Author: andrew

Shinnfans,

Week 5 of the Coast Guard Cutter Bear deployment photo essay is up. You can see it at Fred’s Place. I’m pretty unhappy with this week’s images as a whole. It was a time for “family business” for the Bear. I didn’t use my 12-24mm lens at all this week, unlike last week, where all but one image was shot with that lens. If there are any redeeming images or photos you liked from this week, I’d love to hear about it in the comments below. It’ll help me feel like I wasn’t a waste of skin and oxygen this week.

Thanks,
Andrew

Not something you see every day, unless you happen to live in Agadir! (Photo by Andrew Shinn)

Little Naomi Rose is such a sweet baby. She is so content and a joy to be around. What a blessing. I had a wonderful time visiting Naomi and her mommy & daddy. I’m already looking forward to when I’ll see them again. (Photo taken by Susan Ensz)

In Boston, Lisa could usually get me to go grocery shopping with her by offering to let me use the Shopping Buddy at Stop ‘n Shop. It’s a little electronic gadget that could tell you all the deals on each aisle, try to sense your buying preferences, and get you better deals on purcahsed items. Until today, I thought this was a pretty original invention. Then I learned that in Morocco, they’ve been using the Shopping Buddy system for a long time.

I was shopping for chochkes in Agadir today and found the ultimate Shopping Buddy system. I went to the first section close to the entrance of a gift store and was found by an employee of the store, who proceeded to take me to any part of the store I mentioned (or glanced at, or thought about). There he (or she, they handed me off from time to time) would point to anything I seemed interested in and tell me all about the item. These shopping buddies speak many languages, which is a by-product of living in a highly tourist-dependent area. They would carry items for me (no cart required!) and haggle over prices. One of my Shopping Buddies even dressed me up in a traditional Berber outift, complete with turban. My Shopping Buddy showed me flying carpets and magic carpets. I couldn’t resist; I bought a Magic Carpet. My Shopping Buddy got me the ‘good friend price’ on everything I bought. It was pretty neat. I think Stop n’ Shop could learn a thing or two in Morocco.

My new haircut. We’re enjoying lunch after church on Sunday and Steve & Tricia’s house in Redding.

Friends, foes, family, and foreigners,

Tonight I’m announcing my favorite photos from last week’s Fred’s Place posting (www.fredsplace.org/images/bear/week3) and declaring a winner in the guessing contest! That’s right! I really did intend to announce a winner! Though some have recently cast aspersions on my integrity, I’m here today to announce the winner and prove once and for all that I’m a man of my word (or a man of my words, which is pretty much the same thing).

And this time I’ve upped the prize ante. To the winner I’ll be granting access to a special, private photo album reserved hitherto for Lisa alone. It’s full of photos of me (mostly taken by me) during this deployment. The album also contains a picture of a cat I found at a museum (I call her ‘museum kitty’) and a a bonus picture of my lunch in Algeria.

Without further ado (there’s been altogether too much ado), here are the results:

1) Petty Officer 1st Class (MK) Lucas Marino tests a new wireless headset. This photo is my favorite from this week because of the lighting. Luke wasn’t the only person testing something; I was trying out a new technique in digital alternatives to traditional lighting methods. I purposely set the white balance on my camera to read incandescent light properly, then used a handheld mini-maglight flashlight (shining incandescent light) on the right side of his face (left side as you’re looking at the picture). The ambient light coming from all around was flourescent light from the overhead lights, which gave off that greenish glow. Taken all together, the mixed lighting creates a moody image that really grew on my the more I looked at it.

2) Petty Officer 1st Class (EM) Thomas Palmeira supervises the cleanup of a mass casualty drill. I work with light all the time, but it’s rare that I get to actually show the light that I’m working with or looking for. The smoke from the drill draining out of the boatswain’s hole into the daylight above gave me that chance, and Petty Officer Palmeira happened to be standing in the right spot. But this picture is about more than light; it gives an insight into Palmeira and the way he does his work. The confident look on his face, the tatoos on his left arm, and the webbing and pipes behind him all seem to work together to say, “This is a sailor, and this is where he belongs.” The picture, to me, almost transcends time, and feels like it could be from the days of the Spanish Armada or the Barbary Pirates, so universal is the story it tells. Incidentally, light that harsh coming from above forced me to pop some extra flash into the picture, but not too much; just enough to bring out some details in the shadows and bring down the overall contrast range into the limited capabilites of a digital camera.

There you have it, and Grandma’s the winner! She’ll be receiving access to the photo album in her e-mail inbox. The people’s choice photo of the week would definitely have to go to the photo of Alex Fernandez with the Cutter in his sunglasses. Interestingly enough, he’s been having his friends re-create that picture at ruins and landmarks that we visit, so I guess the concept was a good one! Stars and Stripes, the only 1st Amendment newspaper put out by the Department of Defense, ran another of the photos of Fernandez on page 4 of their June 10th European edition (caution: large download!).

This week’s images will be posted tomorrow, and I expect they’ll probably be at www.fredsplace.org/images/bear/week4. Look for some instant classics and cool effects, including:

– How to take a group photo with a wide-angle lens while standing on top of a column in the middle of some Roman ruins
– What to do when the Chief Cook asks you to make his motley guys look good (hint: showcase their work!)

That’s all for now, kids. Thanks for playing, “Guess which picture!”

Good night,
Andrew

P.S. – Don’t forget to have your cats and dogs spayed and neutered!

That’s what we call the urinal in our berthing area. Brighty. Why? Because she sounds like a donkey; why else? So someone’s taken the time and care to post the word ‘Brighty’ above the bowl and behind the plumbing in large, red letters against a field of glow-in-the-dark green. I think the name was actually lifted (without even a shadow of regard for copyright or intellectual property laws) from a donkey named Brighty in some long-forgotten movie. But the name stuck like the glow-in-the-dark tape with the big, friendly red letters on it. And so she stands (or, rather, hangs). She’s the only trace of anything even remotely female in our living area.

But for all the smells, swear words, and insults that give away the distinctly male (so male one can feel the testonsterone even when the place is empty) environment, the sinks are remarkably clean. Yes, you read that right. The stainless steel sinks, ever so graciously adorned with the message, “Don’t be a pig, wash your hands after wiping your ass!” are always clean; spotless. That’s because everyone who uses either of the two sinks ALWAYS wipes it clean with a paper towel when they’re finished, in accordance with another small label-maker-produced sign posted in the vicinity of the sink. In summary: Brighty, red letters, donkey, smells, testosterone, clean sinks, two small signs.

Good night,

Andrew

Sunny and pleasant weather California greetings!

I have officially chopped my hair! ‘Want to know what it looks like? Sorry. Feel free to take some guesses if you dare and pictures will be posted soon. I have given up the ponytail for awhile.

We have a wireless network set up in our home as of 5:30pm June 08, 2005. If you visit and have a laptop, you’ll be ‘connected!’ I’m excited about this for Andrew as his laptop (currently onboard the USCGC Bear) will make computer #2 in our house. No worries now, we are all hooked up! 🙂

I recently purchased a Fugi Fine Pix F10 digital camera from costco.com. It was shipped today and should arrive shortly. I’m really looking forward to stepping into the consumer-grade digital camera world. The Nikon F100 has been great and worked perfectly since I’ve arrived in California, but the pictures are all captured on film. C-GDC world here I come!

Yes, this is my confession, in little internet-residing digital pixels-bytes. I did, in fact, make up the word ingenuitized. I didn’t know a more appropriate word that would exactly convey my meaning in the specific type of sentence I was using with the wording and intent I had crafted around it.

So, in the best of Hungarian linguistic tradition, I made up the word I needed. I, too, checked a dictionary and decided that since my word didn’t reside in an already-compiled tome, I would just declare it into existence. Maybe you should write to Gwyn Paden (Grandma says she already has); I’d love to be infamous in gramatical circles IN ADDITION TO being infamous in conspiracy theory circles. If you’d like to gaze on my conspiratorial notoriety, click here.

Do I apologize? No, I don’t. I defend my decision as a legitimate act of linguistic development. I think of it in such terms because I did it consciously. Unlike my illustrious (but gramatically improverished) Commander-in-Chief, I chose to forge the yet-unknown waters of the tounge instead of splashing around in grammar’s kiddy pool. These dark and murky waters are still to be found as long as humanity retains its right to creative expression and development. Ours is the noble task of bringing to said waters the illumination of our language-which-is-to-come. Like a Ghost of Christmas Future gone good, this right and responsibility gives us a glimpse of the glorious destiny of our English language. So come with me, dear friends! Ingenuitize!

Do you agree? Disagree? Let me know in the comments below.

Peace out,

Andrew

P.S. – I’d love to get Gwyn’s take on this post. I would appreciate it if someone would forward it to her. I’ll post her reply.

One of the things I love about photography is solving problems. The picture on http://www.fredsplace.org/images/bear/week3/ of the earmuffs hanging in the foreground with Lt. j.g. Jonathan Cox in the background is a great example. I was in the aft steering compartment and saw the picture, but execution was a problem. Like so many spaces on a Coast Guard Cutter, aft steering is incredibly cramped. I knew that pulling off a shot like that would take a wide-angle lens. So I grabbed my 12-24mm f/4 Nikon lens and stood up on top of a storage freezer.

But the problem with taking a picture of something hanging from a ceiling in a dark space is that extra light is required to make a decent photo. Usually that means adding flash to a photo. But shooting from the ceiling leaves no room for a hot-shoe mounted flash (the kind that mounts on top of your camera).

You can use an off-camera flash cable to take the flash off the camera, but in order to do that you must have one handy. I didn’t. So I did the only thing I could think of: I ingenuitized. (Yes, Jon, that is a word. Here’s the definition: ingenuitize – v. – in·ge·nu·i·tize. – 2 – To exercise or display ingenutity. [Latin ingenuits, frankness (influenced by ingenious), from ingenuus, ingenuous. See ingenuous.])

I turned the camera upside down and took the picture with the flash hanging down, into the room. It worked every bit as well as I hoped it would: the earmuffs got a great shadow-to-highlight transition, giving them form and depth and de-emphasizing the ceiling, which would otherwise be distracting, and the rest of the room got just enough light to show what was going on.

Mr. Cox walked away none the wiser, looking great in an interesting situation due to my work, and I walked away with an image I thoroughly enjoy, albeit one I had to rotate in Photoshop.

Would you like hearing stories and photographic problem-solving like this in the future? Anyone perpetually interested in the story behind the picture or the scene behind the camera? If so, register your comments below. If not, feel free to leave no comment and I’ll keep good and quiet about such things in the future.

Good night,
Andrew