have No Name

My new fitness regime took a quantum leap yesterday. It was breezy and cool, the dogs didn't need to go for a run, having had a good workout the day before, so I decided it was time to do a little mountain climbing. The mountains I had in mind are conveniently located next to the house.. The Little Florida Mountains, also known as the North Florida Mountains. My initial target was the nearest peak to the house.. the same one I took last Winter. This time, however, I didn't plan on the bushwhacking route I took then. I could see there was a little bit gentler incline to take. What I found was even better: trails! Since I was starting from inside the boundaries of the Rockhound State Park, there were lots of trails.. maybe not all the way to the peak, but most of the way.

So I was making good time when I decided it was time to go more vertical. Problem was, I intially wanted to go vertical into a dead end. The back-track cost me almost 20 minutes, and a painful slip and fall into a dead prickly pear cactus patch. These are not things you want stuck in you.

As it turned out, I still made it to the peak in 75 minutes from the time I left the house. That's it down there:

On another day, I would have negotiated a descent, and plunked myself down in front of the Pro Bowl with a beer. This day I still felt fresh and saw a higher peak that wouldn't take long to get to. I set off.

But not at the pace I had set on the first pitch. I had no intention of exhausting myself when I still had a long downhill to negotiate. I had thought, from the house, that the peak I was going to was the highest on in the Little Floridas, and when I got to the top, and saw all the rock cairns other hikers had erected, I was sure. That was, until I looked to the west and saw that the next hill over was noticeably higher. I had some more uphill walking to do, and set off immediately. It was close.

When I saw the yucca stalk protruding from a rock cairn, and a Bud bottle stuck on the top, I knew I'd made it. I could go no higher in the Little Floridas. When I found the jar with the register (above), I was sure. I looked down at the state park campground far below, set up the camera to take some self portraints, got out of the wind and took a nap!

The day had gone better than I ever could have imagined. It was time to head home. I chose to hike down to the jeep trail that intersects the top of the range and headed toward home. My only mistake was choosing a descent route that was way too scarily steep and loose. No more falls, but it was very time consuming. I arrived home about 5 hours after departure, and according to my GPS, had negotiated 4 miles and 1450 feet of elevation change, give or take. I took a long, hot bath in Epsom salts, and I'm ready to do it again!

Having gone as high as possible in the Little Floridas, I guess it's time to start planning the next 2000 feet. The "Big" Floridas.

Scanners! Harleys & Hooters

The title of this post alone should drive tons of traffic from repressed nations all around the globe, á la the Victoria's Secret post. Thank You Google.

This was taken ten or eleven years ago in Chelsea, MI. Some friends with a studio thought they had the biggest money making scam ever. The event was a charity motorcycle rally, and the studio was set up in a tent on the grounds, with models trucked in from a Detroit area Hooters. The bikers would ride into the studio on their hogs, have their pictures taken with the models, pay up and ride out. We would make thousands of dollars!

What we made was a lot of pictures of models on a loaner motorcycle when the attendance at the event was less than 10% of the anticipated total, and 2 people came through the tent.

I'm still happy with the results.

Happy Face!

"Click Play for Soundtrack"

Willow, and a couple of Salukis, came back with the same messy faces, but without the hare. There's little doubt that they caught the jack, but it seems there was probably some disagreement about who owned it. In the end, no one.

Margaret Shoots Me. On Site.

After seeing myself in a picture, I decided it was time to work a little more exercise into my days. Yesterday, I headed out to the canyon in the Little Florida Mountains behind the house. When Margaret got home from work I radioed her to grab the camera and shoot me. Can you see me? (you'll have to click the image to at least the next bigger size).

It wasn't even a mile and a half round trip, but as you can see, it's not an easy walk. I plan on exploring the rest of the cliff faces over the next few weeks of cool weather. Once the snakes come out I don't go there.

Everything But the Antlers. Lepus Alleni

OK.  Cleared that up.  Not a Jackalope.

If the (probably) extinct Ivory Billed Woodpecker is the "Lord God Bird", then the Antelope Jackrabbit of the Sonoran Desert of Arizona (and a whole chunk of Mexico) must be the "Holy-Jeebus-Christ-on-a-pogo-stick-that's-a-big-fuckin- Jackrabbit."  They're just huge!

I'll get a longer, more detailed post on the trip to Arizona to chase these guys in a day or so. It was quite a trip.

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!

Scanners! Where The Wild Things Are.

Not all of the old black and white negatives and prints are of ex-girlfriends, ex or current wives, school friends or acquaintances. Sometimes they'll be total strangers, as in this selectively colored image from around 1971 from a camera club shoot set up by a Detroit model/talent agency. I'll probably post a few others from this event if for no other reason than to illustrate the amazing changes in cameras in the last 40 years!

I Was Wrong A Lot In 2007

Oh, was I ever.

Last three years not exactly as I envisioned them.

UPDATE:  Just so you know how positively nuts it can get around a big time athletic factory in the throes of a coaching search... the denizens of the interwebz are tracking private planes all over the country and creating scenarios from whole cloth.  Crazy!

My Mistake. The Mystery Deepens.

A while back, I wrote a post here, titled "Winner... and still champion", voicing my amazement, and consternation over what I said at the time was the single most viewed post in the history of this blog.  I wondered at the motivation of people from all over the world who would want to view an image of two deer fu... mating.

Well, Blogger has new stat tools, and it turns out that I mis-identified the December 2007 post that everyone was looking at, and had I been more observant at the time, it would have been clear to me that they were all looking at this one*:

..and it's obvious when you look at the Google search terms used that brought all these people to the site, they weren't coming (no pun intended) for the article.  But, at least I have a little more respect and understanding for these sad, lonely men from around the globe.

So, case closed?

Not exactly, because when I look at the Blogger stats, I find that in their history (which, unfortunately, only goes back to May of last year), the most viewed post, by a very, very big margin...  is this one!

I just don't get it.  I really, really don't.



*Of course, posting this image again, means it will turn up in Google search results twice as much. Well, driving traffic to the blog, for whatever reasons, is what I want.  More eyes on the blog, means potentially more eyes on the ads.  There's a method to my madness.

Scanners! Of Course It Is!

Field Of Dreams.

This coursing season started back in October, with a few posts, like this one, about the lack of jackrabbits in all the usual places.  We had days where we'd walk and walk and only scare up one in a couple of hours, and it would usually suffer a quick fate, because it couldn't move any faster than the dogs in the unusually thick and high cover.

Things were looking grim.

Then, towards the end of October, I piled the crew in the Mitsubishi and headed out to explore an area that Margaret and I had found almost by accident last Spring while attempting to take shortcut from the highway by the Aerostat station about 20 miles southwest of Deming, to the Victorio Mountains some 25 miles west of Deming.  As it turned out, it was shorter, but took about 90 minutes longer than if we had just driven around on the normal highways and county roads.

The area is huge, and is about 99% Federal and State land, leased for grazing some pretty large herds of cattle.  The cover is much more reasonable than any of our usual fields this year, and the ground is as walkable as a walk in the park, meaning there's no "bunchgrass", or big holes, or boulders.  It's flat.

That's all well and good, but is meaningless if there are no jacks!  My first exploratory trip was to the area we'd first driven through in the spring.  Jackrabbit "sign" was plentiful, but I saw no jacks.  I did some more exploratory driving and discovered that there were at least a half dozen distinct separate areas where one could hunt, including  a mammoth, flat plain that seemed to stretch out forever in all directions.  It was time to bring in Dutch and his dogs to see if there were, indeed, rabbits in this ideal area.

The first couple of trips were fruitless, and I think Dutch was losing faith as he would prefer to go back to the old places, rather than make the long drive out to this field.  But I kept at it, trying out new, different sections, and finally started getting some races.  Got Dutch back, and for the last two months we've been getting in some really exciting races, with about a 25% catch rate.  In that time we've probably seen and/or run close to 40 jacks, and we're really only scratching the surface.  Dutch is now so confident in the fields that he has decided to run his famous Pack Hunt and Desert Hare Classic on them.

The new fields also came with an unsuspected bonus!  With such a large expanse of flat, open land, the opportunity for great coursing photos was like nothing we've experienced in any of the other fields we hunt in southern New Mexico!  The hounds actually have an opportunity to turn the hare many times, and often back in the direction of where they started.... where I wait with my camera.

The images below, are all from a single run on January 5, 2011.  The dogs weren't lacking for opportunities to catch this jack, first with Willow in the lead, and later with the black and white Saluke, Bisa, who had several opportunities, but as we saw with the  hare in the previous post, this field is starting to establish a reputation for strong jacks that will take anything your pack of hounds can dish out!  This was another 3 minute marathon, that ended when the hare made it to the safety of the creosote bush patch on the north side of the draw, and Willow with a very sore foot.