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Photo above: Palomar
Observatory interior photo. Hand-held exposure of
about 1/2 second length (no tripod), holding camera
lens against glass window of the observation room.
Had to hold lens against the glass to avoid
reflections caused by florescent lights in the
visitors' observation room. Used a film camera to
take advantage of my widest angle lens. Used high
speed film due to the long hand-held exposure,and
it shows grain. I could have avoided the grain
using a slower film, but camera motion might have
occurred and caused blurring. I'd rather have a
sharp image. A one-half second exposure is hard to
hand-hold sharply but I did it. Observation room
can be seen in the next photo below.
Photo
above: Visitors' observation room at Palomar
Observatory (the "200 inch Hale telescope") near
Escondido, southern California. Note florescent
lamp reflections in the glass. That's why for the
telescope shot (previous photo) I had to
hand-held my camera lens against the glass to avoid
the reflections. This photo taken with the digital
camera I use for photographing weddings. Note the
image's high quality.
Photo above from Phil
Asher's retirement dinner, April 6, 2010 at
Cassidy's Restaurant (really really nice
restaurant at Boomtown in Verdi, Nevada. Shot
on film camera by the waitress.
Above: Phil Asher's
son Phil Asher and his wife Shawn.
Snapshot above: Phil
Asher portrait relaxing at Terrible's near the
Nevada-California state line.
Photo
above: Terrible's has Bonnie
& Clyde's car on display. Bonne and Clyde
should have been nicer folks, the car wouldn't have
all those unsightly bullet holes.
Photo above: Here we
are posing in front of the world famous La Brea Tar
Pits. We watched tar & methane gas bubbling up
at least once a minute. Located at Wilshire
& Fairfax (near La Brea Av.), a mere mile
from where I used to work in Hollywood. Of course I
never went inside the museum when I was near
it every day. I only visited it after moving
500 miles north.
The museum has a
convenient underground parking garage (at the
LA County Museum of Art which is on the same
grounds.)
Photo above: Saber
Tooth Tiger skeleton inside La Brea Tar Pit's
museum. They call it a "cat" instead of a
"tiger" but look at that tooth. You don't need a
PhD to see it's not a cat. Duh. (Photographed using
Doug's digital wedding camera with a combination of
electronic fill flash plus ambient lighting. Fill
flash provided by my Nikon SB600 external
flash.)
Photo above: Mastodon
skeleton at La Brea Tar Pit's museum. Also
photographed using Doug's digital wedding camera.
Combination of existing light plus electronic flash
fill bounced off the ceiling -- I pointed my
external Nikon SB600 flash head upward and to the
right.
If you look closely you'll
see this ship has run aground into concrete. Must
have been very embarrassing for the Navy.
Photographed using my digital wedding camera at
night (a Fuji S3 Pro), which is a camera
specifically designed to capture the widest
possible dynamic range of brightness (light to
dark) in a single image.
For an interesting
comparison shot, see below.
See
Lighting makes all the
difference! Above: This daylight view of the
same Navy ship is ordinary and "blah" looking
compared to the night shot. The night shot uses
multiple light sources (electronic flash plus
street & flood lamps.) I photograph
weddings the same way --- using multiple light
sources whenever possible. Big difference the in
the results!
Photo above: On
Sunday morning we attended a church service in
Carlsbad, California at North Coast Calvary Chapel.
I was hesitant mostly because I thought this
denomination would have overly loud rock music - my
wife gets migraines from loud music and excessive
lighting. But so much for stereotypes! The music
was acoustic guitar and piano with a deliberately
understated drummer's style (the drummer's style
was totally perfect for this), plus saxophone -
clarinet. Each musician and singer was great.
I am an experienced
audio person and know you don't have to blast out
the audience's ears if your music and sound mix are
high quality! Well, it totally met my high class
sophisticated standards. Volume level was perfect,
I estimate just 78-80 decibels whch is just
right, and way below the threshold of pain that too
many "contemporary" style churches use. The
pastor was excellent and his preaching style was
like a college instructor's. That's a good thing,
especially for an educated geographical area.
Again, so much for stereotypes!
The reason we had selected
this church to visit is because my sister, who
lives in Carlsbad, had been invited there several
times by one of her friends. I totally enjoyed this
church and so did Beverly.
Photographed on Doug's
digital wedding photography camera (Fuji S3 Pro)
using 18mm wide angle lens with f-stop f:2.8 and
camera sensitivity of ISO 800, no flash.
DOUG'S
COMMENTARY: Our experience at North Coast
Calvary Chapel was so positive that if we lived in
that area (which we don't) I could
probably talk Beverly into attending or joining
this church with me.
Years ago Beverly had
repeated unsatisfactory experiences with
charistmatic churches in Northern California, which
had severely turned her off to this type of
denomination. (Calvary Chapel would be classified
as a charismatic denomination.) DOUG'S
OBSERVATION:: This perfectly illustrates
something I learned shooting wedding pictures where
I've observed many many churches behind the scenes.
Here's what I learned:
You can have two churches
of the same denomination (fill in the blank for any
denomination) where one church is
horrible and the other
"identical" church across town is excellent.
So when a person has had
bad experiences at Church XYZ, it is not true that
every church is just like it.
That principle is true
whether one is rating churches or restaurants.
Logically, people who have
been "turned off to church" ought to try a
better church across town. Don't give up food
because you used to eat at a bad restaurant. Stop
eating at the bad restaurant and find a normal one!
Principle: Churches
will good or bad for the same reasons as
restaurants. It is a function of the character
of their managers and staffs (which will affect the
quality of the food they will feed you.)
They're not all
alike.
This church's
link is at: http://www.northcoastcalvary.org
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