The Discarded

I was crossing the bridge by my apartment that goes over a creek and saw a bike just sitting in the middle of the rushing water. Made me wonder why someone either threw it over the side of the bridge in the first place, or why someone hadn’t gone to get it. I went down the embankment below the bridge, which was an adventure in itself because it is very steep and still wet from rain. Took a couple photos then dragged it out of the creek. It had a tag with the owners name on it and an address so I am gonna see if I can look the guy up.


I was on my way to the esurplus junk dump, as I like to call it. It’s where all the electronics that are outdated or going to be trashed are taken. There they are sold on online auctions similar to eBay. However, different from eBay an entire computer usually ends up with a final bid of 10 dollars or something silly like that. The computer we are running our web server off of at the apartment we got for 5 bucks from esurplus. They also sell monitors, chairs, cords, well, lots of stuff.


Most of the good stuff is in that warehouse in the background but some of the really old stuff is in those boxes. Unfortunately, when it rains there is nothing covering those boxes so some of it is ruined. So strange sometimes what is considered trash, and what is discarded. A perfectly good bike and a landscape of electronics.

Amtgard

I was driving down the road and saw these people at a park near where I live. There were around 20 of them just going nuts smacking each other. I didn’t have my camera so I went home first and came back, but the rain had reduced the number of people there quite a lot. Thankfully it had stopped raining by the time I got there as rain and cameras don’t mix all that well. I guess it is something called Amtgard. One guy that told me he was dressed as a monk explained a lot of it to me.


Some were fighting each other with weapons made of bamboo with those floater things that you see at pools wrapped around them. A few of them even had shields.


Probably one of the more interesting parts was what people were yelling out of their cars as they drove by. People in cars yelled everything from insults to various quotes from the movie 300. There was even a truck that slowed down to watch and got hit by another car, whoops. Overall, it was really fun to watch these people because they were really into it. Surprisingly no one was injured while I was there.

Under the weather

Your fearless leader has been under the weather the whole weekend so it hasn’t been the most fun the past few days. Along with the constant rain it's been a real blast. I’ll have some real fun photos for you tomorrow. I saw some people doing something pretty interesting while I was coming home from helping a DJ record at the radio station. Almost no DJs are live anymore, it’s kinda sad. Almost everything is prerecorded. The camera is in the car so I am not going to go grab it and upload the photos until tomorrow. You’ll just have to guess what craziness is going on that was enough to have an accident happen from people watching them as they were driving by. Gotta leave you with something though, so here’s some people watching some dolphins at the beach. They were just past the pier but I thought the people were a little more interesting.


This guy must be a stud though, having four girls following him around, not bad.

Ipod pouch

Two posts in one day, scary, but I told my sister I would do this for her and keep forgetting. If you didn’t know, she is an excellent knitter. Some of the things she has made are just beautiful and the artisanship is superb. She has made a little bit of everything. You really need to look at some of this stuff. Can you really get much cuter than this?


She is also part of a group that exchanges Christmas ornaments every year and made quite a few of these for this past Christmas’ exchange.


Clothing too!


Anyway, I got an ipod for Christmas and my sister knit a little pouch for it. She asked me to take some photos of the pouch in action. I was going to take some shots in the studio today but some people were using it so I set up my own little shooting studio in the study area of the Dexter Building for those that know it. They have a nice red felt covering on the seats. Of course, leave it to the Dexter building to have red felt seats. I also found a white poster advertising some weird concert and used that as a white background for some high-key shots. Here’s a few, the rest I am sending to Gidgeflibbit for her knitting collection. The background isn't very white but I'm not one for spending much time in photoshop.

A little about me

Thought I would say a little about myself. I am currently pursuing a Journalism degree and will finish college at the end of this year. With work regarding my major, I have worked for newspapers and a TV station in the past, but I currently work for a radio station doing a morning news show. I write news and produce parts of the show. One of the more unique parts of working for a morning show is getting to work at five in the morning. I have been writing and taking photos for quite a long time. I started writing fiction in 5th grade and the story I wrote got chosen to be performed by the local high school as a short play. That got me going on writing and I have been doing it ever since. As far as photography, my grandma gave me the photo bug. When my sister and I were growing up she was always taking photos of us and she got the nickname Flashburn Della (Della being her name), as we supposedly had glazed over looks in our eyes from so many flashes going off. My first camera was this really funky Kodak thing. I looked for a photo of it but I don’t remember what it was called but it looked a little like this one.
For the longest time I was a total film guy and completely opposed to digital. I developed all my own shots in darkrooms on campus, which was great because you had total control over the exposure of the photo. A little while ago though I finally got a digital camera. Various reasons, but I had to take the digital plunge eventually. I’ll leave you with a shot I took of one of my roommates a few days ago in the studio. He is a relatively quiet and reserved guy so it took a little while to get him to do this shot. It is called a low-key shot if you were wondering.

Lighting used was a Dyna-lite 1000 and a 2000 connected to three soft boxes and goboed for lens flare. Unfortunately I didn’t get the gobo right and the black background is more gray than black. For non studio people gobo is a term used to mean a barrier to “go-between” the light and something else. For example, you can tell that I didn’t block the lights properly from the background or it would be much darker. Instead, you can clearly see its black paper and not a black void as it is supposed to be like in this shot taken by a friend.


Enjoy and have a good weekend all.

The beginning

Welcome to the beginning of Jon de Plume. I have wanted to start this blog for quite a while but never got around to it. I have had a page at FictionPress.com for several years, but you can’t add much more than a bio to your uploaded works. My sister has been my biggest encouragement for starting a blog. Her blog, Gidgeflibbit is quite popular. It doesn’t hurt that she is adored by many and extremely talented. I apologize that the template for my page is currently the same as hers. I like the design, but I will change it once I get the chance to play around with the colors a bit more. Like FictionPress this blog will be updated with new pieces I am working on. I will also upload photos from my studio shoots. Some are available on Flickr, but I will place photos on the blog more frequently. To start the ball rolling this is a shot I did today for a product promotion shoot.

I almost broke the eggs while stacking them. Probably should have boiled them first. I’ve never been one for eating the sugar coated Peeps, they kinda scare me. Simple lighting using a Dyna-lite 2000, a large soft box on a boom tripod, and black paper for the shot. I had the soft box hanging above me so every shot blinded me, oh well, that’s 2000 watts for yah.

Anyway, if you are visiting from FictionPress, welcome, extra reviews coming your way. I will try to update frequently and enjoy.