I woke with the strong desire to stretch the camera's envelope of features. I'd been trying to think of unique ways of using them over night. I think I dreamed about it too. When I'd packed up and began heading out, things looked a bit different...
This is not the Prince symbol, nor the symbol for androgyny. It is "angelic" script.
There were new tags around too. On the bridge column above me were a bunch of blended angel symbols. I took a picture to study for later. And, I saw this new work...
Strange things were going to happen in the next few days that seemed to indicate a new direction was coming for me personally on this journey, besides the physical act of going back to the Midwest. The Spark was beginning to express itself - through me - more often. But, you'll read about all of that soon enough.
I'm just another guy when it comes to certain things. I like dreaming about what I would do with land if I had it (when I have it?). I often passed this rental place and admire the little toys I could use...
When I reached Sprague, I saw two guys up on a crane doing something to the side of bank building. I guessed they were going to install something. But I could not see what they had done from the ground. It was too far away, until I checked out my pictures of their work...
Even this was blurry to me...
But, the new camera has a terrific optical zoom. It was only after checking out how these shots looked, that I was able to see the hole and the cut lines around it.
The reason I'd looked up in the first place - and this is among the most boring paragraphs I've ever written--sorry - was, because I like flow of the shape of the iron below these air intakes; they make it look like a stylistic wave is formed, just by alternating concentric curve directions...
So... Ha! Anyway, the Fibonacci sequence came to mind...
I know the awful truth: I'm a geek.
Now came the fun part: Time to give the new camera a real test drive, kick the tires and see how she performs. The first experiment with the panorama feature was what impressed me the most. I'd never used such a feature before...
There was only a slight dip in the bridge on the left. Just this one shot showed me a whole new world of photographic possibilities. I was hooked.
Now, if anyone doesn't quite get how this works I'll tell you. The panoramic pictures in this post are actually three full-sized pictures at full resolution. In other words. I have the camera set to the largest and finest detail (over 1,500 pixels per picture frame).
The picture above is actually over 4,500 pixels wide. The camera starts by asking me to take a picture. Then, it tells me to hold the frame while it processes that first picture. When I see the next screen I have to move the camera to the right, matching up a little "plus" sign (indicating a point where the camera has remembered the visual aspects of the image) until it fits into a plus-shaped graphic on the camera screen. Then, the same procedure is followed for a third frame. The results are spectacular, and poster-worthy...
What would have taken three pictures to show you, can now be done in one.
Here is the macro setting. It can be zoomed up so
close that the scratches on my watch look like mountains and valleys.
The area in the park where I was sitting.
Walking out on to Spokane Falls Road, this scene struck me as kind of humorous. Is the Christian Science Reading Room really destroying documents? Surely the second coming is at hand!
The day before, I'd found a penny. It looked brand new until I checked the date...
I thought I'd found gold! The rim was raised too--maybe an "error coin". Surely it must be worth more than one cent? I would find the answer to that question in the next couple days.
I saw the two small streams that ran from the pond up where I had been sitting down, to the river below. They made their way through two different routes. Here is the head of one...
And here is the head of the other...
Both run down to the river on the right, in the following image, via meandering man-made channels and subterranean pipes. I made a movie of each step they went through, but my movie app is having issues, and won't master correctly. So, the movie has been added to the long list of unused video, for future production...
I found all of this too interesting to stop. I knew I had a post to publish, but somehow, this photo experimentation seemed more important.
The day was overcast which made for excellent pictures, without glare or shadows. The air was cool and misty. I acknowledged these good conditions and then looked down to find this pencil...
"Grey Mist". Yep...
See?
Now it was time to really power up this puppy up. I'd seen how it blended scenery to make a wide angle panorama. I wondered how something straight, like the top of a fence - for example - in front of me might come out...
I swear I did not cut this fence pipe. The background is preserved,
while the top of the fence is sacrificed.
What might happen in a tunnel?...
This gives some idea, but the second and third shot weren't quite blended enough.
What about looking at the ground from side to side, like a left-handed golfer might, along the strip that her club would follow?...
First shot, on the left.
Second shot on the right.
Then, I combined them later to form the entire six-frame panoramic perspective...
I was seeing some things I'd never really seen before in photography. Though, I'm sure they have been done many times. There is also a "Manual" setting, where, with each frame, you line up the details yourself with a little half-opaque scene from your last shot. I tried it, and when I was very careful I could achieve something similar to what the camera could do automatically.
For the hell of it, I wanted to see what happens when the images don't line up correctly during the process.
The first issue is that the light can be different in each frame, but also notice that the perspective in each frame will be askew and unable to connect to the others. Makes for an interesting shot though...
There is never anything wrong with experimenting. It helps one learn about one's gear, and maybe some creative ideas might arise too? You never know. Here is what can be done by half-aligning each frame, during the three frame process...
Still, the good old way you "should" do it, does produce remarkable results for rivers and landscapes...
The Grand Hotel and Convention Center from the north bank.
The Spokane Falls Dam.
I didn't yet know whether I'd be leaving for Minnesota before or after the Lantern Festival, but I thought a shot of the map might be good...
OK. So, I wasn't really done with my panoramic day. I saw that I could produce excellent horizontal panoramas, and even manipulate them to get illusion-like results. What about the vertical? How does one take a picture of an entire tree, from base to tip? Well, like this...
Willow, tall and strong (the ground could be cropped for more attention on the tree itself).
Here are scenes that combine many of the views I'd shown
in regular pictures over the last four weeks. I love these two shots!
The modern on the left and the older, more natural, on the right,
separated by the Spokane River. I even included a pretty girl on the steps.
The following is a good way to see how the ability to do panoramic shots increases the angle that can be seen...
Panoramic, from three feet away...
Or, non-panoramic, from three feet away.
A convex mirror at the bend in the park path.
I spent all day playing around with ideas. I'd take shots, delete the nasties, and keep the ones that either worked or could remind me of what doesn't work. In a way, they all "worked".
I had missed making my post for the day, but gained so much by trying different things with the new camera. I wanted novel ideas that I could use when I hike down the east side of Mississippi River on my final leg of this year's journey.
It was getting dark. I strained to see the shots on my laptop, while still being able to look up and see anything around me, due to the brilliance of the screen. I needed to march back to my temporary creek "home", before it got too late.
There were two cats - one, an orange and white short-haired tabby male, like Buddy (my cat in Maine), and the other, an exotic, dark silver long-haired female - that I would greet every morning on the way into town or the last two weeks, right on Seventh Avenue. Then I'd meet them again on my way back to the creek. It was the male whom I'd first seen. But over the last few days, the female was around more. And, this day was no exception...
On this night, she came straight out, purring and meowing. At first (a couple weeks before) I called her "Silver", but that morphed into "Sylva" like the maiden name of my great friend in Livermore, California.
Sylva - The silver ball of mushy, kitty love.
The creek was quiet, and the air was getting chilly. The cold air tumbles down from the cliffs on each side, bringing the temperature along the creek banks to a good five degrees lower than it is in the city, at night. The moon was waxing.
The timing of this last week - as gleaned from personal and social observations (not necessarily discussed in this blog), to cosmological events, was seemingly auspicious. It seemed that way to me; something I will discuss in the next couple of posts...
The moon on its way to hiding behind the bridge column.
Fun coincidental facts: Remember my post about Kevin? He started his course on morality in jail 7 days before I left Livermore, California to walk on this journey. He was released from jail 7 days before I would end up heading to Minnesota. I found his papers exactly one month before the one-year anniversary of the Manifest Destiny journey. It will be a full moon on the night that I leave (a trip I still didn't have a date for on the day discussed in this entry). And, my first full day in Minnesota will be the 100th day of this current journey. That is the same number of days it took me to cross the country on the Manifest Destiny journey.
In short, though all of the above may be whimsical coincidences, more of them would pour into my experience in the two days to follow this one. I watched the moon as I lay in my sleeping bag, knowing I would not be in this place much longer.
With each departure from a town I've gotten to know, I am becoming more and more nostalgic. It is not a sentimental feeling, but rather a flood of memories from my time in these places and wanting more time to know them. It is an emotional longing, not a pleading.
At the same instant, I'm happy to not be getting dragged into the drama that comes along with getting to know the people in these places, too well. In other words, any place has its share of ongoing drama.
I have gotten to know a few women here, and have been very careful not to raise the expectation with them that I might stay longer. I've been clear about my job, my journey and my dedication to it (which I don't think is difficult for them to appreciate). And, they are easy-going persons... that is the Northwest way.
These lovely ladies stand as both a reminder to me that I can still attract the opposite sex (something I've wondered about for years), while also reassuring me that I will have good friends to come back and see some day--maybe more than friends--SOMEday.
Their presence is an incentive. Spokane is a passionate and intimate place. I've found the girls/women here to be very willing to risk getting to know a stranger, without over-worrying about putting themselves in harm's way--either physically or psychologically. People shoot MUCH straighter out here, than on the east coast. They learned a long time ago that games lead to pain.
They simply want to find love and friendship. In Spokane, there is a strange kind of overlap in these too desires. I can't explain it much more clearly. You have to "be" here--as it were. For now, friendship must override. In the future? Who knows?
I slipped off to sleep, enjoying the recent memories of my time, and the friendships I've developed here.
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