Photography

A Farewell to Blogs

Don Horn — Wed, 03 May 2006 11:18:00 GMT

Well, I see that this is my first post here since December of 2004, and I can only conclude that I'm no blogger.   After my last post, my online focus shifted to maintaining a couple of mostly visually-oriented web sites. I started with a photo gallery, incorporating most of the photos originally posted here in my short-lived "Photo of the Day" series (a project that was perhaps a bit too ambitious).   I've added several more photos, but nowhere near one a day. I've also added much of the other content that originally appeared here, plus a little more. In a sense it's like a blog, but at a slower pace.

Last July, I discovered a large cache of Kodachrome photos of trains taken by my dad, dating back to around 1951. I was already selling Dad's collection of paper railroad collectibles on eBay, and so I decided to start posting a "Railroad Photo of the Week" for my customer base. Since then, I've actually managed to continue to post at least one new photo each week, and that collection has grown into a site of its own.

The bottom line is that this will no doubt be my last post here, and instead I'll continue to concentrate on expanding and reorganizing my web pages (although I expect the pace will slow down some as the weather gets nicer).

The current home page for my personal site is:

     http://www.pangraph.com/main/   (see the Links page for additional pages)

and Dad's train photos are at:

    http://www.rrpix.pangraph.com/

Gallery Re-0rg

Don Horn — Mon, 06 Dec 2004 10:49:00 GMT

After a lapse of a couple of months, I've managed to update the Photo of the Day continuously for a few weeks. I hope to continue adding a new post every day and avoid having to change the name to Photo of the Month. I've probably got enough photos to last every day for a few years, if I can keep up with sorting through them and getting them scanned.

Anyway, the POTD gallery was starting to fill up, so I've moved older posts to other galleries, a practice which I'll continue from time to time. Any photos that I post from now on will show up in the POTD sooner or later, even if they're initially posted in another gallery. I've also created new galleries for San Francisco in general and for Cliff House, since I have tons of photos in these two categories. Another new gallery is called "Photo Collection" which, as the name implies, will be photos that I've collected rather than taken myself.

The Decisive Moment

Don Horn — Fri, 06 Aug 2004 19:27:00 GMT

H. Cartier-Bresson 1908 - 2004
Henri Cartier-Bresson, master of "the decisive moment" died this week, just short of his 96th birthday. There's a nice sampling of his work on this page:

On the Banks of the Marne, 1938

Back in the '80s, I wandered the streets of San Francisco, semi-consciously emulating the master (along with a few others). The unfortunate appearance of H. C-B. in the news has inspired me to finally begin a series that I've been contemplating for a while, publishing a foto du jour in my blog. Here's my first entry (with apologies to Henri):

Green Valley Restaurant, North Beach

Adams Ranch Panorama Redux

Don Horn — Mon, 31 May 2004 12:36:00 GMT

A while back, I posted a set of panoramic photos that when put together covered a 360 degree view of Adams Ranch. These are still viewable in my gallery. I also posted a larger set of files, around 1MB each, that were scaled to print at about 3" x 10". Links to those are in my blog entry.

At the time, I had also intended to post even larger versions, formatted to print on Epson 8x23" panoramic sheets, or on 8" continuous rolls. However, I had numerous technical difficulties, and wasn't able to load them. Now that there's a newer version of the Jumano Blog software, it appears the problems have been fixed, and I've posted them here:

Large Panel 1 Large Panel 2

Large Panel 3 Large Panel 4

These are JPEG format, and the images are 6" high by about 20" long, except for panel 3, which is about 13" long. File sizes are about 9MB each, so depending on your connection speed, you might want to plan to pursue other activities while they're downloading. These are intended for printing, and aren't really practical for viewing, unless you have a monitor that's 96 inches wide, or you want to inspect the ranch rock by rock.

Another Buster Sighting

Don Horn — Fri, 12 Mar 2004 09:38:00 GMT

Due to popular demand (thanks, Brenda!), here's another post in the "Travels With Buster" series. Since I haven't been getting out much lately, this one is more along the lines of "Daily Walks With Buster."

Buster in Shooks Run Park

This was taken in a local park as a test of a dime store camera with a plastic lens. Although it was taken in bright sunlight, the vignetting effect of the lens makes it look like a flash photo at night. It's also a little fuzzy, but I resisted the urge to sharpen it up in PhotoShop. Buster is a little fuzzy himself, so it's not a bad lens for him. Will post more lens/camera tests featuring Buster as I get around to scanning them.

Photograph: Manzanita

Don Horn — Thu, 11 Dec 2003 13:22:00 GMT

One of my "fine art" photos from 1986, taken at Camp Sierra near Shaver Lake, scanned from a 4x5 negative. I posted a smaller version of this file in my gallery, and you might want to preview it there before taking the time to download this very large (2.2mb) file.

Feel free to download it for your own personal noncommercial use. This will be too large to view in your browser window, but you can save it and view it in a graphics application. If you want to print it, do it as a black and white photo--don't use colored ink since there are no color channels in the image file.

Preview Manzanita in Gallery

Manzanita Large File

Adams Ranch Panorama

Don Horn — Sun, 23 Nov 2003 14:04:00 GMT

Well, I just finished re-creating my panorama photo of Adams Ranch taken during the 1999-2000 roundup. I've divided it into 4 sections or panels, and sized it so that each panel can be printed on an 8.5x11" sheet. Actually, you should be able to print two panels on a sheet, if you're able to print off center (I usually do this by inserting the photo into a Word doc). These are JPEG files of about 1MB each, so depending on your connection speed, you might need to plan on some download time. You can see a preview of sorts by looking at some earlier, lower resolution versions that I've posted in my "Places" image gallery.

There were 11 original frames, making it hard to divide them into an equal number of segments, so panel 3 is a little smaller in width (and in file size) than the others. Once you print these out, you can line them up together with any one of the panels starting on the left, as long as you keep them in otherwise numerical order. Here are the URLs for downloading:

Panel 1 Panel 2

Panel 3 Panel 4

I also have a set of larger files that are formatted to print on Epson 8x23" panoramic sheets, or on 8" continuous rolls. File sizes are about 9MB each. If anyone is interested in trying to print these, and storage space on the Jumano server isn't a problem, I can upload them as well.