wilson bridge non-explosion

Maybe Hollywood movies primed me to expect big orange fireballs during explosions, but the Wilson Bridge demolition was sort of a letdown for me and the hundreds of people who turned out on the waters edge in Alexandria. I showed up at 10:30pm with my camera and tripod hoping to have enough time to set up and actually learn how to take night photos as I had never tried it before. I had the entire little park to myself where Wilkes Street meets the water, but not for long as the crowds started filling in the park and surrounding me as I was trying to figure out how to work the camera for the shot.

Set camera to shutter priority mode: check. Of course with every crowd, there are loud talkers who happened to settle in near me. Everyone apparently thinks they are either a comedian, the best narrator/storyteller in the world, or particularly in this case, a traffic and highway engineeer. Bump up ISO/sensor sensitivity: check. I had about ten minutes of quiet to myself, before the first people showed up. At first it was couples out for a walk just stopping to catch a view, that was fine -- they were quiet too. Switch lens to manual focus: check. Then the peanut gallery showed up: I lived in San Francisco once and it's really cool by the water. Roger Woodward survived Niagara Falls. Wilson Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down. They need to make diagonal parking just like on 9th Street. All of that jibber jabber couldn't escape my ear as I was running my 50-photo experiment to determine which shutter speed would work the best.

The moment of truth finally came at 11:59pm. Well, not really. This is Washington. At 11:59, there were still cars going across the bridge. As I was finally ready to take the shot, I held down my shutter button anyway, just in case they decided to blow up the bridge with traffic still passing by. Of course they didn't though. Thirty minutes of listening to people speculate and pointing out every... single... car... on... the... bridge, the traffic eventually stopped and the crowd started to cheer. I heard a horn, I pressed and held my shutter button down, my camera started to click away, and then a tremendous, thunderous explosion. However, sound travels slower than light, and there was no light! No flash, sparks, or fireballs. Just a puff of dust. Granted, there was a building blocking the view, but everyone out there was hoping for something. Some sort of explosive, fiery retribution for what the bridge meant in their lives: wretched workday gridlock across two states, delayed trips to the beach, missing appointments and events, white knuckle driving, and the idiocy of a drawbridge on I-95, the major north-south highway on the east coast. Boos and groans of disappointment -- that is the legacy of the old Wilson Bridge. And to add insult to injury, the streets of Old Town Alexandria became ensnarled in traffic at 1am with the rush of let-down people trying to go home. Meanwhile, I folded up my tripod and sat down on a bench at the end of the dock. I was just happy to have the park all to myself again.


Pre-Blast


Post-Blast (with a sad dust cloud behind the building)

The Washington Post had a much better vantage point as they had access to all the officials on Washington Street at Belle View. They have a good video as a result.

price is right tickets

Tickets

With an intention of seeing a taping of the Price is Right within the next year, my self-addressed stamped envelope is going in the mail tomorrow morning. I don't think I'll be able to make it on stage (I don't have nearly enough energy to impress the people who choose the contestants out of the audience line), but just being there will be an experience of a lifetime.

I don't think people will openly admit they love TPIR, but I can tell you most any kid who grew up in the 80s has imagined spinning the Big Wheel or playing Plinko on stage with Bob Barker.



I ran into some TPIR fanatics at Bay to Breakers last May who built the Plinko board above and had it on wheels, rolling it down the race route and stopping to invite people to play a few chips. I have to give them credit, they did a good job with the board and I enjoyed chatting with the ladies who were dressed up as Barker's Beauties.

Finally, I always wondered as a kid how they had those flashing lights around the screen during the show open. This is long before the era of computer graphics too. Well, thanks to the miracle of the Web, I found the answer:



One camera is used to film the lightbox above, while another camera films those famous pans across the audience as people come on down. Then, someone in the control room overlays the image from the lightbox over the image from the studio audience. Right before Bob Barker comes out, they zoom in on the center of the lightbox to bring up the show title (below). I'm not sure who came up with this idea, but it must have been inventive for the time.



Oh, and if and when I get to travel to Thailand, I'm not coming back until I have a crazy suit just like Rod Roddy's.

arlington music festivals

The City Paper's print edition had two advertisements for upcoming outdoor music festivals in Arlington. They are both free too.

Planet Arlington World Music Festival
Netherlands Carillon (Rosslyn, next to Iwo Jima Memorial)
Saturday 2 September 2006, 4:00-9:00pm

16th Annual Rosslyn Jazz Festival
Gateway Park (Rosslyn, next to Key Bridge)
Saturday 9 September 2006, 1:00-7:00pm

Between these and some art exhibitions I want to catch before they leave town, I think I have a good idea of what I'll be doing these upcoming weekends. Camera in hand, of course.

christmas time is here

Christmas Time Is Here, as performed by the Vince Guaraldi Trio, from A Charlie Brown Christmas came to mind as I was in Costco this
weekend. I saw Christmas LED lights, ornaments, and wreaths on
display for sale. Last time I checked, it's still August!!

best lens for wedding photography?

This is my advice to the many people out there who are asking, "I'm taking photos of a wedding and I want to know what lens/equipment is the best to buy?" The reality is there is no one best lens -- each lens has strengths and weaknesses. So before you jump out and buy or commit to renting equipment, try to come up with a plan or sketch of what the specific wedding scenarios will be:

• Will you be mainly outdoors, indoors, or both?
• Will this be during the day, at night, or span both?
• How much lighting will you have available to you inside?
• How much access will you have to maneuver around the space?
• How much space is there to work with?

Once you think about what the answer to these and other questions are, then you will be able to easily determine what equipment you need. Otherwise, the cart will be coming before the horse and you might show up with a whole bunch of sweet equipment that just doesn't work for the setting that you have.

If you know you have limited space to work with, you might want a zoom lens that can do wide angle to cover a table full of people. If you know the space is vast, you might want more telephoto ranges to work with. If the lighting is dim, you'll need a faster lens. If you want to do portraits in natural light, maybe a prime lens would be best. Needless to say, there are lots of tradeoffs to look at depending on the conditions you will be working with and the style of photography that you like to do.

It's only natural to think of the technology first -- it's exciting and cool. But if you put the questions and goals first, chances are the technology (i.e. lenses) will select itself out and obvious choices will emerge as to what you will need. Especially if you describe the settings that you will be working with in the photographer forums (like flickr), the experts will come out with more consistent answers. Otherwise, it's just all personal preference and personal experience that will dictate the wide variety of answers and suggestions you will get.

I guess this is just me applying the systems approach to photography... Really, it all sounds like common sense, but this is a trap easily fallen into. Especially in the IT industry, where people tend to jump to the latest and greatest technology without thinking about what problem really needs to be solved.

william shatner, rocket man

I came across this video in the washingtonpost.com Celebritology blog in an entry titled, For Bill Shatner, Phasers Set to Roast. It's definitely something!! Shatner is introduced at the 1978 Science Fiction Movie Awards by Bernie Taupin, who composed the song with Elton John, then Shatner does his rendition. (If you're curious, Taupin also wrote the lyrics to "Your Song", "Don't Let the Sun Go Down On Me" and many others for Elton John as well as "We Built This City" for Starship and "These Dreams" for Heart.) In the Family Guy, Stewie Griffin imitates this performance in the episode And The Wiener Is… No doubt I'll be catching the Comedy Central Roast of William Shatner this Sunday at 10pm. They are promoting it as "The Shat hits the fan this Sunday!"

protest photography

On Saturday I went down to Lafayette Square, across the street from the White House, to practice some event photography at a Rally for Lebanon. The Washington Post covered the event in Lebanon Supporters Converge at White House. For the most part, there were a lot of families out trying to show their support for Lebanon and wanting to see an end to the conflict -- they were the nice people. Then there was some of the usual protest riff-raff: anarchists, socialists, and some good old hippies. All peaceful, but some of them gave off a militant vibe, almost counter to the spirit of the rally. It seemed like they were just latching on to the rally for Lebanon to advance their own cause, which had little, if anything, to do with Lebanon. In fact, I saw one guy there who was running for President and trying to draw support.

From the photographic point of view, I only brought one lens with me, my 10-22mm wide angle. A few minutes in, I realized I should have brought at least another lens. With the wide angle lens, I had to get up really close into peoples' faces, as in only a few inches away. When I was taking pictures of the rally on the move, banners would be within a foot of touching me until I was ready to take the shot, after which I had to get up and dart or otherwise be trampled. It was sort of fun though, me being in front of the press photographers, and embedding inside the crowds, where the press didn't bother to venture (they stayed only on the outside perimeter of the crowds). Definitely a challenge overall though: trying to compose as people are moving in and out of the frame, tight crowds, and direct sun from overhead. I like being able to cover lots of activity with the wide angle, but next time I'm definitely carrying the telephoto to give me a chance to do some portraits and some shots without feeling like I am going to get run over if I don't get out of the way in the very last second.

one semester down, five more to go

I just submitted my last final exam for this semester and it's feeling good. I still have some loose ends to tie up, but it feels good to get exams out of the way. The good news is I get month off from classes before the fall semester kicks off :) So, for those of you keeping track, I'm now done with Introduction to Graduate Library Research Skills, Issues in Software Engineering, and Software Project Management. Next up: Systems Engineering and System and Software Standards and Requirements. It's definitely been interesting so far in this Master of Software Engineering program, but Spring 2008 can't come soon enough!