Spider,
originally uploaded by will.duquette.

I’ve never seen a spider quite like this one before. Its legs curve so far up above it that you can hardly see its head.

(Found on a path at Descanso Gardens.)

Rover Prototype,
originally uploaded by will.duquette.

Here’s a prototype Mars rover relaxing in JPL’s Mars yard. They’ve got a number of these prototypes, all different; they use them to develop and test new rover software. Why they had this one out yesterday I’ve no idea, but it makes a nice picture.

Why, yes, JPL is a nifty place to work.

20060122-134055.jpg,
originally uploaded by will.duquette.

This is a sad old house I see every day on my way home from work. It’s an anachronism; it’s on the main street through town, and the only others houses on that street for blocks in both directions were converted into businesses a long time ago. Until recently, though, it appeared to be in decent shape…but recently, there are signs that it will soon be coming down.

20060120-073121.jpg,
originally uploaded by will.duquette.

In a fit of madness I got myself a new camera last week, and naturally I’ve been taking pictures with it. I have pretensions of learning how to compose pictures properly and how to adjust the exposure to best effect; I’m not there yet. Most of the pictures I’ll be taking will be family snapshots, which I don’t intend to share with the world, but there will be others as well, of which this is one. It’s a picture of a new antenna at JPL; I gather that it’s part of a prototype antenna array which will be used to track some upcoming missions. It’s on a hill just above the building my office is in; I see it like this every morning. That gray and blue thing in front of it is the back end of a cherrypicker they use when working on things in the dish.

I’ve got a friend who’s seriously into view cameras–you know, those old-fashioned cameras with the accordion bellows and the black cloth you duck under draped over the back and the little squeeze bulb and the Great Big Plates that you insert into the camera after you’ve composed the picture you’re looking for. Actually, I don’t know whether Ted’s cameras have either the black cloth or the squeeze bulb, but you get the idea. View cameras are mechanically very simple, but you can do things with them you can’t do with normal cameras.

I’ve always said that almost everything interesting is done by folks who are utterly nuts, and this site just goes to show (click through to one of the mirrors). Several years ago this guy decided to try making a home-built digital view camera out of a cardboard box, duct tape, and a cheap flatbed scanner. He was so impressed with the results that it became an obsession. And I have to admit, it’s pretty cool. You see, a scanner doesn’t scan a page all at once; it’s like a copier, it scans the page slowly from one end to the other. And when the scanner is attached to a view camera lens, and there’s movement in the scene…..well, the results can be quite striking.