feren

Just a photo of my best friend, taken on October 16th, 2011. Today (April 3rd 2015) marks the 3 month anniversary of his passing over the Rainbow Bridge.

Thank you, Ra. Though losing you was devastating, I want to remember you as you were in hale and hearty days.

Thank you for sharing your journey and all of your love with me. Daddy misses you dearly, buddy.

Haven't posted in a long time. Here, have something unoriginal and trite.

---

Suspended by ~panfah on deviantART

Ladies and gentlemen of the LazyWeb, I am about to give back to you.

I shoot in RAW format on my Canon 40D. I have grown weary of the fine folks at Canon dicking around and being utterly unable to provide a codec for 64-bit versions of Windows. All I want to do is be able to see thumbnails of my photos in RAW format that are on my CF card or hard drive. Is that so much to ask?

Well, judging by the utter silence out of Canon, yes. Yes it is.

Even as technology marches inexorably onward and 64-bit operating systems become increasingly more common (Hell, Solaris has been 64-bit since 1998 and pretty much anybody who mattered announced or released a 64-bit capable OS in 2003, people!) Canon seems intent on punishing those of us who want to actually be able to use the full potential of our machines by refusing to publish a 64bit-friendly codec for the RAW files (CR2) produced by my 40D dSLR and other models. I can find no word to use other than "refusing" since they've been asked repeatedly over the last two years and constantly do not act upon the requests. This flat out denial means that users of Windows XP x64, Windows Vista x64 (what I used to run) and the platform I'm on currently, Windows 7 x64, are essentially shit out of luck. Sure, I can run Adobe Lightroom 2.6 in 64-bit, hell, Adobe's been supporting my 64-bit experience since I first installed Lightroom back in 2008, and hell they even supported using multiple cores; it's been smooth sailing with them every step of the way. Pulling in 8GB of RAW files and converting them to Digital Negative (.DNG) would have been hell if I had been in the 32bit world, unable to take advantage of my 8GB of RAM in this rig. But Canon? Not so forward-thinking.

Fellow suffering Canon owners, rejoice! Your salvation is at hand. A little company out of Switzerland, called Axel Rietschin Software Developments has heard our cries. They have released a codec pack for purchase, called the FastPictureViewer Codec Pack. It supports Windows 32-bit and Windows 64-bit. It supports tons of RAw files, not just Canon's (I counted Minolta, Nikon, Sony and Kodak amidst many, many others). The install is easy, purchase is easy, everything's easy. They fix what lazy, wayward manufacturers will not. And the software is on sale right now for an absolute steal compared to what other third-party codec providers are charging.

Act now.

It's official, Kodak is retiring Kodachrome film at the end of 2009.

I love my digital camera, but film is what I grew up with and learned on. I still appreciate the many benefits film has over digital (not the least of which is simple "archivability"), so this stings on a personal level even though I never did any darkroom work myself.

Why do the good always die young?

According to this New York Times article, New York cops think it is -- even though they're dead wrong. Not that being wrong stopped them from harassing, arresting and issuing a number of summons to the photographer. Lawsuits will probably (and quite rightly) ensue, with the tax payers of New York ultimately footing the bill for the ignorance and paranoia of these cops.

And so it goes. Isn' it amazing how a bit of glass and film (or glass and flash storage media) can be so incredibly dangerous in the minds of certain individuals who should know better?

Except, perhaps, when you're being encouraged by Amtrack to take pictures of their trains. I don't even know what to say about this.

Armed with his Canon 5D and his new Lensbaby lens, photographer Duane Kerzic was out to win Amtrak’s annual photo contest this week, hoping to win $1,000 in travel vouchers and have his photo published in Amtrak’s annual calendar.

He ended up getting arrested by Amtrak police; handcuffed to a wall in a holding cell inside New York City’s Penn Station, accused of criminal trespass.
Kerciz says he was hardly trespassing because he was taking photos from the train platform; the same one used by thousands of commuters everyday to step on and off the train.

“The only reason they arrested me was because I refused to delete my images,” Kerzic said in a phone interview with Photography is Not a Crime on Friday.

Full story at this Prison Planet article, since the main reporting site (Carlosmiller.com) is currently returning naught but 403 errors.

Inspectors Test by *panfah on deviantART


Inspector's Spigot by *panfah on deviantART

Shot in mid-December of 2008, these were from when markvd and I were doing some explorations during the renovation of our newly acquired building in Wood Dale, IL. This sign and drain spigot were in the 2nd floor boiler room, looking like they were a few decades older than I know the building actually is.

Up-front disclaimer: No, it was not a Daily Deviation.

I keep a pair of galleries for my work. One is at FA, the other is on dART. Most of you who read this journal are familiar with DeviantART because it's the system I use to post my work as "deviations" to my LiveJournal. I balance my work so that FA and dART pretty much mirror one another, so it's not as if one gallery gets sooper seekrit work while the other doesn't. I keep them both mirrored simply because they offer exposure to different types of audiences and I enjoy being able to share my efforts. Do I have a favorite? Not really. I like FA and dART pretty much equally, though dART is a bit superior as it seems to have less problems reading the EXIF data from my photos. And it doesn't limit the size of my images to 1280x1280. And it lets me post my work directly to my LJ, as you all well know. And dART has a working search function.... but I digress.

I haven't been doing much posting on either site for the last month because I've been busy with work and personal matters. Imagine my surprise when I signed into DeviantART the other day and found that a user (tainte-truffle) had put together a narrative complimented by a collection of photographs -- and that one of my photographs had been included! That's right, my "Missing Door" piece was featured in the "Abandoned Places" collection alongside some other fantastic works.

I'm incredibly honored and I don't mind saying that it really made my day.

Those interested can see the "Abandoned Places" collection at http://news.deviantart.com/article/64552/

Trucks Hauling Ass by *panfah on deviantART

Trying to make up for being quiet on LJ and not posting many photographs as of late, I've been mostly doing post-processing and other work. However, while I was running through a batch of Minnesota photos tonight, I came across this one - and since it made me grin I had to share it.