Hey kids! New book!

With all the Chicken Ranch stuff going on, it appears that I have completely forgotten to let everyone know about another publication of mine that recently came out. Some of you may know that photography's a sort-of hobby of mine, and that I assist The Wife with her photo studio, Lisa On Location. Some of you may also know that I've long had a fascination with infrared photography, and have experimented with that form quite a bit over the years.

Well, all that experimentation seems to have attracted some attention my way. Four of my infrared images (one of which may be seen below) were selected by Karen Dorame for inclusion in her new book from Amherst Media, Mastering Infrared Photography: Capture Invisible Light with a Digital Camera. Now, I like to think that my work's pretty good--nobody else has combined levitation with infrared to push the surreal up to eleven, after all--but there are some images by Ikan Hui Pegel Pegel, an Indonesian photography who does some amazing work with false-color infrared. Seriously, Ikan's work is fantastic. One of the things I love about the interwebz--and being included in this book--is that it exposes me and brings me into contact with incredibly talented artists that I'd never know existed otherwise. That's quite inspiring, and, if one want to get all metaphorical, very much like infrared photography, as it also brings the unseen into view.

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Mourning the sandstorm

It's gone. I've lost it through a combination of carelessness and dumb luck. Pleading and bargaining with fate has failed. My efforts to do an end-around have failed. I have to force myself to accept the ugly truth: My beloved Monument Valley Sandstorm, Infrared, is no more.

Oh, I still have a gorgeous 36x24 gallery wrap on my office wall, and the web-sized version you see here persists. But the original RAW file is gone. The full-resolution tiff and Photoshop working files are gone. The finished-edit jpeg is gone. Which means I can never make another quality print of this image, which resonates with me at a level hard to explain.

The sad discovery of my loss came about because I had an offer to publish it in an upcoming photography book. I felt all the regular emotions--excitement, validation, yadda yadda--which quickly gave way to sorrow and denial when I could not find a single print-quality file. I'd had many multiples of this image on my home computer, my laptop, my work computer... all gone. My work computer ran out of hard drive space early this past spring, so I deleted all of my personal stuff to clear operating room. My laptop suffered a Windows implosion, so I did a clean install, wiping everything from it. All those duplicate files on my home computer? I deleted those duplicates, and apparently the master file as mixed in amongst those. Ah, but what about the official backup, the one kept by The Wife? Well, those turned out to be on an external hard drive I accidentally knocked off her desk and destroyed whilst attempting to install some new hardware. The awful part is that this drive continued to function for another dozen hours or so before going kaput, hours we foolishly did not use to transfer everything off it. We couldn't remember what was on it at the time, and didn't worry too much, because there were multiple copies of files kept elsewhere. Except those that weren't.

Other images are gone as well. All of my photos from the Very Large Array (with the sole exception of "Listening to Nightfall") and the Horseshoe and the Grand Canyon... Some of those were good photographs. None of them were great. All of them can be replicated, more or less, by me in the future if I ever return to those locales. But Monument Valley? In a sandstorm? Under these unique lighting conditions? Never gonna happen.

It's hard to let go, but it's time to move on.

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House for sale. Comes book-ready

We've finally bitten the bullet and placed our house on the market for some lucky family to buy. The complete listing can be found here. And here's the Realtor.com listing: Click here.

We've lived here 11 years, which is the longest Lisa and I have lived any place that wasn't our hometown. The kids barely remember living in Temple. Bug has never lived anywhere else. We really like this house, and have put a lot of effort into making it our own over the years. Here's my office, below. One of the first things I did when we moved in was close it in and install floor-to-ceiling book shelves. I really, really wanted to include a ladder on rails, but I just couldn't justify it in the limited space.

Astute readers may notice there aren't actually that many books on my library's shelves. That's because probably 90 percent of my collection is boxed up in storage. That was a lot of boxes. Double-stacked, and horizontally stacked on top, those shelves held a great number of books. I'm damn proud of those shelves--especially since my father couldn't understand why I just didn't get some cinder blocks and plywood and save all that effort. Our new house will have a new office, and I'll build a new set of book shelves, bigger and better, but I'm not looking forward to the considerable effort involved, and I'm not going to miss these any less. Heck, I miss my office already. I wrote "Prince Koindrindra Escapes" in here. "The Whale Below." "Being an Account of the Final Voyage of La Riaza: A Circumstance in Eight Parts." I edited fiction for RevolutionSF in here. I put together Voices of Vision. Heck, the massive undertaking that is my Chicken Ranch history book was conceived and executed entirely in here. I did a tremendous amount of writing in this room, even if my publication history doesn't reflect it. This office is going to be hard to replace.

We never expected to stay here forever. We always planned on moving to a more rural area with acreage we could develop (and the girls have been begging for horses for a decade now). Lisa on Location is going great guns, so much so that Lisa's already outgrown her studio in the Landmark. We need more space, and need a much larger studio space in particular so her business may continue to grow. We've already scouted several potential houses in our price range, and several are promising... if we're able to sell before someone else buys them out from under us.

The house has been on the market five days, and already we've had four showings, with another scheduled for tomorrow. When we were trying to sell the Temple house--which we loved, even though it was old and drafty--we would sometimes go an entire month without a single showing. So the initial interest is encouraging. Moving is entirely dependent on a sale, as our down payment is tied up in our home equity. This raises the interesting prospect of having to move out before we've closed on a new home. That's a scary thought. But as I say, we'll burn that bridge when we come to it. If you know anyone in need of a New Braunfels home in easy commuting distance to San Antonio, San Marcos or even Austin, point them our direction.

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Lunar eclipse!

The morning of Tuesday, April 15 saw the first of four lunar eclipses slated to occur over the next two years. That's celestial mechanics for you--like a Venusian transit of the sun, these things come in groupings. Unlike Venus passing in front of the sun (which happens at century-long intervals), lunar eclipses are comparatively common. But not that common. The last lunar eclipse visible from North America, in 2010, didn't turn out so well for me. Because of the chance of clouds at any time, I was determined to take advantage of the opportunity this time around.

Several things are different now than they were back in 2010. For one, I have a different mirror in my telescope, which I'm still sad about. The second is that I've figured out why there was so much diffusion in my 2010 photographs--the plossl eyepieces I use for visual observing introduce field curvature, which causes the edges of the image to be out of focus. If I'm ever to get serious about eyepiece projection astrophotography, I'll need to invest in flat-field orthoscopic eyepieces. I've also got a better camera--the Canon 7D--and have learned I can use a telextender to double the telescope's focal length, thus making the moon fill the frame of my camera. Finally, I've got a rock-steady Orion Atlas equatorial mount for my telescope, a significant upgrade from the 1970s era pier GEM mount that came with the scope.

Unfortunately, I wasn't feeling all that well, and wasn't up to doing much preparation. And I'm still not entirely familiar with the Atlas mount, so wasn't able to get it to track the moon very accurately (although the electronic controls worked very nicely and allowed me to position the image precisely). I moved the mirror up in the tube so I could shoot at prime focus with the camera. Ideally, when I did this, I should've collimated the scope to make sure the mirrors were in good alignment to ensure the best possible image. But I was tired and sickish so I didn't.

As for the weather, this time around I was not plagued by clouds. The sky was crystal clear, in fact, and it got pretty darn cold for Texas in April--down to the lower 40s. Brr. Which should've meant great views, but it didn't. There was a good bit of wind on the ground, and a lot of turbulence up high in the atmosphere, making the moon's edges waver and forcing me to adjust focus regularly simply because the "boiling" effect of the atmosphere made it impossible to be certain I ever nailed focus. None of my photos turned out as sharp as I'd have liked because of that, but overall it wasn't a bad effort. The 6" Meade 645 f/5 Newtonian has a focal length of 762mm, and for most of the night I used a Vivitar 2x telextender, which essentially turned the scope into a 1524mm f/10.6 lens. I had to remove the telextender during total eclipse, though, because the moon was too dim to shoot without those two extra stops of light--and even then I cranked the ISO up to 3200 (which introduced significant noise to the image). The good news is that I'm progressing with my competence in astrophotography. The bad news is that I clearly have a long way to go. I combined 30-something images into the animated gif above. You can see a progression of the original still images below. Hopefully, by the time the next lunar eclipse comes around, I'll have mastered the Atlas' tracking and be able to shoot totality using much lower ISO and longer shutter speeds.

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Sherwood Forest Faire

A day late and a dollar short as always. I'd intended this post to go up earlier, but life, you know? Took the family to the final day of Sherwood Forest Faire on Sunday, and had a good--if rushed--time. When we lived in Temple, we'd make annual trips to Scarborough Faire (which opens this weekend) but the four-hour drive from New Braunfels is simply too long a haul to do with any regularity (we've only been back once in the past decade). Having a viable ren fest less than two hours away (and 15 minutes from my mother-in-law's) is very nice. Plus, we're kinda sorta familiar with Sherwood's lineage. We attended the first couple of Cavalier Days way back when that defunct fair was held outside of Smithville with no permanent structures. Once Cavalier went belly-up, I participated (in costume) in the poorly-organized, one-day-only Underhill Village Fair in Austin, put on by some Cavalier refugees. That was an experience, and largely responsible for my not participating in any more ren fairs. Excalibur Fair followed shortly thereafter, back in Smithville, and despite some good word of mouth, I never attended. Despite a promising start, Excalibur crashed and burned when they tried to relocate it outside of Lockhart.

Which brings us to Sherwood, established 2010. We've never been before, but Monkey Girl and I have made it to their Celtic Music Festival and were impressed by the amount of permanent buildings and investment they've made in the place, outside of McDade. Sherwood has flush toilets which Scarborough didn't have until the late 90s. We also noticed some old standbys from the Texas Renaissance Festival--the water wheel, carousel, etc.--have relocated to Sherwood. They're building a full-fledged castle on one end of the grounds, and overall the property is well-developed for being such a young event.

I took my 500mm reflex lens along, hoping to play around with it and get some good candid character shots on the day. Alas, the crowds and scattered forest confounded me more than I'd expected. On top of that, despite recent rains in the area, the sandy ground was bone-dry and dust quickly coated everything, so I didn't keep the camera out for long. Still, I got a few interesting shots, and learned that my manual focusing skills are crap when it comes to moving targets. Hopefully, next year I'll get to try again, and maybe take in more of the acts for a change. I'll confess I love that first image. That sticker's placement is perfect, and makes me smile.

(ARGH! I just discovered Google is "enhancing" images uploaded to Google, which accounts for the skewed colors. I'll try to upload corrected images tonight.)

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149/365: Fireworks

Well, boys and girls, it's been fun (some of the time) but my 365 project is coming to an end, well short of the finish line. Actually, it's already bit the dust, I'm just so far behind on posting that it isn't apparent. Today's photo, for example, I shot on July 4 with the intent of posting it July 5. Didn't get around to it until now, half a month later. And that's the rub--I've got a number of projects demanding my time and only so many hours in a day. Despite helping out The Wife, photography remains a hobby for me, and a much lesser priority than, say, writing and publishing books. I've never, ever been someone content with simply shooting a cell phone pic and Instagramming it to satisfy my 365 commitment. If I can't envision and execute a concept to my liking, I don't want to do it. I don't have the time to develop my vision into images I find acceptable. In light of that, I am re-allocating my resources elsewhere. There are still some backlogged photos, so they'll trickle out over the coming weeks. But we're going to fall significantly short of 200, much less 365. Just so you know.

Camera: Canon 7D
Lens: Tamron 28-75mm 2.8
Lisa On Location

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Chicken Ranch report no. 36: GHOSTS OF THE CHICKEN RANCH

This is what I've been working on for the past two months, Ghosts of the Chicken Ranch, a coffee-table/fine art book that takes readers on a photographic tour of the infamous Chicken Ranch brothel as it is today:

This book developed as a companion piece to my other Chicken Ranch book, the definitive history of the place that is currently under consideration with a number of agents/publishers. When it became clear late last year that, even under the best of circumstances, the Big Book would not see publication in time for the 40th anniversary of the Chicken Ranch's closure on Aug. 1, I knew I needed to do something to mark the occasion. Then it struck me--The Wife and I had visited the ruins outside of La Grange many times over the previous four years, extensively photographing the site. By presenting some of the best and most interesting of our images in book form, we could allow readers to explore and learn about what is and what was. I also include a bit of history as well, mostly in the context of relating to the property itself. I have to admit I'm pleased with the way it turned out.

The book should be available for purchase online within a few weeks--certainly before Aug. 1. I will provide information on that as soon as it is available. So for everyone out there who has strongly urged me to self-publish my Chicken Ranch materials over the past year or so, here's your chance to prove your case. Who knows? If Ghosts of the Chicken Ranch moves in significant numbers, I may be forced to look seriously as self-publishing that other book...

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148/365: Castle Falkenstein

Here's one of what appears to be quite a few 365 photos I took earlier this years but failed to post back when classwork got the better of me. I'd completely forgotten about some of these. This, for example, is Castle Falkenstein in the Texas Hill Country. It's supposedly based on plans designed by Mad King Ludwig but never built by the Bavarian monarch. Weddings are occasionally held there, but unfortunately, The Wife and I have never photographed one.

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

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147/365: Lutea foliage

Last fall, the family and I made our annual pilgrimage to the Texas Renaissance Festival. Whilst there, amongst all the jousting and grogging and wenching, I discovered to my delight an extensive growth of passiflora lutea. Now lutea is a small, unassuming passion flower type with small, subtle yellow flowers that can easily be overlooked. This plant not only had a bunch of the little flowers in bloom, but was heavy with ripe fruit. Decaloba-type fruit are about the size of blueberries and generally inedible, but full of seeds. I collected several and after a few months of refrigeration for stratification of the seeds, I planted them. And I've been rewarded with a bunch of little lutea seedlings sprouting for me.

Lutea, as I mentioned, isn't a flashy passiflora species, but it is a Texas native, and I'm happy to add it to my collection.

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

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146/365: Tenuiloba foliage

Today I'm sharing the foliage of passiflora tenuiloba. This one's native to Texas, with a range starting in the Hill Country and extending west and south to more semi-arid regions. It doesn't have flashy flowers, being a small decaloba-type, but I find the foliage fascinating. It's informal name is "bird-winged passion flower," which is self-explanatory. I don't know of many other passiflora species with as elaborate a leaf form. One problem with this plant is that the stems are so thin that I haven't had any luck rooting cuttings from it, which frustrates me to no end, I assure you.

And here's a second view of some younger leaves. Note they start out with less pronounced lobes like other passis, but extend as the leaf grows and matures.

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

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145/365: Work-In-Progress

Not a terribly sexy photo for today's 365 installment, but it is a timely one. This is a glimpse of the current work-in-progress I've been hinting at (Chicken Ranch). Hopefully I'll have more substantive information to share next week.

Camera: Canon 7D
Lens: Tamron 28-75mm 2.8
Lisa On Location

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144/365: Baby chameleon

Yes, I know they're technically green anoles, but I grew up calling them chameleons and still do to this day. Hard to argue with their color changes!

I first saw this little guy last week, hanging out in a potted plant on the front porch. He's a tiny hatchling, barely more than an inch long--I don't think I've ever seen one this small. He's wary, though, vanishing before I've been able to get my camera. Last night, however, I found him sleeping on a leaf, oblivious to my spying. I was able to get several shots before the confused guy woke up fully, then shut off all the lights and let him go back to sleep. Our bushes and thick passion vines around the house are a haven for the little lizards (there's an adult male displaying his red throat outside my window right now) and I like having them around. They remind me of my childhood, when I used to catch them for fun. It's amazing how large a moth these little guys can eat!

This bonus shot shows how sleepy he was. I've gotten this same exact look from The Wife some mornings...

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

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143/365: Caerulea

And here we have a seed from quite possibly the most wide-spread passion flower in the world, caerulea. The seed's a bit smaller than that of incarnata, and not quite so dramatic in its surface texture. This is a seed from last year, stored in my refrigerator in a packet of moist sand. I suspect if I get some fresh seed this year I'll re-shoot it, as tiny sand grains wedged themselves into little nooks on the seed so that I couldn't brush it clean. Note to self: Fresh seeds photograph better than stored seeds.

Camera: Canon 7D
Lens: Canon 100mm 2.8 macros with Vivitar 2x telextender
Lisa On Location

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142/365: Incarnata seed II

I photographed the seed of passiflora incarnata earlier, for my film photography class, but I used a mottled gray background for that image and wasn't entirely happy with the contrast. So I've re-shot the species for consistency's sake. I like the contrast in this version much better.

Camera: Canon 7D
Lens: Canon 100mm 2.8 macros with Vivitar 2x telextender
Lisa On Location

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141/365: Inspiration seed

Inspiration is my next subject in my passiflora seed series, but it's not from the Passiflora Society International seed sale. This one is from my personal stock. Inspiration is a tetraploid hybrid, similar to the common p. Incense hybrid, but slightly larger with deeper violet flowers that reflex more. There are other subtle differences as well, along with one big one--Inspiration is self-fertile, whereas Incense fruits with reluctance. Seeds of Inspiration generally follow the classic, common passiflora seed form, but are significantly larger--half again to twice the size of a regular incarnata seed. It also has more red pigmentation than other seeds I've photographed, which is curious.

Camera: Canon 7D
Lens: Canon 100mm 2.8 macros with Vivitar 2x telextender
Lisa On Location

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140/365: Herbertiana seed

Herbertiana is my next subject from the Passiflora Society International seed sale. Like p. aurantia, this is an Australian species, once of the few passiflora native to the "Old World." And like aurantia, herbertiana is among the smallest passiflora seeds I've worked with. It's slightly larger than aurantia, but not by much.

Camera: Canon 7D
Lens: Canon 100mm 2.8 macros with Vivitar 2x telextender
Lisa On Location

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139/365: Aurantia seed

Aurantia is my next subject from the Passiflora Society International seed sale. This is an Australian species, once of the few passiflora native to the "Old World." A few years ago I bought some seed on Ebay, but they never germinated. Hopefully, I'll have more success with this one.

One other thing--these macro seed photos aren't to scale with one another. Their size varies widely, but I try to "fill the frame" as much as possible to reveal the maximum amount of detail. Aurantia is the smallest seed I've worked with yet--it's actually smaller than the head of a pin. I know, because I Photoshopped out the silver crescent of the pin head I'd mounted it to. Amazing something so small can grow into such impressive vines.

Camera: Canon 7D
Lens: Canon 100mm 2.8 macros with Vivitar 2x telextender
Lisa On Location

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138/365: Bogotensis seed

Bogotensis is my next subject from the Passiflora Society International seed sale. Again, I've never attempted to grow passiflora bogotensis before. It's a decaloba, which I like, and fairly rare, which I also like. However, it is reputed to dislike high temperatures, which means I'll have to keep it indoors throughout the summer lest it suffer the fate of the unfortunate tasconias I've attempted to grow. This might be the oddest seed form I've come across yet.

Camera: Canon 7D
Lens: Canon 100mm 2.8 macros with Vivitar 2x telextender
Lisa On Location

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