Dave Bullock / eecue : Programmer | Photographer | Admin | Human

Our short trip to Austin last weekend happened to coincide with the Republic of Texas Biker Rally. I don't own a motorcycle and am not a biker. This didn't prevent me from enjoying some of the great motorcycles on display in Downtown Austin.

Penelope, her brother and his girlfriend hit some bars during the rally. Of course I had my camera with me.

Click here to see the "Republic of Texas Biker Rally" photos...

As I mentioned yesterday, I love junk. Last weekend, my wife and I visited her brother in Austin and on our last day there we took a trip to the Cathedral of Junk.

The Cathedral of Junk is basically a giant sculpture in Vince Hanneman's backyard. It's open to the public on most days and entry is free, although donations are accepted. The cathedral is an amalgamation of thousands of random pieces of junk including electronics, bicycles, toys, lamps, bottles and more. It's actually quite beautiful to look at and fun to climb on.

I shot some HDR photos of it using my trusty Canon 5D Mark II and 16-35 f/2.8 L II lens. As usual I combined the +/- 2 EV bracketed shots with Photomatix. The results are after the jump.

Click here to see the "Cathedral of Junk" photos...

If you have an opinion about me embedding the larger sized photos please let me know by leaving a comment. Enjoy! 

I love junk. One of my first jobs was working at the world's most amazing junkyard: The Black Hole.

Over the years I have photographed some really cool junkyards including Norton Sales and APEX Electronics. I am always on the lookout for cool places with giant piles of interesting junk. If you happen to know of any particularly cool junkyards let me know in the comments below.

A few weeks ago when I was shooting my June Gloom series in Vernon, I came across a metal recycling yard. On a whim I walked in with my camera and tripod and asked if I could take some photos. As it turned out they were fine with that. I made my way through the giant piles of aluminum, copper and steel scrap and captured the HDR images you'll find after the jump.

Click here to see the "June Gloom Series: Part 6/6: HDR Scrapyard" photos.

One of my favorite perspectives of Downtown Los Angeles is from atop a little hill between the 101 and the 5. I shot one of my most popular photos from that location. A few weeks ago I captured some more photos from that spot on the hill.

It saddens me to think that the 6th street bridge will be demolished someday in the near future. It has cement rot, due to the materials used in its construction. The new bridge won't be the same, but it will still be fun to document the transition.

Click here to see the "June Gloom Series: Part 5/6: 6th Street Bridge Revisited" photos.

The Los Angeles River is not your average waterway. Before it was channelized in the 1940s it frequently changed its path and flooded various parts of the Los Angeles basin during big rains.

Today the LA River hardly looks like a river at all, being completely encased in concrete. It does still attract waterfowl on their migratory paths and water does flow through it throughout the year. That water is about 80% treated sewage when it's not raining. I still find the LA River beautiful with its sloping concrete walls and many bridges and railroad crossings.

A few weeks ago I waded through muck and treated sewage to capture some photos of the endearing Los Angeles River.

Click here to see the "June Gloom Series: Part 4/6: Los Angeles River" photos.

Vernon is a very interesting city. I have written about and photographed it several times over the last few years.

South and slightly East of Downtown Los Angeles, Vernon is a fully industrial city with only a few residents (91 in 200 census). These residences are for the employees of the city. The Mayor of Vernon is the grandson of the founder of the city, according to Wikipedia:

The city held no contested elections from 1980 to 2006 ... most of the municipally owned housing is occupied by city employees, and has regularly voted to cancel elections...

Mayor Leonis C. Malburg is a grandson of one of the founders of the city, leading to frequent allegations of political fiefdom or illiberal democracy.

Currently, the District Attorney's office of Los Angeles County is conducting a criminal investigation into allegations of public corruption by city officials...

Vernon is packed with warehouses, food processing plants, glass and plastic bottle manufacturing, scrapyards, and it's crisscrossed with railroad tracks. I love shooting Vernon. To me, it's beautiful.

Click here to see the "June Gloom Series: Part 3/6: Vernon" photos

As I mentioned yesterday, I spent Saturday tooling around taking photos of the lovely clouds above the industrial wasteland that is Vernon. At one point I made my way down into the Los Angeles River.

The birds were out enjoying the water and the sunshine. I saw ducks, finches and sandpipers. It's great to see life thriving in a giant concrete spillway filled with muck and a bit of water.

Click here to see the photos. 

Last weekend I spent the day wandering through my favorite industrial city in greater Los Angeles: Vernon. The sky was perfect for HDR and I captured a wide range of interesting industrial goodness. I have decided to split the photos into a 6 part series.

The first part of this series is also the smallest. The two photos it contains feature two graffiti walls near Vernon. I shot these with my Canon 5D Mark II through a 16-35mm f/2.8 L II lens. Each photo is a combination of 3 bracketed RAW files which were used to create a tonemapped HDR image in Photomatix.

Check out the photos:  

• Delicious API
  Fun stuff!
  (tags: api programming)
• Sir Paul McCartney And Bob Dylan Set To Record Together - GIGWISE
  Very cool!
  (tags: music)

• 7 mind-boggling uses for frickin' laser beams | News | TechRadar UK
  Awesome, I shot two of the galleries they link to for this... must work on the other 5!
  (tags: lasers wired photos photojournalism)

My lovely wife Penelope and I have been taking walks around Downtown recently. I've been shooting photos as we walk. Here are a few random shots from our last two walks:

Click here for the Walkabout Photos 

Today I picked up my first produce box from the South Central Farmers' Coop and its contents were simply amazing.

My lovely wife Penelope and I have been trying out different organic delivery services over the past few months. We started out with L.O.V.E. Organic Delivery, which we really enjoyed, but much of the produce was grown far far a way. The nice thing about L.O.V.E. was that they delivered right to our door every week.

We stopped L.O.V.E. because we really want to support local farmers and not waste energy having our food shipped from other states or countries. Our next move was to try Community Supported Agriculture.

With a CSA you basically buy a semi-yearly share in a farm, if the farm is successful (and most are in sunny Southern California) you get a box of veggies every week. We read great things about Tierra Miguel, so we gave them a try.

Tierra Miguel's boxes were huge, but of the three we picked up, we found their selection to be lacking. This could be related to the season we're in right now, but for us, it was just too much greens. Our first two boxes were almost entirely different varieties of lettuce, and several bunches of each kind. TM's quality was top-notch, but for our small family of two, it was just too much. And for $45 a week, it was just more than we could justify while still having to buy other veggies to round out our meals.

I understand that a big part of the price of the CSA is supporting the farm, but TM just didn't seem like a fit for us. Enter the South Central Farmers' Coop.

Bordering on a reasonable amount of vegetables for two people in one week, the South Central Farmers' Coop box was packed full of beautiful organic, locally-grown vegetables.

Initially we didn't go with the SCFC due to the lack of fruit in their offerings. Today when I went and picked up the box at the Farmer's Market at City Hall I also picked up some organic fruit from the other vendors at the market, so that solved that problem. Once I got the box home and opened it up I was amazed. So many quality veggies inside, including:

• Spring Onions
• Red Romaine lettuce
• Romaine Lettuce
• Carrots
• Fava Beans
• Red Beets
• Golden Beets
• Rainbow Chard
• Swiss Chard
• Black Kale
• Blue Kale

I don't think we've ever prepared golden beets, but we love beets, and Penelope has a mean recipe for salt crusted beets with horseradish creme fraiche. I actually didn't realize you could eat kale, but I've already found some good recipes for it creamed. I make a mean fava bean cassoulet, and today at the Nickel, owner Monica May gave me a great recipe that I think I'll try.

We're very excited about the SCF Coop box, and we'll almost certainly buy a whole season's worth. The boxes were only $15 a month for the cheapest option, but you can pay more to support the farm or pay $30 and someone who can't afford it will get a free box... now that is cool. We'll most likely do the buy one, give one deal when we subscribe.

At first sight, the amount of vegetable matter contained in the SCF Coop produce box is deceiving.

Due to its massive size and weight when loaded with camera gear, I am no longer using the Tamrac 619 as my daily-carry bag. Last year I wrote about switching to the Tamrac 619. It served me pretty well until one day when it nearly broke my back.

The Tamrac 619 is a huge bag. Like everything from Tamrac it is constructed from tough, high-quality materials, and designed to last a long time. Unfortunately for me, my eyes were bigger than my stomach (shoulder?) on this one. Fully loaded, the 619 weighed in at almost 40 lbs! Way too much to wear on my shoulder every day.

After I nearly threw my back out, I went down to Samy's to peruse their selection of camera bags. I needed shoulder bag that provided quick access to my camera, had room for a couple of lenses and had a padded laptop enclosure to fit my MacBook Pro.

Up until this point I had sworn by Tamrac bags, but they just didn't make one that I felt really good about carrying around every day. After looking around I found the super-tough and non-camera-bag-looking ThinkTank Urban Disguise 50.

ThinkTank Urban Disguise 50

The ThinkTank bags are designed to not look like camera bags. The Urban Disguise 50 looks just like a laptop bag, but has some really nice features. Obviously it has room for cameras, but it also has lots of nice pockets for various gear and accessories, a laptop sleeve, a super-comfy shoulder strap and an integrated rain fly.

The guys are ThinkTank really went all out with their design, including unique features like a hidden pocket, super-tough ballistic nylon and YKK zippers. I love this bag and will likely devote a post to it for a more thorough review at some point.

Bottom Line

The Tamrac 619 is a well-constructed bag, but it is simply too massive to carry around every day. I still use it to carry equipment for big shoots, and at some point it will become my RedRock Micro DSLR rig case. If you need a giant bag, this one certainly meets that requirement, just don't try and carry it with you every day.

The massive Tamrac 619 / Super Pro 19 with a 77mm lens cap provided for scale.

A few years ago I switched to wet shaving and in doing so I saved money, got rid of my razor burn and now get a much closer shave.

Wet shaving involves using a badger brush and good ol' shaving soap. You soak the badger brush with water and coat it with shaving soap. You then spend a few minutes working up a nice thick lather. I form the lather directly on my face, but many folks prefer to use a separate bowl to do so.

Don't be fooled by the photo below, I actually use handmade natural soap from Classic Shaving. I just happen to put it in a vintage Old Spice mug. The shaving soap lasts for months and is much cheaper and more effective than the store bought glop in a can.

For the actual shaving I use a vintage Gillette safety razor. It has a nice large handle and feels well balanced in your hand. It's called the Fat Boy and is especially popular with vintage shave enthusiasts.

The blades I use are made by a Japanese company called Feather. They're pretty much the sharpest razor blades you can buy and they work wonders. You can get a pack of ten for about six bucks from Classic Shaving. That equals big savings if you consider that Gillette five pack of Mach 3 blades will run you around $15.

Regardless of price, the sharper blades combined with the badger brush and soap have eliminated the razor burn I used to get. Plus, wet shaving is fun!

Last night Penelope and I attended Downtown LA icon Rickey The Pirate's housewarming party at The Exchange. After 30 years living on the street Rickey finally has a place to hang his (pirate) hat. Rickey had a blast and received tons of gifts to help furnish his new apartment at the Rainbow.

Penelope and I brought him various food items and a first aid kit. Penelope also gave him a beautiful handmade card she put together with her card making kit. Here are a couple photos from the event:

A few months ago while on a San Francisco vacation with my lovely wife Penelope, I took a tour of Livermore Lab's National Ignition Facility.

NIF is an amazing experiment designed to create fusion using lasers. As you've probably noticed, I love lasers and robots, and NIF employs both to get its job done. The NIF gallery just went up on Wired.com. It uses the new gallery format which allows for bigger pictures and the ability to view the whole thing at once. NIF is probably the coolest thing I have ever photographed.

Click the photo below to see the gallery:

Last year I worked with Brett Gurewitz and Epitaph on a photo project for Bad Religion's newest album: New Maps of Hell. The photos I shot around Los Angeles were used for the Deluxe Edition of the album.

The project was really fun and I really enjoyed working with Brett and the folks over at Epitpah. I just got around to photographing the album artwork and booklet. You can check out the work below:

More photos after the jump... 

Keeping up with tradition, I photographed Coachella last weekend. This time around I shot for Wired, URB and of course, my blog. As I mentioned in a previous post, I also wrote the Official Coachella iPhone application for Goldenvoice.

I had a great, albeit busy, time at the festival this year and took about 50GB of photos and 10GB of video. If you look through some of the Coachella VRs, you will see me in about half of the panoramas shooting from the photo pit.

Here are some of the photos I shot:

Coachella Crowd for The Killers

Robert Smith

Photogs Shooting Morrissey

Henry Rollins

More after the jump... 

Made it to Coachella yesterday around 5pm. Got our RVs situated and our base camp set up then took a walk through the field and camp site. Here are a few photos to get you excited for Coachella:

A string of balloons blows in the wind above a row of tents in the Coachella Camp Site on Thursday night.

The Do Lab's new look includes a plethora of shipping crates and a wooden trough fountain, which they estimate will use up to 7,000 gallons a day.

The field is nearly empty for Paul McCartney's rocking sound check.

People from all over the world travel to Coachella, many of them camp.

A worker puts the final touches on The Do Lab on Thursday evening at Coachella.

Keep your eyes on Wired and Urb for more of my shots throughout the weekend. 

For the past few months I've been spending all my evenings and weekends working on two big projects: the Coachella iPhone App and the Cartifact Map Portal. I am really happy with the results and ecstatic that I am not currently working 14 hour days and weekends!

I've been doing web programming work for Coachella and Goldenvoice since 2005 when I wrote the Coachooser, a online scheduler where concertgoers could choose who they want to see. As soon as the time-slots were announced the Coachooser then allowed the user to print out their schedule for the event. I have programmed the Coachoooser each year since then.

This year I pitched Goldenvoice on an iPhone application for the festival. They finally gave me the green light a bit over a month ago. Considering that it was my first iPhone application I think it came out really well. The Coachella iPhone App has been up on the iTunes store for about a week and has been downloaded thousands of times. It was hard work hammering out this application in a month, but the response was worth it.

Another project I recently finished is an interactive map portal for a really cool mapping company called Cartifact. This project is the most advanced javascript application I have written. It does some really cool things, especially the lens tool which let's you see a different map over the top of the map you're viewing.

I enjoyed the hard work, but I'm looking forward to enjoying my evenings and weekends again!