Catharsis

Affairs of The Heart

Unusually warm day, even for North Carolina, on deck under shade canopy with pre-dinner libation, I am, unlike yesterday, alone in silence of the Carolina Wren pair who nested inside a privacy fence and have provided unending song. Peeked with a light and saw the nest is empty. Which validates my decision to not replenish the rain water in the upside down top of a cooler they’d been drinking from. Skeeters soon. And like the new CD by Bonnie Raitt that arrives tomorrow, “Just Like That”, they are gone. Afternoon sun, pleasant humidity and newly leafed Beech and White Oak branches sway in the afternoon breeze like a corps de ballet. Through the trees, the sky is Cerulean Blue.

Putin As Peacock

War

A Peacock spreads it’s fan to intimidate.

Behind, is nothing but air. Like his Hypersonic Missile.

Disclaimer: I’m really old and I’m pretty sure the USN Top Secret clearance I had is irrelevant. But the Laws of Physics, I’m certain, have not changed.

A month before his assassination, President Kennedy watched a Polaris A-3 Ballistic Missile launched from a submerged Fleet Ballistic Submarine, the USS Andrew Jackson SSB(N) 619. I spent four years aboard.

When I left as an E-6, I had Dolphins and was qualified a Missile Control Center Supervisor for both Mk 84 Polaris and Mk 88 Poseidon Fire Control Systems. Nearly 50 years later, not much has changed. Boats are still on patrol. Poseidon C3’s have evolved to C-4s and Trident D4’s and then D5’s. So here is why Submarine Launched Trident Missiles are indefensible.

They are already most of the way to the target.

They can’t be found- no one gets close to a Boomer.

Putting forces on “Alert ” is baloney. A Boomer on Patrol is always ready. Always

Hypersonic is nonsense. The “Re-entry Bodies” are re-entering atmosphere, way faster than hypersonic. It’s why they have heat shields. Good luck shooting down a space capsule re-entering atmosphere.

They are inertially guided, essentially autonomous.

The real problem is mutually assured destruction. Like two guys in a room awash in gasoline. One has two thousand matches and the other, four thousand matchess. Go ahead and light one. Mr. Putin is in love with himself. And he knows he will be incinerated.

Songbird II

North Carolina, Spring, Travel, Wild

Miss Maudie explains to Scout why Atticus declared that it was a sin to kill a mockingbird: “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out of us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”

6 April 2015, Clayton, North Carolina

Nothing Could Be Finer!

Fall, North Carolina, Photography, Raleigh, State Fair

A favorite rite of Fall is photographing the NC State Fair for Cary Citizen

I enter two of the photographs in next years competition – but not last year

This is from the 2019 State Fair and I delivered it today

2021 North Carolina State Fair Entry – Professional Photography Competition

 

Declaration of Independence

Photography, Seasons, Summer, Travel

Letter from John Adams to Abigail Adams, 3 July 1776

“You will think me transported with Enthusiasm but I am not. — I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. — Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that Posterity will tryumph in that Days Transaction, even altho We should rue it, which I trust in God We shall not.”

Washington, D. C. 3 July 2009

Tripod Tale – In Pictures

Getting In Gear, Photography

This started simply and innocently. I just wanted to add a Full Fame camera body to my work. And I did. But of course I needed to add to my Full Frame capable lenses. And I did. But they are big, heavy and hard to hold for hours, so a tripod is needed.

But I was already using my tripod in rear of theater with a really long lens. So to use my new to me Full Frame 70-200 with the same Field of View as my APS-C 50-135 I’d need a second tripod. Which I had. Sort of. In the back of the closet.

Here’s the story – in pictures.

Focal Gobo

Fresnels and Focals and Gobos, Oh My!

Try saying that three time fast!

So when we last left our hero (moi), he’d just sort of figured out how to project a pattern with a strobe. But there is more to the story!

12/12/12: I had an epiphany after making a photograph in theater and realizing I had no idea why, as much as instinctively liked it, it looked as it did. Which led to an adult dose of reality about how much I didn’t understand about light. And then I discovered the Kodak Reference For Cinematographers and the work of George Hurrell and Studio Harcourt

It took awhile, but I learned about and accumulated enough Made in Hollywood, Mole Richardson Tungsten Fresnel’s to make a portrait. Four 2801 Mini’s or “Inkies” and a couple of 2351 “Midgets”. I could do key, fill, rim, double rim and back with lights to spare. Okay, you don’t need that many but I fell into a bargain.

And I had all the ways to modify the light, starting with the internal Flood to Spot adjust and then left to right below: Color with a Gel, Reduce size with a Snoot, Shape with Barn Doors and Dim with a Scrim

But I didn’t know I could project a pattern or gobo. Until, I found that Mole made Focal Spot lenses for their fresnels! And they worked like the shutters and pattern holders in theater ellipsoids / lekos! Movie sets are like theaters!

So I found one that fits my Minis / Inkies. It has a rear condenser lens and an adjustable focus lens. Just unscrew an accessory clip, remove the Fresnel lens and mount it. Looks likes this.

This is old legacy stuff and Mole no longer make the Pattern/Gobo Holder or Matte Sets (think manual Iris). The Sales Manager at Mole in Hollywood was kind enough to send me the original engineering drawings for both. Which helped a lot. I found that an ETC Source Four Mini E Size was a perfect fit. And someone in the NYC Barbizon Lighting Warehouse found a set of original Mattes. It all looks like this:

So that works okay with a controlled, ambient light session. But 200 Watt Fresnel’s are anemic compared to strobes. And you can’t fit a strobe into an Inkie like a 2K Watt Junior. So the strobe has to go outside the focal Spot.

Back to the parts bin for these, again for these bits:

Bottom only

Plus some 1/8″ offset Mirror Clips and couple of knobs from a speed ring To make this:

All this was before it occurred to make to adapt the theater ellipsoids. Which are a LOT larger. The E Size pattern of this focal spot compared to the theater B size is well, it looks like this:

Today UPS delivered a Triple Riser Wheeled Junior Stand that will handle 60 lbs to 12 ft.. Which is a factor of three for my Altman Zooms. It was an open box deal and I’m pretty sure its going for a studio test drive next weekend.

It’s a never ending story. Chapter next, soon.

Gateway Gobo

Fresnels and Focals and Gobos, Oh My!

It started innocently. I wanted to project a Gobo pattern with a photo strobe onto a background. The entry level projector was this. And of course, no longer available. Which made me determined to find one.

It didn’t take long surfing the web o sphere to find these had been sold for a long time by different brands:

Popular Photography Dec 1999

So I bought one branded as Smith Victor and probably the last one in stock at Adorama in January of 2019 for $82.95. The picture is wrong but the item was right. P/N on the box is Smith Victor 401275, non existent on their web site.

It’s simply two nested metal boxes with a pair of plastic Fresnel lenses and a Pattern Holder or Gobo slot and a gel slot. To focus, just slide the outer box in or out. The plastic mount was meant to fit around a small strobe and be secured by tightening a pair of threaded knobs. The pattern holder is sized for a standard B Size Gobo, the most common size found in theaters.

This is what it looked like out of the box. And it mounted unmodified on my strobes okay. I did however use a Paul C Buff Digibee with an Chip On Board LED Modeling lamp so I wouldn’t melt the plastic Fresnel lenses and still be able to focus the pattern.

And it worked! The Circus Tent gobo went in the Pattern Holder in front of a yellow gel that was in front of a piece of Tuff Frost Diffusion to eliminate the hot spot from the round flash tube. And Covid cancelled the show.

So while pandemic home bound, I decided to improve the safety and utility of the mounting. With these bits:

Just the bottom!

To create this:

But that’s not the end of the story, only the beginning. It’s my Gobo Gateway. To be continued…………