Ron’s Photo World

"...played it til my fingers bled..."

01-26-2011

My fingers hurt like hell.

I signed up for Beginning Guitar at Sac City College this semester. I’ve never played a guitar before…never really tried my hand at any musical instrument in a serious way. None, that is, unless you count the time I plunked around on an old accordion when I was 7.

“I’m not musically inclined.” I’m not sure where that notion came from. I’m guessing I got embarrassed when I was a little kid when I tried to sing and someone laughed. Maybe it was the cute girl in class, maybe be it was my fourth grade teacher, “Sister Mary Eff Withyourmind”, hammering home the point with the edge of a ruler. So I grew up without an interest in making music, often a little envious of my peers who could play, and some played quite well. Garage bands in the neighborhood. Jazz bands in college. Me? I am just a music fan.

No interest, until now. Part of my interest in learning to play a guitar comes from the portability of the instrument. A guitar needs no accompaniment, no electricity. Just whip it out and play with it. It is also fun to learn something completely new to me. It’s good for this brain to make it do something unfamiliar. I do not know how to read music, I barely have rhythm. So it’s a challenge on many fronts. The instructor is very good. He’s obviously talented and doesn’t mind working with the students who, like me, have no clue what they’ve gotten themselves into.

First, I’m just learning to place my fingers on the strings in the right places and hoping for a clean strum – that’s all I want. The metal strings don’t have any give to them, so my fingertips are taking all the heat. It is almost like a mini-torture, the pain pushes against the determination, usually ending in a deadlock.

And until the callouses form, my fingers will hurt like hell.

- + -

p.s. Today would have been my dad’s 87th birthday. If he were alive today, I wonder what new tricks he would be learning right now.

12-19-2010

It seems like the holiday rush is all around. Even with the economy as bad as it has ever been, the stores are crowded, the roads are jammed and people are still shopping.

The above image was taken in 1/5 second… a lot can happen in that brief instant. But for this person, it was just one footstep.

- + -

09-30-2009

I was driving home from a photoshoot and noticed that my odometer was rolling over a bunch of 13′s. It’s a good thing I’m not superstitious (I’ve heard that it’s bad luck to be superstitious) or I might have been worried that something bad was about to happen. I was more interested in stopping in a safe spot and taking this photo. Lucky for me I was able to stop at just the right moment. I parked in a nice little quiet spot, positioned  just under a ladder, in front of a black-cat-crossing, and I think my tires were resting on a crack in the street.

I can’t help it if I’m lucky.

- + -

08-28-2009

Somebody’s day is about to get ugly.

- + -

July 3, 2009

Happy 4th of July!

After the Sacramento Rivercats game ended on Friday night, they had a pretty nice fireworks display at Raley Field. This was taken from across the Sacramento River along the promenade. I included one of the towers of the Tower Bridge because I wanted a stationary and recognizable object in the image in order to provide some scale to the fireworks.

Fireworks photos are pretty easy, if you can control the shutter speed of your camera. For a time exposure, a sturdy tripod is essential to keep the camera from moving during the exposure. I used a 10 second time exposure for this shot – I also set the lens at f/22 (ISO 200). This gave me a good base exposure for the bridge. I just locked the shutter open while a few fireworks bursts went off. It’s hit or miss, sometimes you’ll get a lot of bursts (and sometimes more is not better), other times, there won’t be very many bursts.

- + -

10-12-2008

It’s getting easier to get around town on a bike. With more cyclists hitting the road to beat the gas prices, auto drivers are getting used to bicycles maneuvering through traffic. This photo is meant to give the viewer the sense of relative movement between cars and bikes. Even in a bike lane, it’s a little un-nerving when a car whizzes past my shoulder with a speed difference of 25-30 MPH.

This photo was taken with a remote setup. My Canon Digital Rebel XT was mounted on a bracket attached to the rear axle of the bike. The camera was remotely triggered with a radio trigger in my right hand. The bracket was made from a shelf bracket I picked up at Home Depot. I drilled out the holes so I could attach one end of the bracket to the bike axle and the other end holds a ball-head for adjusting the camera. (You can click on the photos to see a larger image.)

I set the camera to manual exposure with a slow shutter speed (1/30 sec.) in order to gain some motion blur from the moving car and roadway.

- + -

09/03/2008

Laying in a hammock can be very relaxing and soothing. You feel almost weightless while suspended between two large trees. This image makes a hammock look more like a thrill ride.

I slowed down the shutter speed to 1/2 second and panned the camera in synch with the swinging motion. It took several attempts to get the image of Laura sharp enough to tell it was a person inside all that motion.

- + -

08-25-2007

It can be very refreshing to ride a bicycle along a quiet mountain road. The only sounds you hear are the buzz of knobby tires on asphalt and the wind in the treetops.

06-11-2007

I stayed up late and played around with different ways to light glass objects – this is one of the results.