HDR self portrait, Mark Miner

I like taking photographs much more than I like being the subject. I never quite relax when I get my picture taken. Once in a while there is a picture that I like of myself. This is one of them.

Taking a picture in low light with no flash makes for a very real picture.  The trade-off is a very shallow depth-of-field.  (note, my eye is in focus yet the word Nikon on the camera is not.)  Also, low light photography almost always has a slow shutter speed.  With a slower shutter speed, both the camera and the subject have to be extraordinarily still.

This picture was taken on Greg and Lana’s sailboat at night with just a small background light.  The iso is 1100 and the shutter speed is 1/100. The aperture is 1.4 which is as wide open as this lens gets.   (this is what causes the shallow depth of field.)

The photo has obviously been post processed.  The software is topaz adjust.

-Mark-

Mexican food is one of my favorite cultural diversions. I love traditional Mexican cooking. The spices, textures, heat and aroma make for an intoxicating meal. This story would be much more fun if I could say that I got my recipe from some family in northern Mexico on an extended stay there. That is not the case. It is however adapted from a Rick Bayless recipe, and I can assure you, HE got it from some family in Northern Mexico on some extended stay there.

Barbacoa usually refers to meat including goat or sheep that are slowly cooked over fire. Rick Bayless is even more traditional and cooks the meat in a covered pit at low temperature for many hours. The result is tender meat that is well spiced and excellent as a base for many Mexican foods.

The recipe that I use for barbacoa uses the crock pot and a three pound beef or pork roast. The recipe that I use can be found here. It makes excellent barbacoa and is easy to prepare and serve.

I make fresh salsa as well. A couple of tomatoes diced, four cloves of garlic, eight sprigs of cilantro, a couple of green onions and the juice of one lime. Add salt and pepper to taste and WOW.

Serve with CORN tortillas, lime wedges, salsa, sour cream, optionally rice or beans. It is a great meal that makes great leftovers.

Mark

World Famous, (Well it ought to be), Palm One.

Palm One, E202, Sapphire Beach

My son Zach’s prom was this weekend. It is hard to believe that he is a senior in high school. He has always been the best child and now he is the best young adult a parent could have. He is active in many things including scouting, Taekwondo, and school. Currently his plan is to go to Iowa State for undergrad and the University of Iowa for medical school.

His graduation and 18th birthday are both coming up next month and I am writing a longer post with a lot more pictures…..

Zach Miner, Prom 2010

Coffee is is the heart of the productive part of my day. The posts on this blog are almost universally written after my daily java dose. Coffee will take me from lounging around with no real direction to being pumped up and looking for something to get done.

I use a French press to make coffee. It could not be any easier. Simply put ground coffee in the press, add hot water, wait four minutes, and then press the grounds to the bottom with a mesh filter and pour the coffee off the top. I make a huge serving of coffee, put ice in a carafe and pour the hot coffee in it. I have a huge cup and the rest goes in the refrigerator. I make coffee once every three days and keep it in the fridge and drink it over ice. YUMM.

Zak Evans, my great CS  friend from Utah ordered a box of random stuff from woot.com when I was there in December.  I wrote a little post when I was intoxicated that described the ordeal.  This is a link to that post…. <-be sure to read this post to get up to speed on THIS post. 

This is the video of the hip-hoppin-hippies.

My aunt Florine has lived on the same farm for the last seventy years.  She moved there with her husband, (my uncle K.C. (short for Kenneth Chaloupka)) when she was 18 years old.  She is 88 and still does daily farm chores.  This clip is from last summer when we all paid a visit.  Here she talks about one of the tractors that has been on the farm for 60 years.

The trip down the highway 1 (more commonly called Pacific coast highway or PCH) was a fantastic part of my December road trip.  The coastline is so beautiful that I was compelled to stop every few miles to shoot video.  This is from the PCH near Eureka, California just after dawn on December 9, 2009.

Hi-Def video from Sapphire Beach, St Thomas, USVI.

I have several pieces of software that I use when editing photos. First and foremost is photoshop. I have learned a great deal about this fine program over the last year. I still probably only use one third of its capability. There are a very large number of excellent tutorials on the web for using photoshop. I usually wait until I really need to do something with PS and then look on the web for a tutorial on how to do it.

For HDR, I use several programs. To truly do HDR, you need to take several photos in rapid succession with varying exposures and then combine them into one HDR photo. This does not work very well with human or other moving subjects. For this you make your HDR from a single exposure. (This is actually pseudo-HDR because it comes from just one exposure) Even with one exposure you can get some truly interesting HDR photographs. My single favorite HDR software that I use when I only have one exposure is Dynamic PhotoHDR by Mediachance. It does an excellent job of spicing up photos and if you play with it enough, it looks great. There is a lot of customizing that you can do within software, yet it is very simple to use.

White Bay, Jost Van Dyke, BVI (British Virgin Islands)

Almost all of the photographs that I take today end up getting at least a little HDR manipulation. It adds drama and extra “pop” to a photo. It takes a photo that I like anyway and makes me love it.

Flowers from Grays lake. Converted to black and white and photoshopped for a while. I am going to make an art print of this one.

"Flowers for Ryan" 2010

A friend recently asked if I could take a few interior shots of a property that she has for sale. (E5W in the East Village, Des Moines)  I decided that if I shot in HDR it would add drama to the photos. I am really pleased with how they turned out. Taking the photos in HDR probably adds fifty percent to the overall time spent processing each photo.

Link to all the photos

E5W in the East Village, Des Moines

Last evening was beautiful and a great time to hit Grays lake. During the spring summer and fall Gray’s lake is busy with people enjoying the beautiful park in the heart of the city. I brought my camera and got a few photos that I like. Obviously I am a fan of HDR, although I usually do not like that grainy over-the-top-look of HDR done poorly. With that said, I really like one of the pictures of Ryan that I took while I was out and I like this photo with the over-the-top-look.

Grays Lake Des Moines, Early Evening

Ryan Carney, Des Moines, Grays Lake

Random Folks, Grays Lake Des Moines

Two weekend’s ago I had a couple of couchsurfers in town. They were from the San Francisco Bay area. They are currently trekking across the country to start a new life as CSA farmers. CSA stands for community supported agriculture and they made it sound pretty great. They hope to take over a farm from an ailing couple in Michigan and start a CSA program there.

The basic idea of CSA means individuals buy a ‘share’ of a farm at the beginning of the season. For this, they receive a weekly basket or box of fresh vegetables from the farm as the season progresses. Participants also get special trips to the farm, fresh flowers in season, etc. In return the farms get a good cash flow at the start of the planting season when they could use it most. It also helps to spread the risk. In a drought year, people who bought into the farm help absorb the decreased production. To me what CSA really does is connect the community to the plight of agriculture in a more transparent and fun way.

Learn more about community supported agriculture.

About the pictures.. I noticed that they had their lives packed into this car and thought it would make a great photo. We got back from hitting downtown and they ‘posed’ in the garage for a few pictures. They have been HDR’d because, well, I really like HDR.  They are Matthew and Molly.

Matthew Benjamin, HDR, Des Moines 2010

Molly and Matthew Benjamin, HDR. Des Moines 2010

Spring is here. It has been a wonderful two weeks in Des Moines. The weather has been warm and sunny. The days are getting longer with plenty of outdoor time to be had. I am learning the extensive bike trails around the city, a lot of these run along the riverbank. (A few stretches still have four inches of mud covering them from the flooding a couple of weeks ago making them nearly impassable.) The goal here is to be ready for RAGBRAI this summer. The Registers Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa (RAGBRAI), is a week long bike ride that tracks across the state of Iowa in daily stages from east west to east. This year the seven day trek will cover 442 miles. RAGBRAI is a great way to see Iowa and rural Americana.

Ok, so, I wrote every day of my road trip and I looked forward to my daily post. I vowed ahead of time that I would and I did. Setting the goal of writing daily and then saying so on the blog made it more important for me to actually write a daily post. Now for the commitment. I am going to post daily for the next year. I really like writing, I really like photography and videography. The posts are going to be a bit of all of these things. If I don’t, I’m just lazy….

Iowa winters are cold and ugly. It seems as though this one is particularly mean. It is breaking my spirit. I took a look through the directory of photos from St Thomas and the US and British Virgin Islands and picked a few to post. It is warm and sunny somewhere…..

Jost Van Dyke, Jan 2009

The Baths, Virgin Gorda, Jan 2009

Jost Van Dyke, Jan 2009

Tonight I braved the crazy cold and mind numbing boredom of a Monday night in wintertime Des Moines in search of a good bowl of French onion soup. Before I even left the house, I entertained the idea of making my OWN FOS by hitting up google to steer me towards a recipe that would make kick-ass food. I found one without difficulty, but the recipe called for over two hours of preparation before I would actually be tasting the goods. So, out I went. For some reason I had it in my head that River Mile would have good French onion soup, nope. I hit five or six other places on Court Ave, no luck. My big break came at Zen’s where I stopped to have Sake. The bartender, a helpful chap, said that Django would be the place to go. (Django is about fifty yards from my door at home. How was I to know?) So Django, and a very apt bartender named Elizabeth hooked me up with a FANTASTIC bowl of the good stuff with broiled cheese, bread crumbs and excellent onions. (Django is an upscale place and Elizabeth seemed right at home there) Great soup and two Newcastles later I was headed for home, happy. Now I know where to get the goods when it is crazy cold outside in Des Moines.

Mark

I made it. Me and the mighty Pacific

Some pics from the trip.

Trying to boil this three week trip into a comprehensive synopsis may prove difficult. It was a trip that had been loosely on the drawing board all summer long  (since somewhere around the time of the southern US driving trip.)  My main goals of the trip were to visit Portland, drive the Pacific Coast Highway and visit my dad in Pahrump, Nevada. To that end I accomplished those goals. The wonderful bonuses of the trip were all the things that I did not anticipate going into the drive. First and foremost I LOVE the solitude of driving by myself. I am perfectly happy inside my own head driving with an audio book letting new vistas wash over my eyes through my windshield. It is a Zen-like experience for me. I tend to get bored easily, but not while I am driving. At no point was I weary of driving even with the 5500 miles of it on this trip. Also unexpected on the trip were the beautiful things along the way that I did not know existed. Twin falls in Idaho, part of the Snake River Canyon, was breathtaking. It was not really tourist season and the temperature was cool along my route. This actually made the trip better for me. There was a huge parking lot for visitors at Twin Falls and I was the only car there. It was as if the whole thing was just for me. Other unexpected natural wonders came during the last 45 miles into Portland, driving the Columbia River highway (US 84). The highway snakes along the Columbia River valley with mountains flanking both sides of the river. Numerous waterfalls emerge from the mountains along the route. I had no idea all of it was there.

Couchsurfing also played an integral part in the success of the trip and although I have surfed a lot before it never ceases to amaze me how wonderful people are everywhere. I met some very interesting people along the way and glimpsed into the lives of people who are very different than I in so many ways.    Equally unforeseen was how long it would take to get down the PCH with the sightseeing involved. Ultimately San Francisco and Los Angeles were culled from the trip. (It WILL be a separate trip). My original plan was to head from Las Vegas back up through Denver and cut across the middle of the United States to get back home. Due to some winter weather I detoured to a more southerly route that included Phoenix, Albuquerque and Tulsa. All unplanned, yet wonderful, stops in my journey. Thanks to this detour I met a couple of hitchhikers in Santa Rosa and took them to Henryetta, Oklahoma. They were fascinating people and the 500 miles that we rode together certainly flew by.

The things that I expected to be wonderful, were. Visiting Portland with Christine was delightful. She was a wonderful hostess and lives in a really kick-ass town. She promised me micro brews before I even arrived and instead delivered a frickn winter micro brew FESTIVAL that was fantastic!   It was downtown Portland and had a wonderful assortment of beers from all around the Pacific Northwest. She has a great little apartment in a suburb called Lake Oswego with a wonderful couch. We also hit Multnomah Falls (the picture with the bridge across the waterfall). Local bars in Lake Oswego had great beers on tap and were lively.

PCH, which I expected to be a cornerstone of the trip, certainly was. I drove it from Tillamook, Oregon to Eureka, California. It was beautiful every bit of the drive, and pulling over for the ‘scenic overlooks’ was practically mandatory. I shot close to an hour of video from various places on the coast during frequent view stops. Visiting my dad in Pahrump, Nevada was great as well. The atomic bomb museum in Vegas was fantastic and they had a stupendous collection of ‘ground zero’ artifacts. The south detour through Phoenix, and then New Mexico was uneventful and did not have a lot of scenery as compared to the rest of the drive although I did manage to get a sunset picture just outside of Albuquerque.

The cost of this trip was nominal considering the three weeks of entertainment and lifetime of memories involved. I averaged 27 miles per gallon for 5500 or so miles for a total of 203 gallons of gas. Approximate average per gallon rate during my trip was $2.60 for a total of $530 worth of gas. I couchsurfed or stayed with friends or family all but three of the nights. (Three nights were hotel nights, 35 dollar/night average for the hotels including a 33 dollar stay at the Excaliber in Vegas) so 105 for hotels. I ate peanut butter and honey on tortillas one or two meals a day and when I ate out it was inexpensive. I probably checked out of the three weeks for a total of less than $950 and had a spectacular time of it. 

I am not sure where my future plans will take me although I am thinking a one week stay in Washington, D.C. and a one week stay in Manhattan will be in the next trip, couchsurfing of course….

Thanks for reading

Mark Miner

My buddy for 5500 miles.

The final route

Home today from the 5500 mile plus trip. It was Fantastic. I will write a synopsis soon….

Here are some pics… some are similar or the same as ones from the blog some are completely new.  All are redone.

Mark