Drifting as a way of life

I grew up in the Midwest, around Chicago. My childhood was anything but normal as both my parents died before I turned 10 and I wound up in a orphanage (they liked to call it a 'children's home' but under the covers it was very much a warehouse for lost, abandoned kids) until I graduated high school. Fortunately, one of the few perks from living that misery was they agreed to pay for my college education so I worked my ass off and eventually earned an engineering degree. I was a pretty good student which got me an invitation to Stanford where, after 4 years of hard work, I wrapped my hands around a nice piece of parchment declaring that I was a "Doctor of Philosophy" in engineering. The future looked very bright in those days.

But ... there's always a but isn't there ... I was a certified flake and had the attention span of a gnat. I'd work on some project for a few years and then grow bored until I got tired and angry and burned the bridges down as I left the place. I've done just about everything you can imagine over the years which is good for keeping your interest peaked but not great for building a long-lasting career. So you see, wanderlust is in my veins. I hate long-term commitments and the idea of staying in one place for an extended time really makes me itch. That's why wandering seems so interesting to me. I can stay just a long as I want and then move on. Maybe I'll shoot Death Valley for a month, working the options to exhaustion and then move down the road to someplace else for a few days or a few weeks. Maybe I'll chase storms in the spring (not looking for tornadoes but taking pictures of the awesome wall clouds that form ahead of the front) or maybe I won't ... whatever I feel like doing at that moment. Not having thick roots lets me quickly pack up and head to the next opportunity. My only aim is to take pictures ... lots of pictures ... and improve my skills and the quality of my images. And to end the day exhausted but happy.

A Sunset Worth Keeping

My wife lives in Crimea ... yes I was here when the little green men showed up and maybe someday I'll tell you about it. Her flat is on the eighth floor of an old soviet-era apartment block. My little balcony office faces west so I can see the sunset every evening. Unfortunately, Crimea isn't really a good place for sunsets. It's either no clouds or so overcast you can't find the sun so a spectacular sunset is a really nice departure. I was working on some pictures when I noticed that my office was turning a very intense shade of red. Opened the curtains and the image you see below blew my socks off. Quickly set up the camera on a tripod and snapped of a dozen images at various stages and orientations as the sun disappeared behind the buildings.

There's one big problem with the image ... you can see it in the first panel below (the raw image with minimal processing). They love to string wires between the buildings and the sky is absolutely filled with these image killing lines coursing back and forth. Some are even worse because the lazy workman skimped on the cable ties and you can see big loops of black cable everywhere. Fortunately, several hours in Photoshop with the spot healing brush and the cables are all gone. It's not perfect as the healing brush does impact the underlying image but still a much better image in the end. A bit of final tweaking and the bottom image is the result. Man how I hate wires in my pictures.

Original Raw image - 70 mm 1.6 crop, f/16 (-2/3 ev compensation), 1/50 sec (license CC BY-NC 4.0)

Crimea Sunset - same as above (license CC BY-NC 4.0)