The Drive Home

Post-Script: It was a great trip. We enjoy the open road, the seemingly desolate landscape that is, in truth, full of life if a person were to take the time to look closely enough. The trip is in the journey, not just the destination.

Some people are put off by decrepit small towns, like the kind we find ourselves driving through in the west. But these are testimony to the history of the land, both the ups and the downs. Unvarnished reality. And it's great to find people living in these towns who are, day by day, trying to make their lives better.

It was also great discovering a new vacation destination like San Antonio. We intend on returning soon.

Our tiny house rental was fun, and we learned a lot more about these novel ways of living than from just watching TV shows.

All You Can't Eat at the K-Bob

Post-Script: Here's part 1 of our trip to San Antonio:


And part 2:

Lumen Photography on the Road

Post-Script: When I got my Mac mini in 2017 I didn't have a recent version of Photoshop or any other 3rd party photo editing software that could do a decent job of tonal inversion, other than the raw editing software SilkyPix for the Panasonic Lumix cameras. And since I was traveling, I only had the iPod Touch as an iOS device - and didn't want to get into trying some other app to do this. That's when I hit on the idea of using the screen inversion feature of iOS, then taking a screen shot. It's true, using a screen shot image is limited in resolution; but for quick pics of lumen prints suitable for blogging, I think it's sufficient.

The dark streak across the middle of the image is glare from the glossy surfaced paper negative - reversed. Semi-matte finish paper would work better for this.

There's something elegantly simple about exposing lumen prints. A small tripod - or none at all - and a simple box with paper. No post-exposure developing needed, the image forms itself on the light-sensitive paper as the silver halides auto-develop due to the action of light itself. Despite the fact that I'm using a glass lens with sub-f/5 aperture, it takes longer than a pinhole camera to make a usable image.