Jupiter, Venus, Moon, Sylvania

(Click for larger size)
The other night I walked out to the mailbox after dinner, and coming back up my driveway I noticed a couple bright spots in the sky just over the roof. I hadn't heard this was happening, and had to do a little Googling to find out it was a convergence of Jupiter and Venus. I read that a sliver of the moon was going to be in close conjunction over the next couple nights so I decided to take a walk around the neighborhood with my camera.

I'd never tried any kind of long-exposure photography, so I just guessed at camera settings. High ISO, wide aperture and maximum exposure time—3 seconds on my Fuji E550. Of the 10 or so photos I took last evening around 6:30-6:45pm EST, the one above is the best one I could manage. Obviously, I have a little bit to learn about this stuff. Probably would've helped if I'd gotten away from the neighborhood lights as well.

Makes me really appreciate what my compadre on the Adobe Forums—Jeff P.—does with his camera/telescope/sky-tracking device. He's got some cool galaxy and nebula shots...Go check 'em out.

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NYC via Satan's Laundromat

Satan's Laundromat was revealed to me by my buddy Steve Vesperman, who found it while Googling for images of pre-September 11^th Manhattan.

From the Satan's Laundromat home page:

"This is a photolog of New York,
with an emphasis on urban decay,
strange signage, and
general weirdness."

Mike is a guy who lives above a laundromat with a street number of 666. Umm, hence the tongue-in-cheek, albeit obvious, title for his site.


Satan's Laundromat is the type of site my Dad would have loved immensely. One of his favorite hobbies was just walking or driving around, and—when the scene caught his measured eye—taking pictures of the incongruous, the unusual, the wonderfully juxtaposed, the forgotten and missed details. He loved city and country equally for the photographic opportunities they presented, each in their own unique ways.

What Mike has put together with his site is an enormous collection of photos that capture the city in the way I most enjoy. Taken mostly around NYC (with some jaunts across the river to New Jersey and down the highway to the Philadelphia, PA area), it's clear that Mike has an ongoing love affair with city imagery in all of its diverse, grungy-to-glorious splendor. I'm still exploring the site's archives, and have so far resisted the temptation to veer off into the side-alley links he has posted, which I'll guess are probably to sites similar to his.

One thing that saddens me when I run across sites this rich, though:

There are many people in my email address book to whom I'd like to send the link, but who would probably never take the time to explore the site, not to mention the sites that are linked from there.

Then, there are a ton of people I'd like to send the link to who aren't even online (many who continue to hold on to the belief the the internet is a vast wasteland with little to offer them), and so, will never get to experience that wonderful collection.

More's the pity.

That guy needs to publish a book, if he hasn't already.

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