Otakon 2010

It's that time of year again in Baltimore, when waves of young people arrive at the Convention Center in amazing costumes for Otakon

I brought my Big Gun camera with me today so that I could try for some interesting shots during lunch. Here's my best one - a lucky grab shot that seems as if it were perfectly composed!

This one is almost straight out of the camera with just a tiny bit of fill light in Picassa. It looks pretty good in B&W as well, but I'll wait til I get home and use Channel Mixer in Photoshop to do it right.

Abu The Flutemaker

Here's my new friend Abu, playing a saxophone-like contraption that he makes out of plastic pipe and fittings. Now here's what I find amazing - it sounds pretty good - at least when he plays it.

Abu is a street entertainer, licensed by the city of Baltimore. Besides his music, he has a bright and happy personality. While we were with him, he gave me and another admirer each a straw, then proceeded to teach us how to "play" it, including showing us several ways to get various sounds out of it.

Abu entertains at the nearby Medical Center Plaza each Tuesday; I'll try to catch him for some more photos in the coming weeks.

Wachovia Building

Amberg: Schiffgaße

On Jan 28, 1950, I was born in Amberg, a small, 1000-year old town in Bavaria. It was in the American-occupied zone of Germany, and Displaced Persons, my family included, were housed in the old German Army barracks outside the town wall.

On Jan 28, 1978, I visited Amberg while on a business trip to Germany for GE. Somehow, there was a mixup, and the band and welcoming committee were not on the train platform to greet me.

I did get a few photos, though. This one is looking North on Schiffgaße along the Vils River, with Basilika St. Martin in the background.

Concrete Swoop

A portion of the West facade of the Robert C. Weaver Federal Building, home of United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in Washington, DC.

Fous du Volant

No special reason to give this one a French title except to hook Dave into taking a peek.

Sorry, Dave, that was a cheap trick! ;-)

It was a slow nightat the racing booth of the annual Earliegh Heights VFC Carnival, and the Carny is waiting for a mark.

My First Camera

Sounds like something from Playskool! But it was actually my Dad's Kodak Retina I, a little Stuttgart-made 35mm folder with a decent Schneider lens.

Along with a 1948 GE light meter, a gift from my friend Roger Wesalo, I was in business. With a camera as basic as this one, I had to learn all the basics. I even had to get good at estimating distances (in meters) because there was no rangefinder - just scale focusing. So that lead me quickly to understand depth-of-field.

My college friend Ed Hollingshead took this in NYC in Central Park sometime in the fall of 1967, our freshman year at Stevens Tech in Hoboken. I used to poke fun of Ed because of his left-handed, East German Exacta SLR. Little did I realize then that years later, I'd be a collector of Commie Cameras!