Internet Cats

Internet cats are such a thing people can make a living off their celebrity pet cat. Does Maggie cat have what it takes for me to quit my day job?

Madison County Transit Confluence Trail

For Memorial Day I rode part of the Madison County Transit Confluence Trail which tracks the eastern bank of the Mississippi River just north of St. Louis. The path is poorly marked, the trail isn't paved in places, and overall it is fairly exposed. I can't say I recommend it, but there are some interesting views of  St. Louis City and various industries along the river. Also, there is the occasional bit of wacky charm. This sculpture of a giant head bouncing away from it's tiny body was on a bare street corner in Granite City. 

Possum Opossum

You know what's cute? A baby possum eating dog vomit. That is all. 

Birds on a Building

The weather was too nice to ignore today so I spent some time cycling through south St. Louis. The mural is a Jeff Kapfer design installed recently for the Southampton Neighborhood Association.

IRL

Is this the beginning of the end of www.pluckandlights.blogger.com? Perhaps, I have plans to scale up, to provide a more varied and useful content, and to switch platforms. Between real life squeezing me for attention and lack of experience in web design, though, I have no idea how long the switch will take. A week? A couple of months? We'll see.  
This was an opportunist's shot of a sun ray over a sun ray. Perhaps I've used a bit too much Photoshop in post but what I really needed was a strong flash, which I didn't have, to pull this shot off. 

Dirty Bird

Mom turned 60 last weekend and we celebrated by going to Grant's Farm. This handsome fellow was one of Grant's exotic birds that had escaped his perch. He was landborne, and was slowly making his way towards the fence and the greedy hands of children that don't know better than to avoid his beak of doom. Really, that beak can crush nuts, and children are all kinds of nuts. The bird was giving a staff member the fits, though, before someone gave him a ride back to his stand. Perhaps the bird had tasted human flesh before?

DayQuil Tinted Glasses

I'm playing hooky from work today. It's legit, my sinuses were inflamed yesterday and today I have a cough and a fever. Still, I don't like calling in sick; it's tough to keep experimental momentum in biochemical research, and this has put me two days in the hole. The bright side is I get to spend the day with my feet propped up on the couch. True, I'm heavily under the influence of cold medicine right now, and I am attempting to work on a paper today – instead of watching movies – but I do like this couch. 

I'll be off the blog for a couple of days. We have family visiting over the weekend so I probably won't return until Monday. Hopefully, I'll get a chance to shoot some new material next week. 

Lemon Katie

I was reading a tutorial today on making double exposures with DSLRs. The tutorial was specific for Canon 5D Mark III cameras, which have a more robust multiple exposure function than my Nikon 5200, but I found I am still able to make them in camera. After trying a few, however, I decided I would have more control over such things in Photoshop.  True enough, but as with most things this heavily manipulated it's difficult to make it look natural. And there is nothing more natural than a Katie full of lemons. 

Goin' Pro

For fun, I've been looking into what it would take to be a professional blogger. Basically, to make ends meet, I'd have to have on the order of half a million page views a month. In the past four months I've had almost two thousand. At current AdSense rates that puts me at about $12 pre-tax profit for four months worth of work.

Not too shabby... As long as I don't need money.  

Chicken Little

In lieu of a grassy lawn our landlord has planted the backyard with leafy plants and perennial flowers. We let the dogs trample through it but they don't make a dent in the vegetation. The plants are rugged, hardened by the harsh St. Louis weather. The advantages of this style are that yard looks nice and it requires little effort in maintenance. It's smart. I do find our landlord's choice in lawn art amusing though. The nude concrete bust looks like a sculpture of a butchered chicken to me. 

Mystique-ish Photoshop

Alright, so take a perfectly good iris highlight and turn it into something cartoony and dumb. This is my playing around with layer masks in Photoshop. Somehow, I've made it a long time without figuring out that layer masks make life easier in Photoshop.

That eye and hairline need some work, but this was mostly a get-a-feel-for-the-tools session. 

Caffeinated

I do not envy drug addicts. My caffeine fast lasted all of two days before I reintroduced coffee into my diet. It was two days of a mild hell. My head throbbed, my muscles ached, my nose ran and I was so damn sleepy. On the third day I decided going through withdrawals was not worth the effort. Luckily, caffeine is the only drug I've ever developed a physical dependence to and it is relatively benign. I can imagine the trials an addict to a dangerous drug has to go through to stop — and I include nicotine as a dangerous drug. 

Of course, the photo above has nothing to do with drug addiction. It's an artless selfie of me. I'm posting it because I came across a Photoshop tutorial on Phlearn that describes a technique for making the eyes of your subject pop. I'm using the technique heavy handedly here, along with my standard mix of tricks, but there is real potential here for legitimate touch ups. It's fun, and straightforward, but not something I would have figured out on my own easily. 

Fire Fire

Short post tonight: I decided to give up caffeine for awhile and today is day one of the fast – horrible, horrible flu-like symptoms. This fire is a good representation of what's going on in my skull. 

Ho ho ho

I've been posting a lot of archive shots lately for two reasons. First, I enjoy being a tourist through my own work – it's interesting which shots I liked back then and which ones I like now. Sure, my past and present preferences overlap, but not always. The difference, I think, is that I'm not as biased now by my original vision, and whether or not that vision was achieved, than on day I took the shot. So, I'm seeing the photo in a different light. My second reason for mining the archives is, I fear, that I've been lazy. There isn't much new material to draw from because I haven't taken the time to shoot.  Worse, I've been drooling over new photography gear during my turn at sloth. 

Let's not be that guy shall we?

The spray of color above is from a mistake. I bumped my tripod while taking pictures of Christmas lights back in December. The effect was interesting enough though to try to recreate it. Of course, none of my deliberate attempts turned out as well. 

Cutthroat

Anyone who follows my online dealings would notice I have an absurdist streak. It flares up when I'm at my most nihilistic because I'm frustrated over something – which, with my current career track and lackluster resume, happens frequently. To relieve stress, I try to make myself laugh with visual and verbal non sequitors. Not everyone gets it – actually, a surprising number of people take me at face value – but that's fine by me, others' reactions become part of the joke.

That said, while I haven't yet found the voice for this blog I don't want it to always be the joke that only a narrow audience gets. So, enough already with the niece gifs. Today's post is more sincere, it's simply an image I rather liked. The photo is a shallow-depth-of-field shot of Eugene Field's cutthroat razor. It can be found in his field house museum in downtown St. Louis. 

Just Because 2

Well, so I was thinking the only way to get better at this photography thing was to push my comfort zone both creatively and technically. To really challenge myself, I looked through my sister's  Facebook page, the sister that is the most tolerant of this kind of thing, and started downloading pictures of meals that I thought looked good to eat. I then decided to put my niece dancing in her Motorhead T-shirt (not Photoshopped) on top of the food.  

It was a lot of effort but I believe you will agree this is one of my most important pieces.*

*Now that I've watched this a few times I realize I forgot a series with her Chicago Hot Dog Salad dish. She forgot the celery salt and sport peppers on that salad though so I don't think it really counted.

Catching Up

I just noticed that the blog has just reached as many unique page views as its parent blog, A Day in St. Louis. It has only taken me four times as long to reach that number since changing the name to Pluck and Lights.  I'm fine with that, I've also noticed I get much fewer non-human visitors. So, this blog gets fewer numbers but more people.

Today's photo is another archive shot. This was taken in Chicago's China town when I visited the city for a job fair about a year ago. The job fair, unfortunately, didn't go anywhere but I wasn't trying very hard. It seemed that everyone was wearing a suit and tie except for me. While I didn't dress like a slob, I didn't see the point in getting all starched up to walk around booths to collect corporate swag.  Also, I despise corporate swag -- so what was I doing there exactly? Well, to network presumably, but I didn't meet anyone I was much interested in talking to. So, after ducking out of the fair early I went to China Town in search of one my favorite dishes, Sichuan pork intestines. Unfortunately, the Chinese bistro I went to didn't have that so I settled for a cumin lamb stir fry instead. It wasn't spectacular, but it was certainly better than being over dressed and eating fast food at the convention center. 

Just Because

Apparently my niece walks now. This video was shot of her at an Easter egg hunt a week ago. I have no idea why her parents thought Devil horns were appropriate for an Easter egg hunt -- they do listen to that punk-rock music though.

Oooo, Dr. Waldman can make a stoopid animation!