124/365: Sargassum fish

We found this little guy in some Sargassum weed washed up on the beach. He was very tiny, about half an inch long, and at first we thought it might be a baby lionfish, which wouldn't be good as that introduced species has no natural enemies in the Caribbean/Gulf of Mexico and is wrecking the ecosystems. After a closer look and some online checking, we figured out it was a native Sargassum fish, a small ambush predator adapted to live all its life among the floating mats of Sargassum weed in the gulf. After taking some photos, we put him back into the ocean but we didn't expect him to have a high chance of survival. The waves were washing great clumps of the weed onto the beach, and there was no way this tiny guy was going to swim against that current. In any event, we bought him a few more hours of life and gave him a fighting chance.

Camera: Canon 7D
Lens: Canon 100mm 2.8 macro
Lisa On Location

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Friday Night Videos

I don't know if I can say I'm a Jackson Browne fan, because while I like a lot of his work, a great deal of it leaves me cold. That said, I love, love, love Running on Empty. Not only is this tune a masterpiece of '70s songwriting, the album overall is great. Seriously--I wore out my cassette I played it so much back in the day. I think the single hit it big just when I was starting to become aware of music in general, and it has stuck with me all these years.

Previously on Friday Night Videos... The Doors.

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123/365: Gull

So, just as I was nearly caught up on my backlog of 365 project images, my computer goes all wonky. Repeated crashes, wild instability. I had to eventually re-install Windows 7 twice to get the problem under control, and even now my PC isn't quite the beacon of dependability. And for all those out there who're smugly saying, "Ha! He should have a Mac..." Been there, crashed that. Mac problems are distinctly different from those of PCs, no less maddening.

So,here's a seagull from the beach trip the other week. Offshore storms had churned up a lot of Sargassum weed, and the gulls were actually hunting for food as opposed to hanging out around tourists looking for dropped french fries. Wonders never cease.

Camera: Canon 7D
Lens: Canon FD 500mm f/8 reflex
Lisa On Location

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Chicken Ranch report no. 35: EXPEDITION TEXAS

Have you ever wondered what the Chicken Ranch looks like today? Have you been confused by rumors that the infamous brothel burned down, or the building was moved to Dallas? Have you gone onto YouTube looking for some kind of video footage but been put off by awful, shaky cell phone video and yokels babbling on about how they think the Chicken Ranch might've hosted dog fighting (hint: it didn't)? Then you'll like this.

As I mentioned last week, I met up with Bob Mauldin of Expedition Texas and the current owner of the Chicken Ranch property to take a tour of the infamous brothel's ruins. Not many people realize it yet, but 2013 marks the 40th anniversary of the Chicken Ranch's closure by Houston television personality Marvin Zindler. Miss Edna Milton departed La Grange not long after, and the intervening years were not kind to the old farmhouse. A series of subsequent owners worried more about profiting from the property's notoriety than historical preservation, and the result is... well, you can see in the videos below.

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Friday Night Videos

Ray Manzarek, keyboardist for the Doors, died this week. This fascinating interview with him aired on NPR today, which really got me thinking about Light My Fire. It's amazing how Manzarek describes the song's evolution from a saccharine, Sonny & Cher pop ditty to one infused with a Latin beat, jazz elements and even Bach. I'd never noticed all of that before, but once Manzarek points them out, it's impossible to miss.

Previously on Friday Night Videos... Chris Hadfield.

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Chicken Ranch report no. 34: TELEVISION!

Big news to share regarding the Chicken Ranch! The television series Expedition Texas is airing an episode dedicated to the Chicken Ranch this weekend, featuring yours truly prominently. Expedition Texas is most easily viewed by folks in East Texas, since it is based in the Nacogdoches area, but they have an array of stations listed on their website that carry the series. If you don't have access to a station that carries the program, don't despair! Expedition Texas makes individual episodes available for viewing online.

Okay, maybe I should back up a little bit now that the important stuff is out of the way. See that fellow in the picture below?

That's Bob Mauldin, creator and host of Expedition Texas, a regional history-oriented television series that focuses on quirky, interesting, forgotten or otherwise intriguing stories of the Lone Star State. For those of you who grew up in Texas during the 70s and 80s like myself, it's a show not dissimilar from The Eyes of Texas and Texas Country Reporter. This past winter, I was contacted by Mauldin out of the blue. He wanted to devote an episode to the Chicken Ranch, and hoped I might lend my expertise in the area to the project. Now, it's not every day my vast knowledge of prostitution and brothels spanning 150-plus years of Texas history comes into demand, so naturally I agreed to help.

I contacted the current owner of the property, Mike, who approved of the project quite enthusiastically. With everything in place, we gathered in La Grange in early February and spent the day filming and exploring. I talked about so much Chicken Ranch history that day my head started to spin. I fear I babbled quite a bit. Even so, the stories I told and the events I related can lose impact or relevance if not given the proper context--yet there's no way to properly give that much context in a 30 minute television documentary. If there was, I wouldn't have spent three years writing and researching a 110,000-word book on the Chicken Ranch, now would I?

In the end, the whole experience was a great deal of fun. Mauldin and his crew were eager to learn and see all they could. We explored parts of La Grange then the Chicken Ranch property itself, making our way (carefully!) through the ruined, disintegrating building, and even had fun digging through the old trash heap. There's never been a place quite like the Chicken Ranch and there will never be another like it. Regardless of one's feelings regarding prostitution, this place was a very big part of Texas history for more than a century, and it's story needs to be told.

Remember, you can help make this book a reality by formally follow this blog, either via Google or Networked Blogs, both of which have links to the right, or "Liking" my Chicken Ranch Central Facebook Page. Don't forget to tell your friends and neighbors, too!

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Infrared camera for sale

SOLD! The time has come to sell my workhorse Canon Rebel XTi camera body. It has been infrared modified by Lifepixel, the 720nm option, so that the images it takes can either be processed as false-color or high-contrast black and white. I've found it pretty flexible in that regard. The autofocus system is calibrated to the EF 50mm 1.8 lens, and works flawlessly with that. I've also found AF works well with the EF-S 10-22mm lens if aperture is stopped down to at least f/8 when shooting.

I bought this camera--my first ever DSLR--in March of 2008, new. I'm the only owner. We had it converted to full-time infrared two years ago, for use in my wife's wedding photography business. We had a Canon 50D converted about six months back, also by Lifepixel, so the XTi has sat unused since then. The camera still functions well. I'm estimating it's got approximately 55,000 shutter actuations on it, but that's just a guess since it's darn near impossible to get an accurate number with these Digic II bodies. There is some obvious wear on the grip from use (see image). The pop-up flash no longer pops up. I'm not sure when this happened, because I never use pop-up flashes. The hot shoe works just fine. In addition to the body, I'm including the vertical battery grip, three batteries, battery charger and the Canon software that came with it new.

I'm asking $350, shipped. Paypal is fine. Considering the fact that a conversion is going to cost nearly that much, I think that's a fair price. It's a nice little camera, we just don't need it anymore.

I'm posting this in multiple places, so anyone interested should email me.

Here are some images I've taken with this XTi over the years:

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