LiquidPolymer

I’ve made my living as a pro photographer for over 30 years. These days I consider most cameras to be disposable. I also keep any older bodies as hazardous duty remote cameras. Once you get into the mindset it opens a certain amount of creativity.

I love the kid who is hamming it up at the bottom of the frame. I've been a photographer/videographer for my entire professional career and have run into this kid many, many times. Adults exhibit this behavior too but it is usually much more moderated.

This kid had to know what a camera was, which end was filming (some early film cameras appeared to be simple boxes), and wanted to make his mark on the final product.

I have the "Apollo Remastered" book and it is gorgeous. I'm going to buy this one too. Obviously they went back to the original film from the missions and did a full scan. NASA almost never gives access to the original film and instead we have been seeing duplicate transparencies which involves a loss of detail and dynamic range. They were good enough back then. But these first generation scans cannot be matched for detail and color.

I hate exercise. The only thing I hate more is not exercising.

This article keeps coming back up. I know so many people in Oregon who freaked out about this and started prepping go-bags and family emergency plans. Yet nobody really thinks about it much now. Such is human nature.

A while back on this forum I explained how I have my truck camper fully fueled, stocked with water, foo, and propane. Its electrical system is solar charged but it also has a built-in generator. It’s in this “ready mode” as an emergency shelter for my family. We don’t get much warning with an earthquake.

I was ridiculed by a few folks who seemed to suggest I was a paranoid prepper. But this article and its message have never left my mind.

I also thought this was a longevity test.

I do love optical media and have a considerable CD, DVD, minidisc, and blu-ray collection. Like a Luddite, I still enjoy burning my own.

I especially like my Superscope disc copier. It completely disregards copy protection and I frequently make a backup of my favorite CDs which I store. Although much of my stock are older blanks (like those listed in this article)I’ll be sad if CD-R disappears from the market.

Subduction zone earthquake.

That makes sense. Thank you - in Oregon we can live without AC in an emergency.

Every geographic region in the U.S. has a natural disaster risk factor. In Oregon we are overdue for a large quake, but I've prepared for this. In fact, taken what other regions face - wildfire, tornadoes, hurricanes,flooding - an earthquake sounds down right mild.

My preparation of a truck camper as an emergency shelter makes perfect sense to me. It is mobile, has a built-in generator but is mostly run by solar charging, provides enough space to sleep and live with heat and AC. Few people prep their RV's as an emergency shelter. I'm not sure why. Naturally, I hope my community does not have to face a major earthquake, but I do find it interesting when I get criticism for preparing. Am I coming across as paranoid, or prepared?

After losing power twice for over a week in the depths of winter We installed a transfer switch to allow hooking up a generator. This cost around $200 (my brother-in-law did the electrical for free). We already have a generator built-in in to the truck camper parked in the driveway. The truck camper is setup as an emergency shelter when parked - fully stocked with food, water, and fuel (I live in the PNW and we are expecting the BIG ONE any second).

The transfer switch has multiple switches that allows me to power different sections of the house. I tested everything running the generator - the furnace, the fridges, select lights - it works like a charm. The generator runs off propane and I have 8 bottles of extra in the shed in addition to the large tanks in the camper. Propane is very stable in long-term storage so it is my ideal fuel.

My point being that I don't know where the cost of a home generator is between 7k and 15k. Even if I purchased a separate generator dedicated to house back-up this would be around 2k. The transfer switch would be around 1k for the average consumer. That is 3k. What am I missing about these estimates?

I have an ancient laptop with Snow Leopard running. It keeps my Nikon Film Scanner useful since Nikon abandoned the software for these scanners rather abruptly.

I've been a pro photographer since 1990 and the Kodachrome setting embedded within the Nikon scanner is fantastic for capturing the color and detail of this exceptionally sharp film.

Hi. You are talking about me. I'm involved in multiple infringement settlements and lawsuits every year. Perhaps I should point out that I have spent thousands of my own dollars, and hundreds of hours photographing subjects that are rarely seen much less captured with a camera. My images are licensed hundreds of times every month. They are also frequently stolen. If you steal one of my images you are going to get a demand letter. The price will be far higher than any licensing fee. This is because my images are registered with the copyright office at the Library of Congress which entitles me to seek punitive damages.

The writing has been on the wall for decades. Images are losing value because millions upon millions are created every hour of every day. However, some of those images are remarkable and unique. People can make a lot of money if you happen to be the copyright holder of these images.

An example I like to give is the photographs Gary Rosenquist captured of Mt. St. Helens exploding and the side of the mountain sliding away. Nobody else captured this sequence. Not even close. These images make substantial licensing fees to this day.

I've long been fascinated by the fact that a camera can capture subjects the human eye cannot properly perceive. It just so happens that this obsession has led me to create images that are hard to imitate. I feel no guilt in charging fees for my images. I feel no guilt about pursuing people who have stolen my images for their own projects.

If you are photographing bald eagles with an American flag in the background or frosty fall leaves artfully arranged on the ground - I agree with the gist of this thread - these images are worth practically nothing. But this not universally true for all images.

Kodachrome is an amazing archival color film that when stored properly will last centuries. b&w negative film is even more stable.

You make a good point about the lack of durability and instability of many types of chemical photo processes (especially color negative and print processing). I do think many digital formats will be lost to time when a color transparency or b&w negative will still be viewable without much aid into the future.

One of my favorite photo books is the re-photographic survey project by Mark Klett. He went around re-capturing the exact locations (and camera position) of notable images of the American West from the early days of the US geological survey when they had a plate photographer on the team. We are talking about a time period just after the US Civil War. So we see a landscape captured in time 10 decades or more after the original.

I've been a pro photographer for over 30 years. All my earliest digital work is archived in RAW so I have the original shooting data. It all triple backed up and I have a friend that allows me store one of my backups at his home. I've been amazed at how many photographers lost track of or throw away their older work. I'm still licensing my work hundreds of times a year and some of this older material is becoming even more valuable simply due to scarcity. The redundancy of digital is great of you take archiving seriously.

Yet, I still have drawers of original film from the late 80's - to early 2000's I'm scanning a few but will probably let many be disposed of . . .

I've been rabies vaccinated for 32 years. I get my titer checked every 2 years. I finally got a booster a few weeks ago. I do work with wild animals including bats.

Whenever I read a story like this, I wonder if more people should be vaccinated for rabies. When I spoke to the Oregon state veterinarian a few years ago he told me about a terrible case of rabies infection that happened with a child. The general scenario is - domestic cat catches rabid bat - cat becomes rabid - child in the household is bitten. As mentioned, by the time symptoms are detected it is too late. The doctor also told me a man who got bit by a rabid dog in Mexico and died in Oregon. It took some sleuthing to figure out how/when the infection occurred since the Mexico trip had been months before.

Rabies is a terrible way to die.