Cher performed in Jacksonville on January 23, 2019. It was an impressive show. Here are some photos.
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Cher in Jacksonville
Category: Photography
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Evening commute distraction
Spotted it coming in for a landing about 10 minutes from home in a field where a Christmas tree stand resides in that season. Pulled over into the driveway, took a few photos, and then relocated to the spot on a side street where this was taken. A moment later, it took off and landed atop a light pole next to Little Black Creek.
Dana and I spot four manatees and other wildlife on a Saturday kayaking adventure to Ichetucknee Springs State Park near Fort White. The river was flooded at the south end and slightly high throughout.
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Scene from the morning commute
The end of my morning commute is a several-minute walk from the parking lot to my office–around the UF football stadium. I looked up and saw this on Tuesday morning.
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Shot with my iPhone, really?
I took this in late January. I’m still amazed that it came out of my iPhone camera. More later.
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Happy Holidays 2011
I guess I didn’t do a very good job last year of blowing the dust off of this site or my work blog. One big reason for that has been the sheer busy-ness at work this year. And working here is a lot like work, even more so this year, and I want to unwind from work when I’m at home. I hit my 10-year anniversary at UF last March and it’s still my dream job. Two other reasons for inactivity here are called Facebook and Twitter, which make sharing brief updates very convenient.
But the biggest reason is that I’ve been working on something very big offline and it’s shown wonderful progress. I’m happy.
Here are some photo albums from the past year:
- New Year’s Eve Ichetucknee River kayaking 2011
- St. Augustine Ice Skating and Lights – Dec. 28, 2011
- Dana and Craig – 2011 – Photos of us from some of the year’s adventures.
- Cockspur Island Lighthouse and Fort Pulaski – Nov. 12, 2011 – Kayaking near Savannah
- Gator Growl – November 4, 2011 – featuring the Goo Goo Dolls
- Duran Duran in Concert – October 13, 2011 – at the St. Augustine Amphitheatre
- UF Gator Football 2011
- Spirit of America concert – Sept. 24, 2011 – at the Jacksonville Veteran’s Memorial Coliseum
- Ichetucknee River Tubing – Labor Day weekend 2011
- Atlas V Juno launch – Aug. 5, 2011 – shot from Playalinda Beach
- Ichetucknee River Tubing – July 15, 2011
- Rainbow River Kayaking – July 14, 2011 – A new favorite place
- SW High Class of 81 30-year reunion weekend – May 20-22, 2011 (on Facebook)
- Launch of Endeavour – May 16, 2011
- Green Cove Springs 3rd of July Fireworks 2011
- St. Augustine Alligator Farm – May 7, 2011
- Launch of Discovery – Feb. 24, 2011
- Weekend at the Postcard Inn – Feb
- GCC Chilly Chili Picnic – Jan. 29, 2011 – My favorite bicycle club event at O’Leno State Park.
Some older stuff not linked here previously:
- Favorites of 2010
- Best of 2010
- Vampire Weekend in Concert – Oct. 14, 2010
- Space geekery – Various photos related to space from all years
Find me elsewhere online:
Check back. I might not be done yet.
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Happy Holidays 2009
Here are some links to stories and photo sets from my adventures of 2009:
Kayaking
- Ichetucknee River – New Year’s Eve 2008
- Sante Fe River – February
- St. Augustine Beach – April
- Ichetucknee River – April — Flood! (and manatees)
- Ichetucknee River – April — Flood, part 2
- Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge – June (lots more manatees)
- Ichetucknee River – October
- Enoree and Broad Rivers in South Carolina – October
- Turkey Creek in Palm Bay, Fla. – October – with the Ryans
- Ichetucknee River – New Year’s Eve 2009
Travel
- South by Southwest Interactive conference 2009 – March
- Panama City Beach vacation – May
- Kayaking in South Carolina – October
- Osborne Holiday Lights at Disney’s Hollywood Studios – just after Christmas
Miscellany
- Garden and butterfly pictures from the year.
- Palatka Fourth of July fireworks over the St. Johns River – July 4.
- Ichetucknee River tubing with my cycling club group – August.
- Midnight launch of the Space Shuttle Discovery – August.
- Gator Football 2009.
- My Best of 2009.
- Happy Holidays 2008 – last year’s version of this.
Find me elsewhere online:
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Succinct camera buying advice
Many of my readers now that being asked for camera buying advice is a somewhat regular occurence for me. Mike Johnston of The Online Photographer summed it up about as well and succinctly as I have ever read in one in a series of recent posts:
“But seriously, here’s how to buy a camera: figure out what lenses you need first, and who has them; figure how big a camera you want to carry; figure out (from that and from the pricing and your budget) what level or tier you’re going to be looking in (and this level is a good one); then pick one and get on with it.”
My usual advice is to find the Canon camera that best fits your budget and desired features and then talk yourself into the next higher-priced model. If someone complains about not wanting to buy a Canon, I tell them that they asked the wrong person for advice. That’s not entirely true, though, since I do occasionally recommend Panasonics too.
Update: The day after writing the above, New York Times personal technology columnist David Pogue offered this even-briefer bit of advice in response to the cocktail-party question, “What camera should I get?”:
“The Canon PowerShot SD880. Or, if you’re willing to carry around a bigger, heavier model (an S.L.R.), the Nikon D5000.”
I’ve recommended the first camera. The latter I’m not very familiar with, but I have long found Nikon’s user interface to be confusing.
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Happy Holidays 2008
Here are some links to stories and photo sets from my adventures of 2008:
Travel
- South by Southwest Interactive conference 2008 – March
- Buffalo/Niagara Falls – March
- Gulf coast road trip – May
- Fall color adventure – October
Kayaking
- Kayaking Turkey Creek near Palm Bay with my brother Andy – Dec. 2007.
- Ichetucknee River – New Year’s Eve 2007 – a.k.a. “Hernia Day.”
- Ichetucknee River – May – wherein I met the Whites, who became my kayaking buddies.
- Santa Fe River – June with the Whites.
- Silver River – July – a new favorite place.
- Salt Springs Run – July – not as interesting as I’d hoped.
- Oklawaha River – September – I may seen enough of that side of the Ocala National Forest now.
- Lake Washington and the St. Johns River with my brother – December.
- Ichetucknee River – New Year’s Eve 2008
Miscellany
- Lunar eclipse – February
- Garden and butterfly pictures from the Summer.
- Night launch of the Space Shuttle Endeavour – November.
- Happy Holidays 2007 – last year’s version of this.
Keep checking back. I might not be done yet.
My photos from my bike club group ride and Ichetucknee River tubing adventure over the weekend were my first successful integration of photography, my recently-acquired GPS unit, and my quest for adventure.
Here’s the toolkit:
- A Flickr account, naturally.
- A digital camera, in this case it was my everything-proof Olympus Stylus 770 SW. This also works with RAW files from my Canon Digital Rebel XSi.
- A GPS unit, such as my Garmin GPSmap 76CSx.
- Garmin’s RoadTrip software for Mac OS X.
- GPSPhotoLinker by Jeffrey J. Early.
Here’s the procedure:
- Synchronize your camera’s time with the GPS unit’s time.
- Take your powered-on GPS unit with you on an adventure. Garmin makes a nice handlebar mount for mine. I also have a boat mount that I plan to put in the kayak. For the tubing, I put it in my dry bag that I took along.
- When you get home, download the photos from the camera to your Mac.
- Using RoadTrip, download your GPS track to your computer and edit the track as necessary. I copy my edited track to its own folder in RoadTrip. Export the folder from RoadTrip, creating a GPX file.
- Open GPSPhotoLinker and load the track and the photos. Use the “View on map” button to preview the position online in Google Maps (the default, others are available). I mostly found myself using the “Time weighted average point.” When you are satisfied with how things are looking, use the “Save to photo” button to write the geographic info into the metadata of the photo file. A batch mode is also available.
- Before uploading to Flickr, You need to set the Import EXIF location data setting in your profile to “Yes.” I don’t know why Flickr doesn’t have a “This photo contains geographic data, do you want to use it?” option when you click, “Add to your map,” but for now, it will only automatically use the data on upload.
- Upload your images to Flickr. If you are editing the images first, make sure you don’t save them with a method that discards the metadata.
- Sit back and enjoy your mapped photos. Here are mine.