Category: blog

In March, for the first time in a long time, Arizona mattered in a presidential primary. The 2016 campaigns descended on the state with all the candidates but John Kasich making an appearance. The Trump rally in Fountain Hills made the national news because of the protesters that closed the roads into the small suburb. I passed a few of them on the way in. The road was still open at the time.

This seems like a disturbing trend. This month (May 2016) two cloud backup services have gone away. Both Bitcasa and Copy sent emails saying that they’re shutting down their services. End of life emails. My guess is that not enough people signed up for their paid service, so they decided to get out of the non-business market. Overall they didn’t have that great of deals, so I never upgraded. Between my free 5GB on Dropbox and my upgraded iCloud storage (50GB at 99¢/mo.

A few weeks ago I ran across a huge structure fire. Traffic was backed up because it was near the intersection of two major roads. I parked about a half mile away and walked to a parking lot across from the fire. Only a few fire trucks were there, and the police hadn’t arrived yet to cordon off the area. My plan was to get some early shots and get out.

Sometimes it’s a matter of seeing smoke and following it to the fire. [instagram url=https://www.instagram.com/p/BEkWsXzBZ61/ width=700] I was on my way home from the local World Wide Instameet that was at the ASU Art Museum. I saw the smoke in the distance and followed it the best I could. Once I got close, traffic was so bad I had to park and walk the last three-quarters of a mile to the fire.

The little lock icon is a thing of beauty.     

Just testing the 7D Mark II’s wireless flash control. I really like that it can control my 430 EX II from just the popup flash. The system is pretty slick, with several choices: Built-in and external controled via the ratio of each to the other. External only. Both but with independent exposure compensation for each. This is my cat with the 430 EX II at lower right with a 3:1 ratio to the popup flash.

A little upgrade turned into a bit more than I was expecting. Over the weekend I took delivery of a new camera. A Canon 7D Mark II. The first thing I noticed when I took it out of the box was it’s weight. It’s a full two pounds (910g) for just the body. My SL1 is downright tiny next to it. But that wasn’t all that was in the box. I had also found a great deal on a used fast lens (EF-S 17-55 ƒ/2.

The one constant about indoor events is the poor lighting. It’s not usually bad lighting. The people that set up the stage want the event to look good. There’s usually plenty of light from the audience’s perspective. What the camera sees is a different story. When Hillary Clinton campaigned in Phoenix the event was held in a high school gym. I’ll wait while you finish shaking your head. So you can imagine the base lighting.

The last few weeks have been busy. All but one of the presidential candidates came through town. I managed to get credentialed to them and got some decent shots. But first, here’s some fun stuff. The hoop dancers were part of the 27th Annual World Championship held at the Heard Museum. The Ostrich racing was part of the Chandler Ostrich Festival. These galleries are also on my photography page. Hoop dancers & Ostrich racing [gallery type=“rectangular” link=“none” ids=“1732,1733,1734,1735,1736,1737,1738,1739”]

I originally planned to do more frequent updates on this, but found that there wouldn’t be much to report. It’s been two months since I hung the test strip in a south-facing window. During that time we’ve had one of the hottest Februarys on record. Test strip in window. For a quick review, see the first article in this series. Here’s the side-by-side scan of the two halves. Scan of both halves.