Sunset in Oregon

Between 4/22/08 to 4/26/08 I met my brother, Ralph Nordstrom, and Jack Graham in Oregon for three and a half days of shooting. We shot the Oregon coast and the Columbia River Gorge.

Being Oregon it was overcast and rainy most of the time. However on Saturday we had a beautiful day with lots of sun and wonderful clouds. But as the day wore on the clouds inscreased and as it often happens in the midwest, I'm from Minnesota, the weather turns unpredictable. In the evening we stood at the Womens Forum overlook looking east as the storm gathered steam. As the sun fell lower in the sky the rain started falling and the lightning began to strike. One of Jacks sunset locations is the Vista House a short drive from the overlook, so we headed there.

The three of us, along with a few other photographers, were setup looking west toward the setting sun. It continued to rain and thinder boomed around us. We were hoping the sun would appear under the cloud bank and light up the underside of the clouds. The sun did appear but a heavy rainstorm had moved between us and the sun. As can be seen from the image below the suns light was diffused by the rain and filled the sky with colors fromreds to purples. It was a magical moment.

Roger

Cardiac Snow

Yesterday morning we woke up to a beautiful winter wonderland. Cardiac snow is great for photography. It's very wet and sticks to everything. So I took a bit longer to get into work. Here are a few images that were taken.






Roger

What is It

The first two people that saw this image each thought it was something very different from what it is. What is it?



The image was taken along the North Shore on Minnesota.

Roger

Backup, Backup, Backup

Last week I decided that my internal hard drive needed some relief. This Raid-0 500gb drive had just over 1gb free. So I thought I would move my 100+ gb of 20D files to an external drive where I had previously moved my 300D files.

Fortunately for me backing up my data has been a long standing routine. My career has been in the systems side of IBM mainframe shops and backing up data is a big deal in IT. So I have always backed up my data. I always preferred unattended backups and I've owned a number of tape systems over the years but use hard drives now.

My tool of choice for moving my 20D files is Lightroom. Lightroom contains all of the info on my images so it is really the only choice. But Lightroom really moves the files, meaning the source copy is deleted. So before I began I made sure my backup was in place.

Moving 100+gb of images in Lightroom is a time consuming process. Towards the end I started getting write errors on the 500gb destination drive. To make a longer story shorter the destination drive was chock full of errors and the quality of my files were consistently inconsistent.

As it turned out my 300D files were never copied to my backup drives but I was fortunate that I could get them safely off the errant drive loosing just a few images in the process.

I proceeded to rebuild my image files for my backups. I keep two sets of backups. The first is the destination for nightly SyncToy, a freebe Microsoft tool, synchronizations. This insures that I will loose no more than 1 days worth of work. The second level is an unscheduled but regularly run synchronization of my first level backup to a second level backup. This second level is my safety net. It is not as up to date as the first but if all else fails I 'should' have a copy.

As I was rebuilding my 20D images I discovered my first level backup was missing quite a number of images. This was a disconcerting discovery thinking that they were gone. But my second level backup came to the rescue. Since the second level backup isn't subjected to daily updates all of the files were there.

In the ended it took me about a week to get all of my files restored, my daily backups rescheduled and all of my backup copies back in order. It was a chore but all of my files, minus a half dozen, were saved.

One future enhancement to my backup strategy is to use two second level backups. These would be switched back and forth every week or so with the one not in use going to work with me and stored there. One more 1tb drive would give me that option.

So the lesson here is backup, backup, backup. I have heard to many stories of people loosing thousands of digital images due to a hard drive crash. Just think of all the time and money that goes into capturing those images and memories and then how easy it is to go spend $250 for a terabyte drive and start backing up.

Roger

Arts in Harmony - Jury Results

Last Sunday the artists reception was held for this years Arts in Harmony art show where the just results were announced. Unfortunately I was unable to attend.

So yesterday I went by the Government Center, where the art work is displayed, to see the art work and the winners. This is an excellent show, again, pulling in work from local as well as national artists. I was happy to see a number of people enjoying the art. They appeared to be there to see the show and not because they had business with the county government.

As I was looking at the work Dave Beauvais , the original founder of the Arts in Harmony 13 years ago and the force behind the show, came up to me and said he had put my ribbon behind my Photograph and that I needed to get it since my print was not going home with me. (I suspect my eyes lite up at this point.)

Last year I had won a Members award and the Great River Energy Purchase Award for my Spearfish Canyon image.

I knew I hadn't won that award again since I had seen another photograpy that won it, as well as the Best Photograph award. The photography was particularly strong this year so winning anything was an honor. Not being familar with all of the purchase awards, turns out there are only two, I was curious.

When Dave and I got to my image and while Dave went to revrieve my ribbon I read the label. I had won the Members Award as well as the Government Center Purchase Award. My image would be finding a permanent home in the Sherburne County Government Center. Cool, I thought. You know a guy can get used to winning these purchase awards.

They had the art show pamphlet which listed all of the artists in the show and their art work. There on the first page of the awards was my name again, for the second year in a row. Last year I won 1 of the 2 top dollar awards and this year I won one of the top 4 dollar awards. Like I said before 'A guy could get used to this'.

I feel honored to have two images selected for the show and very proud to be one of the Member award winners as well as the purchase award winner.

My winning image was taken last fall along the shores of Lake Superior. This is Cascade River in Cascade River State Park. The water was particularly high this last year which added to the character of the image.

The art show can be seen M-F from 8:00 to 4:30pm at the Sherburne County Government Center off HWY 10 in Elk River, Minnesota.

Roger