Not much progress has been made on the runner as I keep on finding things I’d like to add to it so it never seems to want to be done!

Last time I blogged, we left off with the dahlias; both were done in satin stitch, one with the two colors separate and the second one with the colors blending with short and long stitch…well, let’s move onto bouillons and dessert, shall we? But before, some biology:

–

If you are lucky to live in southern climates, you might have noticed that bougainvilleas are a lot like Poinsettias; the red/colorful “petals” are actually leaves, the flowers are the tiny yellow/white centers!

So how would you portray that in embroidery? Well i chose to use bouillons in a light yellow color…what do you think?

And after adding the yellow bouillons, AKA the flowers, the flower ovaries were done. These were done with double thread, in brown, because that is what I have noticed in these flowers.

–

And now we have this:

I still needed to add some stuff to the blank space, so I decided to add another Mexican native: Vainilla! I knew this one was going to be hard, I personally didn’t grow up seeing these orchids…but I love vanilla, so I had to try.

And….this is when, while browsing pictures by my Flickr contacts, I saw this pretty monarch butterfly. Forget about the “flower only” theme…it had to be added!

Let’s focus on the vanilla blossom for now: Sadly the color of the flower is close to the fabric so, in order for the flower to be noticed, I had to add some foliage.

So far I’ve only done one leaf but i intend to add some more at the end, when I will probably fix the first leaf anyway. I’m afraid that instead of appearing like an elongated leaf, it looks more like a blade of grass.

For the center of the flower I went with a hint of darker yellow to show some “shading”. I am afraid the orchid did not come out as well as I wanted, but hey, maybe in the future I’ll try and do another project and do a better drawing of one…didn’t I mention this was going to be hard?

–

And this is what we have so far:

Next up: the butterfly! (that will be in a couple of days!)

*No, I did not misspell vanilla. I just chose to spell it in Spanish!

Put me in the pro-filter camp, I suppose; with an appreciation of what the anti-filter camp is getting at. I actively avoid the temptation to become a boring equipment collector, but to actually use the stuff I’ve got and try to improve how I use it. So, I’ve limited my filter purchases to: a circular polarizer filter for our 35mm F/2 Canon lens; and a yellow (K2) and red (25A) filter for B&W photography on the Pentax K1000. The color filters were pretty inexpensive, so this doesn’t need to be a big deal to mess around with.

(Oh, and a “UV haze filter” for the ultra wide angle lens, but that’s just there to protect the front glass element on a moderately expensive lens. I’m not kidding myself into thinking that it’s had any effect on the images the lens creates.)

This brings me to a few shots I took on my walk around with my first roll of B&W film in 20 years and with our Canon. It’s easy enough to search around for instructions on how, when and why to use filters, so I’m not going to get into that much. The intent to show some direct comparisons of what the effect of the filters is.

First up, a pair of B&W images from the Pentax. The first is with the yellow K2 filter; and the second without. The EXIF data I recorded shows that they were the exact same exposure (F/8, 1/1000sec). You can definitely see a difference in the clouds; with the yellow filter, they have more contrast. It’s not a dramatic difference, but I definitely prefer the result with the filter than without. The red filter would have had a significantly different result (but I didn’t have the red filter when I snapped these shots).

Next, a pair of shots from our Rebel XTi with the circular polarizing filter. Actually, they both are with the filter attached, but with it rotated to give different effects. I’d say that there’s no better or worse between these two; it’s a matter of what you’re after. (Maybe the reflection is what you’re looking for. But if you’re trying to get a person inside the building, you’d set it differently.)

Basically, you have to experiment with them. I haven’t even bothered trying neutral density graduated filters yet. Maybe some day I will, but I’m not in any hurry…

I don’t know much about it because it wasn’t really a hand-me-down. My father found it abandoned in a park, missing its lens cover. He turned it in to the local police’s Lost and Found, so that whoever lost it could possibly get it back. After a year had passed, it hadn’t been claimed, so it became his.

To see if it worked, we ran a roll of cheap Walgreens film through it. Some of the shots didn’t come out, apparently from flaky film advance. The shots that weren’t messed up looked fine, though. He gave it to me to mess with, and I ran a second roll of film, to see if the problem happened again. That run was just fine, so now I trust it.

That was a year ago.

On March 1, I ran a third roll of film through it. This time, I felt like trying some Black and White photography for the first time in probably twenty years. Having read up a bit on lens filters, including filters used for B&W effects, I also bought a Yellow #K2 filter.

The idea of the filter is to use it in outdoor photos that include blue sky. Apparently, black and white film is most readily affected by blue, so if you put a warm filter on the lens, it will help add contrast to photos taken oudoors, particularly clouds in a blue sky. Yellow is the most subtle effect, and red makes a blue sky appear almost black. 49mm diameter color filters are cheap, so it’s not exactly a bank-breaking experiment.

I bought Kodak T-Max 400 Black and White film. My original intention was to take some night time/low light photos to get some interesting lighting and that nice film grain, but that never happened. Still, I got some interesting grain in my daytime shots, so I guess it worked out.

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so I’ll be following what folks like Albert Yee and Kevin Brown do with their film choices and subjects. Just like Albert, I also hand recorded the EXIF data for each shot I took so I can review what I did later.

I’ve also decided to finally pony up and buy a “pro” account on Flickr, so I can share whatever I come up with, and get feedback on it. I bet people will be surprised to see me posting photos for the first time in years in the future!

It so happens that among all my other totally geeky interests, I really like pipe organs. (I even used to own one back in college.) And the Macy’s contains the Wanamaker Organ, claimed to be the world’s largest operational pipe organ. I took some pictures, which you see here. No concert today, but I like looking at it, and just knowing it’s there is nice.

Craftyangie wrapped up her shopping, and we started our long walk home. We decided to come home via Reading Terminal Market, and followed the abandoned Reading Railroad viaduct towards home, through the Loft District. Enter some more of my favorites: trains, architecture, photography and abandoned urban infrastructure (which is probably just a subset of architecture, in a sense). We stepped inside one building that promised some sort of art exhibition, but was apparently closed. Not all was lost, since I got to take some pictures inside.

The abandoned Reading Railroad viaduct just fascinates me. All the old equipment: signals, bridges, a station (at Spring Garden Street), tracks, electrical power stations, rust… all awesome. We took some photos with our Canon, and also with my fully manual Pentax K1000 35mm film SLR (which I will write more about soon; probably later this week after I get some film back from the developer).

Finally, on our way back, we stopped at Provenance, an architectural salvage company not too far from where we live. We’d been there once before, at least a year ago. Talk about your interesting stores! Most recently, they have been involved in the deconstruction (in advance of redevelopment) of the greate Divine Lorraine Hotel at Broad and Fairmount; and the careful deconstruction of the Varick Memorial AME Zion Church at S. 19th and Catherine streets.

I got to talk about their business with Bob, who coincidentally also has a garden plot in The Spring Gardens, and Brian. (Very interesting…) After he saw me showing Craftyangie some pipe organ parts (some linear pneumatic motors responsible for stop action, a wind chest and a pedalboard, in case you were curious), Brian showed me to a box full of metal pipe organ pipes. Awww yeaaahhh… Back to the pipe organs, second time today! These all happened to be from the Varick Memorial Church. Some were pretty incredibly beaten up, but I found four worth bringing home with us. From left to right, two small open flute pipes of some sort (maybe from the same rank, maybe not… I can’t tell); a Horn (reed) pipe; and two Tuba (reed) pipes (just one pictured). They’re all about a foot long, plus or minus, including the foot (bottom part).

I got to add these to my one wooden flute pipe I bought via eBay several years ago. Different kinds of organ pipes use different methods to tune and voice them. A wooden flue pipe, like my old flute pipe, might use a piece of lead, which can be rolled or unrolled to raise or lower the pitch. (See the right picture).

And then there’s my new reed pipes, the Horn and the Tuba. If you remove the feet from the pipes to reveal the reeds (like I did in the photo on the right), you can see how they are tuned. A little bit of wire sticks out of the bottom of the foot, which you can move up and down to adjust how long the reed is that vibrates. This allows you to change the pitch of the pipe– a lot more drastically than I’d originally thought. I suspect that maybe in practice, organ builders use the same reed, and reed foot, for a whole bunch of pipes in a single organ rank, just changing the size of the resonator (pipe) and adjusting the reed with the tuner for each pipe.

In these closeup photos, you can also see how very different the reeds are in the Tuba versus the Horn. The Tuba’s reed is long and wide, maybe three inches long and 3/4″ wide at its widest point. The Horn’s reed is under an inch long, much more narrow, and doesn’t flare out anywhere near as much as that of the Tuba. Also, the resonators (the obvious top part of the pipe) are totally different. The Horn flares out conically with that big gaping hole on the side, and the Tuba is just a short length of pipe, almost cylindrical. All of this contributes to their drastically different sounds.

Did I say sounds? Yes, I’m just maniacal enough to make recordings of each pipe for you to hear! I just blew through each of them to play them… enjoy… and let me know what you think in the comments!

Tuba Reed

Horn Reed

Low metal flute pipe

High metal flute pipe

Low wooden flute pipe

The impressionist painter Claude Monet is famous for having painted the Rouen Cathedral over and over again, but in different light. I still remember what a revelation this was to me when I first read about it (likely in my early teens). At first blush it sounded horribly boring to me, but when I saw the resulting art, I understood. Light changes and defines the mood of a space. Capturing this in your preferred media (paint, watercolor, film, charcoal…) is a worthy life-long pursuit. (Furthermore, now as an adult with more of an appreciation of our limited time on earth, I envy Monet’s ability to devote so much time on a project like this. But that’s another story…)

Now, I live near Eastern State Penitentiary, a semi-abandoned former prison in the Fairmount neighborhood of Philadelphia. There’s a non-profit organization that maintains it in its current state and allows visitors, so I got a dual membership so Craftyangie and I can visit whenever we want. It’s full of interesting subject matter, and since I’m just down the street, we don’t have to limit our visits to perfect “tourist” weather. Many of our most interesting shots were taken when it was cold, humid, raining or you name it.

Flickr holds all kinds of amazing inspiration for me. It was my first exposure to HDR photography and post processing. It inspired me to be more creative with my shots, which ultimately showed me the limitations of my last two digital cameras. Which led me to conclude that we need a Digital SLR camera.

Flickr is also dangerous. For the first time, I’m experiencing some serious lens envy. I see a particularly great shot, check out the EXIF data and see a lens that’s drastically better than, or different from, the 35mm f/2 or kit zoom lens we’ve got. It takes a good deal of willpower to resist thinking any deficiencies in my photography can be solved by spending money on lenses. I remind myself that I did nearly win a photography competition with my Canon A700. It wasn’t the equipment; it was the subject, composition, luck that the light was right, and a good understanding of how to use the tool I had at my disposal. All with a (very nice) point-n-shoot camera.

Still, I’m slowly formulating the lens kit in my mind that would cover all the bases I really want to cover. I’ve seen enough interesting very wide-angle shots that I know I need a wide-angle lens. It’s impossible to take certain kinds of interior photos without one. I really want to be able to take photos like this guy. Subject matter that’s right up my alley; he’s got a really good eye; and understands how to use post-processing effectively (in this case, HDR). Apparently, he uses a “small sensor” DSLR with a 10mm wide-angle zoom an awful lot. I think if I had one, I’d get an awful lot of use out of it, too.

If he’s using a Canon “small sensor” DSLR like a Rebel or 30D, then maybe he’s using the Canon EF-S 10-22mm USM to get that 10mm shot. I’m torn about getting it. On the negative side, that lens is only for “small sensor” DSLRs; it would crop on the 5D or a 35mm film camera. I have no idea if the next DSLR we buy will be another “small sensor” model like our XTi. If Canon abandons the smaller sensor models, then we won’t be able to use it on future cameras. On the other hand, the price is remarkably affordable, especially compared with its bigger “professional” brother, the EF 17-40mm f/4L. I’m pretty torn… but I find myself wanting to go for the EF-S 10-22mm. What do you think?

Yes… Flickr is very dangerous, indeed….