Attention Deficit David

It's the most wonderful time of the year

It's the most wonderful time of the year, originally uploaded by davidjschloss.

Halloween is a big deal around these parts. After Abby and I moved into our house, we started a tradition of doing a haunted house. For a few years it got bigger and bigger—the last year we had hundreds of kids and a gigantic haunted maze on our yard with dozens of our friends haunting it.

When it occurred to me that we should probably carry supplemental insurance to cover something so large I discovered that said insurance costs in the thousands. The tradition ended.

For two years I mostly sulked on the porch, drinking beer and making fun of kids. This year we picked things up a bit and had friends over to help haunt. Not as big as a full-blown haunted maze, not as small as a few beers on the porch.

This is my favorite costume, something I've worked on for years. Chainsaw zombie (real chainsaw, no blade) always scares the crap out of the kids.

We had lots of kids crying this year, always a good sign.

Join us next year? And in 2008 the maze returns....

Bru ha ha.

What's come over me?

What's come over me?, originally uploaded by davidjschloss.

Everyone loves halloween

Everyone loves halloween, originally uploaded by davidjschloss.

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Accidentally Shopping Like My Dad

I use a pretty nifty little contact-lens cleaning system that uses UV-c light to kill all the yuckies that build up inside a person's eyeball in a day. (I'm not entirely sure, but I think I hear them talking to me sometimes.)

The only drawback to the system—aside from the bulbs that often blow out and the contacts that sometimes rust—is that it requires the use of preservative-free saline. One of the nifty things about preservatives is that they keep the saline solution from becoming un-preserved, i.e. spoiling. So preservative-free saline comes in really little bottles so that the contents may be used before they spoil and the solution delivers yuckies of its own.

We had run out of the bottles recently so I turned to Amazon to pick some up (god bless Amazon prime) and I seemed to have goofed. Each package contains three small bottles, so I put in an order for what I thought was four packages each of which contained three bottles.

What I actually ordered was three sets of four boxes, each of which contain three bottles.

I now have Saline of the Apocalypse.

At least my eyes will be very, very moist.

My days as a pedicab driver

My days as a pedicab driver, originally uploaded by davidjschloss.

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bikers of the fall

bikers of the fall, originally uploaded by davidjschloss.

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Can't Seem To Focus

I've sort of lost my drive to photograph recently. Partially it's because I've been spending so much free time on my bike (4762 miles for the year as of today) but part is because I'm just sort of non-motivated. I've got two main camera selections, my super-honking Canon 1Ds Mark II, which is something like eight pounds with a lens is one one end of the spectrum. On the other is my smaller point-and-shoot but I've become so disillusioned with the image quality that it's not even worth shooting.

The perfect camera has yet to arrive, and every pro photographer I know wants it. It's small, high megapixel, with manual settings (including Aperture and Shutter Priority modes, and preferably full-manual) and in an ideal world it would come with a raw mode.

The Canon G7 seems tantalizingly close, and I'm still awaiting PDN's review unit, but it lacks a raw mode and that's a bummer. Panasonic/Leica have a new body out but it got terrible terrible reviews for high-ISO noise, and by that I mean "anything over 100 ISO" which makes it less attractive by a factor of around a billion.

Anyhow, fall just fell and I didn't get out to shoot at all. I think that's a felony in the photographic market. I need some motivation. A good project or something to get me going.

In related news, I've been on flickr for two years now. Time flies .

Bad day to be a fly. Good day to be a spider.

Bad day to be a fly. Good day to be a spider., originally uploaded by davidjschloss.

First days of fall for a bumble bee

First days of fall for a bumble bee, originally uploaded by davidjschloss.

My Own Little Magazine

About six months ago I pitched an idea to the publisher of Photo District News (where I am Technology Editor) to replace the craptacular show guide we produce for our Photo Plus Expo with a new Gear Guide. Aimed at the consumer and prosumer (I hate that word) the Gear Guide would be a buying guide for the reader looking for new products.

As our new publisher is a wonderful person, she immediately jumped on the idea and started to look into how feasible it was. Very, as it turns out, and so we started work on the new Gear Guide. While I didn't run the project, I provided most of the editorial for it including the buying guides, product articles, and more.

The Gear Guide arrived at PDN today, fresh from the printer, and it's fantastic looking. It'll be distributed not only at the show, but on some news stands as well. PDN staffers did a killer job, absolutely top notch, and it's really great to read.

It's also fantastic to have invented a publication. Yes, I've written books before which is also great, but this seems a bit different somehow. Perhaps because there's a good chance we'll keep making this title, and so this will be the start of a regular thing.

When the issues came in today those who worked on it stood around in the kitchen congratulating each other and praising the various elements of the publication. I kept waiting for someone to pass around cigars.

I'll get some shots up from it as soon as I can scan it.