Just Dropped In

Days that are unpredictable are so rare, so that when you happen to take a look out your window and see a hot air balloon standing precisely at the end of your driveway, you can't help but do a double-take. It's not so much that the balloon exists; hot air balloons are a fairly common occurrence in North Alabama at this time of year. The big balloon enthusiast gathering in nearby Decatur, called the Jubilee, happens each year on Memorial Day weekend. What made this so odd, was the fact that this pilot chose to put down in our quiet cul-de-sac, directly in front of our house. I mean, he could have chosen any of the corn or cotton fiends in the areas or even one of the vacant lots in our less than sold-out subdivision. Any other choice would have certainly provided a bigger target, along with the corresponding margin for error. Unfortunately, by the time I was able to grab my camera and run outside to record the event, the balloon was being readied for launch once again by the ground crew. Once aloft, the crew jumped back in their vehicle and sped away, so I never got the chance to ask the obvious question - why here?

It was only when I mentioned this event to my daughter a couple of days later, did we come up with the logical explanation. It wasn't a forced landing as I suspected, but a deliberate put-down using our rather small cul-de-sac as a challenging target. Obviously, the pilot was testing his navigating skills to see how close he could land to the center of the circular space. If that was indeed the case, he nailed it. Accuracy is one of the criteria that balloonists are scored on during the Jubilee. The fact that we have no power lines on our street may be another reason we were chosen for the unannounced visit. In any event, it made for some interesting photos and one less predictable day.

I'm just now getting around to posting a link to a Blurb photo book I did a while back following at trip we took to Germany and Poland.

While accompanying my wife on a recent business trip to Berlin, I had the opportunity to explore Germany's capital city on my own. Traveling mainly on foot, I got a chance to see this amazing and historic city up close and personal. I found that Berlin is a surprisingly easy city to navigate, despite its enormous size. I was even more surprised to see what little evidence remains of the East-West separation of the Cold War era. I think it is a great tribute to the dedication and resolve of the people and political leaders who worked so tirelessly in order to make reunification of Germany a reality back in 1990.

Following our ten days in Berlin, we crossed over the border into Poland - one country in Europe we had never been to before. We traveled all over, but concentrated our visit on the southern half of the country, and while Poland will never replace Germany, Italy or France as our favorite European destination, it did provide some wonderful experiences and memories. The city of Cracow turned out to be the highlight of our entire trip. The city glows with the warmth of its old world charm, its quaint streets, beautiful architecture and amazing people.

From Berlin to...

A Photographic Tou...

By Tony Triolo

Book Preview

Zeiss Ikon Memories

I recently began a project to scan my dad's entire color slide archive. The thousands of slides provide a record of our family, and document my years growing up with my sister on Staten Island. When I was asked to take on the project, I knew it would be a major project that would take many hours to accomplish. I procrastinated for a number of years until my dad gave me a "fatherly" nudge to get going. He said he hoped that he was still around by the time I ever got around to digitizing his lifetime of memories. Well, that got me started, I'll have to admit. He wanted his images preserved on DVD so he, along with his grand kids and great-grand kids would each have a permanent copy of this family record.

Well, I am happy to say, that I am almost finished with this Herculean effort. Not only did it involve scanning close to 600 slides (both 35mm and 120mm), there was a substantial amount of Photoshop work involved, along with minor scratch and spot removal as well as some color restoration. Fortunately, my dad almost always used Kodachrome film, which possibly, has the most stable dyes of any color reversal film on the market, even today. Thankfully, only minor color correction was required. I continue to be impressed with what digital ICE can do with respect to eliminating film scratches and dust spots. That fact, combined with the beautiful sharpness of the Nikon Coolscan 5000 and 9000 scanners really produced some amazing scans, many of which defy the fact that the photos were taken half a century ago. Except for the obvious changes in hair styles and fashions, one could easily be convinced that they were taken last week.

Although my original intent was to just scan all the images and put them on DVD, I thought it might be nice to produce a slide show set to music, and possibly, even produce a Blurb photo book of just the best shots. I have done a number of photo books in the past, and felt like this would be good to do, in order to give my parents easier access to their memories. Not computer savvy people, they would have no way of looking at the photos unless one of their grand children were close at hand and could load the DVD onto a laptop for them. A book would allow them to look at the photos any time, without assistance. Technology is great, but you have to have access to it. The book is almost done and will soon be on its way to the publisher.

The camera that my dad used to take the majority of the images was a Zeiss Ikon Contaflex. Made in Germany in the mid-50's, it was made of all metal and glass and featured a very sharp fixed 45mm Tessar lens. Although a bit cumbersome by today's standards due to a lack of internal exposure meter and a slow film loading process, it did take some superb photographs. My dad handed it down to me a number of years ago and I try to keep it clean and well maintained, although I do not use it. It has become a collector's item to me, and while it won't fetch much money on eBay, I wouldn't trade it for ten Leica M8s. For the last photo of the book, I'm including this image of the Contaflex which made all these memories possible with the help of my dad's appreciation for how fleeting time is and how important it is to preserve all our histories for the generations who come after us.

Leica Book Cover

    Today, I found out that one of the three images I sent to the Leica Camera Users Group was selected for the cover of their most recent book.  Okay, so it's the back cover, but hey, that's still pretty good.  The Blurb book highlights Leica's first digital rangefinder camera, the M8 which was introduced about a year ago.  The book, Many Eyes, One Camera, represents the work of nearly 80 Leica M8 photographers from around the world, who contributed hundreds of photos for consideration in the book.  The group hopes to persuade Leica Camera to agree to a world-wide distribution of the book in an effort to promote the M8 to a much wider audience.

    The  photo (below) selected was one I took last September while I was in Berlin.  I was taking a shot of one of the government buildings right near the Brandenburg Gate, when I saw this janitor walk by while pushing the "tools" of his trade.  He just seemed so out of place against the pristine building, more often the backdrop for German diplomats and government workers.  A huge letter "D" (Deutschland) which was applied to the facade sort of ties the image all together.

Madison Street Fair '08

Although I lived in Madison for several years before moving to Limestone County, I never had the opportunity to attend the Madison Street Fair. That's because it was always held the same weekend as my wife's annual business trip to Germany, a trip I enjoyed joining her on. This year, however, her meetings aren't scheduled until December, so I had an opportunity to see just went on at one of these yearly events.

Predictably, they had the usual assortment of vendors, offering a varied range of home-grown arts and crafts. I have been to enough street fairs to have developed a certain level of expectation. I was not disappointed. There were the usual array of artists, jewelry makers, people selling cakes and cookies, notions and lotions. A number of food vendors kept the crowd satisfied, even though the prices are easily double what you'd pay on any other day. The children were kept well entertained, and along with the traditional face painting, there was hat and necklace making and even an area to create one's own personalized cupcake.

Due to the timing, one thing I did notice unique to this fair was the number of political tents promoting a number of candidates, not only for local office, but for the presidential race as well. I found it a bit disturbing that one had to pay for a bumper sticker or campaign button promoting either the Democratic or Republican candidate. I thought the parties wanted you to have those things to display, and would supply them willingly to anyone who showed the least bit of interest in their candidate. Apparently, those days are over. After all, somebody's got to pay for that 700 billion dollar bailout of those credit markets.

All in all, I'd say that the Madison Street Fair was one of the better attended fairs of this type. The crowds kept building throughout the morning and early afternoon, but I did notice a slight easing up of the number of people as things approached the 2:30 pm kickoff for the Alabama-Kentucky game. That's was to be expected I suppose.

Darrell Osborn, better known as Dr. Osborn mimics the face of one of the hundreds of animal balloons he created for the throngs of kids at the Madison Street Fair.

Scanning Site a Reality

Well, this week, I finally launched my new site, White Glove Scanning.  It took a while, no doubt due to my lack of experience building web sites. I'm sure I will be tweaking it some more as we work out the bugs in the next few weeks. 

White Glove Scanning is a full-service professional scanning and digitizing service, geared not only for the photographer, but anyone who has a need for high quality scans.  We offer all the negative, slide and print scanning services anyone would ever want, and at a reasonable cost.  We accept films in sizes from 16mm through 4x5 inches and prints up to 8x10 inches.  Our scanners are truly state-of-the-art.  We have just recently added a new Nikon Coolscan 9000ED (very difficult to get) to our equipment lineup as well as an Epson V750 Pro flatbed, considered the best flatbed for imagery scanning.  This scanner has two lenses to provide optimum performance depending on the material to be scanned as well as the resolution required.  It even incorporates fluid mount capability to remove scratches and grain from black and white film.

Our scans are all done by hand.  We use no automated feeders that can malfunction and damage slides and negatives.  We feel that our prices are very competitive and turn-around times are better than most scanning houses.  We never send slides or negatives to another country as a lot of less reputable scanning houses do.  So, please check us out at  White Glove Scanning, located right here in Athens, Alabama for all your scanning needs.

Caney Creek Falls

I have been wanting to photograph Upper Caney Creek Falls ever since I saw a shot taken by Decatur photographer, Charlie Seifried. It was a panoramic shot that was made into a poster promoting the Bankhead National Forest in northwest Alabama. Charlie presented me with a copy after he hosted a photo workshop for our photo staff at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville. The photo, ever since, has inspired me to try to capture these beautiful falls myself.

This past week, I finally got the opportunity. In spite of the morning rain, I trugged on in hopes that the skies would clear. Actually, I wanted cloud cover to provide a more even, less contrasty light (photo 1). When the sun finally did arrive, I had to adjust a bit and find a way of photographing the falls while taking advantage of the sunshine (photo 2).

The falls lie just outside the Sipsey Wilderness, accessible from CR 2 off Cranal Road (CR 6). The falls were flowing pretty good despite the lack of rain in the area, evidenced by the extremely low level of the Sipsey River.

The two examples here fall a bit short of Charlie's interpretation, but I thought they represented a good first attempt. I'll have to return soon since I didn't get a chance to photograph the Lower Falls this time. The Lower Falls are just downstream, about an hour's hike. The Canon EF 17-40 f4L was used on a Canon 5D for both images.