Arm’s Length Self Portrait « 365 days of 2011

Impending monitor failure

Just to match my ever blue screening computer

This spreading mass of dead pixels started off life as a baby kangaroo, morphed first into an ice skater and now resembles some brooding nuclear holocaust.

Great. I’m already paying out for a new computer (not cheap with a specification set to handle all my photographic needs). Now I’m going to need a new monitor. I had already identified one – a thirty inch 2560×1600 resolution monitor with an extended gamut. I was planning on sticking with my current two monitor set up while I saved up the 1,000 plus dollars for the new beast. We’ll have to see how much the dead pixels spread. It’s a shame as my current monitor has very accurate color rendition.

By the way, the stuff on the screen is what has been keeping me busy of late. I’m teaching myself Java Script and jQuery. Add that to learning how to create WordPress templates a month or so ago – I seem to be learning a lot recently.

November 18, 2011 | Categories: Arm's Length Self Portrait, Around the house, Body Part, Home | Tags: 365 Days, Artificial light, Available Light, Colour, Dead pixels, Gary Allman, Hand, Monitor failure, Nikon D7000, Photography, Self Portrait | Leave A Comment »

After Thanksgiving Dinner at church

I spent this evening helping in the kitchen at church

We fed over 200 hundred people, including members of the congregation and local community. We were too busy to stop and take pictures, so all I have for today is this hastily taken picture of Ginger and I in a brief pause near the end of clearing up. Ginger, it appears, found a cookie.

November 16, 2011 | Categories: Arm's Length Self Portrait, Church, Church | Tags: 365 Days, Artificial light, Available Light, Christ Episcopal Church Springfield Missouri, Color, Gary Allman, Gary and Ginger, Nikon D7000, Self Portrait, Springfield Missouri | Leave A Comment »

Gary by Piney Creek, Piney Creek Wilderness, Missouri

Armistice Day, and the kids have the day off school

We took the Girls with us on a scouting trip down to Piney Creek Wilderness. The wilderness has access from Table Rock lake, so we’re planning on Kayaking in here sometime, camping and hiking the wilderness. It should make a good 3-4 day excursion. We wanted to get down here now because the deer hunting season start tomorrow, and for a while it won’t be a good idea to go hiking in the wilderness.

Our plan was to get right down to the lake shore, but we didn’t quite make it. We had to be back in Springfield early in the evening, because Katie is playing in the orchestra for the schools presentation of ‘You’re a good man Charlie Brown’ this week. So we decided to stop for lunch just short of our planned destination. The girls did really well. we hiked around five miles and climbed over a thousand feet.

I couldn’t watch katie play last night because it was my EfM tutorial night, so we went along tonight, and it was a great show. Afterwards, to celebrate we treated Katie and ourselves to an ice cream at Braums.

Piney Creek, Piney Creek Wilderness, Missouri

Cooking lunch at Piney Creek, Piney Creek Wilderness, Missouri

Ginger, Lanie and Katie at Piney Creek

Lanie finds a tree bark mask

Trail back to the Tower trail head at Piney Creek Wilderness, Missouri

Look out tower at the Piney Creek Wilderness Tower trail head

November 11, 2011 | Categories: Arm's Length Self Portrait, Day out, Hiking, Outdoors, Wilderness and trails | Tags: Gary Allman, Hiking, Missouri, Ozarks, Photography, Piney Creek Wilderness, Self Portrait | Leave A Comment »

Ten year US Permanent Resident card

Now I can stay in the US another ten years.

Things seem to have moved on since my two year Green card was issued. This card’s got more security features, is RF readable, and the information pack that came with it was fairly comprehensive.

I can’t vote, but I can buy a gun and if I was young enough, be called up to join the armed forces.

Sobering thought. Based on the average life expectancy of my family I won’t need another one…

November 8, 2011 | Categories: Arm's Length Self Portrait, Around the house, Body Part, Home | Tags: 365 Days, Artificial light, Available Light, Colour, Gary Allman, Green Card, Hand, Nikon D7000, Photography, Resident Alien, Self Portrait, US Permanent Resident Card | 2 Comments »

Trunk or Treat

This evening we went to the Church Hallowed Carnival

Lanie wanted to take part in the ‘Trunk or Treat’. After a lot of head scratching we came up with the idea of making the back of the van into an ambulance, with Lanie as the patient, tended to by Katie as Nurse D’eath. We even managed to find a hospital IV bag hanger for $1 in the Habitat for Humanity Restore Center.

I took today’s picture while I was handing out candy. We’ll pass over how I frightened one kid by making them think the candy finger they’d picked out of the box of human body parts was really my finger. Oh how I laughed (later).

Lanie the victim at the Trunk or Treat

Nurse Katie D'eath, box of body parts in hand, tends Lanie the Victim

October 30, 2011 | Categories: Arm's Length Self Portrait, Church, Church | Tags: 365 Days, Available Light, Christ Episcopal Church Springfield Missouri, Colour, Gary Allman, Halloween, Nikon D7000, Photography, Self Portrait, Springfield Missouri, Trunk or Treat | Leave A Comment »

Tubby

Look closely at his eyes

Tubby is a Burmese cat of many names: Rotters, Rot-row, Tubster, Tubmeister, Irritant and Pokey Paws . I suspect he is harbouring an ambition to get his paws on an Uzi 9mm and get his revenge on us.

His eyes have been like that since birth – he can see, but not perfectly. He’s annoyingly hesitant, but I suspect that’s more due to his personality than his eyes. He hates having the top of his head touched – possibly because he can’t quite properly see your hand coming. More likely he’s just contrary.

October 29, 2011 | Categories: Arm's Length Self Portrait, Around the house, Body Part, Home, Idling | Tags: 365 Days, Artificial light, Available Light, Burmese Cat, Eyes, Gary Allman, Hand, Nikon D7000, Photography, Self Portrait, Tubby | Leave A Comment »

Gary and Lanie down by the creek

Today we relaxed at Ginger’s parents

I relaxed so much I spent a good part of the afternoon fast asleep sitting on the porch of the guest house.

This morning Lanie decided she wanted to go fishing in the creek. That would have been fine if I’d known the day before and had packed our fishing gear. Jim rummaged around and found a small portable rod we couldn’t get to work, and then turned up with a proper fishing rod and some bobbers. No hooks though. So he made one from a sewing needle. Lanie packed some of this mornings wonderful breakfast sausage for bait and we headed down to the creek to fish.

At the creek we saw a beaver swim under the bridge, and we found a small lure and a large fish hook – tripling our fishing gear. The fish loved the sausage but the needle hook wasn’t very effective at catching them. Lanie caught one fish on the huge hook we’d found up in a tree over the creek.

October 22, 2011 | Categories: Arm's Length Self Portrait, Day out, Out and about | Tags: 365 Days, Fishing, Gary Allman, Lanie, Missouri, Nikon D7000, Self Portrait | Leave A Comment »

In the backyard – Berwyn, Illinois

Today we made major progress

We made a lot of trips to Goodwill today and got rid of just about everything that wasn’t fit to be trashed. Then we started piling up the trash to be carted off on Wednesday. There was some very heavy lifting involved, we moved out all the beds and mattresses. The basement is cleared, cleaned and tidied, as is the garage. Curtains have been put up, floors vacuumed and surfaces dusted.

The local vultures removed the defunct appliances we had left out for collecting tomorrow. The only items we couldn’t donate, and can’t be left for trash are a couple of TVs.

In the front yard - I think I look a little more chipper in the backyard picture.

The only problem at the moment is that the builders haven’t turned up to fix the problems that need to be cleared to get the building up to code. They say they are coming tomorrow at 7.30 am. We’ll see. In the mean time I took a couple of minutes out between carrying out all the rubbish to take today’s self portrait.

18 October 2011 | 365:291 | 365 Days blog | Copyright © 2011 Gary Allman

October 18, 2011 | Categories: Arm's Length Self Portrait, Out and about, Visiting | Tags: 365 Days, Colour, Gary Allman, Nikon D7000, Photography, Self Portrait, Trip to Berwyn | Leave A Comment »

Gary on Hawksbill Crag (Whittaker Point), Arkansas

Today I had an easy day’s hiking in Arkansas with a couple of friends.

Bluffs on the Buffalo river near Ponca, Arkansas

We started off with a hike up the ‘Lost Valley’, I’ll have to return when the creek is in spate – today it was completely dry; so we hiked up the creek bed instead of the trail. We crawled on hands and knees into a cave (I found out afterwards on YouTube that there is supposed to be an upright route in), which has a large chamber about 150′ in. Normally there is a waterfall there, but not this time. We took a second hike along the Buffalo river and finished the day backpacking to a superb camping spot near Hawksbill Crag (aka Whittaker point) – a rocky shelf suspended some 200 feet up on a bluff overlooking Whittaker creek. The bluffs and crag providing magnificent views across the valley. It really is a wonderful place, and it’s not surprising it is one of the most photographed features in the Buffalo River area.

I left my pedometer behind, but a rough guess is that we hiked just under 7 miles altogether.

Campsite near Hawksbill Crag, Arkansas

Our campsite was under a huge rock ledge, that is normally fronted by a waterfall. However, after the long dry summer it was dry. There were a few drips of water to be collected nearby, which was lucky, otherwise we’d have been thirsty, as the six litres of water I packed in very quickly started to dwindle. The space under the ledge was big enough for several tents, so we had plenty of room with just two.

After dark we were interrupted by the arrival of a party of students who were hoping to spend the night under the ledge. They were very polite, and fortunately had a better knowledge of the area than we did, as they spent the night under a smaller overhang, that we didn’t know existed, a hundred yards further along the bluff.

Just to finish off the day we revisited the crag around midnight to enjoy the scene in the moonlight. Given the huge drop offs perhaps that wasn’t the most prudent of ventures – especially as my headlamp batteries decided to go into terminal decline on the way back.

Gary on Hawksbill Crag (Whittaker Point), Arkansas

Steve, Gary and Kirby on Hawksbill Crag (Whittaker Point), Arkansas

Our campsite near Hawksbill Crag, Arkansas

Bluffs on the Buffalo river near Ponca, Arkansas

October 14, 2011 | Categories: Arm's Length Self Portrait, Backpacking, Camping, Hiking, Outdoors, Wilderness and trails | Tags: 365 Days, Arkansas, Buffalo River, Colour, Fuji FinePix F30, Gary Allman, Hawksbill Crag, Ozarks, Photography, Self Portrait, Whittaker Point | Leave A Comment »

Day 285

Not a good day.

October 12, 2011 | Categories: Arm's Length Self Portrait, Around the house, Home | Tags: 365 Days, Artificial light, Available Light, Black and White, Gary Allman, Nikon D7000, Photography, Self Portrait | Leave A Comment »

Day 281

Today Ginger arrived back from Chicago.

I was too busy catching up to take any fancy pictures.

October 8, 2011 | Categories: Arm's Length Self Portrait, Around the house, Home | Tags: 365 Days, Artificial light, Available Light, Black and White, Gary Allman, Nikon D7000, Photography, Self Portrait | Leave A Comment »

Blessing of the Animals

Today was another busy day.

I was up at five-thirty am and out the door at six for my lift to church, and then I spent most of the next seven hours in the kitchen helping with the meals. It all went very well (well planned and executed Kris!). We were far too busy to take any pictures. I really should have made the effort.

Clearing up took a long time, so I decided to stay at church until the afternoon’s events started. I took today’s picture after the blessing of the animals had taken place, Getzger was very well behaved and the only feline this year – there were lots of dogs but no lizards (shame).

October 2, 2011 | Categories: Arm's Length Self Portrait, Church, Church | Tags: 365 Days, Blessing of the Animals, Christ Episcopal Church Springfield Missouri, Gary Allman, Nikon D7000, Photography, Self Portrait | Leave A Comment »

2 am.

okay 1.55 am to be precise.

It could also be titled HTML, CSS, PHP and Javascript, oh my! I’ve been busy working on a WordPress theme.

September 20, 2011 | Categories: Arm's Length Self Portrait, Around the house, Home | Tags: 365 Days, Artificial light, Available Light, Black and White, Gary Allman, Late Night, Nikon D7000, Photography, Self Portrait | Leave A Comment »

This is what results when one accidentally presses the shutter while struggling to get the camera into position

AKA Parking lot fund raiser wash-out.

Ginger and I volunteered to watch over the Youth Group kids working the Cider Days parking lot fund raiser after church today. Yesterday’s attempt got rained off, and the weather wasn’t any better today. After less than an hour we sent the kids in and Mark and I stayed out and took around six dollars an hour (that’s two cars) for about three hours before throwing in the towel.

Gary at the parking lot fund raiser wash-out.

While Mark was off having some lunch I took a few pictures for today’s self portrait. This is what you get when you accidentally hit the shutter and it fires several times in quick succession when you are not expecting it to do so. I had a more normal shot – but I’ve loads of those, so I decided to go with this rather stupid looking one. You will, I hope, note the rain on my glasses. Unfortunately you can’t see how wet my hair is.

18 September 2011 | 365:261 | 365 Days blog | Copyright © 2011 Gary Allman

September 18, 2011 | Categories: Arm's Length Self Portrait, Around Springfield, Church, Church | Tags: 365 Days, Christ Episcopal Church Springfield Missouri, Colour, Gary Allman, Nikon D7000, Photography, Self Portrait, Springfield Missouri | Leave A Comment »

Trying to get out of the parking lot on the way home from the symphony

It took nearly an hour to complete a ten minute journey.

I spent the day doing ‘webby’ things and ending up ultimately disappointed once more in the quality of software – this time bought. Sigh. This should be simple.

Ginger took Lanie down to church to help with the ‘Cider Days’ parking lot fund raiser, and Katie clothes shopping in a hunt for some classic clothes in the down town flea markets. The fund raiser got washed out, but the shopping trip was a success, and I was treated to an impromptu fashion show when they got back.

John and Marsha are on vacation and very kindly gave us their tickets to this evening’s symphony concert, so we had a Beethoven treat night. I had planned on taking today’s picture either just outside or inside the auditorium, but the light was horrid inside and it was frightfully busy outside.

After the concert we got stuck in traffic trying to exit the parking lot – apparently a rodeo just down the road had finished at the same time, so we spent 50 minutes just sitting in line. I decided to take a safety shot while we were waiting.

We were a bit concerned about our back tyre which currently has a number plate screw, complete with washer, buried in it. It’s been raining heavily all day, and I didn’t fancy changing a tyre in the wet, so we left it in place. It can stay there, probably until after the school run Monday morning if I can get away with it.

September 17, 2011 | Categories: Arm's Length Self Portrait, Around Springfield, In the car | Tags: 365 Days, Artificial light, Available Light, Black and White, Chrysler Town and Country Minivan, Fuji FinePix F30, Gary Allman, Photography, Self Portrait, Springfield Missouri, Springfield Symphony | Leave A Comment »

Working late

Only 99 more days to go.

This documentary picture a day doesn’t work very well when you never leave your desk. My day began at 7.20 am with the school run, then back home at my desk and I’m still here at 1 am.

Edit: I’m mildly dyslexic especially where numbers are concerned – I didn’t find it out until I started doing business accounts and couldn’t work out why they never balanced – I was typing in a lot of the numbers all jumbled up. The right digits, just not necessarily in the right order. The astute will have spotted that I have 109 days left to go…

September 13, 2011 | Categories: Arm's Length Self Portrait, Around the house, Body Part, Home, Working | Tags: 365 Days, Artificial light, Available Light, Black and White, Colour, Gary Allman, Nikon D7000, Photography, Seiko Divers' Watch, Self Portrait, Spot Colour | Leave A Comment »

Gary, Lanie and Ginger (hiding at the back) too

For what seems like the first time in over three months the temperature dropped below 90°F,

so we had a celebratory hike. A nice short 4 miles on the white trail and Busiek. We took along Lanie, Katie and Katie’s friend. My camera is far too heavy for an arm’s length self portrait, and it took me a few attempts to get the flash level right.

We should have tried for a better shot in which all of Ginger’s face was visible, but we wanted to get on our way as we had an appointment with some burgers at Tom and Rebbie’s to keep. Very nice they were too.

Tonight we’ve had to close up the house. Not because it’s too hot – but because it is too cold!

September 5, 2011 | Categories: Arm's Length Self Portrait, Around Springfield, Day out, Hiking, Out and about, Wilderness and trails | Tags: 365 Days, Busiek State Forest and Wildlife Area, Colour, Gary Allman, Hiking, Ozarks, Photography, Self Portrait | Leave A Comment »

Sitting at the kitchen table chatting with Ginger

September 3, 2011 | Categories: Arm's Length Self Portrait, Around the house, Home | Tags: 365 Days, Artificial light, Available Light, Black and White, Gary Allman, Nikon D7000, Photography, Self Portrait | Leave A Comment »

More of the same

At least this one is in colour.

September 2, 2011 | Categories: Arm's Length Self Portrait, Around the house, Home | Tags: 365 Days, Artificial light, Available Light, Colour, Gary Allman, Nikon D7000, Photography, Self Portrait | Leave A Comment »

2 am

I was working late.

I wanted to finish the first draft of a website, and I just kept at it as the last stage was loading in the content which doesn’t require a lot of brain power. Of course I should have remembered and taken my daily picture earlier.

This picture will have to do. At 2am I wasn’t in the mood to try and set up a complex shot. Shame about having to wake up just after 6am the next day though.

August 30, 2011 | Categories: Arm's Length Self Portrait, Around the house, Home, Working | Tags: 365 Days, Gary Allman, Photography | Leave A Comment »

McDonald’s, I’m good ‘n cold and I have two egg McMuffins!

I love Egg McMuffins.

Sorry, but it is true. However, that’s jumping ahead a little bit. I was the first to arrive for Biometrics scanning – which was great because it was all over in ten to fifteen minutes. There is probably a joke to be made about an Englishman, a Jamaican and a Russian waiting in line for Biometrics, but it will have to wait for another day.

i guess I made somebody’s day, as the lady taking my fingerprints said “it is great to start the week with a laugh” this was after busting out laughing because I was nonplussed as to why my thumb print still matched, when it shouldn’t. Then it dawned on me… I’d injured the other hand.

You are not supposed to take cameras along for the biometrics appointment so I saw lots of pictures I couldn’t take while walking to my appointment, and by the time I walked back to the hotel the light had changed and the pictures weren’t there any more.

It was hot and rapidly getting hotter in St Louis so I decided to head on home. On the way back I stopped at Pacific, Missouri for an egg McMuffin, and I couldn’t believe my luck when I was told there was a two for one offer! My attempts to take this picture of one of my McMuffins attracted the attention of the staff, but fortunately I wasn’t asked to stop – probably because I’d deliberately hid myself away from everyone else which I guess was also rather suspicious!

August 29, 2011 | Categories: Arm's Length Self Portrait, Body Part, Day out, Out and about, Retail, Visiting | Tags: 365 Days, Colour, Egg McMuffin, Gary Allman, McDonalds, Nifty-Fifty, Nikon D7000, Photography, Self Portrait | 4 Comments »

Dressing gown

Or robe as the colonials here would have it.

We visited Ginger’s parents and I tried to take a picture of Jim’s latest creation, a huge bottle tree. iI was working in very hot and humid conditions, by the end of the shoot both I and the camera were drenched in sweat. After taking pictures we loaded up the tree in our van for delivery to Oklahoma tomorrow. It’s going to be a fun trip.

Bottle Tree

Bottle tree details

August 21, 2011 | Categories: Arm's Length Self Portrait, Around the house, Home, Visiting | Tags: 365 Days, Artificial light, Available Light, Black and White, Gary Allman, Nikon D7000, Photography, Self Portrait | Leave A Comment »

If I look a little surprised

It’s because this wasn’t meant to be my picture for today.

I was experimenting with tethering my Camera to my Linux Netbook and it actually worked. No wonder I was surprised. Though I was also equally alarmed when the software removed all my unprocessed 365 days pictures from my camera. Fortunately I recovered them. Now if I want I can see the Photos I take on my netbook as I take them. In theory this should make taking self portraits a little easier. However, I suspect this will not be the case.

August 13, 2011 | Categories: Arm's Length Self Portrait, Around the house, Home, Working | Tags: 365 Days, Black and White, Gary Allman, Nikon D7000, Photography, Self Portrait | Leave A Comment »