Archive for the 'Photography' Category

Yesterday, my sister Hannah graduated from UNC, with a bachelor’s degree in Psychology (though she essentially crafted her own neuro-science major, a topic she is most interested in). She was only 1 of 3 people in her (very large) department that graduated with highest honors, which is a real accomplishment. It’s hard to believe that my little sister has grown up so much.

My main focus with this post, however, is one of great mystery. After the Psychology department ceremony (the last one we attended during the day), my grandmother, mother, sister, and I waited around the Old Well while my dad went to get our car. In a grassy area nearby, a group of people were putting on some sort of show for everyone. There were four “characters” in this show:

The Drummers

The first “character” was actually a group of three people sitting atop some African-style conga drums, each playing a consistent, though seemingly random, beat. Each one did this without stopping, at least for the entire time we were there (which was about 10 or 15 minutes).

The Purple Monster

This character was apparently controlled by two or three people, and stood 12 to 15 feet high. It was a purple being, with a large masked head and two large hands. It never moved from its spot, but swayed and danced along to the music from The Drummers.

The Thought Police

This character wore a giant green mask and hat, while carrying a blue baton. They also wore a trench coat, and spent most of their time chasing the next player around the grassy area.

Blue-Haired Person

This player wore a blue wig, a Carolina-blue gown (from graduation, apparently), and red pants. When they weren’t being chased by the “Thought Police,” they sat atop a “Corporate Ladder.”

No one spoke the entire time, which made this strange thing even stranger. The chain of events I could see where this: the Thought Police chased the Blue-Haired Person around for awhile, at least until the Blue-Haired Person climbed the Corporate Ladder. Once the person climbed the Corporate Ladder, the Thought Police left them alone, running around the Purple Monster instead. I took a few pictures of the characters:

• The Thought Police and the Purple Monster
• The Blue-Haired Person and the Drummers

Does anyone have any clues as to what this means? Seeing that this was in Chapel Hill, there was undoubtedly an implied political message, but I fail to grasp what it is. Irregardless of the message, the whole thing was pretty bizarre.

I have posted a short photo album of some of our backyard wildflowers. As you might be able to tell from the album, I’ve been trying to improve my macro photography skills (I still have a ways to go). This album is not representative of all the flowers in our yard (we have a surprising amount). Several varieties that do not appear here include the Common Blue Violet, the Confederate Violet, the common Dandelion, and a few others that I forget the names of at the moment.

The Wild Geranium photo is my personal favorite from the set.

I have posted the rest of my photographs from the Pump Station trail at Eno River State Park. We saw some other interesting sights along the trail, including a rather large black snake and some signs of beaver activity. I hope you enjoy the album.

I have posted a new photo album detailing the ruins of the Eno River pump station. It was used from 1887 to 1927 to supply drinking water to the city of Durham. Amazingly, after only 80 years, the ruins have been all but forgotten, as the forest has swallowed it up completely. I highly recommend visiting this site in Eno River State Park; it is well worth the trip.

Another photo album will also be appearing in the next day or so, showcasing some of the other things to be seen along the Pump Station trail.

A new photo album has just been posted. This past weekend, my dad and I went out to the Eno River to hike one of their many trails. Signs of spring were all around, and I captured a few of them with my camera. Comments on this photo album are welcome.

Update: I have renamed this photo album to “Dunnagan’s Trail on the Eno.” I think that name fits a little better, especially given the nature of some of the photographs.

I’ve rolled out some upgrades to the software I use here at the site for my photo albums. Here’s the list of improvements:

• Clean URLs are now used through the magic of URL rewriting. I think I’ve gotten most of the kinks worked out with this, but WordPress feels like it should control everything on the site. I’ll be making a post later this week on what I had to do to get things to work.
• HTML is now supported in all my photo captions. I’ve added a few links to a few of the photos, and I’m looking forward to using this feature on future albums. I hope to add this functionality to album descriptions eventually.
• The header image is no longer shown on photo album pages. This reduces the height of the page, reducing the need to scroll down.
• Extended photo information is now shown in a table using four columns instead of two, again reducing the height of the page.
• A new database backend is being used (the MySQLi extension instead of the raw MySQL PHP calls).
• A photo gallery title is no longer shown on each album page.

I want to add comments eventually, but there’s more effort involved in doing that than I want to spend right now. If you notice any problems, please let me know about them. I’m aware of a minor bug in my rewriting code (no regular users should encounter it), but I hope to fix it in the coming days.

An increasing number of links to photographs are making the front page of Digg, making an already weak collection of ‘news’ even weaker. There’s a petition for adding a new photography section to the site, and that would certainly help keep these links off the front page. Most of the photographs that get linked to on Digg are nice, but none of them are front-page worthy.

On a photography related note, I will be making some upgrades soon to the photo album software I employ here at this website. Don’t be surprised if the photo galleries are down for a while over the next few days. Some new features are coming, and I’m excited about them, so stay tuned for updates.