December 22, 2004

• PhotoPost: Christmas Holidays

  Welcome to another edition of Photopost. I dug back in the archives for these. Most are digital videocaptures from the first JVC digital in 1998 and 2001. The first was taken at Disneyland in 2001. It was raining so I replaced the sky. The Christmas Tree is also tweaked with a paste job from another photo of the tree. And the whole thing is colorized. Don’t ever trust any photo you see on the web. I think I achieved the “color tinted post card look” I was after in the composite. The resolution in the video captures taken from the old camera, even shot as “photos” in the new digicam at 640×480, leave a lot to be desired as digital photography, especially with the cameras of today. But it was all there was for me in 2001.

  Next is a still taken at work back in 1998. Since I design electrical circuits, I always wrote my Christmas Greeting in my office in electrical symbols. There’s a circuit breaker, and a double pole single throw switch, and well, you get the idea. That’s the original production board for the client that went out of business on which the greeting is written.

  Now we’ll go in a completely different direction. For those of you who remember Forties Radio, or know the reference, the photo below shows what I call Fibber McGee’s Garage, and why I have to park my car on the street. This area is filled with a decade’s worth of (possibly worthless) “stuff” and I rarely go in there anymore. While storing a friend’s “stuff” the other day, I snapped this photo. That’s Joel’s perfectly good almost new mountain bike on the right. He bought it for Burning Man last year and rode it, then put it here where it has remained since. I’m no different. Along the back wall (which can’t even be seen even if standing in front of the garage door from certain angles) are boxes and boxes of old magazine collections which have probably turned to dust by now. Someday I gotta go through this “stuff”. (We even have a Mormon friend’s “stores” in there, so if Bush does cause the world to go screwey, I’m ready. That is, if I can get to it.)

  Here’s another photo taken in 2001 at Disneyland, actually footage from a digital videotape. This of course is the “entrance” at the Main Street Station as seen through a window on the monorail. This was the shortly after the monorail started running again after being shut down for the construction of the “California Adventure”. The link takes you to my “Travel” site section when they opened the park. I didn’t “tweak” this photo at all. It was raining for most of the two days I was there but did clear up for periods so I did enjoy myself.

  Lastly, I’m posting a photo (of a photo) showing my parents. This is one of the few photos of them I have in my possession. Now that I know where my sister is, (She wrote in her letter “Dear Long Lost Brother”) who has the rest, (something like eight albums worth, if memory serves) I can go visit her and take digital stills or scans from the negatives or prints. I think my mom was about 30 in this photo, about to have me. Dad would have been 35. He started balding, like me, at 27. The dog is Sparky. I might be “mis remembering” the dog’s name, now mind you. But I’m pretty sure that’s the name even though it’s probably been 30 years since I last thought of it.

  

  Dad died at 54 in 1974 from his 13th heart attack. I was 21 and should have graduated from USC that year but didn’t. Mom followed him three years later from complications relating to the stroke in 1972 which paralyzed her. As Christmas is almost here, I think of the old family. It was really neat that last Christmas before my mother had the stroke. My brother now lives somewhere in Humboldt County. Perhaps he’ll call this year on my birthday, since he didn’t last year. Merry Christmas, Mom and Pop, and Sis and Bro. Remember that last Christmas before Mom had the stroke. It was 1971. We each gave lots of presents that year. Call or write anytime, Sis and Bro. You’ve had my email and website addresses for years. I’ve been in the same house for a decade. Google me. I’m not the one who’s LOST.

  God Bless Us One and All

  • 11:59 pm
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