760 Nanometers

Hello Friends...

As we speak, David Heisler is changing planes in Phoenix in route to Texas and mighty San Marcos. Today is St. Patrick's Day, it's Spring Break and SXSW starts this week in Austin. I'm afraid this will be a drinking week. And nearly as exciting is that my new Color Digital Infrared Camera is in - arriving only yesterday. I shot a few pictures this morning - will try people throughout the week. And certainly, as the foliage becomes more robust, IR will be bouncing around everywhere. Infrared is a long wavelength not discernible to human vision. Green plants reflect it. Water absorbs it. Among its properties is that it travels in a straight line through atmospheric contents - undisturbed by dust, moisture and smog - and will penetrate skin, making blood vessels and bruising visible beneath the surface. And - included herein is one picture of my porch project. Lots to do, but it will be finished eventually.

Geotech

This past Wednesday I ventured North into the Dallas Metroplex to visit my good and trustworthy friend Roger Moore and to lecture at the 21st annual Geotech conference being hosted there. Roger - who is my sooth sayer when it comes to the state of the economy and where our train wreck ends, gave me a good bit of insight into the future. What was most interesting of course is his constant counsel that the only person with responsibility for your welfare is yourself and so - be wary when depending upon anyone but yourself when managing your health, your wealth, your safety and certainly your investment strategy. He reminded me of the staple Merrill Lynch office joke - "well the builder made money, the broker made money, the company made money, but the client lost money - three out of four isn't bad!" 

The Geotech conference is a regional educators conference where teachers from far and wide come for extracurricular education in a variety of topics. I did a three hour talk on color theory as it relates to human color vision, the science of digital photography, and the use of specific wavelengths for identifying and documenting evidence. It was great fun but three hours is just about my limit. 

Pictures by Roger Moore of RogerMoorePhotography.com

Class One Eleven

Brian P. Garcia was one of my former photography students at Texas State. He's a pretty sharp cat. He owns his own custom card company   www.AustinBlanks.com, can run a bar and a saw but can't fly a plane. And on February 13, 2009, Brian graduated with Class One Eleven - The Austin Fire Department's latest class of Rookie Cadets. Brian likes his job and is back to chasing girls so we don't hear from him much. (Insert Fire Hose Joke Here). We (Me, Myself and I) are proud of Brian as we are of all those who sacrifice from their personal lives to serve mankind.

Texas Independence Day Photographs

The Lone Star State

For the last three years, I have been fortunate to accompany my friend Terry "Tex" Toler - a writer, marketing and advertising mogul, wit, sooth sayer and walking Wiki of all manner of minutia, trivia and flotsam - a mud brick makin, stucco slingin, dog not disciplining, desert plant knowing, sotol loving West Texan, word smith and divining rod - to the Annual Celebrate Texas events that surround Texas Independence Day - events held in memory of the day that Texans defended the Alamo on March 2nd, 1836. And the most enjoyable of the lot is the annual dinner and program at Terry Boothe's ranch near Cypress Mill, Texas. 

It is a gathering and pot luck dinner where alcohol is permitted. Often dressed is western attire, and period ware, Texans and their friends celebrate Texas with live music, food, libation, poetry, and the reading of William B. Travis's last letters - perhaps the most eloquent and patriotic letters ever written, a program that ends with canon fire.