debate, camera, draw a picture.

From my point of view the debate was a blowout. I wanted to see Trump prevail by smashing Hillary's face in. I wanted to see her eyes roll again. I wanted to see her slip into another coughing fit. I wanted to see her nearly pass out. I wanted to see her lose another shoe again. I wanted to hear Trump call her a straight up liar every time she lied. Again.  I wanted to hear him tell her that she's pulling figures out of her ass. That she is 100% corrupted such that she corrupts everything she touches. That she is flatly not to be believed on anything. I wanted to hear him say everybody around her is corrupted merely by propinquity to her by way of survival. That her private server was much more than a mistake, it was in fact criminal with upwards to 33,000 felony counts, and that Obama was in on it and he lied about it to the American people too. I wanted to hear Trump tell Hillary Clinton that she takes the American public for idiots easily misled because that's the type she surrounds herself with. But none of that happened and so I was disappointed.

And that caused me to draw a picture instead of listening.

This is the back cover of Arizona Highways October 2016 issue. The one with the birds in it. I already drew the cranes. But this photo looks like a painting because the wind is blowing the water's surface and blurring the reflection. It's real arts. The blurb says:

A breeze creates shimmering reflections of aspen leaves in a small pool at Lockett Meadow. Gerry Groeber. 

Then technical camera numbers.  Nikon D7100 1/150  sec  F13 Iso 160 125mm lens

That there is camera code.

Wow. You can get a Nikon D7100 for $700.00 on Amazon. You should buy me one. It's a savings from $1,200.00. Oh, it's a DX format. That means it's 3/4 of full frame, or 3/4 the size of old time 35mm film. But that doesn't matter so much anymore. Except a lot of lenses are not used to their full glorious capacity. Full frame digital cameras are a matter of prestige. They're for pros. I want one. It has very good attributes.

The 1/150  means the shutter blinks not so terribly fast. 1/150th of a second. But they can blink much faster than that, 1/4000th of a second.

F13 means the aperture is like a squinting eyeball. As if an eyeball pupil is constricted almost by half. The higher the number the tighter the hole. The aperture can squeeze to hole so tiny as f32.

To give you an idea, the indoor photos with the kitchen lit up all the way with every ordinary artificial light available, the track lighting, the Aerogarden light, the stove hood, and another 80w fluorescent, a horrible mixture of lighting, I will use shutter speed of 100 and fstop of of about 4. A rather slow blink and wide open pupil. Then I tell the camera numerically what temperature to make the light. Since it's a jumble. That is, I tell what white balance to be numerically. And if it comes out funny, like too blue or too orange then I can correct it in Photoshop with an eye dropper tool. Or numerically.

ISO 160 refers to the sensitivity level of the sensor, the array of sensors actually. It is set to be near the lowest sensitivity. It means there is a lot of light available outside. Usually photographers will set at 200 for lowest. In film terms that would be larger grain film. In film terms finer grain film has the advantage of collecting more light but because the grains are so small then light bleeds through to neighboring grains. The same is true with the sensor array. The higher you go then then more sensitive to light the array is set. That way you can take photos in dark places without using the dreaded on camera flash. But the photos appear more grainy because light is bleeding across to neighboring sensors in the array.

Nikon 125 lens is macro, their term micro. This one. It's an old lens and no longer available. That means you'll have to buy it for me used. It'll run you about $2,300 on eBay. Here.

So the photograph looks like a painting, all scritchy-scratchy, and you'll be wondering, "All that for just that?" And the answer is, "Yes. Do you think arts just happens?" The last frame is is my camera's photograph of Gerry Groeber's photograph.

And since Trump failed to tear Hillary a new one, drawing this in Photoshop was a lot more satisfying than watching the debate.