October 16

It's gotten chilly in Boston recently, with lows in the 30s and highs barely getting into the high 40s. I'm doing my level best not to complain about the weather -- really, I am -- but when it's this cold and this wet, it's difficult.

That's why this one lone rose hanging on to a scrawny rose bush made me smile. I was putting away the garbage can and spotted it there -- that bright color really stand out. It's kind of inspiring to see a little bit of summer hanging on.

If this little flower can tough it out, so can I. I think that's a good enough life lesson for today.

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October 03

True confession time: This photo was not taken today, but yesterday. The resulting image was created today, however, so I'm using it as my photo of the day. (The nice thing about making the rules -- you know just how far they will bend.)

The necklace and earring set here were created by Roslindale jeweler Keith Monsour, and were recently featured in the Parkway Fall Fashion Fiesta. I photograph all of Keith's work, so I got the chance to shoot this on Friday.

It was tough to light this image; when the necklace and all of its beads were properly illuminated, the earrings in the center shone too brightly, completely washing out all of the detail on the long beads. When the earrings were lit properly, the pendant on the necklace was in deep shadow. Rather than continue trying futilely to find the perfect lighting solution with my limited tools, I decided -- reluctantly, as this is always my last resort -- to fix it in post-production. Essentially, that means I photoshopped it to within an inch of its very existence, all in the quest to make the end photograph look like the original items.

Ideally, you get the shot right in the camera. In most situations, you might make a few small changes or enhancements in Photoshop. Resorting to out-and-out photo manipulation to get a good image chafes a bit. In the end, though, it's a good looking photo, and Keith is happy with it.

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October 01

Today was the first really cool day of the fall -- the high temperature didn't even touch 60 in Boston. I went over to my neighbor D'Anna's house to photograph some of her flowers that bloom late when I noticed this single red maple leaf on her lawn. It was perfect; it's a wonderful visual representation of the arrival of autumn. The photo itself didn't do the original sight justice, so I did a little photoshopping to help make the leaf pop on its drab background.

One of these days, I'm going to make prints of all this stuff and hang it in my front hall, which will then be christened "The Gallery of Pointless Art."

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June 12

There was a rainbow over Boston today, and one of my residents called me so I could snap a photo of it. Rainbows, being ephemeral things, often don't last long, and this one faded before I could get a good picture of it.

Since I was 19 floors over Boston, though, I took advantage of the opportunity to get a panoramic shot of the South End. After the clouds parted, it was a lovely day -- perfect for outdoor photography.

They say life is what you make of it, and I'm beginning to see their point. You can't ignore beauty while chasing rainbows.

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June 07

Today's weekend photo walk was one of the more interesting trips I've taken -- specifically because of the company.

Anna and Brandon busied themselves doing environmental work before the photo walk began. They hauled a shopping cart out of the Muddy River near Fenway. I was invited to participate but declined. I picked them up and off we headed, meandering around until we decided to head over to Charlestown and the Bunker Hill Monument.

Marion had to work until 4 pm -- and then an hour later -- so we picked her up en route to Castle Island. She was sporting two black eyes and a bruise over her left eye from a softball accident, so any portraiture plans with my most willing subject went out the proverbial window. Since she gamely let me take photos, though, I cleaned up the bruising just a teensy little bit in Photoshop. After all, we must look our best. ;-)

In the future, I hope we can get some more folks involved in our walks. The people I've met through National Novel Writing Month and Script Frenzy are really some of the most interesting and unique individuals I know -- and I have high standards. It's just a lot of fun spending time with them.

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April 01

It's been a busy day for me, but at least I've accomplished a lot -- at least tonsorially. The lustrous brown locks are gone, replaced with a more sensible haircut.

We had a minor plumbing mishap at home this morning -- the hose to our handheld shower head decided to part company with the threaded nut holding it to the bathtub spigot -- which got me out of bed unexpectedly to try to deal with it. As I said, it was minor, but a nuisance nonetheless. Leaning over the bathtub trying to fix the problem, I had a hell of a time keeping my unkempt hair out of my face.

Without the benefit of a shower, my hair -- which is very thick and exceedingly full -- was not being particularly cooperative. I brushed it back, put in a hairband to keep it out of my face, and tied off the back in a ponytail. Well, that just didn't work.

It's a nice day out, so I cracked my window as I drove to the hardware store. My hair got all up in my face because of the breeze, which was frustrating. Sitting at the red light at the end of Cummins Highway, trying to fix my hair again, I spotted the Rialto Barber Shop across the street; once upon a time, I went there every two weeks to have a trim. "Well screw this," I said to myself out loud, and I pulled into the lot behind the barber shop. I mean, this is bullshit, not even being able to keep your hair in line.

And that's how I ended up with the old-fashioned shorter 'do.

Oh, and happy April Fools Day*.

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*The real Photo of the Day will resume tomorrow.

March 14

I don't know if it's art, but that's what I was aiming for when I created this piece I call "Guard Dog."

We live on the second floor of a two-family house, and in our entryway we have what I can only describe as the ugliest wallpaper ever. There's not a lot we can do about the wallpaper -- the space is awkwardly-shaped, so stripping the wallpaper and painting it is out of the question. It did, however, give me a large wall space to try this art experiment.

I took an old black-and-white photo of Pogo, my dog, and did some work on it. Each of the tiles you see is a plain piece of copier paper. I blew up the photo, ran it through a halftone filter, then divided the image up into separate images. These were printed on a laser printer, and I assembled them into one honkin' big piece of art (42.5 inches wide, 66 inches deep). It wasn't made specifically for the entryway, but it was the only swath of wall large enough to put it up.

It's pretty cool what you can do with copier paper, scotch tape, and a little imagination.

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March 12

It's going to be a long day -- and night. My coworker Chris, who normally covers the overnight shift, is on vacation, and it fell on me to cover his overnight shift tonight. I arrived at work this afternoon at 3 pm and will leave tomorrow around 7:30 am.

On the plus side, working the double-shift overnight lends itself beautifully to this photo idea. Here's the building where I work, in daylight and darkness. I marked the space on the sidewalk where I placed my tripod legs, thus getting close to identical shots about five hours apart. Placing them side-by-side in Photoshop was simple enough, and while the match isn't perfect (it's very windy outside and hard to keep the camera steady on the tripod), it's close enough.

I'm interested in seeing my photo of the day for tomorrow; I've made plans, but if I'm too tired to stay awake and go into town it's going to be a crap shoot what I come up with.

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March 09

I've managed to get a few steps along in the process of getting the new computer to a usable state. I've always thought myself a reasonably-intelligent computer user who could handle most situations, but setting up this computer has humbled me a bit. The endless loop caused by an incorrectly-installed Windows Update, where the computer wouldn't boot up without crashing, was loads of fun.

I run an older version of Adobe Creative Suite (CS2), which isn't specifically set up to work with Vista. Intellectually, I can understand that, but it's really frustrating when I have very expensive, perfectly good software that I can't completely install because it's not the newest version. I managed to get Photoshop working fairly well, but it's going to be an inconvenience not to be able to make PDF files of graphic design projects (since Adobe Acrobat 7 doesn't play well with Vista.

Microsoft Office, fortunately, is a good little doobie and works fine.

I've got a list of programs to download and install on the computer as I'm able. Meanwhile, it's running with a functional software firewall and antivirus, and I'm composing my first complete POTD entry with the new machine, so it's not going badly -- just slowly. Too damn slowly.

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February 23

There's just no way to get a good photo of my desk at work.

I thought I'd give it a shot today -- again -- by taking several photos and stitching them together. It's an interesting concept and I've really gotten some pretty photos using a free program called Autostitch to create the final image. I used the program on January 14th to get a photo of snow graffiti on my car, and took some fascinating photos while on vacation in Virginia.

Of course, a beautiful panoramic shot of a mountainside with wispy clouds in an azure sky is a far cry from photographing a desk from five feet away in incandescent lights. And even though it took several tries to get it where it is, and it's demonstrably not perfect, at least I'm putting effort into making it interesting.

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February 19

The idea to photograph a negative strip, render the digital photograph as a negative (thus making the negative strip in the picture a positive), and then post the results, is more difficult to accomplish than it looks. Above is my best effort at a visual double-negative.

The idea for this little bit of experimentation came to me like an avalanche. Literally. A bunch of photo envelopes from 2002 cascaded off my bookshelf onto the floor today, and as I was picking them up I noticed the inimitable Wilma von Shwink smugly smiling at me.

Fortunately, the avalanche was not large enough to bury me or the dog -- and the cat was out of the room at the time. So I can say this truthfully: No animals were harmed in the making of this entry.

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January 31

As of this afternoon, I'm now fortunate enough to have a double-hung window in my bathroom. Here's one of the landladies working on the installation this afternoon.

Our landladies remodeled our bathroom while we were on vacation last year. Unfortunately, certain aspects of the remodel did not go according to plan. They took out the window to reglaze it, but were not able to rehang it immediately. Fortunately, the storm window kept us from having a gaping hole in the wall over our bathtub, but it did lack that feeling of completeness that is so important in the room where one spends so much time naked.

The window was done months ago, but the windowsill had gotten damp and swollen, so the window didn't fit anymore. Finally, today, with some effort, the landladies were able to wedge the windows back into place. I thought it was noteworthy enough to photograph -- easily the most interesting thing that happened to me today.

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January 29

I've used a couple of my recent posts to complain about the surfeit of snowfall Boston's received over the past month. There's likely to be more complaints -- many more complaints -- in the weeks ahead.

Not everybody in my household shares the same aversion to snow, however. While I'm pretty sure my cat, Pretty Boy, is on my side, Pogo (my dog, a Border Collie - Husky mix) just loves playing in the snow. I let him out into the backyard this morning and grabbed my camera to snap some photos. He didn't disappoint; as soon as he was done with more pressing matters, he headed right for the soft snow and proceeded to roll merrily in the stuff.

Pogo is 13 years old now. He's diabetic, going deaf, has a ventricular arrhythmia (heart murmur), and in the past year had a small tumor removed from his belly. He spends a lot of time napping. So when I get to see him frolicking in the snow, having pure, unadulterated fun, it brings me a lot of joy.

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January 19

A photograph of a photograph. It's hardly original, but there is a story behind it.

Pogo's veterinarian (Dr. Ilene Segal of Parkway Veterinary Hospital -- I can't recommend her highly enough) has done a super job keeping him healthy and keeping us informed on his progress, how to care for him properly, etc. The vet's lobby and exam rooms have some framed photos of dogs and cats for decoration, and as a little thank you for her hard work, I decided to give her a photograph (with the hope that she'll decide to display it).

The photograph shows Lola and Riley, two King Charles Spaniel pups, in their Sherpa bag, ready to go for an outing. You can see the original photo on my flickr account. Lola and Riley's human lives in the building where I work, and she's been gracious enough to let me take pictures of these delightful little doggies a few times.

Of course, having my name out there on the photo (discretely signed on the mat in the lower right hand corner) doesn't hurt, either.

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January 13

I was beside myself trying to come up with an image to post for the Photo of the Day.

No, really. I was -- albeit, not this literally.

It was a slow day for me, and I didn't get nearly as much done as I'd intended. I didn't get my car in for an oil change, I didn't get my car in for it's annual inspection, and other than helping a friend with a craigslist advert, I didn't accomplish bupkis today. It's not like I was even very busy.

Unfortunately, slow days don't always find me at my most creative, or my most observant, or my most experimental. Today was the exception.

I had to do a little repair work on my "boot," the special shoe I'm wearing on my right foot until it heals (which it's doing, albeit too slowly). The photo of the toe of the boot, having been carefully super-glued back together and adorned with a wooden sunburst of clothespins, was my best option until I decided to bend the self-portrait rule and do a little Photoshop magic.

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January 09

Strangers to Boston, and occasionally, Bostonians themselves, are confused, bewildered, and even baffled when trying to drive here. This photograph is a prime example of what's so confusing. The photo is taken at the corner of Ipswitch St. and Boylston St. Well, one of the corners (there are two) -- it's the corner nearer the 1200 block of Boylston. Last Sunday, this is what the sign looked like.

I probably drive by this sign once or twice a week, depending on the route I drive to work, and I'll continue to monitor its inexorable surrender to gravity -- especially since I can take this photo from the driver's seat without having to worry about walking.

(Image manipulated to desaturate background, punch up sign color.)

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