My editorial on the crash of the SpaceShipTwo spacecraft, Time Editor Jeffrey Kluger's bizarre take on the events, and how his delusion that progress should only occur in an impossible state of perfect safety is not his alone. 

Mom was having difficulty signing for packages while dad is running errands in town, since she can't easily make it downstairs anymore. So I made a thing to help. 

This is my latest work for FirstUAV, a performance of Butoh theater, which I was invited to document with my UAV at the 2014 Ypsilanti Heritage Festival. As far as I can tell this is the first published dance troupe performance that was filmed entirely via UAV, and it's certainly the first Butoh performance filmed via UAV. Many thanks to the dancers, Aimee Adams, Ken Davis, Rachel Finan, Audria Larsen, Katherine Marty, Kari Smith  & Clinton Zimmerman for working together with me to make this work; I think this performance was very well suited to the medium we recorded it in. And special thanks to the Ypsilanti Police Department for allowing me to hover over their truck when the wind picked up (it was very, very windy, with 15-20 mph gusts) as that greatly improved the safety of the proceedings. Filming this performance in that wind, in such a confined space, and without directly flying overhead anyone was a great challenge, especially with so many oblivious people in the crowd, but I managed it, and I'm proud of the result.

Presented without comment. #caturday

Fucking SmugMug seems to have lost my entire photo backup. Apparently there was a payment snafu back in November, and they never told me, never notified me my account was in arrears, and certainly never told me that my photos were going to be deleted. In fact, they used to say that photos would be safe there no matter what, but I dare say they are in danger there no matter what given this experience.

Don't use SmugMug. 

I am proud of this shot. I saw this pastoral scene while driving along outside of Newark, and I was so struck by it that I had to turn back and set up a few shots in A mode. Everything about this came out perfect straight out of camera; the exposure, the crop, the composition, the depth of field. I only pumped up the vibrance a bit to match how it looked to the eye, as I intentionally shoot with a 'flat' color profile for editing flexibility.

I can't stop looking at it. I may have to get it printed. 

My most recent video was taken at the local Drone User Group fly-in at Belle Isle. I also took some lovely (and first!) shots of the spectacular fountain that is located there. 

Home made ginger garlic stir fry with roasted Brussels sprouts, garden beans, sou-vide beef and lots of other things. This was a big success. 

Custard Quest : Volume 6

Yes, I'm quite happy with the MotoX camera now. 

The first (and only, as this species blooms but once) inflorescence of the 80 year old American Agave plant at the Matthaei Botanical Gardens. They had to remove a pane from the roof to accommodate the rapid growth of the inflorescence. More info:

http://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/index.ssf/2014/05/u-m_botanical_gardens_rare_80-.html

If this looks like an impossible exposure, it is. This is a 7 exposure set that I developed in a new way; I created a 32-bit file in Merge to HDR, and then edited that file in Lightroom. I like how this process has produced a perfectly exposed image without the artificial look of the typical HDR image.