I survived.

No blog tomorrow - I'm traveling and will not have a chance to put anything down on words.

Have you guys seen this sidewalk chalk artist?   Julian Beever is amazing. Not like any chalk artists I've ever seen. 

 

Space Shuttle Endeavour starts it's countdown today for a lift off Sunday.  No one even notices when one of the Space Shuttles takes off and this is sad. The mission (STS-130) will take two modules to the International Space Station. One module, Tranquility is the most advanced life support system ever flown in space and will recycle waste water for crew and generate oxygen AND, a new toilette!  It will be used for exercise, storage, and robotics work in connection with Cupola, the other module being flown into space.

Coupola will provide an observation and work area for the ISS crew giving visibility to support, the control of the space station remote manipulator system and general external viewing of the Earth, celestial objects and visiting vehicles.

I'm not real pleased at Obama's plan to abandon the moon as I feel it is important to get there again.  The advance's in technology and the "going forward" I feel are important for the earth.  Many of the "green" industries we currently have are in reality very bad for the earth with their by-products and one of the visions of the space program was to have "green" industry being built off world.  At some point if humanity wants to survive this will have to happen, it's not like we getting less industry.

This will be Endeavours 2nd to last trip, it's last being late July.  Atlantis will make one more journey into space and Challenger will have two more including the very last shuttle lunch in September.Then the Space Shutle program will be tanked and there will be three used Space Shuttles on ebay.

I hope that last voyage has a lot of food in it for the Space Station dudes.  Actually they will be using the Russian Space program which I'm sure the astronauts are all excited about.
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We were talking about our favorites artists and one coworker was a big Jackson Pollock fan while I love Claude Monet.  I have a calendar in my cube with city scenes by Kinkade and another co-worker, when she found out I liked Kinkade said I was now dead to her. 

I think the reason I like Kinkade is how he uses light, yet - there is a side of Kinkade you might not know.

OK OK - perhaps that is only funny to anybody that knows Kinkade art.  OK OK - Kinkade is great for one photo but after seeing more then one they remind me of Harlequin romance novels. All sort of the same, just different colors . . . or maybe he is like Taco Bell, same four ingredients just mixed differently.    
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I lived through my CCRider photo shoot. That's all I'm going to say.  Am I happy with the results?  I never seem happy when I'm finished.  I never seem to get exactly what I wanted so it takes a while to formulate a plan on how I'm going to process these images.

As Ansel Adams says.  The photo in the camera is like the score of a symphony. The darkroom is the performance.  Man I hope I have good musicians for this one.

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Have a nice weekend
Rod