Posted 9:43 PM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: Dawn Patrol

Sunrise at Lick Observatory, June 1995

This photo may look a little crooked, as if the camera was not being held straight. That's just an optical illusion created by the slope of the ridge line in the background. Yes.

This was taken from Mt. Hamilton Rd. just east of the 3m telescope (above me on my right, out of the picture). The main building is visible on the peak in the background.

The large white dome on the left side of the main building holds the historic 36" refractor. That link says that it's the second-largest refractor in the world, second only to the 40" refractor at Yerkes Observatory in Wisconsin. That's what I always thought, too, but Wikipedia (WARNING! WIKIPEDIA!) says that the second largest is the 1m (39") Swedish Solar Telescope in the Canaries. Its design is not a traditional refractor design, although it does have a 1m lens. So we'll give it an asterisk.

BUT MY POINT, before I got bogged down in minutiae, was that the tiny white dome on the right side of the main building holds a 40" reflector. Yes, the tiny dome holds a bigger telescope than the huge dome. Bigger in diameter, that is, which is the important parameter. The refractor is of course much longer than the reflector, which is why it needs all that dome.

Through the miracle of Blogger, this post has gone back in time. It was posted on Friday, though it is in fact Sunday as I write. Do not attempt to adjust your browser. We control the horizontal. We control the vertical. And we control time. So don't piss us off.

Labels: California, Foto Friday

Posted 10:02 PM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: Eye on the Sky

200 in. Hale Telescope
Mt. Palomar, CA, July 1995

In my prints of this, the telescope glows with an unearthly light. It took a lot of fiddling to even begin to reproduce it in this image. I think it had something to do with the polarization and reflection off the white paint.

This was the largest telescope in the world for something like 50 years. There's a Russian telescope that's a meter larger. According to Wikipedia its first light was in 1975, but even in the late '80s it was having grave difficulties, and was not really working.

Nowadays, of course, 5m is not considered any great shakes. The largest single mirrors are the (twin!) 8.4m mirrors of the Large Binocular Telescope in Arizona. (See here for a gripping 2003 tale of how the first mirror was moved up the mountain.)

If you use many small mirrors you can make telescopes much larger, of course. The proposed names for these telescopes are getting larger and sillier too, with the European Extremely Large Telescope (42m), the Overwhelmingly Large Telescope (100m), and the Jaw-Droppingly Mind-Crushingly Huge Telescope (1 gagjillion m). I might've made that last one up. (I think the OWLT has in favor of the more modest EELT.)

Speaking of gripping tales, the story of the building of the Hale Telescope is told in The Perfect Machine, by Ronald Florence. This great book turns glass pouring into high drama.

Oh, yeah: Palomar linky.

Labels: California, Foto Friday

Posted 8:39 PM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: Sublime?

Bridalveil Fall as seen from Tunnel View in Yosemite. I believe that this post could be used to cure insomnia.

Bridalveil Fall
Yosemite, Aug. 1995

In his essay, "Men Without Chests", C.S. Lewis illustrates his theme with an example about a waterfall. A couple of English teachers, writing in a children's textbook, had taken the poet Samuel Coleridge to task for something he'd written: Two tourists view a waterfall. One pronounces it "sublime". The other declares it is "pretty". Coleridge sides with the first tourist, and is disgusted by the second.

The textbook writers go on to say that what Coleridge really meant was that the waterfall made him feel sublime, and warn against confusing our feelings about a thing with properties of the thing itself.

Out of this thin thread Lewis weaves a shroud for humanity. No! he insists! The waterfall is sublime! To deny the sublimity of the waterfall is to reduce everything to the status of opinion. Taken to a really silly extreme, this will lead to men who are afraid to assert the intrinsic sublimity of waterfalls, or the truth of anything, at all, ever.

Sorry, perfesser. The waterfall is merely channeled water meeting a steep gradient in terrain. The "sublime" is the part the viewer contributes.

Now, I know that there will be those who jump up and down shouting, "But Lewis was right! Today we are afraid of asserting the truth of our own truths! The value of our own values!" Speak for yourselves, o hollow men.

I was wondering just what exactly Coleridge had said, and tried to google it up. But nearly every hit was referring to the Lewis essay. Except one.

Not the unabashed assertion of truths here. Try not to let your eyes roll completely out of your head as you read of the continual affront to women depicted as spectators at various events, forced to endure male companionship and even conversation.

Anyhow, here Luke Gibbons quotes from Coleridge's On the Principles of Genial Criticism:

Many years ago, the writer, [i.e. Coleridge -- AS] in company with an accidental party of travellers, was gazing on a cataract of great height, breadth, and impetuosity, the summit of which appeared to blend with the sky and the clouds, while the lower part was hidden in rocks and trees; and on his observing that it was, in the strictest sense of the word, a sublime object, a lady present assented with warmth to the remark, adding - 'Yes! And it is not only sublime, but beautiful and absolutely pretty!

I put it to you that "absolutely pretty" is no fitting judgment for the waterfall that Coleridge describes, and that he was merely lamenting the poverty of the woman's vocabulary. (And I assert this value judgment as fact, as Lewis would've wanted.) From that tiny seed did Lewis's hollow men grow, as well as Gibbons's assertion that the anecdote -- this is "clear" -- means that the female gaze is no match for the sublime, and must express itself in flippant and trivial terms.

There, now. Are you asleep yet?

Labels: California, Foto Friday

Posted 10:26 PM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: Sierra Sunset

Sunset on the Sierras
California, Aug. 1995

Almost forgot! I got some time to scan last week. I had hoped to get a couple rolls done, plus some of Mom's pictures scanned. But it took me all flippin' afternoon to do one roll of Yosemite. So here's some of it.

Don't remember where this was, and it's too late to go googling around. The clouds add a nice touch. Looks like the mountain is thinking about something. You can't really see it, but there's a river at the bottom. Perhaps I should have cropped it off, or left more sky. I usually assume a 1.5 (or 0.67) aspect ratio is best for pictures, but some require something different.

Photo needs some cosmetic diddling, but I very nearly forgot to post one, so you get what you get.

There, I think that's enough words.

Labels: California, Foto Friday

Posted 8:55 PM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: Owens Valley

The print made from this negative is beautiful, but the scan is being recalcitrant. It's OK, I guess:

Owens Valley, California, Aug. 1995

There's more off to the left, but I couldn't capture it. This is one of those occasions were you need a wider lens. And less polarizer. And more cowbell.

Somewhere down there (maybe on the left) is the Owens River, which is basically a big snaky ditch funneling water to Los Angeles, hundreds of miles to the south. For details, see the fine documentary film, Chinatown.

Labels: California, Foto Friday

Posted 8:39 PM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: On a Clear Day You Can See Fresno

This could also be titled, Careful with That Polarizer, Eugene! Yes, it is possible to overdo the polarizer. I wish I knew exactly where this was within the park (Polarization Lookout, 1/4 mile), but I don't.

Sequoia/Kings Canyon National Park
California, Oct. 1995

Hmmm. Busy this week. That's all I got for that.

I has a new lens, though! I went out into the park and took some experimental pictures with it. I took the same shots with both the old and new lens, for comparison purposes. The new one looks to have a sharper focus, but I can't be sure until I see the pictures. They probably won't show up here, being mostly boring flowers.

If you're very good, though, you might get to see some black & white pictures of Rice University. Eventually.

Labels: California, Foto Friday

Posted 1:12 PM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: This Is the Forest Primeval

Sequoia National Park, California
Oct. 1995

Well, no, because forests primeval do not have fences and paved paths.

I had beautiful pictures of the Owens Valley to show you, but I decided something went wrong in the scanning and they need to be re-done. They look pretty -- almost as if the landscape were made of brass. But they are not Right. So instead you get these trees.

I was disappointed somewhat with photographing the Big Trees: they were so dark! Except for the parts that were so bright. When the photographs came out they were either under-exposed or over-exposed, except for the ones which were both.

But in this brave new world of image-diddling software, I can fix that. So here's a shot that actually came out kinda nice. Not spectacular, but good enough.

Labels: California, Foto Friday

Posted 6:17 PM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: Mt. Whitney

Mt. Whitney, California, Aug. 1995

From the August 1995 trip, which began in Yosemite, stopped off at Mono Lake, and finished at Death Valley (last week's Foto Friday).

Mt. Whitney is the highest peak in the continental U.S. (The highest peak in North America is Mt. McKinley, in Alaska, and the highest in the Western Hemisphere is Aconcagua, in Argentina. Wikipedia has many fascinating tidbits about Mt. Whitney, some of which are probably true. It also has pictures better than mine, damn them.)

This is the way the mountain looks from the town of Lone Pine (which is not to be confused with Big Pine, just up the road a piece) -- or, to be specific, the second floor of our motel in Lone Pine. When I scanned these pictures yesterday, I was disappointed to find faint horizontal lines across the lower part of the picture. Were they some sort of scratches on the negative? Or could they be roads? One of them kind of looks like a road on a distant mountain.

On close examination they revealed themselves to be...power lines. I was too lazy to edit them out.

Mt. Whitney is within Sequoia National Park, but you can't see it from the normal park hangouts or views (like Moro Rock -- although I think there's an arrow up there which points in Mt. Whitney's direction).

Labels: California, Foto Friday

Posted 11:20 AM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: Zabriskie Point

On our "real" 1995 vacation, we went to Yosemite, then over Tioga Pass, down US 395, past Mt. Whitney, to Death Valley. Lotta pictures from that trip. I was saving this one until I could try to mosaic it with several others, but that will have to wait for another day.

Zabriskie Point, Death Valley, California
Aug. 1995

Here's the Google maps link to the area. The round thing at the top of the image (I hope) is the lookout. I believe the dark ridge on the right of my image is part of the dark line that runs diagonally across the bottom of the satellite map. If I get some time to figure it out, I'll see if I can display the Google map later.

The short version is, those wrinkles are a lot further away than they look.

Labels: California, Foto Friday

Posted 2:38 PM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: Camp Curry

As part of their continuing saga of last year's vacation (to be continued, if David plays his cards right, until next year's vacation) the Fleck y Breen griped about Camp Curry. In particular:

The whole thing is raised up about 2 feet off the ground, but is only about eight inches away from its neighbor tents...The canvas walls offer very little privacy; everything that happens in the neighboring tents sounds like it's happening at our very elbows, as, in fact, it is.

Ha! This is an utter calumny, as demonstrated in this photo from, er, 1995. Not 2006.

Camp Curry,
Yosemite, June 1995

None of these was our cabin, but it is typical of their spacing at the time. It does look sort of Civil War-ish in the B&W photo, doesn't it? Actually I was trying to capture the impromptu stairstep waterfall above. It had snowed quite a bit that winter, and was just melting in June. Tioga Pass was still closed.

To tell the truth, I was pleasantly surprised by the accommodations. There were actual flush toilets (not in the cabins, but in other buildings) and there wasn't an inch of standing sewage on the floor, so that was better than many campgrounds I've been to (which is why I don't go camping, as a rule).

Even Niles, who is most definitely an indoor boyfriend (always bathing his contacts and flossing his teeth and steam-cleaning his pores and god knows what-all) doesn't remember the bathrooms with horror, but instead bitches about the cold. It was quite cold, and the narrow twin bunks did not permit snuggling together for warmth.

This is one of those pictures I was sure would turn out all Anselly Adamsish, and it, um, didn't. Next time!

For really cool photographs, see Carel Struycken's Spherical Panoramas. Requires Quicktime or DevalVR (whatever that is). Now, when he says "spherical", he does not mean "cylindrical". That is, you can not only do a 360 degree pan, you can pan to zenith and nadir as well. Nadir -- where you'd expect to find a tripod or something. But it's not there! How dey do dat?

Carel Struycken was the tall guy who played Mr. Homn, Lwaxana Troi's manservant, in Star Trek:TNG. Actor, composer, photographer -- pretty interesting guy. Apparently "discovered" walking down the street. (No information on whether he was singing, "Doo wah diddy, diddy dum, diddy doo.") Check out the Trek-themed spherical panoramas here.

UPDATE: Whoa! Coincidence city! Who should appear tonight on Men in Black but Carel Struycken. (He was the friend of the tiny alien in the little old man suit, the one who kept the galaxy on his cat's collar. Whatever the hell that was all about.)

Via Lileks.

Labels: California, Foto Friday

Posted 8:14 PM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: Artists' Drive

Artists' Drive, Death Valley, CA, Aug. 1995

Almost forgot about Foto Friday! Don't have much to say about this: the sky is an impossibly dark blue, and there seems to be a pyramid lurking over in the upper right, waiting to pounce. It might've wandered over from Vegas.

The colors are caused by various minerals in the rock, as you might imagine. Looks like a spumoni spill. There are other views of the area which resemble delicious fudge ripple.

We went in August, as you can see, and it was hot, but it wasn't that hot. I don't think it was over 100. Someone told us that only foreigners go to Death Valley in the summer, and so it proved.

I'd like to go back some day and spend about a week photographing the place. I'd go out at sunrise and sunset, and spend the rest of the day sleeping. I'll have to become rich first: the ice cream was pricey.

Labels: California, Foto Friday

Posted 10:17 PM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: Fine Arts

Woof! Just getting in under the wire today. I had to do some work (so unfair!) that took up most of the day. Have some fine arts.

Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco, July 1996

I was going to gripe that this wasn't the greatest picture in the world, but then I cropped it and fiddled with it, and it turned out much better than I'd thought.

So, I've changed my mind: it is the greatest picture in the world. Except for some of my other ones.

Don't have much to say about the P of FA, except that it's real neat, and that there's a cheesy MST3K movie -- whose name will suddenly occur to me in about three weeks -- that has a brief scene in which stunt men in Roman-ish armor perform a little tepid swordplay amongst the columns.

I nearly choked when I saw it. It kinda precipitates the disbelief when you recognize Ancient Whatsopolis from your vacation. "Watch out, Maximus! I tripped over that sidewalk in 1996!"

Labels: California, Foto Friday

Posted 3:24 PM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: Cerulean Blue

Boy, am I angry.

Ha ha. OK, that's a little joke that I'll explain later, if I can. Meantime, let's look at something cool and soothing.

Emerald Bay, Lake Tahoe, Aug. 1998

Not the most stunning picture I've ever taken, but so soooothing, no? The blues and greens, so caaaaaalm. Ceruuuulean bluuue.

The print of this photo is very intensely blue and green. The scan was much wishy-washier, with the greens looking kind of yellow and raggedy. Probably more like they did in real life. So I fiddled with the colors to recover the lush greens. Didn't quite make it, though. That makes Me SO--- No, no: calm.

Labels: California, Foto Friday

Posted 1:21 PM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: The Shrine

This is another from last week's set. I was struck by the spookiness of this photo. There's a sense of unease about it, as if, in exploring some public space, you'd stumbled into a private one, or onto a grave.

It would make a good album cover.

Laurentine Hamilton Courtyard
Mt. Hamilton, CA, June 1995

This is the Laurentine Hamilton Courtyard up at Lick Observatory. You can take a virtual tour of the observatory. Here's the Hamilton Courtyard page. Click on the picture to see a close-up.

Laurentine Hamilton is, of course, the fellow for whom Mt. Hamilton is named. He was a Presbyterian-turned-Unitarian minister. In 1861 he went up the mountain with a surveyor friend; they had to hike the last three miles. Since the surveyor and his assistant were burdened with instruments -- and Rev. Hamilton was not -- he was able to make it to the summit ahead of them. Ha ha ha. And so the mountain was named for him. He dropped dead during an Easter sermon in 1882. (And that's what sprinting up mountains gets you.)

In the 1990s his granddaughter, Clara-Belle Lorraine Hamilton, gave the money for this courtyard to Lick, and she also gave money for a spectrograph.

This was taken on a windy day, so windy that the fountain was bent to the right, and water was blown all over the concrete. You might be able to see the motion blur in the trees, too.

Here's a St. Louis blogger who has some pictures of the courtyard and observatory.

Labels: California, Foto Friday

Posted 9:23 AM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday in Black and White

I have shot precisely one roll of black and white film -- as an experiment, back in 1995. I finally got around to scanning some things, and decided to do this roll. The results were less than exciting when printed, and they're not any better on the computer screen.

Lick Observatory, June 1995

I took several photos of Lick Observatory, and then went on to Yosemite and finished off the roll. When I went to the lab to pick up the photos, I said something to the clerk about how, gosh, I took these in black and white, and they still don't look like Ansel Adams. Huh.

This provoked an angry response from the other clerk. Adams was a genius! How dare you...! Amateurs! Sputter! Sputter! The clerk I was talking to, who knew a joke when he heard it, stared at him. I hope he switched to decaf and felt better.

This was the Adams photo I was thinking about when I took it. That was taken to the northeast of wherever I was standing when I took this one. I think he had to climb a fire tower to get that angle.

Of course, Adams could make nice pictures because he had fancy cameras and special filters and stuff. Plus, he knew what he was doing.

So, it isn't exactly Ansel Adams, but it does have a sort of 50s-scifi-movie look to it, and I guess that'll have to do.

The Lick Observatory site is supposed to have a gallery of Lick images, but there aren't really very many there. There is a set of pictures taken during the big snowfall of 2001. I particularly like this one, which looks like a scale model of something.

This site is supposed to have a bunch of Lick photos, but they aren't up yet. The one it does have is a doozy, though. It rarely storms in Northern California, and I sure as hell wouldn't want to be gadding about in one like that. I'm willing to go pretty far in pursuit of a good shot, but carbonization is too far.

Labels: California, Foto Friday

Posted 12:41 PM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: Tunnel Vision

Just got off an eight-hour flight, and boy are my legs tired!

Yeah, I know that's not the joke, but they are. The plane was jam-packed, and I have long legs, and the guy in front of me insisted on his God-given right to recline his seat to the fullest. I retaliated by giving him a knee in the back at every opportunity. (Actually, I had no choice.)

After four hours my legs lost all sensation, and it wasn't so bad.

Anyhow, I have challenged the Fleck y Breen to a Yosemite picture contest. Here's my entry: The View---

Tunnel View, Yosemite National Park, Aug. 1995

David Fleck put it very well in his post: That can't be real. The earth has done an impossible thing here.

It's called "Tunnel View" because it's directly in front of a tunnel. As I told David, I'm surprised there aren't more wrecks there, where the drivers are suddenly confronted with the impossible.

That's scanned from a print, not from the negative. Often that doesn't work well, but it did in this case (after considerable cosmetic spot-cleaning). I previously posted this Yosemite photo:

Yosemite Falls, Aug. 1995

That image was scanned from a negative, and you see that the colors are not as warm as those in the Tunnel View photo (the colors in the two prints are comparable). I couldn't quite recover that warmth when I was fiddling with it, but I didn't try very hard. I was torn between the more natural look of the negative scan and the warmer, prettier print colors.

Here's a famous photograph of the Tunnel View, made back when you couldn't fiddle with the levels in GIMP or Photoshop. I have that as a poster. Apparently you can buy that original for an undisclosed price. If, you know, you're Bill Gates.

Labels: California, Foto Friday

Posted 2:07 PM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: Chasing Waterfalls

Waterfalls aren't known for their mobility, so there's really no need to chase them. In Yosemite, however, it is best to go at certain times of the year, else some of them dry up.

Yosemite Falls, Aug. 1995

Technically, that's Upper Yosemite Falls. The lower falls are hidden behind the trees.

This was part of the Great Vacation of '95, in which we went to Yosemite, Mono Lake, and down to Death Valley (which hasn't been posted yet). We missed much on the way (like the Devil's Postpile[1]), so we'll probably have to do it again one day.

[1]That would be a good name for a blog.

Labels: California, Foto Friday

Posted 1:26 PM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: Golden Grouch

Am not feeling well today. None of my pictures look good. So you'll take what's coming and like it:

Golden Gate Bridge, April 1994

I scanned another roll yesterday (Thursday has become scanning day). They all came out in weird colors, with dust and spots the software wouldn't remove. It's so hard to judge what the colors will be from the laptop screen. I'm going to have to bring the scanner into the study so that I can use the big Samsung monitor, like I am right now. Of course, that doesn't mean that the colors that I'm seeing are the ones you're seeing.

There's a "fade correction" (something like that) on the scanner software. Sometimes it works great, sometimes it doesn't do much, and sometimes, as in the above picture, it seems to do too much. The color of the bridge doesn't look right, but a quick image search shows that others get this color, too, so maybe it's OK.

The prints made off this negative have a pink tinge to the clouds, while the hills and ocean have a dreamy, blurred look to them (which also shows up in this image). I wouldn't be surprised if the film was old.

I like the way the famous beautiful view is enhanced with a caution sign. Next time I'll bring a box to stand on, and maybe I can get a photo without it. (It's not as if I'm short, either.)

This was taken a day or so after I moved to California. I sure miss it. Wish I could go back to stay.

Labels: California, Foto Friday

Posted 6:14 AM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: Tufa Towers

David Fleck says I offended their old pond by calling it "stinky". So here I offer a stinky California lake:

Sunrise on Mono Lake, California, Aug. 1995

Mono Lake is on the eastern side of the Sierras, near the town of Lee Vining. It's fed by internal springs and local rivers, but it has no outlet, so the water leaves only by evaporation. Because of this, Mono Lake is much saltier than the ocean. Decades ago, the city of Los Angeles (which is 300 miles to the south) started diverting water from those rivers, and the lake level dropped. Eventually environmentalists got them to cut it out, and the lake level has risen about ten feet since then.

The weird formations you see there are made of "tufa", aka calcium carbonate. The calcium carbonate is dissolved in the hot underwater springs, but precipitates out in the cool lake water and builds up around the spring source. You could think of them as sort of lake stalagmites (well, as far as I'm concerned you can). I'm not sure whether any tufa towers were protruding when Los Angeles began diverting the water. If not, the rising lake level may eventually cover them completely.

Here are some other people's photos:
Dan Heller
Gerald and Buff Corsi
Andre Gunther

A lot of these are better than mine, of course, but I don't think I did too badly. I was inspired to go to Mono Lake by an article I read in the travel section of the St. Louis Post Dispatch, years and years ago. It was accompanied by a picture of the tufa towers in golden light, looking like something from another world (not unlike the Corsi photo). I was obsessed with getting pictures in this light. I made grumpy old Niles get out before sunrise to go with me, and shot like a fiend while the light lasted. We went out again later in full sun and went on a nature tour. I took more pictures there without trying for Art. I should've, because even in full sun the towers are beautiful, white against the blue lake water. (I don't have any of these scanned in.)

Here's some information about the lake:
Living Lakes
State Park page
Tufa Truths

This was from one of our rare "dedicated" vacations. Usually we go on vacation because one of us has a business trip in the area. I was living in Silicon Valley, then. We drove to Yosemite, over Tioga Pass to Lee Vining, down Hwy 395 past Mt. Whitney to Death Valley. We'd tried to make the trip in June, but the pass was closed. Eventually I'll inflict other photos from this trip on you.

I'm so jazzed about being able to post images that I'm finding it hard to limit myself to one photo a week. But I only have 300M of free space, and at this size that's only about 5000 photos, or 100 years' worth, so I have to restrain myself.

(Actually, I'm thinking of posting some of my more interesting postcards and banknotes, too. Exciting, eh?)

UPDATE: I hate this guy. Look at all those beautiful pictures, many of Mono Lake. I particularly commend this one to your attention. Here are more photos by him. Nice rugged, er, landscape there.

Labels: California, Foto Friday