Nebraska Spring

The lilacs up close.

I can tell it's spring.  The tornado sirens have wailed and the lilacs have bloomed.​

The lens was about eight inches from the flowers when I took this photo.  At that distance it's difficult to keep things in focus.  The depth of field is pretty thin, even stopped down to f/10.  I had to break out a monopod to steady the camera and get a sharp image.​

gs​

Temptation?

Cinnamon Rolls

No one will confuse me with a food photographer.  This photo started out as a snapshot taken during a fundraiser.  The original was a pretty noisy photo taken under dim fluorescent lights and wasn't very appealing.  After an application of Lightroom's noise reduction and a pass through a couple of filters from Nik's Color Effects, it doesn't look too bad. 

gs 

Working at Home - 1974

Home Office - 1974

We like to think the Internet made working from home possible, but people have always worked AT home. I ran across these old photos as I was scanning a tray of old slides from 1974. Today, of course, most of the things you see here have been replaced.

The typewriter has been replaced by the word processor. The desk calendar has moved to my phone. The gray container is a humidor that held a set of technical drafting pens.  Drafting moved to Computer Aided Design. Even the pencils play a much smaller role today. None of the classrooms where I teach have pencil sharpeners. I seldom use pencils outside of my workshop.

There is an HP-45 calculator setting atop the book. It's just out of the frame to the right. It was the closest thing to a computer at the time. The first computer kit (The Altair) would be introduced the following year and "Personal Computers" wouldn't really become useful for for another decade. The Internet wouldn't be generally available until several years after that.

Bathroom/Darkroom

Lightroom and Photoshop have replaced the darkroom you see in photo to the left.  (The enlarger is covered to protect it from dust.)

My only phone was wired to the wall in the kitchen. I hadn't yet had an extension phone installed in the office. Cell phones wouldn't be around for several years.

Things have certainly changed. The Technical pens, calculator, typewriter and darkroom equipment cost about $10,000 in today's dollars. Now, I could do the work of all of these tools on a relatively inexpensive laptop computer. If I tried hard enough I could do most of the work on my phone.  GS

Sunday in Fonenelle Forest - 1970

Bob, his wife and the borrowed Nikon

The guy laying on the ground is Bob.  He had just slipped on a small patch of ice.  His wife is looking down, asking if he is hurt.

This picture would be a lot better if I had taken one step to the left.  You would have a clear view of the happy look on Bob's face.  

He's holding up the camera to show that it never hit the ground.  The camera is a brand new, Nikon F with the Photomic meter attachment.  In February of 1970 that was a very expensive camera and it wasn't Bob's.

We worked in a camera store.  Bob was my Manager.  The pay was pretty typical for a retail store but there were a couple of valuable benefits for a photographer.  There were significant discounts on film processing and equipment purchases.  Borrowing equipment from the store was the best benefit.  It didn't cost anything to borrow equipment.  You just signed for it.  Of course, you were responsible for bringing it back in the same condition that it had left the store.

That camera was worth more than a couple of months of Bob's pay.  That's why, when he fell, he didn't let the camera touch the ground.  In case your wondering, Bob wasn't hurt.  On Monday Bob, the camera and I all returned to work in the condition we had left the store.

gs