Tripping The Light Fantastic

a pelican

2008-09-06T09:55:00.003-04:00

i always thought 'Pelican' would make a great band name.

fire haze works

2008-07-29T08:00:00.000-04:00

magnificent frigate bird

2008-07-28T08:30:00.000-04:00

One of many in flight over the Florida Keys

circle in the sand

2008-07-27T11:08:00.000-04:00

tractor beach blow out

2008-07-26T10:35:00.000-04:00

happy father's day

2008-06-15T20:12:00.003-04:00

in your eyes

2008-06-03T01:11:00.000-04:00

florida dusk storm clouds

2008-06-02T12:07:00.001-04:00

nature shade

2008-06-01T09:05:00.000-04:00

the white wall

2008-05-31T21:03:00.001-04:00

chair patterns

2008-05-31T18:33:00.002-04:00

colin amsterdam 2000

2008-04-26T00:28:00.003-04:00

this was shot in color, converted to b&w, and then I think I messed around with the curves a bit to remove some excess noisy ground clutter, but its been about 8 years, so maybe I missed a step. Regardless, this is another favorite shot of my brother, I really like the lines in this picture.

record store glance

2008-04-11T07:28:00.000-04:00

alert and on guard

2008-04-10T17:42:00.000-04:00

windmill

2008-04-09T13:29:00.001-04:00

side road canal

2008-04-08T08:17:00.000-04:00

keukenhof desolate

2008-04-07T11:02:00.001-04:00

the obligatory dead tree image

Bernie store front sillyness

2008-04-01T11:48:00.000-04:00

table submersion

2008-03-24T18:40:00.001-04:00

amsterBlue

2008-02-03T13:47:00.000-05:00

roof visitor

2008-02-02T00:03:00.000-05:00

For those of you who are unaware, I rent out my roof as a tanning bed to the local wildlife, had my first customer yesterday!

montreal

2008-02-01T23:52:00.001-05:00

Challenger

2008-01-28T11:38:00.000-05:00

22 years ago today....

January 28, 1986

My family had moved to Orlando not much longer than a year ago, and our new house was approx 50 miles due west of the launch pads at Kennedy Space Center. It was a real treat to walk outside the front door and watch the Shuttle launches. The fateful day of Jan 28, 1986, I happened to be home sick from school with the flu. Dad had CNN or the local news on for the countdown at which point I grabbed my little blue Kodak camera and walked outside to grab a few pictures. (Note: I'm still trying to locate the pictures that I took and will update this blog entry when I find them)

Just a third grader at the time, it had a profound affect on me. I can't really say I truly understood the impact of what happened, but I was quite shaken for a few days as I recall.

A few months later, my close friends from Ft. Lauderdale were visiting and we decided to re-enact the launch. We decided my bedroom was a suitable Space Shuttle Challenger cockpit if we laid on our backs with our feet going up the wall, after all, this closely mimic real world situations to the best of our knowledge. We were however astronauts, and this required a well equipped cockpit. Scavenging the house for any worthy devices, we setup the cockpit which consisted of:

Four walkie-talkies for communication with Houston
One electric calculator to display random numbers relating yo our speed and altitude
One globe to determine our location
2 Etch'n'Sketch's
1 Speak'n'Spell - used for the countdown
1 Slinky - those things made some cool noises
1 mini-Pac-Man arcade game
1 Am/FM radio & cassette player

Once everything was connected and in place, the four young astronauts, ranging in age from 6 to 9, re-enacted the the tragic day of US Space history.

Key Biscayne sunset (Miami, FL)

2008-01-02T13:02:00.000-05:00

first initial light

2008-01-01T01:01:00.000-05:00