Monthly Archives: May 2012

A swirl of emotions

Posted by Steve on May 22, 2012 4 comments

It’s not often I write about family things on the blog here. Usually it’ all about me. Ok, it’s almost always about me.

FINE…. it’ all about me. Except when it’s not. This time it’s about Andrew. (and a little about me)

Sunday we dropped off Andrew so he can step off on the next leg of his journey through life. He joined the Marines. Now, if you know me at all, you know that me and Marines don’t typically get along. Lots of experiences from my past years in the military have led to that. But, I understand why Andrew decided to go that route (for the most part) and I respect his decision. I am always proud of him when he sets his mind to something and works to accomplish it. He set his mind on becoming a Marine, and through hell and high water (and a stubborn old father set in his ways) he went off to accomplish just that.

The picture you see here is the last picture we took of him as we dropped him off. I have no doubt that he will return triumphant, and very different from how he appears now.

Last night we received his arrival phone call, albeit at 2am, of:

I have arrived safely at Parris Island.
Please do not send any food or bulky items.
I will contact you in 3 to 5 days via postcard with my new mailing address.
Thank you for your support.
Goodbye for now.

At least, I think that’s what he said. It was 2am after all. I squeezed in a “Good Luck”, but I am not sure if he heard me. His voice was stressed and I could hear lots of other recruits behind him making the same call.

In the meantime, Sarah and I are now DINK’s. We have divided up the chore list and are De-”Kidding” the house.

It’s kind of surreal sometimes.

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Some interesting info for recruit parents at http://recruitparents.com

Panning, Lessons from the fail book.

Posted by Steve on May 9, 2012 No comments

This last weekend I was out at a MINI event with lots of cars and driving and great outdoors. In talking with my friend Paul, we figured this would be the perfect chance to try a technique known as “Panning”. This is where you set your camera to a lower shutter speed (to keep it open longer) and you move the camera at the same speed as the target you are shooting. This gives the illusion of speed to the target. It’s great for shooting cars as they go past. The car stays in focus, but the background becomes a blur of speed.

This is NOT an easy trick to master.

Bad Bad Bad Bad

I decided to stop mid way on the Tail Of The Dragon to test out this technique. There were lots of photographers on the road so my setting up camp for 30-45min wouldn’t seem out of the ordinary. I understood the principle of the technique, now to just practice. Something I learned quickly was that location is a huge part of this. I set up near a turn, and not far off from the road. This was two-fold of a problem since most of the cars were coming towards me, instead of past me, and it was hard to see them coming. With the cars shortening the distance to me, I had to work on my focus as well as the panning. If I got the focus right, I may not have the whole subject in the frame. If I got the panning right, the subject would be out of focus.

All totaled, in 45 min of practice, I took around 100 shots.

Of those 100, I ended up with 4 that were close to what I wanted, and only 1 really good one.

Needless to say, this is something that I will be working on.

10th annual MINI’s On the Dragon 2012

Posted by Steve on May 8, 2012 No comments

I am beat.

Last Wed. I set out for the MOTD event in Deals Gap NC. It was a good 9 hour drive from Manassas to the Tail of the Dragon. Since I was going by myself there was no real need to stop aside from emergency bathroom breaks (3 total). I made great time and arrived at around 2:30pm to the event, which was well underway. Over 700 MINIs signed up and just blanketed the area. Driving around with lodge was like I had visited MINItopia, with a MINI in every driveway.

I finally met up with Clint (my buddy from Vegas) after wandering around in a cell dead zone with no internet access either. It was amazing being so disconnected from everything. We were relying on the FRS radios I brought with me. It’s amazing being as internet connected as I usually am to go to nearly black out comms. I am still slowly getting used to being connected again.

Overall I had a blast! Lots of great driving, hanging out with incredible people, enjoying the great outdoors! I had a bunch of stuff done to the POD including, Pulley wheel reduction for the supercharger (I hear that’s a rite of passage at the dragon), new brake handle, [amazon_link id=”B0073XO404″ target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ]stubby antenna[/amazon_link], [amazon_link id=”B002VB8TIG” target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ]chrome bonnet scoop[/amazon_link], and a LightInSight.