{"id":272,"date":"2017-04-10T19:20:43","date_gmt":"2017-04-10T23:20:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/coolskill.org\/site\/?page_id=272"},"modified":"2022-06-30T20:26:38","modified_gmt":"2022-07-01T00:26:38","slug":"dslr-connections","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/coolskill.org\/site\/dslr-connections\/","title":{"rendered":"DSLR Connections"},"content":{"rendered":"

This isn’t really about photography, per se<\/em>, but it provides some background on what led to my getting a DSLR camera, so I have filed it under Photography. \u00a0In 1978, British science historian James Burke was the driving force behind a BBC television series called Connections<\/em>, where he looked at the seemingly unrelated events that led from one scientific discovery to the next. \u00a0This is kind of like that. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In October of 2002, just a couple of months after my second son was born, I was let go from my job. \u00a0This was something that really didn\u2019t surprise me, as most of our clients had disappeared after the company made the questionable decision of dropping all support of our primary product. \u00a0Not that the primary product was anything state-of-the-art. \u00a0There were problems with the underlying technology and codebase driving it, and it was written in a language that very few people knew of at the time (Objective-C), but there had not really been any sort of a back-up strategy. \u00a0We were trying to simultaneously learn new technology and sell products written with it. \u00a0This approach\u00a0really didn\u2019t work too well, and soon the client pipeline dried up.<\/span><\/p>\n

Because of that, I found myself out of work. \u00a0This was not long after the tech bubble collapsed, and I was out of work for most of the following year. \u00a0I really didn’t know how to deal with this. \u00a0It had been\u00a0my first job out of college – one I had gotten answering an ad in a newspaper! – and I had no idea how to do a job search when jobs were scarce. \u00a0Yes, there were some temporary positions, and there was unemployment benefits, but after a year (and some questionable, high-interest loans), we were struggling. \u00a0And so I swallowed my pride and went to a company run by a fellow who had helped found the previous company I had been let go from a year prior. \u00a0Yes, this was getting a job through networking, but I wasn\u2019t sure it was a job I wanted.<\/span><\/p>\n

It turned out that the job was not really for me. \u00a0It was using the old technology and codebase – which I still felt had some fundamental flaws in its approach to creating applications – and the company itself was small. \u00a0Tiny. \u00a0I think the largest number of employees we had at any one time was fifteen.<\/span><\/p>\n

Work conditions were not great. \u00a0There was no breakroom; I supplied the office microwave. \u00a0The company, despite many requests from the employees, would not get direct deposit – everything was paid by check. \u00a0Our primary client was in Washington, D.C., and we were located in King of Prussia (KoP), Pennsylvania. \u00a0There were multiple days when I went into work in the morning thinking that I would be in the KoP office that day, only to be sent to DC mid-morning. \u00a0Several of those turned into overnight trips. \u00a0The company would call on personal cell phones but would not reimburse for minute overages (this was before unlimited talk plans were standard). \u00a0There was a stretch where I was in DC for five weeks straight – take the train down Monday morning and return Friday evening. \u00a0Once I had to take the first Saturday train due to work unexpectedly running late on a Friday. \u00a0I had not made plans for staying Friday night and could not find a hotel, so I slept at the client\u2019s office on the floor under the desk. \u00a0When project plans were made, they were made assuming that employees would be working 10 hour days.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Taking the Acela between Philadelphia and Washington, DC, was probably the best part of the job.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Needless to say, these working conditions were not ideal for a young father with a 3-year-old and a 1-year-old. \u00a0In particular, the refusal to get direct deposit meant that getting my paycheck to the bank was difficult, as I was in DC a third of the time. \u00a0This presented cash flow problems, not only in my personal bank account, but also in my credit cards, which I was using to buy tickets back and forth to DC (among other business expenses). \u00a0Yes, they were reimbursed, but getting those checks to the bank was as difficult as the paychecks. \u00a0Payments were late, my credit was taking a beating, and I was having no time with my family. \u00a0My then-wife was actually helping out by not taking a job – child care costs were higher than the income a job would provide, so we would be losing money on the deal.<\/span><\/p>\n

Finally, after a year of working at that job, I managed to find another job at a small company just around the corner. \u00a0In this case, small meant 200 employees. \u00a0Interestingly, this company was in a building that was a literal stone’s throw from the building I had my first post-college job in. \u00a0I held that job for close to sixteen years, through three building changes and one acquisition.<\/span><\/p>\n

Even though this new job provided stability, it did not immediately restore all the financial issues we were facing from the events of the previous two years. \u00a0When my son wanted to get involved in Cub Scouts, the immediate costs weren’t an issue, but a week at day camp was cost-prohibitive. \u00a0However, if you volunteered at the day camp, your children attended for free. \u00a0So I volunteered. \u00a0After the second year I volunteered there, the director approached me and asked me if I would consider being the director the next year; he was stepping down.<\/p>\n

I agreed. \u00a0The first year was quite a learning year for me. \u00a0By this time, I was six years removed from the lack of a job and finances were beginning to straighten out. \u00a0Both kids were in school, and my then-wife had started a job at the local health food store. \u00a0Things weren’t perfect yet – it can take a long time for these things to resolve – but I wasn’t waking up in a panic at 4 am wondering how we were going to pay the mortgage anymore.<\/p>\n

The second year I ran the camp, the theme was “Pirates.” \u00a0I built a pirate ship backdrop out of heavy duck cloth and PVC pipes. \u00a0It was rather large, and needed to be anchored to the ground to make sure that it didn’t blow over in the wind. \u00a0I went in search of anchors, and in doing so found myself ordering some ground stakes from an online kite-supply company. \u00a0(It turns out I could have gotten the same thing from the local home improvement store, but I didn’t know that at the time.) \u00a0When they arrived, along with them came the whole catalog of kites and kite supplies.<\/p>\n

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“Captain Nobeard” in front of his ship.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I liked kites. \u00a0I flew many kites as a kid, often getting them stuck in one particular tree. \u00a0I decided to get a medium sized kite and see what it would be like to fly a kite\u00a0with some structure to it.<\/p>\n

One kite led to another, and soon I had the idea to put a camera on the kite line and send it aloft. \u00a0I started with a lightweight “spy” video camera that was simply held to the kite line with a fishing bobber. \u00a0That worked, but extracting stills from the video was time consuming. \u00a0A point-and-shoot camera would be better, but how would I press the shutter button from the ground?<\/p>\n

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The Spy Camera Kite assembly<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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View from a Kite<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After a little bit of research, I discovered that Canon cameras could have their firmware overridden with a bit of software called the Canon Hack Development Kit (CHDK)<\/a>. \u00a0This software allows you access additional settings and, more importantly for my purposes, to write scripts for your camera. \u00a0Better even was the fact that it ran entirely from the memory card; put in a different memory card, and the camera was back to running Canon’s default firmware. \u00a0I replaced my then-current point-and-shoot camera with a Canon one, got the firmware working, wrote a script to automatically take pictures every 15 seconds, and started shooting pictures from the air.<\/p>\n

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Area around Nottingham Park, Chester County, PA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

All this research I put in to the camera reminded me just how much I enjoyed photography as a kid. \u00a0I started using the camera for more than just aerial shots. \u00a0One winter day I had been out shooting pictures of the snowstorm that had hit; as I sat in the warmth of my home, editing the pictures, one of them\u00a0caught my eye. \u00a0It was a picture of headstones in the cemetery just up the street, but the composition looked to me like it was a picture that just worked. \u00a0I didn’t know then why it worked – or why it was that I had to lighten the picture, since all the snow was a dingy gray color – but as I was sitting there looking at the picture I decided I wanted to go and finally get a DSLR camera. \u00a0By this time it had been ten years since I had been out of work, and finances had finally smoothed out to the point where I could afford such a camera.<\/p>\n

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A soldier’s grave (with wreath and flags) in Morris Cemetery, Phoenixville, PA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It took me a couple of months to actually make the purchase. \u00a0I knew, from seeing my uncle’s camera as a kid, that SLR cameras had levers and buttons that did I-did’t-know-what, and before I went and got one I wanted to learn about them. \u00a0A few days later, a catalog came from The Teaching Company, a company that produces ongoing-learning lecture series. \u00a0They had recently released a new course,\u00a0Fundamentals of Photography<\/a>, and were advertising it on the cover of their magazine. \u00a0I got the course and over the next six weeks I worked through the lectures, using my point-and-shoot to try out the different things that were talked about in the course and earning exactly what the limits of that camera were.<\/p>\n

(If you followed the link and thought that you might want to follow along on that course as well but suffered sticker shock, know that it was on sale at the time; in fact, every course the Teaching Company offers goes on sale for at least 70% off during the course of the year. \u00a0Or, you can use their\u00a0streaming service<\/a>\u00a0instead. \u00a0No, I don’t get any kickbacks for recommending them.)<\/p>\n

During the London Olympics, Canon was advertising their newest entry-level camera, the Rebel T4i, with a commercial that involved a street luger and a rolling, flaming tire (see it\u00a0here<\/a>). \u00a0Advertising works; I chose the Canon brand because I already had a Canon point-and-shoot as well as a Canon camcorder, but the commercial helped direct me to the specific model that I wanted. \u00a0When I walked into the camera store and said I wanted to by a DSLR, and the clerk immediately directed me to exactly the camera I had decided I wanted beforehand, I knew that it would be a good choice. \u00a0And that is how kites – and Cub Scout day camp – and losing my job – led me to getting a DSLR.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This isn’t really about photography, per se, but it provides some background on what led to my getting a DSLR camera, so I have filed it under Photography. \u00a0In 1978, British science historian James Burke was the driving force behind a BBC television series called Connections, where he looked at the seemingly unrelated events that … <\/p>\n

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