Rick Sammon’s Digital Delray Days
The reason for this trip, beyond the general riotousness of seeing Susan and Karl, was for me to attend Rick Sammon’s Digital Delray Days, a workshop he offered to improve my photograpy. Okay, he didn’t offer it just for me, but that’s the way it felt.
Rick Sammon, photographer, artist, teacher and guru.
Digital Delray Days is held, as one might guess, in Delray, Florida, a city about 180 miles SSE of Orlando between Boca Raton and Palm Beach. The facility is the Colony Hotel, a 1920’s establishment that still retains the old flavor and is extraordinarily photogenic.
There were 8 of us in the class, ranging from real photographers through serious hobbists, poseurs, diletantes, and a couple of doctors who had more money than skill–great equipment that they didn’t really know how to operate. We all had a great time.
A fine looking bunch of shutterbugs. The little cheap tripod on the left is mine.
In another example of how everything is relative, I’m accustomed to people thinking I have a lot of really great photo equipment, which may be true in the greater world, but in this class I was the poor kid. My $70 tripod didn’t look good next to the $500 version everyone else had, and I don’t shoot with (or need) the $5000 professional version of the camera body. We all brought laptops for the image processing part of the class, but one guy doesn’t like the screen on his so he brought a 21″ monitor as well. I didn’t even know you could buy a $300 programmable remote control for your camera, but one guy had it and others knew all about it and were debating ownership.
We started out working on HDR photography. This is a technique where you take multiple photos of a subject at different exposures and combine the photos in the computer to see the most of both the highlights and the shadows. It has become very popular in the last few years, as the software to create the finished product has improved.
We were working with a local model in the ballroom of the hotel, with bright Florida sun coming in the windows and dark shadows on the floors and in the corners, and had to balance all the light to make it all visible and show off the model as well.
Here is a “before” shot of the room:
The middle of the 7 different exposures I made.
I had the model posing like Cinderella coming home from the dance, thinking about the great guy she had met. The camera takes 7 exposures in a row, slowly increasing the exposure from 3 stops below to 3 stops above the “correct” one. Then you download everything to the computer and process it in HDR software, and you get a photo like this:
The final product. Interesting, but I still have a lot to learn.
Another example, this time outside. We went on a photo walk, and this was the little train station in Delray:
Back side in shadow, the high sun overhead seriously overexposed. A boring shot.
I try, I really do
To eat right, that is.
Gail and Susan are playing bridge at some fancy-schmancy country club where Susan also directs. They left this morning dressed to the nines, whatever the nines are. Nobody ever just dresses to the sevens, do they?
I’m working on photos and blog posts, but it got time for lunch so Karl and I wandered over the The Wild Side, a local place I’ve written about before. They have great looking burgers and sweet potato fries, but I decided to try and behave and ordered a Wild Thai Salad, a cabbage salad with pulled pork and barbecued chicken. Maybe not the very healthiest lunch in the world, but gotta be less fat and grease than a burger.
First, though, Karl said we needed some flaming cheese. Who could resist something called flaming cheese? This is what arrived:
Just a small helping of heart attack.
They take cheese, of some non-descript version, bake it, throw it in the deep fryer for a few seconds, pour brandy over it and set it on fire tableside. Serve it with wedges of pita bread. Some people think it needs to be washed down with a mojito.
So just before my theoretically “healthy” lunch arrived, I smacked down a jillion calories worth of fried fat. In a quiet room you could hear the fine crackling sound of my arteries hardening.
I tried, doc, I really did.
Smelling like a giant orange
If you shop for your hotel rooms on Priceline, you can save some serious coin, but you are taking your chances, since you don’t know the hotel until after you have paid for it. You just pick a class, like 3 star or 5 star, and a location.
In San Diego I chose the supposed “downtown” location, and ended up 2.5 miles away from what I would really call downtown, spending most of my savings on parking.
Hotels in the Boca Raton/Delray area are expensive, so the $91 I paid Sunday night for th “3-star” Boca Raton Bridge hotel was a good deal–less than half the posted rate at all the other places I looked. Location was decent, but the hotel was decidedly less than advertised.
I noticed the first bad sign early, when I looked at my room key:
Not quite the way I imagine room service in a fine hotel.
You know your’e in trouble when they buy their amenities at Costco:
Not exactly Evian.
Supposedly there was high-speed wireless internet. In actuality, there was low speed wireless internet, but it took me over an hour to connect to it in the evening and it was impossible in the morning. Something about re-setting the routers in the north of the building. Or the south. Or both. Whatever the problem, the service sucked.
The soap was good, though. Hotels get their soap and shampoo from companies that pay for the chance to have you sample their products, and I really liked this stuff. Florida had an Orange County before California was a state, I think, and the orange is pretty important around these parts. The soap and shampoo are strongly scented with orange oil, and I was like a walking orchard all day. I loved it.
The best part of the hotel.
Not just orange, but “Sicilian Red Orange Extracts”. If it’s Sicilian, you know it has to be good.
I don’t much recommend the Boca Raton Bridge Hotel, but I sure like their soap.
Fishing update
SR sent me this photo of Gail reeling in the catch of the day:
Catching the puffer fish.
Fishing
What’s a trip without adventure? Susan and Karl planned a day of fishing for us today, just because it’s something we would never do ourselves. They found a coupon on Groupon for a 4 hour trip, plus they brought the best fishing equipment from NatureImmerse, and we had the good fortune to be the only ones on the boat, so it went just the way we wanted it to.
Of course, it was a Coast Guard certified passenger vehicle, so it had all the necessary safety equipment.
Sophisticated safety systems for out continued good health.
Carefully designed financial systems.
We’re in sunny Florida, so it’s always warm, but it can be a mite breezy on the waterway, so we came prepared.
Susan stays warm at all times.
We were bottom fishing–looking for bass and grouper and catfish and whatever else live low in the water. Captain Tom was an expert at handling hopeless all-thumbs amateurs, baiting our hooks, casting them out and taking the fish off when we got one.
And get one we did–we caught a lot of fish today. Every last one of them too small to keep. I laugh at Lorin Waxman for catching trout and then throwing them back, but all we did today was catch little fish and not keep them. Which I suppose is just as well–what would we want with these silly fish, anyhow? I doubt that they are good eating and we don’t need pets.
Enjoying a bright and sunny day
With just one of the many monster fish we caught. Real fishermen use ones this size for bait.
Looking relaxed.
Gail caught the cool fish of the day, a puffer fish. As the guide held him to de-hook him, he puffed up to 3 times his original size to scare us off. It worked, too.
Check out the teeth on this leviathan.
Although Gail got the pufffer, the big fishing rewards went to Susan. It seems that last week, a woman got a fish on the hood and got so excited she let go of the rod, dropping it deep in the water. Susan, somehow, inexplicably, magically, “caught” it today, pulling it up from the bottom and bringing it back in. Anyone can catch a fish, only SR can catch a fishing pole.
Heading back, calm and satisfied with a good day of fishing.
We had contracted for a 4 hour trip, but 3 hours was all the fun we could handle, so Captain Tom pointed the little flat-bottom boat back to the base and we went home.
Gail and Susan started playing bridge online, Karl opened some wine, and I packed a bag and got in the car for the 3 hour drive to Boca Raton, where I am taking a photo workshop in the morning. I found a room on Priceline for $79 in a supposedly 3 star hotel, the Boca Raton Bridge Hotel. The hotel isn’t much and it took me over an hour to get the internet connection working, but it’s only 1 night and I’m out of here at 7:30 am, so who cares.
Tomorrow the big workshop with my photo idol, Rick Sammon, then the 3 hour drive back to Orlando. Lots of stuff happening, stay tuned.
Herman Cain endorsed Newty
Former presidential candidate Herman Cain endorsed former House Speaker Newt Gingrich for the Republican nomination for president on Saturday night in West Palm Beach, Fla.
“I hearby officially and enthusiastically endorse Newt Gingrich for president of the United States,” said Cain, who saw his own candidacy dissolve amid accusations of unwanted sexual advances.
Gingrich is in a tough fight in Florida with Mitt Romney, a former Massachusetts governor. Florida’s primary is Tuesday.
Makes sense to me–Herm’s at least still married to the first wife. Newty makes him look like a choirboy. Not so much an endorsement as professional cheaters courtesy.
Going to the dogs
Lo! How the mighty have fallen.
Well, we’re here. Started too early, but that’s life. The flight was easy, a short layover in Dallas to change planes and about 2 more hours to Orlando. SR has been telling Gail since Thursday that she was already waiting at the airport, so she had no problem finding us. The luggage came off the belt faster than ever, and off to the downtown condo we tootled.
Susan and Karl are wine snobs. We had dinner tonight with their wine snob friend, Tim, and spent much time discussing how well some bottle of fermented grape juice had “opened up”, how this one had a “very light nose” and that one had “excellent structure”. My diet coke was just fine, if perhaps a trifle impertinent.
But they drink red wine. Rich, dark, mouth-puckering red wine. Gail drinks white, and we were in for a tremendous surprise when SR opened the cupboard to get Gail a glass—not just the glass but the wine lives in the cabinet, in a bright yellow box that looks like it should hold corn starch. Is this what passes for wine snobbery here in the land of the pink plaid bermuda shorts?
SR was dressed in her official “530 on the 18th” chef’s coat:
Susan, aka “Chef Margarethe”, preparing dinner
The wine may be from the wrong side of the tracks (and it may not–screw tops are now acceptable for fine wine, why not paper boxes?), but the dinner was first rate.
A 3-rib prime is perfect for the 5 of us.
Prime rib of beef, baked potato and Yorkshire Pudding, preceded by a pear salad. Tim, who is a big shot banker in real life, is a baker in his dreams, and he brought a loaf of home made ciabatta that was superb. The only thing this Orlando feast needed was our friend Frances, and I hope we’ll see her before the week is out.
Sunday we are off on an adventure–no grass growing under anyone’s feet around here. We’re going out on a fishing boat, which is slightly odd since none of us is a fisherman, but if you’re in Florida, do as the Floridians and it was either that or stay home and watch the incessant political ads on TV, and the ads smell worse than the fishing boat.
Stirring up trouble
Three forty five am us a God-awful time for the alarm to go off, but it’s the price you pay for a six am flight to Orlando (via Dallas, of course) and a few days of carousing with Gail’s evil twin, SR.
I’m headed to Delray beach to take a photo workshop on Monday. One of my favorite photographers, Rick Sammon, is teaching and I’m hoping to get a lot out of it. He’d better be good, to justify being up this darned early.
———–
Now we’re in Dallas, changing planes. They give out the gate assignments for connecting flights just becore landing and I think some poor schnook got up for our pre-dawn flight to DFW only to connect to a flight right bak in the same direction going to Honolulu. Another insane routing.
A couple more hours and we’ll be in Orlando and the debauchery will begin. Stay tuned.
Sunrise over the Sierra from the plane window.
The Abuse of Humor
Lorenzo Pisoni performs his one-man show about growing up as the youngest member of the Pickle Family Circus. Production photo by Chris Bennion.
Last night we saw Humor Abuse, a one-man show, at the ACT theater in the City. It was mildly interesting, quite funny in spots, but not something I can give an unqualified recommendation.
Lorenzo Pisoni, the star, author and protagonist of this 90 minute one-man one-act opus, was born into the Pickle Family Circus, and started performing when he was 2. A lifetime of experience shows not only in his unabashed acrobatic, juggling and clowning skills, but in his incredible comfort onstage–he just belongs there, and he knows it. The Chronicle revue says that his “Arrow-shirt man” good looks limit his ability to be funny, but that certainly didn’t seem to be a problem last night. He’s both great looking and hilarious.
If the evening had stuck to funny as a theme, it would have been great. Pisoni is a talented clown and could easily have kept us entertained the entire show. Sadly, it turns out that he only uses the clownery to stitch together the story of his life, and his sad, unhappy relationship with his father, Larry Pisoni, also known as Lorenzo Pickle, the founder and beating heart of the Pickle Family Circus.
Lorenzo grew up in a house where Dad was a clown, 24 hours a day. He was performing at 2, had a steady gig as his father’s stooge onstage from 6 to 10, and went off with the circus without his parents at age 11 for 4 years or so. He worked with his father onstage and off, lived with him, ate with him, and still never had the relationship he wanted.
I absolutely couldn’t work up any emotion to care. It’s not like my family was perfect, not hardly. It’s not like other theatrical productions have been unable to make me care–I can’t watch Field of Dreams without tears when Kevin Costner’s father says “want to have a catch?”, or The Promise when Rod Steiger starts to talk to his son for the first time. This play simply doesn’t grab my emotions at all. It only sounded like so much new age whining to me.
Pisoni seems hardly the worse for his upbringing. Coming off the road in his early teens, he attended an upscale private school in San Francisco, then went to Vassar. After college he worked as a ringmaster for the Cirque du Soleil and as a serious actor in New York. Not a bad life, overall.
Humor Abuse will be a the ACT theater for another week or two. It wasn’t awful, and the slapstick is tremendous. I wish I could say more.
What I hate about California
I like winter. I like rain, and wind, and storms, and even a trace of snow, if I don’t have to shovel it.
Unfortunately, we get about 3 weeks of winter here, it seems. It isn’t even February yet, and spring is already bustin’ out all over.
To wit: I was looking out my back window this afternoon, and this is what I saw
The first robin of spring is here in my yard
The trees are still bare, but the birds are back among the buds.
I want more winter!!
But the robins are nice, too. They migrate up to Canada for the summer and are just passing through. We’ll see them again in September or October as they head south for the winter, short though it may be.
Totally Unauthorized 