Saturday, July 04, 2009
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
f233
I went to the nearby botanical gardens this morning with a newly installed pinhole with a 0.150 mm aperture. That is a little small from my focal length of around 35 mm, but it seems a bit sharper to me than the recommended 0.220 mm aperture. I do need to blacken the back side of the pinhole disk as I got a narrow, arcing flare in a couple frames. The sunny scene exposure at 100 ISO with this f-stop is two seconds.
I went to the nearby botanical gardens this morning with a newly installed pinhole with a 0.150 mm aperture. That is a little small from my focal length of around 35 mm, but it seems a bit sharper to me than the recommended 0.220 mm aperture. I do need to blacken the back side of the pinhole disk as I got a narrow, arcing flare in a couple frames. The sunny scene exposure at 100 ISO with this f-stop is two seconds.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
morning flight
The world probably doesn't need more balloon photos, but it's hard to resist their appeal as they drift close by. This one touched down about 25 feet from my car just after I had parked for a walk near the river. The pilot was following another balloon that had made a perfect landing a few minutes earlier, coming down just yards from the chase truck. A fickle breeze pushed the second one a bit too close to a car-filled parking lot, and the pilot shot a jet of flame up into his envelope to lift up again and drift southward over the riverside bosque.
The world probably doesn't need more balloon photos, but it's hard to resist their appeal as they drift close by. This one touched down about 25 feet from my car just after I had parked for a walk near the river. The pilot was following another balloon that had made a perfect landing a few minutes earlier, coming down just yards from the chase truck. A fickle breeze pushed the second one a bit too close to a car-filled parking lot, and the pilot shot a jet of flame up into his envelope to lift up again and drift southward over the riverside bosque.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Friday, June 26, 2009
Public Transportation
Phoenix is a good place to indulge an interest in urban design. There is a lot of interesting late Twentieth-Century architecture downtown, and new buildings are always on the way up. I think the place is particularly appealing for me partly because downtown Albuquerque is such an architectural disaster area. Also, it is about as easy to get around in Phoenix as in Albuquerque, even though the Arizona city is much the larger.
Phoenicians probably thought the traffic jam on Central due to the light rail construction would never end. Now that it is operational, however, one of the most impressive aspects of the new system is the way it fits so seamlessly into the city grid. The trolleys have their own lane down the middle of the streets and the rate of travel is well-coordinated with the lights and traffic flow to interfere very minimally with the vehicular traffic. The sleek design of the trolley cars and the minimalist stations fits very nicely with the look of the city.
At present, the ticketing system is largely symbolic. The saguaro-enhanced tickets are dispensed from machines near the stops at a reasonable rate of $2.50 for all-day transportation. Nobody bothers to check if riders actually have tickets after boarding, but I suppose that will change once the ridership is firmly established.
Electronic parking meters and ticketing machines like those in Phoenix have recently become nearly as ubiquitous as the ATM. The previous generations of such devices, while based on mechanical designs, nevertheless incorporated many of the same concepts for managing service delivery currently in use. There is a very fine article on the development of ticket-dispensing to be found at the Design Observer blog.
Phoenix is a good place to indulge an interest in urban design. There is a lot of interesting late Twentieth-Century architecture downtown, and new buildings are always on the way up. I think the place is particularly appealing for me partly because downtown Albuquerque is such an architectural disaster area. Also, it is about as easy to get around in Phoenix as in Albuquerque, even though the Arizona city is much the larger.
Phoenicians probably thought the traffic jam on Central due to the light rail construction would never end. Now that it is operational, however, one of the most impressive aspects of the new system is the way it fits so seamlessly into the city grid. The trolleys have their own lane down the middle of the streets and the rate of travel is well-coordinated with the lights and traffic flow to interfere very minimally with the vehicular traffic. The sleek design of the trolley cars and the minimalist stations fits very nicely with the look of the city.
At present, the ticketing system is largely symbolic. The saguaro-enhanced tickets are dispensed from machines near the stops at a reasonable rate of $2.50 for all-day transportation. Nobody bothers to check if riders actually have tickets after boarding, but I suppose that will change once the ridership is firmly established.
Electronic parking meters and ticketing machines like those in Phoenix have recently become nearly as ubiquitous as the ATM. The previous generations of such devices, while based on mechanical designs, nevertheless incorporated many of the same concepts for managing service delivery currently in use. There is a very fine article on the development of ticket-dispensing to be found at the Design Observer blog.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Cottonwood Bosque
The flowers are Evening Primrose beside the toy train track at Tingley Beach where I left the car. I grew some like these from seed this year, but haven't seen any flowers on them so far. Maybe next year.
The flowers are Evening Primrose beside the toy train track at Tingley Beach where I left the car. I grew some like these from seed this year, but haven't seen any flowers on them so far. Maybe next year.
Monday, June 22, 2009
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