Here are a couple of pictures done officially with HDR. Three exposures in each one, combined for great effect. Notice the difference between this and Psuedo HDR in the post above.

Mark

Kirkwood Hotel Lobby, Des Moines

Alley between Vaudeville Muse and Royal Mile, Des Moines

This is very well done and is what I would call real art. Stop motion photography is my next project. I would love to make something like this.

There is a stupid youtube ad that comes up. Click the tiny x on the ad and you will not see it the rest of the video!

HDR Photo from Des Moines

HDR or High Dynamic Range photography will be crazy big in the next year.

Photographs have long lagged behind the human eye in recording a scene. When you stand on my deck and look at the sky, your eye adjusts for the brightness of the sky and you see the wonderful blue. When you look at the buildings, your eyes adjust to let in more light and you see the wonderful details of the bricks.

When you take a photograph, if the image is exposed for the buildings, the sky will end up too bright. If you set it to get the sky right then the buildings will be way too dark. The trick is to take DIFFERENT pictures, exposing once for the sky and once for the buildings and then combine them. This picture is a compilation of five images put together using the best exposed parts of each photograph. The merged image is a photo that hits the right exposure for every part of the scene.

Fate? Hardly!

I do think that circumstances can come together in some rather odd ways though. About a week ago one of my partners at work was talking about a band that I should listen to, he lives in Cedar Rapids and I work there in the emergency room with him. He described the band Devotchka and said that they were sort of mellow and very good. I listened to a few you tube videos of them and thought they sounded good as well. At the same time one of our PA’s said that she had seen them four or five times live and they were excellent.

Fast forward ten days. I am wandering around downtown Des Moines on the day after St Patricks day and it is dead.

I am basically slouching towards home when I notice there are a lot of people in the third floor of a building with a trio of bars. I went upstairs to check it out, it was packed in there. “How much?” I asked and the said, “20”. Now I liked live bands, but this seemed a little expensive for cover. Then I asked, “who was playing?”, “Devotchka” ok so I shelled out $20!

Their music was surrealistically good

They played guitar, accordion, viola, tuba, and a theremin. The melodies were hauntingly beautiful and produced goosebumps many times during the concert. They whistled, played and plucked their violin, they hit the accordion like it was the newest instrument to make the musical scene.

Devotchka formed in 1997

They originally played as the background music for a burlesque show. Their breakout out CD was “SuperMelodrama” in 2000 and they have released five CD’s since. They also did the soundtrack for “Little Miss Sunshine” and “Everything is Illuminated”. They are currently on the road promoting their 2008 release “A mad and faithful telling”.

If you get a chance to see Devotchka, do it.
You will walk out of the show a different person.

Mark
My pics from Devotchka March 18, 2009

Enjoy “The Enemy Guns” by Devotchka!

I was faced with the choice going back to Cedar Rapids to celebrate St Patrick’s day with my friends, or staying in Des Moines and going out by myself.

I chose the latter in an attempt to learn a little bit more about my new city. Armed with a healthy scotch buzz and my trusty camera I took to the streets looking for a fun day.

First stop, Johnny’s Hall of Fame

Johnny’s Hall of Fame is a bar with a history dating back to 1962. It is definately a Court Ave landmark. This was a great spot with a huge window to watch the crazy people on the street. If you ever tire of watching the crazy people in the bar, there is always the window! (they also have Glenlivet!).

Next up, El Bait Shop and High Life Lounge

El Bait Shop has 107 beers on tap and is usually packed with people. I had a Northern Porter, yummy. It’s sister bar is the High Life Lounge (they are connected by a common entrance). The High Life Lounge is one of my favorites and has to be seen to be believed. It looks like a trashy neighborhood bar from the late 60’s early 70’s, with authentic signage, shag carpet, wood paneling, rotary dial pay phone, and small black and white tv that you would expect from the era. This place was filled with citizens as always. High Life is also a great place to go for cheap and tasty bar food.

I slid from this pair of fine establishments to Liar’s Club.

This place was crazy busy and had a live band that was fantastic. (Liar’s club also has the coolest website of the bars here.) (The song for their site is also in the movie Clay Pidgeons which is a dark comedy that you have never seen.)

St Pat’s Des Moines style was drunktastic.

I am sure that the folks in Cedar Rapids were doing it right too (they always do). If St Pats were tomorrow I would do it again!

Mark

See a larger collection of the pictures that I took on St Patrick’s day HERE.

Every year on Fat Tuesday at midnight, Mardi Gras season in New Orleans comes to an abrupt end. The police come down Bourbon Street with lights and sirens, followed by mounted police and clean up crew. It is a very visible and agressive signal that the party is over until next year 🙁

As an emergency room physician who works many different shifts at all hours of the day, I have learned a little about sleep and exhaustion over the years.

These are the sleepy categories of my life. For me there are four different kinds of tired ranging from mostly alert and ready to go, to exhausted to the point of not being any good to anybody. These are arranged from most awake to most exhausted. Converting from day shifts to night shifts puts me through the whole range.

The most awake is when I have had enough sleep and I am awake during a time that I am normally awake. A good example of this would be normal nine to fivers who sleep nights and work days. If they got a good night sleep and they are normally awake during the day, they are about as awake as you get.

Second on the scale of sleepiness is when I did not get enough sleep the night before but I am awake at a time that I am usually awake. For example a nine to fiver who did not get to bed until 2:30am. He is tired from not enough sleep, however, he is still doing his job then next day during hours that he is used to being awake.

Third sleepiest is when I slept well but I am being required to be awake during time I am not used to being awake. An example of this would be a nine to fiver who took a nap all afternoon and then had to stay up until 4am in the morning working on a presentation for work. The sleep would help, but the fact that he is usually asleep by 11pm would make him very sleepy in the middle of the am while working on his project.

The most exhausted times come when I did not get enough sleep and I am forced to stay awake during a time that I would normally be sleeping. For a nine to fiver it would be getting up at 7am, working all day and then working all night until four am on a presentation. Not only are they working at a time they should be sleeping, they have already been up all day.

For medical shift work it usually manifests itself like this. I have been working day or early evening shifts for weeks and it is time to work my first night shift. I don’t get any sleep during the day because I am not tired enough. Then I stay up all night long seeing patients. I am not used to nights and I havent been to bed in 20 hours. I am mentally and physically wiped. By day two, I have gotten a little bit of sleep before my night shift. I still stay up all night when I feel like I should be sleeping, but at least I have gotten a little sleep before my shift. Next day I sleep a little more and feel a little less like I should be asleep at four am in the morning. By my fourth shift, I sleep eight hours during the day and I feel at four am like I SHOULD be up at four am. I have succesfully converted to night schedule. Then my nights are over and it is time to switch back and go through the whole exhausting process again. All of this while making life or death decisions in a busy emergency room.

Mark Miner

Mardi Gras is a lot of things, but funny, like laughing so hard you can’t breathe funny, it’s not. Most of the time….

Last night was fat tuesday. The official end of Mardi Gras season. I was walking up Bourbon street. It was crazy packed and there was barely room to move. I was walking in the road right along the curb and I stepped in a puddle with my left foot. The pool of cruddy water mixed with New Orleans street debris was eight or ten inches deep. My shoe went completely underwater and it drenched up my pantleg. I stepped over to the side and shook my leg off. I was about ready to keep walking back to my hotel, when I realized how absurdly funny this was.

A lot of people are staggering drunk at Mardi Gras. Some are barely able to walk on even ground, let alone navigate a deep hole in the road. Instead of moving on, I picked a spot right in front of this murky lagoon and watched the next three or four hundred drunk people step into (and some of them fall into) it. Sometimes there would be a train of ten people in a row who would all step into it. I was laughing my ass off. I was seriously enthralled by this display. Over an hour later I continued on toward my hotel after some of the funniest stuff I have seen at Mardi Gras.

I was also drunk 🙂
Mark

Me! My favorite day of the whole year!

This is part of a series of posts describing what it is like to ride in the biggest parade at Mardi Gras.

The fun starts long before the parade!

Endymion is a Saturday parade. The actual parade starts around five pm, takes in a bunch of New Orleans, and finally hits the Superdome at around eleven pm. This IS Endymion to the hundreds of thousands of spectators who come to see this “super parade” in action. For Krewe of Endymion, it is a wonderful all day Saturday affair that starts at ten am and ends at three the next morning. The events of this wonderful day both before and after the parade itself make it my favorite day of the whole year.

For Krewe of Endymion the fun actually starts months before the parade with various activities, dinners, and balls that help plan the event and elect leaders.

Your dues are paid, beads and other “throws” are selected and purchased. If you are out of town, arrangements are made to stay in New Orleans for this wonderful party.

On the Saturday morning of the parade, we all meet at a good restaurant.

The last two years it has been Burboun House on Bourbon Street. The food there is fantastic and it is an open bar for us. Starting at ten am, we meet up with all of the riders of our float and have a great lunch, catch up with what is going on and laugh, curse, drink and share in some great guy comradery.

We usually roll out of the restaurant at noon with bellies and brains full of food and booze.

We walk out onto Bourbon street wearing our parade costumes. This is where Rock Star for a day actually begins. Walking Bourbon, costumed for Endymion, is like being royalty. Everyone along Bourbon wants a picture with us. Old men and women, great families, and oh yes, the ladies. It is very cool to get your picture taken with parade Krewe (lucky us). We meander down Bourbon causing commotion the whole way, wandering into establishments to stay boozed up lest the wonderful buzz of the day come to a premature end.

Float Captain James Moises Recaps the Rules

Next on the bus to our floats.

Here we get a last minute recap of rules that we have heard so many times before. It would not be Mardi Gras without this re-hashing of what not to do! A couple of the rules that get emphatically mentioned every year are; One, once the parade starts do not throw your first beads until the float captain does, thus signaling the beginning of the parade for your particular float. Two, and very, very important, do not at any time during the parade take your mask off! The charm and mystique of Endymion dictates that the riders are officially anonymous. Friends and family of riders can easily pick out their rider on the float though. After the rules recap, distribution of sandwiches, and other last minute details, we arrive at the parade site.

Instead of the bus dropping us all off at our floats, which are at City Park, we are dropped five or six blocks away.

This is one of my favorite parts. We walk in costume, beads in hand, mildly intoxicated through a wonderful neighborhood near the park. There are thousands of people lining the streets. Some have been there overnight to get a good spot just to watch Endymion Krewe walk to their floats. There is music and tents and barbecues. It is easy to find an encampment of folks that you don’t even know, sit and have a sandwich and beer with them. Everyone is so friendly. After partying on the walk with families, beer and fun, it is off to our floats. Just as you hit the edge of the park, you suddenly get a feel for how HUGE Endymion actually is. The floats line up from one end of the park to the other and wrap around back to the beginning. They are behomoths and very colorful. The whole park is a sea of riders, marching bands, mounted police and droves of spectators.

Once you find your float, nineteen B in our case, you climb aboard and start prepping your area.

The spot you stand in is approximately four feet by four feet. At the beginning of the ride most of this space is taken up with beads beads beads. If you stack them very carefully, you can make yourself a small foxhole to stand in. There are hooks at head level in your cubicle so that you can have some beads pegged and ready to throw. Even though there are many pegs, they will hold maybe one percent of your beads at a time. As you are making ready, families and friends of riders are constantly making their way to the floats to wish us well. We drink, smoke cigars hang out and wait until finally the word is out, the parade has started! Due to its large size and number of floats, it may be an hour before your float starts moving.

coming soon part three
see also Pics from Mardi Gras 2009

After a long look at my low light candids from the last several years, I decided to make a project out of getting the best pictures possible using only the available light.

Available light is a great way to convey the mood of a scene.

The light that is present on your subject and in the background of a scene is a very important to how your brain sees the image. The color of light is also very important. The only way to capture this ‘message’ is get a picture that reflects the feeling. A flash changes the color of the light, kills the background and slays the mood. Step back, shut your flash off, hold your breath and take a great image.

High ISO turns up the sensitivity of the digital sensor.

Taking pictures in low light usually results in a more grainy look to the digital image. This digital noise comes from the sensor making an image with less than an ideal amount of light. High ISO noise can be removed using software meant for this purpose. The results can be phenomenal. Do a google search for high ISO noise and you will find several progams that will help.

Shutter speeds are longer when there is less light.

Shutter speed is how long the sensor is exposed to the light. When you take a photo in low light, the shutter stays open longer. You must take this into consideration. Find a way to brace your camera when you are taking the picture. Using a monopod can help tremendously. Hold your breath and gently squeeze the shutter. It is a very good idea to take two or three shots when you have a long shutter speed. This gives you two or three chances to get it exactly right!

Aperature is how wide the lens opens up to let in light.

All lenses have a maximum aperature that is part of the characteristics of the lens. The wider the aperature the better that it does in low light. The trade-off here is that the wider a lens opens up, the less depth of field that you get. This is good and bad. If you are taking a portrait of a single person, you focus on the closest eye and shoot the pic. The eye is sharp, the other eye is mostly sharp and the background goes out of focus. This is a good look for a single person portrait or candid. The problem lies when you have more than one subject. Whatever face you focus on will get sharp treatment, even faces three inches farther away from camera may not be acceptable. If you make the facial distances from the camera equal you will get excellent results.

Even with its problems, available light photography will reward you with some excellent pictures that the flash would have killed.

Mark

Both of the photo sets below feature available light photos.
Cedar Rapids Night Life
St Lukes Christmas Party

Mark Miner

Saturday night was the Endymion parade and the Extravaganza at the Superdome. Kid Rock kicked the doors out. Second best concert I have ever attended. (Green Day was number one). Until I get the whole article written, please enjoy these pics from the last few days at Mardi Gras.

Mark

Mardi Gras 2009 Pics

Amazon.com and Itunes both offer a huge selection of downloadable MP3’s. Both services charge 99 cents or less per song. They are both very easy to use and are constantly availabe when you get the itch to hear something new. There is, however, one huge difference between them.

Itunes songs all contain DRM, digital rights management. All of the songs you download from Itunes have a lock on them. They will play on your ipod, (if you go through the right steps to make your ipod official with Apple). But lets say you make a family movie and want to add an MP3 that you downloaded from Itunes to it, you can’t. If you want to put the music on your memory stick and play it in your car, you can’t. If your device doesn’t support DRM, then you can’t play the song that YOU PAID FOR.

Amazon.com mp3’s cost the same and come WITHOUT digital rights management. There is much more sense of ownership when you buy an MP3 on Amazon. It is an MP3 that will play on any device that will play MP3’s. If you want to bring the song into your video software and make a movie of Grandma’s 90th birthday party you can. If you want to play it in your car’s MP3 player, you can.

Keep in mind that the Artist retains the same rights when you buy the MP3 from either service, ITUNES just holds a billy club over your head to remind you.

Go to Amazon.com mp3’s section and do a search for your favorite music. When you download your music here you won’t find a cigarette butt in your drink to kill your buzz.

Mark

See CNET’s recent head to head between Amazon and ITUNES. Spoiler, Amazon wins!

Slideshows are a great way to showcase your photography. The Ken Burns effect adds an extra dimension and music rounds out the presentation nicely.
Mark

This winter has been long and COLD. Several all time low temperature records were set in a winter that has left most people in perpetual shiver. The video is a shot of the neighbors decoration blown down by the wind. The second two shots are of a huge blowing drift in my backyard. Both shots were through my window. (way too cold outside). The wind noise is from a sound effect that I downloaded from the net.

Mark

Video edit that starts with some shots from St Thomas, US Virgin Islands, plays through to some Mardi Gras from last year then ends with more St Thomas and a little bit of Jost Van Dyke in the British Virgin Islands. It is a year old. It has never been posted here so from that standpoint it is still new!

Look for more HD video in the coming weeks.

Mark

Audible.com is an excellent source for audio books that are easily loaded onto your IPOD or other MP3 player.

Audible was founded in 1999 as a service to provide audio books to its then fledgling audio player. Since then, Audible has grown to over 50,000 titles. It has support for almost every audio player out there including Apple’s venerable IPOD. Audible was purchased by Amazon.com in March 2008 for 300 million dollars.

Why audio books rock

Books are downloaded to your mp3 player directly from the Audible.com site. The recordings come with album art and are chapter tabbed. A lot of the books are read by the actual authors and the selections that are not are read by professionals. The audio quality is usually excellent. Most of them are done very well and are a joy to listen to. The audio books are reviewed by readers on a five point evaluation system. Some books have two or three HUNDRED reviews with well written commentary.

I listen to an audio book in my car constantly. My commute to work is only 20 minutes each way, but in about two weeks I get through a six hour audio book using time that would have been wasted just driving. Long car trips become a joy when listening to a qood audio book. I usually leave my front door open while I am pumping gas and let it play even then.

Cost

There are several different plans availabe at audible and they also have monthly specials. There is a two credits a month plan for $22.95 that works very well for me. Almost all books are 1 credit. I have been on audible.com for 5 years and I have listened to 140 books. I have yet to download a book that takes two credits. The books that you download are on your computer. They also stay in a ‘library’ on audible.com’s site so that you can re-download them at any time if you need to.

Some of my Favorites

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell read by the author
Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell read by the author
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell read by the author

Life of Pi by Yann Martel- Excellent book with a great narrator.
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson – It is a great easy to listen to primer on all of science from the beginning of time until now.
The Four Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss – Excellent book and part of the reason that I am writing this blogsite.
Time Travelers Wife by Audrey Niffenegger – Excellent book with an excellent reading.

Other books that were great on Audible in no particular order:
Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
Einstein a biography by Walter Isaacson- excellent
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

Audible already has an amazing collection of books available to download. Just about all of the best-sellers are there and they are constantly adding new titles. If I had to give up cable OR audible.com, I would give up cable (but not my high speed internet 🙂 )

Visit audible today and LISTEN.

Visit Audible.com

Few things in life deserve the title “Rock Star for a Day”. Being on Krewe of Endymion is one of those things.

Once a year, New Orleans, Lousiana hosts the biggest US Mardi Gras Party. This annual celebration triples the population of N’awlins from 500,000 people to 1,500,000 people. Mardi Gras or “Carnival”, as it is called, is one giant outdoor blowout. New Orleans measures the success of Mardi Gras each year by the tonnage of trash that is produced.

An essential part of the MG experience are the parades. These exhibitions range in size from a single flat panel truck with a dixieland band, to a super-parade with more than a thousand riders or Krewe. Endymion was founded in 1974 and is one of the two parades at Mardi Gras that has earned the category of Super Parade. Endymion has over 2400 Krewe. A quarter of a million people line up the along the route of Endymion, some families setting up their annual ‘spot’ 18 hours before the parade. Endymion draws the largest crowd at Mardi Gras.

Now a little about the Rock Star part

Perspective from the crowd

Watching a parade at Mardi Gras, the crowd chills along the route and watches as marching bands, baton twirlers, mounted police and other parade participants go by. When a float goes by everything changes. Suddenly the mob goes wild. People are screaming at the top of their lungs and waving their arms madly. All the while trying to entice beads from the riders on the float. They are jumping up and down and trying to make eye contact with the riders to collect all important beads, doubloons, cups, frisbees, teddy bears and footballs. After the float has passed, the revelers go back to chillin with their friends. Patiently waiting for the next chance for treasure….

Perspective from the float

If you are on Krewe of Endymion, the whole perspective is from the float. You stand in a four foot by four foot cubicle. Your beads stacked up around you to your waist, leaving a small foxhole you can barely stand in, let alone move. There are thousands of people constantly in your field of view as your behemoth ride meanders through the streets of New Orleans. The crowd is ever changing. they are whipped into a frenzy, yelling at the top of their lungs, waving ther arms wildly and trying to get you to throw beads. Even though there may be a thousand people in front of you at any one time, you can pick anybody from the crowd and make eye contact with them. You can easily pick any one person from the crowd and reward them with beads or other throws

see part two of the article

It has been ten years since I have written anything. These years have been spent practicing Emergency Medicine in a couple of very busy emergency rooms, which does not lend itself to much writing. Doctors orders and prescriptions rarely require matching tense or action verbs. Because of this even a three paragraph story is taking a few rewrites just to get the tense to match. Trying to impart the feelings that I had at the time using words is both frustrating and rewarding. The things is, I can tell a good story person to person. I get very animated, use different voices and facial expressions that really punch up the story. Trying to get this into words is very different. It gives me new respect for people who do it well. The people with a site that you read daily just to see what is next. My promise is to work and work until I get that good.

There are many resources available on the net that can make my writing better. Over the next few months I am going to do at least one thing daily that improves my writing. If you are here, I hope the positive changes will be evident.

Mark