Remind Me Again

This is a song I wrote a long time back. I forgot all about it in with the drafts of unfinished blog posts that I have started and never finished. This one is finished now, so time to post it. For reference, I wrote this right after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting and that's what was weighing on me at the time.

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i woke up today and the world had changed
we're so much different but still the same
something is gone and it won't be back

side by side we're all miles away
shoes are empty the smiles fade
our song has all but been forgotten

will we remember what we had and when
or was it ever there and did it end
is this all how it's supposed to be?

is it true that all of us are telling lies
behind locked doors and in disguise

written words and muffled sighs
when the life we knew met its demise

i've been so far, what have i found
lost in ourselves when you come around
you speak life and truth without a sound
and i still listen for the echoes in this town

with lights and words for all to see
they sell you things that were already free
but the only one who's really fooled is me

so i will look away to the joy that i keep
to the path that is laid out before my feet
shed a light on us and the words that we speak

and find us another day to start again
where we can shake free of it all again
and take the steady hand guiding us back again

remind me who you are again
i've forgotten all i knew again
remind us all again

Shadows On the Wall

After taking the kids' pictures in front of a wall and capturing their shadows, I started thinking about ways to make shadows that look like something out of a dream, or maybe even something that looks like a still from a movie.

Most of the ideas I came up with would involve making costumes and building props and going to a lot of time and expense to get the right shot. I'm not opposed to going to a lot of work to get the right shot, but I also don't have all the time in the world and I am no expert at trying to photograph shadows. I discovered when I was taking pictures of Rose and Emily that it is tricky to capture the shadows in a way that really makes them stand out. Doing that on a smaller scale might make the learning curve easier.

So with that in mind I decided to create shadows on a smaller scale by cutting out shapes from black card stock. Since Halloween is approaching, it seemed fitting to do something based on a scary movie and since shadows tend to be utilized a lot in horror movies it wasn't hard to find some good examples.

I settled on an iconic scene from "Nosferatu", a silent film from 1922 and the very first vampire movie. It was a super creepy movie surrounded by controversy and at one point a judge ordered all copies of the movie destroyed. And just like the plot to a scary movie, only one copy managed to escape destruction and it has been duplicated and distributed for audiences to watch for many years.

This is the scene from that film that I decided to recreate:

I traced the outline of his shadow and transferred the line drawing onto black card stock. Using an X-acto knife, I carefully cut out the shape of Orlok and the railing to the stairway. Cynthia helped me set them up on an old changing table that we still have in the basement and using a utility light and a piece of foam board for the background, we had a set built!

I couldn't use a professional studio strobe for this because the reflectors inside the light housing create diffused shadows (which is exactly what they are supposed to do), so I had to take an old utility light and modify it to produce a crisp, clear shadow. I'm still going to modify it some more, but for now this will work.

Here's the result:

It looked stark and creepy, but I thought if I added some wallpaper to the background it might add to the realism. I printed off an image of wallpaper that I found online and taped it to the foam board:

Now that's more like it! The wallpaper gave it some more texture and made it look like he is sneaking around in someone's house. The red coloring in this was produced by Cynthia holding up a transparent red storage bin lid in front of the utility light. The wallpaper was actually a weird greenish-gray color, so this was an improvement.

Here's my setup:

A closer look:

Cynthia also came up with the idea of using the clip to hold up the cutout. I used one of her old VHS tapes to make the shadow of the doorway.

It took a lot of tinkering to get the lighting just right and to make the shadow strong enough without placing the cutout so close that it would be in the shot. It was a cool experiment and now I want to try a few more!

These Are Not the Bikes You Are Looking For

I sat in the parking lot with the engine off. The hotel looked really dark and ominous and for some reason it didn't seem like I expected. No lights were on in any windows and it was night. That should be a bad sign, right? Tom Bodett at Motel 6 would not approve of this. I checked in anyway, and soon discovered that the whole place was a den of thieves. Not that they were looking to steal from me, but it seemed everyone in that place was scheming to steal from someone else.

After I had dropped off my luggage in my room, I went back down to the lobby for a minute (I don't remember why) and a bunch of cyclists in spandex were huddled on sofas wearing their helmets and plotting something. As I walked past, one of them stopped me and said that they needed a driver. That cracked me up since they all had bikes. Why do they need a driver? They insisted that they needed a driver and that they would pay me $50,000 cash to be their driver. I asked how soon they needed a ride.

They told me to back my car up to the front door of a nearby casino resort at a specific time on the following day. I would need to be there on time, not a second late and wait for them. Then, when they arrived, I would need to take off as soon as they all got in the car and drive them about 15 minutes away. Sounded like an easy way to make $50,000 to me.

The next day I sat in my car with it backed up in front of the main entrance to the casino resort. They told me to get as close as I could without blocking the door, so I had backed up the sidewalk, up the concrete steps, and was sitting right in the entryway waiting.

Suddenly, all of the cyclists appeared. They all wore ridiculous spandex outfits with blue helmets and they all furiously rode yellow bikes. They raced up the steps, threw their bikes on the ground in front of the doors, pulled out machine guns, and went charging in through the main doors.

This was not at all what I expected. That whole entrance should have been a deal-breaker, but I wanted to see what happened. I hadn't committed any crime, so no reason I would be in trouble for anything they did.

A moment later a U-Haul truck came barreling into the parking lot and right up to the entrance next to me. The cyclists all came bursting out the doors again with large duffle bags that seemed to be very heavy. One cyclist threw open my car door and tossed a bag full of money on the front seat next to me while the others opened the trunk and somehow managed to cram ALL of their bikes into the trunk AND close it. "There's your cut. Make the bikes disappear." And then they all piled into the U-Haul, the driver peeled out and they were gone.

Well that was unexpected. Now what? I pulled forward slowly and drove back down the steps. I parked the car in a parking space and sat there wondering what I should do. Just then, someone knocked on my window. It was one of the cyclists! "You don't have to take off anywhere, just don't let anyone ever find those bikes. No one saw you doing anything; you were out here in your car the whole time, so no one will be looking for you. You should go inside and grab a bite to eat. Really. The food is great here." Then he ran away.

I got out and walked to the building and just then the whole parking lot flooded with cop cars and even a helicopter was flying overhead. Everyone ran past me and into the building. I ordered a meal and discovered that the food was really good. There was a lot of commotion all around me, but no one bothered me. The cops questioned everyone except me and kept asking people if they had seen a group of cyclists on yellow bikes.

I have no idea why I did this, but I went back out to my car, grabbed a yellow bike out of the trunk and rolled it into the restaurant. I leaned it against my table and resumed eating. A cop came over and gave me a stern look. "Where did you get this bike?" he asked. "It's not mine," I said. That was good enough for him, so he walked away.

And that was the end of that dream. Weird, huh?

More Fun in the Sun

We played around with shadows on a wall today...

Along the Cedar River...

Sun

A few pictures I took of sunlight...

DSM

We took a kid-free trip to Des Moines for the weekend, saw some bands, had some good food, and visited some of the old places where we used to go. On Friday night, we went down Court Ave. and enjoyed some really good live music. Saturday morning we went to Gray's Lake for breakfast after stopping at Dahl's for doughnuts. Dahl's bakery makes some really good doughnuts and we used to stop there for breakfast sometimes.

And guess what else I found at Dahl's? EGG NOG. I do like me some eggnog, so I had that for breakfast, too. I don't care if that makes you want to puke, it was great and I liked it.

We walked around downtown for a bit Saturday morning and I took pictures of whatever as we walked along...

There's the old courthouse (below). I used to work in that tan building behind it and to the right. One day some crazy dude started spray painting expletives on a truck in front of the courthouse, so the cops tried to stop him. At work, we heard all the commotion and looked outside. He took off running and then pulled out a gun and turned on the cops. They shot and killed him in the street. The gun turned out to be a fake. Very sad and very bizarre. Anyway, that's a fun bit of trivia there.

A shot of the Des Moines River...

The High Crest band playing downtown.

I was hoping to get my reflection in his shades in this one, but you can't quite see me.

As I was taking pictures of them, a hippie came up to me and stood there watching. The dude was a few years younger than me, had a full beard, a tie dye shirt, shorts, birkenstocks, and a bandana with a native American design on it. He seemed very chill and reeked of herb. "What do you take pictures of?" he asked me. "Everything that catches my interest," I told him. That was a satisfactory answer and he nodded in solemn approval. Looking up at the sky, he said, "There were some really interesting clouds earlier. The contrast between the buildings and the sky was really cool." "Yeah, I took several pictures of the clouds behind the tall buildings earlier," I said. Again, solemn approval.

We saw a friend of ours from Cedar Rapids selling granola at the farmer's market and stopped to talk for a bit. I took senior pictures of her son a couple years ago and it was cool to catch up.

At the Court Ave. Brewery for lunch...

A lot of memories going back to Des Moines. I don't miss living there at all, but it was cool to go back and see all the old places we used to go to and goof off and revisit for a while. And yeah, there is way more to do at night in Des Moines than in CR!

Quiet Flyers

On Tuesday night after hanging out for a while at the Cedar Valley Park, the kids climbed into the back of the truck and we drove down Cole Street just off of Otis Road and as we rounded a corner, we saw a line of cars parked along the side of the road and a large rc plane swooped down buzzed across the open grassy field to our right.

We parked in the grass and walked over to the field to watch. The CR Quiet Flyers Club (electric rc planes only) had gathered there and they were lined up in lawn chairs at the edge of the field and flying their planes. It was very cool to watch! One of the larger planes had gotten stuck in the power lines, but luckily that guy had a whole fleet of planes, so he didn't skip a beat, but kept right on flying them.

I had my camera along with me, so I took a lot of pictures. It is ridiculously difficult taking pictures of rc planes. When you are facing into the setting sun, then away from the sun, then up at the sky, and all the while trying to focus on a small object that is moving very quickly and getting closer and then farther away... that will keep you on your toes. I've never adjusted so many settings on my camera so fast! It took a bit of trial and error to get some decent shots.

I used manual focus in some shots and autofocus in others. It's hard to say which method is better. I did discover that if I used a slow shutter speed (which would seem counter intuitive), and panned the camera at the same speed as the plane, I could get a crisp shot of the plane, but cause the background to have a horizontal blur, which makes the plane stand out better in the pictures. This effect is really only noticeable when the plane is up close. Luckily, a few of the guys intentionally flew their planes right in front of me several times so that I could get a decent shot. And the plane that you see in the last three pictures... that one got too close and about took us out! He had trouble getting it to respond to the controller and had to crash it intentionally before it hit anything.

This was the first plane I saw (oops):

And this one the other guys jokingly referred to as "the leaf blower" because it was so loud, but it was impressive to watch. It had some serious power and flew very fast, but also used up its battery quickly, too. I hardly got any pictures of it because it was too quick, so focusing the camera on it was extremely difficult.

This little plane flew the ENTIRE time we were out there. I'm not sure how long we were there, but it was a while. This plane outlasted all the others.

The leaf blower again...

This was my favorite plane out of all of 'em. It had LED lights all along the wings and fuselage and it was really trippy to watch.

Alliant Energy showed up amazingly fast to take the plane down out of the power lines. They hung around a bit to watch the planes fly and took pictures with their cell phones.

I was trying to take a picture of Emily and somehow got a picture of the plane. Er, wait, maybe it was the other way around...

This might be the best shot I got of this plane...

This plane had a lot of lights!