Well I spent this afternoon making some more updates to my business website. I incorporated a few more images and rearranged the order of the images on the thumb bar at the bottom of the page.

I also added arrow buttons to allow the user to manually rotate through the thumbs, and also set the thumb bar to auto-rotate if the image currently displayed by the slideshow doesn't appear on the thumb bar.

One invisible but important change was to set up timely preloading of the images such that there shouldn't be a big wait for individual images to load, but also no big wait up front. Basically the page now loads an image, and schedules the preload of the next image a few seconds later, long before the slideshow will automatically display it. In this way, the next image is loading while the user is viewing the current image, and should avoid delays.

If the user dorks with the thumb-bar the preloads and slideshow are cancelled and rescheduled to be further out. Theoretically this should prevent the user from being interrupted while working the toolbar with annoying delays or images loading.

So my friend Brian had an idea for a fun photo he wanted me to create for him.  He wanted to be Gulliver of Gulliver's Travels, tied down on a beach by the Lilliputians... all of whom would be played by his wife Lynnea.

I originally wanted to shoot this on a beach (as per the original idea) but the lake in Chelmsford, MA that we were relaxing at didn't afford a beach with a suitable layout for the shot.  So we instead did it on a nearby grassy knoll.

First we "bound" Bri by encircling him over and over with a thin twine.  Then I helped him lie on a slightly raised knoll and lay flat before him so that the camera would be angled up to make him appear bigger.  I said "imagine there is a six inch high person standing on your chest lecturing you" so that he would look in that direction.  That was the first shot.

The subsequent shots all featured Lynnea using the thickest rope I could find on short notice as a prop.  Bri would stand out of shot (typically on a footstool) and hold the rope while Lynnea would pull on it this way and that.

After recording about a dozen different poses, we did the lecturing pose, and then I shot the "sitting on the toes pose" when Lynnea was just relaxing on the stool.  I thought the pose would come in useful and as you can see it did.

Shots were all done by daylight, no flash. EOS 5D with the EF 24-70mm 2.8L lens, which is the widest I own.

Then, after some cleanup in lightroom, came the hours of photoshop work to carefully clip Lynnea out of her surroundings in various pictures and edit her into this one at reduced scale.  I thought the grass, which to a Lilliputian should be knee high at least, would be a problem, but it turned out that just using a gradient transparency on the ends of her legs (or whatever was closest to the ground) worked fine unless you look really close.

Things I would do differently if I shot this again:

1. I really need to get a chromakey backdrop for shoots like this.  I shot Lynnea against a grassy green background, but that was not uniform enough to make clipping her out simple... it was fun, but it was a LOT of work.
    
2. Lynnea had been swimming prior to the shoot, and threw on a pair of pants for her poses.  But in each subsequent pose water slowly seeped through the material and created spots in various places.  I was mostly able to edit those out, but it was additional work.
    
3. Get thicker rope, or simply edit the rope out altogether and use the twine.  The size difference between the reduced rope and the twine bugs me a little.
    
4. A beach location with a nice uniform ocean background would have made for easier editing.
    
5. I would have backed off a little more when shooting Bri.  At 4x6, 6x9, or 8x12 the photo is fine, but at 8x10 the ends get clipped.  That was just dumb on my part... to produce an unclipped 8x10 print some edits would be required.

All that said, I am really pleased with how the resulting image came out.  And more importantly, my beloved friends Brian and Lynnea are happy with it, which is really what this was all about.  Doing something nice for people I hold very dear in my heart.

Love you guys, glad you liked the photo!

Oh I remember now... that's the sun!  I saw that the day we left to go on our vacation here in Rainland.  How nice that it has decided to grace us with its presence... on the last day.  Well I'm not going to be cynical today (I mean, after this point).  Clark's Bridge was a bust yesterday... rain dumping down and you have to pay to get in to the tourist trap it is ensconced in... a veritable fortress of phony, brightly-painted, dreck.  So I'm not going back there.  But maybe I can get to the Flume Bridge today.  We'll see.  Either way there should be something to shoot.

Unless it starts raining.

Okay, starting from now, I mean...

So yesterday I was exhausted in the morning.  I had fallen asleep about 10 PM the night before and then woke up around 2 AM.  I was excited to be writing about Mara and Kennis again, and when I woke up I went back to work on it.  By 7 AM the chapter was nearing completion but I was utterly wasted.  So toward the end it got a little rushed but all in all I was satisfied.

It also looked to be the only day we weren't going to have rain.  So needless to say the fam was up and about by 8 and looking to go out for a day hike.  But I was so not up to it.  So I slept on the couch while they went out and had fun.  I woke up around 1:15 or so, and trekked to the information center in Thornton where there was a public access internet terminal.  The wifi on this old laptop is fried... so I need more than an access point.

When I got there two people were coming out, a man and a woman, and the man was saying "well ya, I could have checked that if I could have gotten on the computer."  That didn't sound good.

Once inside I noticed a teenage girl was on the computer, so I decided to kill some time and asked the person on staff for information about local architecture that I could shoot.  He recommended a list of covered bridges starting with the Blair Bridge.  I had already shot the Blair Bridge last year, but thought it would be nice to try again with the 5D.  Plus I had an idea for something new to try, and even had the necessary lens in my bag--fisheye shots from inside a covered bridge.  I thought that would look really cool.

We talked for about 20 minutes.  When we were done the young lady was still using the computer, so I said, quite clearly from about 3 feet away.  "Thank you sir, do you mind if I wait here for a bit?  I need to use your internet access."  The staff member said, "Sure no problem."  The young lady glanced up at me and then went back to what she was doing.

I had brought my Kennis and Mara story with me, all preformatted and ready to post.  All I would need to do is copy and paste it into a window and click a button.  Then I wanted to check my mail, respond to any comments on my blog or flickr, check twitter and post a tweet about shooting bridges, and then I would be on my way.  I figured it was about 10-15 minutes of time on the computer.  So I sat in the chairs provided to wait.  These chairs are situated immediately behind the computer, which is probably not a good idea because it means you can see whatever the person using the computer is doing.

And in this case the person using the computer was on MySpace.  I realize it is a public access terminal, and nothing I was going to do was any more important than poking about on MySpace.  That wasn't the problem.  The problem was this young person was posting comments on MySpace pages and then waiting for responses to be posted.  Or rather, hoping responses would be posted.  She would check her incoming MySpace messages, and then scroll up and down, up and down, up and down, on her MySpace page, continually refreshing it, to see if she had gotten a response.  After a few minutes of no response, she would click on one of her friend's pages, post a message there, and then return to her page and scroll around waiting for responses.  This is clearly not the way such a resource should be used, you get on, you do what you need to, and you get off.  If you are going to just wait around for messages to be posted, you let other people on and get back on when they are done.

After about 15 minutes she got bored scrolling around, so she went to YouTube to watch videos of kittens playing with toys.  After 5 minutes or so of this she glanced back at me, at the time I wasn't looking exactly at her.  I was looking a little to the right, sitting forward, elbows on knees, hands clasped, and clearly doing nothing other than waiting.  I think it occurred to her at this point that it was obvious she was just fucking around with the PC, so she had three options: (1) get off and get back on later, (2) do something other than simply kill time, or (3) try to make it *look* like she was doing something other than kill time and hope that I would give up and go away... like the people before me had.

Guess what option she chose?  She turned back to what she was doing and opened a new browser window.  The home page was a New Hampshire tourist information page, so she clicked around and pretended to read information about local attractions that she probably would not be visiting.  And then, about once every 30 seconds or so, she would switch back to the browser window containing her MySpace page, refresh it, look for new messages, and then minimize it and go back to pretending to read tourist information.  Occasionally she had a message, but most of the time she didn't.

I was not going to be bested by this kid, so I remained where I was.  I figured I would wait until she looked at me again and if she did I would ask her how long the wait was going to be.  I figured I could offer as a consolation that it would take about 15 minutes for me to take care of what I needed to post.

It took another 10 minutes or so before she looked at me again.  By now I had been in the information center for almost an hour.  This time when she looked at me, I made eye contact with her and made clear from my expression that I was not going to leave.

"Are you waiting to use this computer?" she asked.

Gimme a break.  She knew I was waiting.  Still I just wanted to get on, so I gave her an out.

"Yes.  I need access for about 15 minutes."

"Um, okay, I'm almost done I just need 2 more minutes."

Yeah.  Two minutes so you can post a message to whoever you are yakking with on MySpace to let them know you need to get off the computer and you will be back in 15 minutes.

"That's fine thanks."

After about 5 minutes she shut down her MySpace page.

"Ok all set."

"Thanks.  I'm just checking my e-mail and posting an article.  I should be done in 10 to 15 minutes, and then you can get right back on."

"Okay, thanks." And then as she left "I'll be back in 15 minutes."

She was just letting me know not to take my time.  Now if I had been an asshole I'd have sat there and waited for her to get back, then watched videos of kittens on YouTube.  But I actually  had things I wanted to do that day... and should have long since gotten started doing them.

It took 10 minutes for me to post my material, check my mail, and respond to my messages.  And then I left.  No kid in sight outside.

But I'll be returning today to post this article, upload 5 covered bridge fisheye-pix to flickr, and check and respond to mail/comments.  And of course to minimize my time on the PC I have prepared everything in advance.  Should take about 10 minutes again.  I wonder if I will have the joy of waiting for her again?  My plan this time is to show up at 9 AM.  I got the sense this young person doesn't do 9 AM.

The fisheye pix came out nice BTW (12345).  When I get home I'll be able to do some proper post processing.  All I have here is IrfanView, which doesn't do well with Canon RAW files.  100% chance of rain today, but it is 8:22 AM and nothing has started yet.  So I am probably going to at least *try* to shoot some covered bridges today.  Wish me luck!