Sunset in a Starboard Turn – Whitefish Lake, MN

Want to thank The Lonely Island for the title of this post, seems fitting for the picture. The shot was taken from Erica’s uncles’ Cobalt while we boated to see the sunset out in the middle of the lake.

The trip to the lake was a good one, I believe I got some good star trails and the one that I can at least see from the 35mm loaded into the Pentax looked sweet. Other than take pictures, I really didn’t do much which was nice.

Drove to Lincoln, NE to visit the family for the 4th and had a good time there. Saw Larry the Cable Guy for $6 at the football stadium. We took Lilly to the zoo for the first time and had a blast there. I got some good pictures I think and hopefully the torn sprocket holes and the opening of the camera back didn’t screw too much up on the roll of film. I did get my dad’s old multi-meter since he isn’t using it anymore, so that’s a plus as they always come in handy.

I borrowed an old Kodak Retina III C from my aunt which turns out to be my grandfathers’ old camera. It’s pretty sweet, but the shutter is sticky some times, the selenium light meter is dead, and the rangefinder is ultra dirty. I remembered that Ken Rockwell found a repair place near to him that does excellent work, so I emailed and ask for a quote. Sorta too much for me to pay for now, but it would be nice to get the camera fixed. I would do the repairs myself, but I have a feeling that it wouldn’t turn out too well. Maybe I can find a repair manual for it somewhere…

So I’m actually making it through Solaris right now from when I recorded it on the DVR months ago. I need to get the book.

I’m in the mood to rant.

I went in to Radio Shack today to look at momentary contact and sliding switches for my vertical shutter release mod on my Winder ME and was pleasantly surprised to not find what I was looking for.

In Iowa, it’s sort of a big thing to buy local to keep shops in town (even international chains from my point of view) as it provides jobs and keeps the towns alive. It’s also a growing trend nationally, but with the advent of the internet, buying things online and having them shipped to you makes life easy.

I’m all for buying local, but what I’m not for is shops not carrying the items I’m looking for. What’s the point of buying local if I can’t get what I need locally? I guess this is probably going to end up as a rant against Radio Shack, but they used to carry far more electrical components than they do now. I don’t think there are any other stores in town that someone can walk in to and find a wall of resistors, capacitors, etc. My google search turns up a list of distributers who work on large scales, but there is some promise, Iowa Radio Supply, who just happen to be less than a mile from my house.

So where did Radio Shack go wrong? I don’t really know, I do know that they did come in handy while I was in Virginia Beach for work, well at least for one part we needed.

Because I couldn’t find two simple switches (which Radio Shack does carry, just not in the form factor I need), I have to spend a couple of hours looking through Mouser to find the right part. Mouser is huge and the carry pretty much anything electronic you can think of that might be needed.

Hot Air Balloons at the Tanager Fest Balloon Glow

I can’t believe I was able to finish my sofobomo before the end of the weekend, especially when I started taking shots yesterday morning. I’m kind of relieved that it’s done, but I’m also 50-50 on whether I like the book or not. It’s not what I originally wanted to do for a theme, but you can’t always do what you want. I have ideas for next year already, unless I do them alongside my experimentation with new photographic techniques I am picking up by reading the internets.

The book can be found here. Definitely let me know what you think by throwing a comment in my direction. I’ve gone through a couple of the books already complete and there are some good ones.