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I'm David Braverman, this is my blog, and Cassie is my 7½-year-old mutt. I last updated this About... page in March 2021. Quite a lot has changed since then, most notably I wrote a whole new blog engine. (More on that in a moment.)

We get pretty sunsets this time of year:

I attended an event last night at Chicago's Old Post Office. It was a lovely night in (and on top of) a lovely building: That's all, just some pretty photos.

Just clearing my photo backlog. From the 23rd: And from yesterday: Today we're trooping out to Suburbistan for a walk with Cassie's old friend Kelsey. Updates as conditions warrant.

Today is Cassie's 7th birthday, and it breaks my heart that she has to spend it in the Cone of Shame: (I'll clean this photo up before the end of the day.) She has adapted to the cone just fine, of course, and it'll come off on Wednesday. I could potentially take it off today, but I think it's important to wait until her stitches come out. I just don't want her to hook a suture and open up the incision. Also, to further ruin her birthday, I'm at the office downtown until just after noon. We'll have...

Cassie enjoyed some couch time with me yesterday evening: Eventually she decided on a full-bagel nap:

One of my work projects has a monthly release these days, so right now I'm watching a DevOps pipeline run through about 400 time-consuming integration tests before I release this month's update. That gives me some time to catch up on all this: The New York Times has a long explanation of how the Clown Prince of X took over the federal bureaucracy. As I and others have warned for years, the OAFPOTUS has embarked on a truly unprecedented program of bribery and corruption that we may never recover from....

Cassie didn't like how I came home late (8pm!) last night, but she forgave me. She really is the sweetest dog:

We had our coldest morning since February 17th today, cold enough that Cassie didn't want to linger sniffing her favorite shrubberies. The temperature bottomed out at 7:45 am, hitting -8.6°C at IDTWHQ, a cold we haven't experienced since 8:25 am on February 17th. O'Hare hit -10°C at 8 am, also the first time since 8 am February 17th. Tonight, going into the first day of astronomical winter, the forecast predicts it'll get even colder before warming up a bit on Monday. Unrelated to the weather are these...

A week ago Sunday, my friends picked me up in Aix-en-Provence and took me to their house in St-Martin-de-la-Brasque, about 30 km north, just south of the Luberon massif. I can see the appeal: We then drove about 10 km to the Commune of Lourmarin, which may be even prettier than Aix: Yes, Provence really does look like that. I really need to go back.

Let me tell you how much I suffered in Aix-en-Provence. I mean, just look at this stuff, starting with the street my hotel was on: The Passage Agard, off Cours Mirabeau: The Fontaine du Roi René at the east end of Cours Mirabeau: Rue Aumône Vielle: Finally, the Palais de Justice (the local courthouse) just past 9am on the 23rd: Tomorrow: Lourmarin and St-Martin-de-la-Brasque.

I use Adobe Lightroom to catalog and retouch my photos. Like any complex piece of software, it has a lot of features I haven't learned how to use yet. So I decided to play around this morning. Here's a new edit of Cassie's Gotcha Day photo from March: Here's the photo as previously published: Other than the aspect ratio change, the changes are subtle, but I think the top photo is better. And Cassie is just as adorable in both.

Cassie and I adopted each other three years ago today. And yet, she remains one of my most frustrating photographic subjects: Regardless, I got really lucky when I found her at PAWS. I hope she feels the same way.

Finally recovered from jet lag, our hero takes a 6-kilometer walk along the Isar and through Glockenbachviertel: As the sun set, it found a gap in the clouds which I hope means tomorrow it'll come out for a while. You can see a little bit of it here on the Paulaner Brewery: (I didn't stop in; any Brews & Choos stops on this trip will come tomorrow, in Nuremburg.) The Theresien-Gymnasium: And back at Marienplatz just as twilight became night: Now, off to find a beer.

A weather pattern has set up shop near Chicago that threatens to occlude the sun for the next week, in exchange for temperatures approaching 15°C the first weekend of February. We've already had 43 days with above-normal temperatures this winter, and just 12 below normal during the cold snap from January 13th through the 22nd. By February 2nd, 84% of our days will have had above-normal temperatures since December 1st. Thank you, El Niño. Though I'm not sure the gloominess is a fair exchange for it....

She's in this photo, trust me: A bit closer, after we got home:

Cassie and I walked down to Christkindlmarket by Wrigley Field yesterday to meet up with some friends. I understand that the lakefront was completely fogged in, but a kilometer or so inland it just looked creepy: And on the walk home: Right now at Inner Drive Technology World Headquarters, the sun has started peeking out, though the temperature-dewpoint spread hasn't gotten that much wider from this morning: 10.9°C with a dewpoint of 10.6°C. O'Hare still reports mist with increasing horizontal...

Not shown: she's snoring.

Cassie did not understand why she could not try my Indian food last night: And somehow, with the rudimentary editing controls on my phone, I accidentally turned her into an Andrew Wyeth painting. Huh.

More photos. The Czech countryside, approximately here: Hafnersteig, in Vienna's Innere Stadt: The Schloss Belvedere, with (I am told) an Apollo capsule:

Between my overflowing PTO balance and getting two "floating" holidays every year, I decided I have enough free time to extend my vacation by a day to get stuff done. I'm glad I did. Cassie provided her vet with a really good sample of...things that her day care needs to know about, I've done 3 loads of laundry and queued up a 4th, I've gone through the important receipts from the trip, and I've loaded all 740 photos up into Lightroom. I've also done some Apollo-related stuff, so some of today went to...

There's a line in The American President, when President Shephard (Michael Douglas) is trying to intimidate lobbyist Sydney Ellen Wade (Annette Benning). He says, "the city planners, when they sat down to design Washington, D.C., their intention was to build a city that would intimidate and humble foreign heads of state? It's true. The White House is the single greatest home-court advantage in the modern world," Good thing Aaron Sorkin qualified it with "modern," because this is the summer residence...

Today they got through about half of our flat roof which doubles as an upstairs patio. Imagine how much noise all this made: Note that all the crap on the roof off to my left was at the other end of the balcony while they laid down the material directly under me. They timed it so they had the power saw going exactly when I had a Teams meeting for work. But they did got a lot of it done, and they should reconnect my A/C units just in time for next week's heat wave.

For 10 hours today I had banging and pounding right above my head. Once the roofers left, I took advantage of the light winds and decent light to take some aerial photos. Here's the roof on Thursday, before they ripped it off this morning: Here's 20 minutes ago: Fortunately I won't be home tomorrow during the day, else I'd probably start yelling at them. And hey, since I had the drone up, here's a Chicago skyline photo, free of charge:

Cassie and I hung out for a bit at Spiteful Brewery yesterday. She, of course, got pats and love from everyone. But the couple sitting next to us had a Land Camera, so she also got photographed: These are now on display in my library.

First, on the flight from Dallas to San Francisco, this handsome boi slept peacefully on the floor four rows ahead of me: Bane is a malamute mix, 11 years old, and here in the SFO baggage claim area, very tired. Monday morning, I walked over to the Ferry Terminal on my way to the Caltrain terminal at 4th and King. This guy posed long enough for me to compose and take a shot: I don't know his name, or even whether he's male. Sorry. Later, in Palo Alto, I stumbled upon this historic site: That's the...

This. Is. Amazing: Chicago Public Media explains how they made it: The viral video was shot earlier this summer, with the help of a Minneapolis-based production studio. With a “lean crew” of just three people, Sky Candy Studios paid a visit to the Windy City in late July, the company’s founder Michael Welsh said. Over the course of a Saturday and a Sunday, Welsh piloted an FPV-style drone with a GoPro attached through the nooks and crannies of Wrigleyville. The “high-precision drone,” which weighs under...

More photos from last weekend. I mentioned The Samuel Palmer in Shoreham, Kent, where I stopped after my hike through the Kentish Downs. I didn't mention that I had a delightful cheese plate for dinner, because cheese: Then I got to experience four Chicago blocks' worth of an English country road at 10:30pm getting to the railway station: On Saturday, I walked along the Regent's Canal on my way to the Southampton Arms: Which remains, as ever, one of my favorite pubs in the world: I will return to all of...

I will definitely make time this weekend to drool over the recent photos from the James Webb Space Telescope. It's kind of sad that no living human will ever see anything outside our solar system, but we can dream, right? Closer to home than the edge of the visible universe: Josh Marshall highlight's a reader's note explaining how the historic conservatism of the Executive Branch legal team won't work any more. The President's conservatism doesn't work either, as recent polls and Democratic-party...

Even though it seems the entire world has paused to honor HRH The Queen on the 70th anniversary of her accession, the world in fact kept spinning: Blogger Moxie Marlinspike wrote about their first impressions of web3 back in January. I just got around to reading it, and you should too. On the same topic, a group of 25 security professionals, including Grady Booch, Bruce Schneier, and Molly White, wrote an open letter to Congress advocating for serious regulation of cryptocurrencies. What's Russian...

Editing photos on my phone doesn't always produce the best results. Faster, cheaper, better, pick two, right? Fortunately I have Adobe Lightroom at home, and deploying software yesterday took a long time. Here are my re-edits. Better? Worse? At the very least, they're all correctly-proportioned (2x3) instead of whatever I guessed on my little phone screen. Thursday's sunrise at Nicura Ranch: Berea College: One of the ranch's permanent residents: Down the road from the ranch: Cinnamon, who rather...

I'm hard at work on a presentation for my company's annual Tech Forum, which is next week. Meanwhile I've got two performances of Bach's Johannespassion this weekend, with our orchestra rehearsal this evening. Oh, and we change the clocks on Sunday. So in lieu of anything more interesting, here's a photo I took of Chicago's St Boniface Cemetery on Tuesday morning:

I finally got a chance to re-edit some of the photos I took in London last weekend. Here are four from Thursday, in chronological order. Trafalgar Tavern, Greenwich: Lincoln's Inn Fields, Holborn: St Paul's Cathedral, west façade: Blackfriars Bridge:

My lunch spot, the Trafalgar Tavern in Greenwich: Lincoln's Inn Fields, by the Sir John Soane Museum: Lincoln's Inn Fields gazebo: Today: Hampshire and Gospel Oak.

I'm troubled not only that it's already November but also that it's already 5pm. I've been heads-down coding all day and I've got a dress rehearsal tonight. I did, at least, flag these for later: The Times reports on how traffic stops turn deadly for a lot more people than one might think, and certainly a lot more than one would want. Josh Marshall worries about the proportion of the Republican Party who believe political violence solves all problems. I need to check out this new feature in Adobe...

Chicago Loop, Monday morning:

Parker would have turned 15 today. I'm of course very glad to have Cassie, but I do miss my bête noir quite a bit.

I didn't have as much time to edit photos yesterday as I expected, so I only have two more for today: And I want to give a big shout out to this little guy, named Bear, who forded the 5-meter-wide tidal pool all by himself:

The United Winthrop Tower Cooperative started life in the early 1970s as a public housing development. In response to rising crime and costs on the order of $1m a year, the residents bought the building from the Department of Housing and Urban Development in 1993 and turned it into the affordable-housing co-op it remains today. We had a really cool sunset Tuesday evening, so I snapped this on my walk with Cassie.

Everyone: D'awwwww!

I'm back in my downtown Chicago office after working at home every day for almost exactly four months. It's weird, as I'm once again the only one on the floor, but that will change pretty soon. And I'll still be working from home three days a week. I did miss the view.

From our local television station, WGN-TV, an amazing video of ice breaking up on Lake Michigan this past Sunday and Monday:

If the forecast holds, today will be the 15th of 16 straight days of below-freezing temperatures, and the 19th consecutive day with 30+ centimeters of snow on the ground. On Sunday, though the temperature will just barely break the freezing point (1°C predicted), this winter will move from 5th to 4th place in history on that last statistic. Officially O'Hare has 46 cm of snow right now, and until Tuesday's predicted mostly-sunny 6°C, not a lot of that will melt. (The last time we had this much snow on...

Microsoft has started sending little reminders of things that happened "on this day," no doubt taking cues from Google Timeline and Facebook Memories. But I did enjoy getting a reminder that I took this photo 14 years ago this morning: Parker at Bardwell Park, Evanston, Ill., 18 February 2007. It'll be 3 months tomorrow. I do miss him.

Shortly after upgrading from my old Canon 20D to a new Canon 7D, I flew to New York for business. My company let me fly in on Saturday instead of Sunday as the lower airfare offset the extra hotel day, enabling me to spend Saturday afternoon and evening getting to know the new camera. You can see some of the results here. This morning, I revised the treatment of one of the photos I posted that evening: 1/30 s, f/3.5, ISO 6400, 18mm I think the Mark II could do even better. Whenever I'm able to travel to...

See that turquoise blanket he's on? I've only just thrown it out. I'm not even going to describe its condition after 13 years of a dog sleeping on it. (18 February 2007)

Getting my bête noir to pose for photos always challenged my patience and photography skills. This is his 3rd birthday portrait, 16 June 2009:

An outtake from Parker's 6th birthday photo shoot, 16 June 2012:

Oostburg, Wis., 6:59 am: I brought my real camera and my drone, so early next week I hope to have better photos.

I lied; I'm doing one more thing of value before heading back to my couch and book. A few days ago I re-edited one of my favorite photos of Parker from his first few weeks with me: Other than a slight adjustment to the crop, some exposure and color correction, and a tiny bit of dodging around his eyes, I didn't do a lot. I think it's a better photo now though: I expect you'll see quite a few Parker photos in the days and weeks to come.

We have some decent fall colors this year. They should peak sometime this week, but I didn't want to waste perfect weather this evening, so I took the drone over to Graceland Cemetery and Arboretum: Here's the end still, with a bit of processing in Lightroom, taken from here: Graceland closed for the longest period in its history after the August derecho that knocked 200 trees and caused $250,000 in damage. Fortunately the surviving trees look beautiful in their autumn best.

I got this a couple of weeks ago, but only today had a chance to put it through Lightroom:

Just a few of the things that crossed my desktop this morning: Astronomers have detected phosphine gas in the clouds on Venus, which is a strong indicator of life. Astronomers have also detected a ping-pong-ball-sized black hole orbiting the sun, getting as close as 133 kAUs in its orbit. An aircraft made a precautionary landing on an Interstate in Tennessee, and got a full police escort on take-off. No one was hurt. Car manufacturers are teaming up with insurance companies to share data on almost every...

I found this photo of the 800 West block of Montrose in April 1891 in a Chicago Public Library collection: Here's the same place yesterday: A few things have changed. In 1891, Montrose was paved for the half-block between Clarnedon and the Lake, and the apartment developer had built a proper curb from Dayton to Clarendon on the south side. I expect that the city paved the rest of Montrose shortly after this photo. The park to the left became a hospital in 1957, which closed in 2009 and was demolished in...

I'm David Braverman, this is my blog, and Parker is my 14-year-old mutt. I last updated this About... page in May 2019, and the world has changed. So here's the update. The Daily Parker is about: Parker, my dog, whom I adopted on 1 September 2006. Politics. I'm a moderate-lefty by international standards, which makes me a radical left-winger in today's United States. The weather. I've operated a weather website for more than 20 years. That site deals with raw data and objective observations. Many...

We had calm winds in my neighborhood this morning, so after walking Parker I grabbed my Mini and did an altitude test. I discovered that I had to replace 3 damaged propeller blades (more on that later), but after fixing the aircraft, I popped it up to 90 m and had a look around: In the climb to that altitude I discovered that the tallest building in the area is only 70 m tall, and trees tend to be around 25 m tall. These are very useful data points when flying a tiny UAV that doesn't have...

It was too windy today to get above 30 m, so I just snapped this still before taking the Mini on a "walk" down the block. But I also didn't want to waste a perfectly clear day, so I snapped this before bringing the drone back down to eye level: When you learn how to fly real planes, you learn slow flight first, because it teaches you how to control the plane precisely. And before I do something to permanently damage the Mini, I thought learning how to control it made a lot of sense. Alas, the forecast...

Some photos from London. Last night, South Kensington: Early this afternoon, Earls Court: Later, the Grand Canal at Kentish Town Road:

...I might have time to read all of these: President Trump's new rule, announced by acting USCIS chief Ken Cuccinelli, could radically change who gets to become an American. This week is the 10th anniversary of Kanye West's unpardonable dick move against Taylor Swift. The UK banned a Philadelphia cream cheese advert because it portrayed a gender stereotype. David Dudley argues that the bad mayor in Stephen Spielberg's 1975 movie Jaws explains "all I really needed to know about cities." Blogger Charles...

I'm David Braverman, this is my blog, and Parker is my 13-year-old mutt. I last updated this About... page in May 2017, and a couple have things have changed. So here's the update. The Daily Parker is about: Parker, my dog, whom I adopted on 1 September 2006. Politics. I'm a moderate-lefty by international standards, which makes me a radical left-winger in today's United States. The weather. I've operated a weather website for more than 16 years. That site deals with raw data and objective observations....

Writing for the Washington Post, columnist Monica Hesse examines how our understanding of the famous V-J Day photo of George Mendonsa kissing Greta Zimmer Friedman have changed between then and Mendonsa's death this week: Within 24 hours of his passing, a Sarasota, Fla., statue that re-created his and Friedman’s famous kiss was defaced. On Friedman’s aluminum leg, in red spray paint, someone had written, “#MeToo.” As much as any image, the picture of Mendonsa and Friedman has defined American perception...

Yesterday was a bit busy. I spent my morning getting this: I haven't named it yet. Current thoughts are Hinata (一陽), Hana (初夏), and Asahi (旦陽). (The new car was built in Naguro, Japan; thus, a Japanese name.) The new Prius replaces Magdalena (built in Munich), the BMW 335iX that I got in 2012. Poor Lena, she was so old and decrepit she just couldn't go on much longer. She was burning 13.9 L/100 km, which is just awful. The new car, so far, hasn't burned any gasoline at all—it's only run off batteries....

Photographer Mark Holtzman flew a Cessna 206 over the Rose Bowl on Monday—and captured one of the coolest aerial photos I've ever seen. He explains the shot in The Atlantic: I’m always talking with them. It’s run under the Pasadena Police, so I get a clearance. They don’t want anybody just flying around during a big event like that, even though you theoretically can. So I was on a discreet frequency, the same frequency as the B-2, talking to them. They know me now. Unlike film, the way you shoot digital...

I've been in frenetic housecleaning mode today, since it's the first work-from-home Wednesday I've had in...let me see...10 weeks. And apparently I last had my housekeeping service here 16 weeks ago. (It wasn't that bad; I do clean up occasionally.) The activity and actually having to do my job has led me to miss a couple of news stories, which I will now queue up to read: Former President Obama spoke at the Economic Club of Chicago last night, and said, at one point, "American democracy is fragile, and...

At the Bristol Renaissance Faire yesterday I caught my friend Megan trying on earrings: Today, though, I'm getting on this gorgeous machine and flying to the Ancestral Homeland: I'm also operating on about 4 hours of sleep, since my plan to wake up at 10:30am British Summer Time (4:30am Central Daylight Time) worked a lot better than my plan to go to sleep around 3am BST (9pm CDT). For that I thank the squad of Irish bros across the alley who had one of the louder parties I've ever witnessed...

It'll take some time to sort through the photos I took at the Bristol Renaissance Faire today, especially since I've got a 9am flight tomorrow and haven't really started packing yet. This one, though. I mean, I had to post it:

Yesterday Parker turned 11, which means today brings his annual birthday portrait: I am not sure why he prefers me to photograph his left side, but going back through earlier photos of him, clearly he does. For example, here's the runner-up for this year's portrait: Not to mention, the 10-years-apart photos I posted May 4th.

The Apollo Chorus of Chicago held its annual benefit on April 7th, with me as benefit chair. We raised more money than at any previous benefit, as far as we know. I've got some photos to post; here's the first, of soprano Meaghan Stainback and alto Molly Mikos:

The last two days, I've been in meetings more than 7 hours each. I'm a little fried. Meanwhile, the following have popped up for me to read over the weekend: Making people reveal their real names stops online trolling, right? Um, no. A poet discovered that two of her poems were used in Texas' state assessments, but she couldn't answer the test questions about them. Hanselman asks, should we teach programming from the machine up or from the glass down? Photographer Kaylee Greer has a video about how to...

Here's a fun comparison. This is the building adjacent to the north side of the northbound platform at the Northbrook Metra station. First, October 1985: Here's the same wall almost exactly 31 years later: The pharmacy long ago disappeared. The building now contains an Italian restaurant and a hair salon.

One of the first photos I took with my poor, now-deceased G5:

The Cubs actually won, and it was a great night for a ballgame: Also, I'm digging my new LG G5. That kind of photo is not what I'd expect from a mobile phone.

Every day that I'm in my office (about 3-4 times per week), I take a photo out the window. Here's today's: We're on the 35th floor of Willis Tower. But we have access to the 66th floor lobby, so on really clear days I'll sometimes post something like this:

This is one of the coolest things I've seen in a long time: A new site called OldNYC delivers a Street View-like view of what the city looked like in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The site includes a map of New York City and a slew of dots that can be clicked on to see different images of that particular location. According to Business Insider, which earlier reported on the site, it was developed by Dan Vanderkam in collaboration with the New York Public Library, which has acollection of more than...

This is London: And so is this:

I'm David Braverman, this is my blog, and Parker is my 10-year-old mutt. I last updated this About... page in April 2016, and a couple have things have changed (not least of which, all the internal links changed when the blog moved to BlogEngine 3 last October). So here's the update. The Daily Parker is about: Parker, my dog, whom I adopted on 1 September 2006. Politics. I'm a moderate-lefty by international standards, which makes me a radical left-winger in today's United States. The weather. I've...

Michigan Avenue at the river:

I'm in Bend, Ore., today, doing nothing of value (except blogging and photographing). I'll have a few photos tomorrow or Monday. My goal for the next several hours is to get 25,000 steps in this perfect weather. (I have sunscreen.)

It turns out, our neighbor to the west has a better-looking capitol building than we do. I mean, gilded roof? On a hill? We have none of these things. But we also don't have Steve King, which makes up for it and then some. That's from October 2004. I've tried to correct what the original camera did to it, but it only provided so much data.

Apparently we have two. The old one: And the new one: And as a bonus, here's a squirrel:

Combine a full moon, a really good camera, and a beautiful church on Christmas Eve: (The grain is from shooting a HDR photo at ISO-12800.) Did I mention the candlelight part? The final piece of the service is the entire congregation singing "Silent Night" holding candles. Even as an atheist, I found it moving. And the Winnetka Congregational Church, while still a Christian church, doesn't beat people over the head with religion. I'm certain I wasn't the only atheist in the congregation.

Two from last night, near the Hermosa Beach Pier:

St. Boniface Cemetery, Chicago:

My new LG G4 phone has one hell of a camera: That's what came out of the phone, unedited (except for location tagging). The phone can save photos in raw .dng format, which Adobe Lightroom reads just fine. This enables full editing control and zero data loss, among other things. Pretty cool.

I logged 24,771 steps yesterday (argh! 229 short!) mostly by walking from Arundel to Amberley in West Sussex. The walk seemed longer than 6 kilometers, but that's what my FitBit counted. I also walked from Victoria Station to my hotel, another 3.9 km, but at a much faster clip than down public footpaths and across fields in the South Downs. My first stop was The Black Rabbit: My last stop was The Bridge, where I stopped on similar hikes in 2009 and 1992. And I ended the day at The Blackbird, because of...

Saturday I promised Illinois State Fair photos "tomorrow." Yesterday I drove home, and for a variety of reasons (including having to do everything I ordinarily do on weekends Sunday evening), didn't look at any of them. They're not that great, unfortunately. I'm not happy with the light nor with the visual interest. So all I have for you is this one: Also, here's Peter Scott, lead vocalist for Captain Geech and the Shrimp Shack Shooters, an impressive local Springfield cover band: I may post some of the...

After not going to a Renaissance Faire in so long I don't even remember my last visit, it was fun going three times this summer, each with a different group of people. Yesterday was Steampunk Invasion, which attracted crowds one of the more regular Faire attendees in our group called "epic." Great costumes though: I didn't do real costumes myself this season, but I have been informed that next season, there will be a costume, oh yes, there will. This should be interesting...

Why would anyone go to Arizona in July? A geas. On Friday I visited Park #26: The trip also gave me a chance to take my 7D Mark II for a spin. Sitting 18 rows behind the Diamondbacks' dugout, I was able to get photos like this, no problem: Let's take a closer look, yes? This is at ISO-3200, 1/500 at f/5.6, from about 100 meters away: Cool, right? More photos of the game and of my field trip to Tempe later.

Weather? Check. Photography? Check. The dog? Nope. The National Weather Service photo contest winners are very cool, though.

Part of the reason one stays in an Agriturismo is to go hiking. This is a state highway (scala provincale) near the closest village: Despite being as far north (46°27') as Quebec City and Portland, Ore., Dosso del Liro is surprisingly warm and dry, the perfect environment for these guys, which we saw all over: These guys (common Italian wall lizards) are about 8 cm nose to tail, and very fast. We didn't even try to catch them. But they're also hard to photograph; I got lucky and moved very slowly for...

I can imagine why the Catholic Church build Gallio Palace on the shore of Lake Como: We didn't make it to the palace because we were distracted by food. I'll have more to say about Wednesday's dinner in my next couple of posts.

I took 324 photos on Monday, so I'm not all the way through them yet. I'll just start with a photo of our hotel's lobby. We stayed at the Hotel Danieli, a 193-year-old hotel in a 600-year-old building: This was our one hotel splurge. I do not know the exact bill, except that it was approximately the same as the next four nights' lodging combined.

As I'm still getting to know Lightroom 6 and its HDR feature, I wanted to revisit this one from 2013: Here's the refresh. I think it's a more subtle result, and looks more like what I actually saw in Hampstead Heath: On my next trip (in two days), I'll probably take a lot more HDR-ready images. The Canon 7D Mark II does a sort-of draft HDR in-camera, with a number of options for generating the raw files that my old camera didn't have. I'm looking forward to the results.

Less than 24 hours ago, I put my old camera on Craigslist: $500 for the body, two old lenses, the battery pack and charger, and a 32 GB CF card. This afternoon, someone stopped by my office, played with the camera for five minutes, handed me $450 in cash, and that was it. Thank you, Craig. That was remarkably painless.

I'm not sure this produced a significantly different photo, but I've done another quick HDR image with Lightroom. First, the basic shot, posted the day after my visit to the Joint Security Area on the North-South Korean border: Here's the first HDR attempt posted a week later: And here's one with Lightroom 6: The second HDRI used different source images, but only from a few seconds later. Are they significantly different? Maybe insignificantly? I must ponder...

I've just upgraded my main camera to the same model's Mark II. The first shot doesn't seem that impressive, as it's a daylight shot of a familiar view. (There are noticeable differences in Lightroom, however.) But check this out: That was shot at ISO-51200, 1/60th second at f/5.6. I mean, holy crap. To put this into perspective: in order to take that shot with the Tri-X Pan film I used as a kid, I'd need a 2-second exposure at the same aperture—a 7-stop difference. The mind reels. Yes, it's grainy, but...

...with my new camera: More details forthcoming...

Another big walking day in sunny weather took me up to Bernauerstraße and the Gedenkstätte Berliner Mauer (Berlin Wall Memorial): That's a mostly-preserved but partially-reconstructed section of the wall at the corner of Bernauerstraße and Ackerstraße, near the site where the first person trying to flee over the wall was killed. It's hard to imagine that the place I'm sitting now was once in East Berlin, just a few hundred meters from the place by the Wall where Reagan gave his famous speech in 1987. I...

The Atlantic's CityLab blog brings us the work of Ignacio Evangelista, who has photographed European border crossings abandoned after the Schengen treaty came into effect: Evangelista has photographed many of these checkpoints over the last couple of years. Aptly titled "After Schengen," his project reinforces the suddenness with which many of Europe's border crossings went silent. Brightly colored vehicle gates remain at some boundaries, but they stand open, implying a warmer "Welcome," rather than...

The Nag's Head, Angel: Coincidentally, this pub has the same name as my go-to pub when I lived in Hoboken, N.J., 15 years ago.

And it's 5pm. And I'm still working on Thursday's work. Ex-cellent! While I'm figuring out what part of the week I missed, read about how a group photographers explored subterranean London.

Three more photos from Sunday's publicity shots. Shaina Summerville and Stephen McClure: Shaina Summerville and Parker, behaving for about 30 seconds: Zach Blackwell, Shaina Summerville, and Stephen McClure: My direction for that last one was, "Imagine something horrible. It's Sarah Palin. She's got a gun. She's coming toward you. And she's naked." They look truly horrified, don't they?

I've got approval from Spectralia to post some publicity shots from Sunday. Zach Blackwell: Shaina Summerville: Stephen McClure and Shaina Summerville: More a bit later.

I've had a few minutes to go through the Spectralia photos from earlier today. We attempted to get Parker in them, to play Crab, the dog, but he is the sourest-natured dog that lives. Observe: Yet did not this cruel-hearted cur shed one tear. Eventually we got a couple good shots with him. Eventually.

Today wasn't nearly as pretty:

I debated this question with someone at a dinner a couple weeks ago. She suggested higher megapixel numbers told you more about the ego of the camera buyer than about the quality of the images. I said it depends on how you're using the photos, but generally, more data yields more useful photos. Here's an illustration, using a vaguely-recognizable landmark that I happened to pass earlier this weekend, and just happened to have photographed with three different cameras. All three photos are from...

I'm David Braverman, this is my blog, and Parker is my 7½-year-old mutt. I last updated this About... page in September 2011, more than 1,300 posts back, so it's time for a refresh. The Daily Parker is about: Parker, my dog, whom I adopted on 1 September 2006. Politics. I'm a moderate-lefty by international standards, which makes me a radical left-winger in today's United States. The weather. I've operated a weather website for more than 13 years. That site deals with raw data and objective...

When I last visited St. Martin five years ago, I struggled a bit to get through the heavily-defended border between the French and Dutch sides. I am happy to report that the two countries have made significant improvements to the border since then. For starters, they've put up a brand-new sign: Unfortunately, it appears that an aggressor nation has taken over part of the French side: All right, I'm wasting time writing a blog post when I could do it with something else. If only this Internet connection...

I posted a photo of the Korean Joint Security Area the night after visiting it, while still in Seoul. Finally, today, one of my colleagues had time to assemble a high-dynamic-range image from a set I took for that purpose. I think it's a much better photograph: Not only did I get the colors closer to reality (always hard to do with a laptop), but combining three different exposures into this one HDRI brings out the details in the shadowy foreground as well as on the DPRK building we were facing. Thanks...

Yesterday, on the Siberia side of the Bering Sea: Our flight path yesterday followed the terminator as the earth turned. The sun stayed right on the tip of the left wing for about 90 minutes before we jogged slightly west over Kamchatka.

The publicity photos I took a couple of weeks ago have started getting published. Spectralia's first news release went with this one: I'll keep posting the ones they use.

At last night's performance, the venue used dim, magenta lighting on the stage that made poor Lauren O'Connell look like a pink ghost. Here's one image exactly as it came out of my camera: Fortunately, I shoot raw photos, which take up lots of room (about 22 MB each) but with the benefit of lots of uncompressed image information. It's therefore relatively easy, using Adobe Lightroom, to correct for it. Magenta lights are pretty grim, though; the only reasonable correction was to make it black and white...

This caught my eye as I walked to work from the El this morning: History buffs and Chicagoans may recognize this spot as the place where the Great Flood of 1992 started.

The view from my office window:

As promised, Parker's birthday photo from yesterday: 1/250 at f/5.6, ISO-3200, 116mm

Two photos from yesterday at a plausibly recognizable location: The rain didn't even bother me, because it looked like this: More when I get back to Chicago.

The Economist this week examines the imminent death of Kodak, which in the 1970s commanded 90% of the film market: Then came digital photography to replace film, and smartphones to replace cameras. Kodak’s revenues peaked at nearly $16 billion in 1996 and its profits at $2.5 billion in 1999. The consensus forecast by analysts is that its revenues in 2011 were $6.2 billion. It recently reported a third-quarter loss of $222m, the ninth quarterly loss in three years. In 1988, Kodak employed over 145,000...

...at least for a few days. From last night in Chicago: And:

The Red Rooster, Chicago: Canon 7D, 37mm, ISO-400, f/5.6 at 1/60, here.

I forgot to post this photo from the Tsukiji fish market earlier:

Tokyo at night, with a 6-second exposure: (Here's the daytime view.)

Every year, the Economist publishes the Big Mac Index, "a fun guide to whether currencies are at their “correct” level. It is based on the theory of purchasing-power parity (PPP), the notion that in the long run exchange rates should move towards the rate that would equalise the prices of a basket of goods and services around the world." The current spot price of a Big Mac in Tokyo today is ¥680: just under $9. Yes, NINE DOLLARS. This fact might cushion the surprise I experienced this evening when I...

Last one from Saturday's photo shoot with historian Mimi Cowan: ISO-3200, f/5.6 at 1/250, 250mm, here.

Historian Mimi Cowan needed new headshots for her professional CV. So yesterday, we got a few: ISO-800, f/5 at 1/250, 116mm, here. And if she releases a solo album, we got the cover photo:

This afternoon, North Pond, Chicago: Canon 7D, ISO-100, 1/125 at f/5.6, 18mm, here.

I'm David Braverman, this is my blog, and Parker is my 5-year-old mutt. I last updated this About... page in February, but some things have changed. In the interest of enlightened laziness I'm starting with the most powerful keystroke combination in the universe: Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V. Twice. Thus, the "point one" in the title. The Daily Parker is about: Parker, my dog, whom I adopted on 1 September 2006. Politics. I'm a moderate-lefty by international standards, which makes me a radical left-winger in today's...

My sister and brother in law photo-bomb from the air: They're on their way to dinner with the family while I suffer once more in this harsh environment:

This evening at Angel Stadium in California: Canon 7D at ISO-800, 1/250 at f/8, 18mm, here. The home team won, which I always like to see when I'm not someplace the Cubs are visiting. More photos and game info tomorrow night. Right now my body thinks it's midnight.

On a school field trip, at an El stop in Chicago: October 1985. Canon AE-1P, Kodachrome 64, exposure unrecorded, probably 80mm, probably here.

Kitten (yes, that was her name for all 16 years) relaxes in a sunbeam: April 1985, Northbrook, Ill. Canon AE1-P with Kodachrome 64. Exposure unrecorded. Here.

Parker just after sunset: 10 July 2007, Canon 20D at ISO-1600, 1/8 at f/11 with fill flash, 18mm, near here.

Parker, New Year's Day 2008: Canon 20D at ISO-400, 1/250 at f/8, 18mm. Edited from the first published version.

Three years ago today, I was in Atlanta: Canon 20D at ISO-1600, 1/125 at f/5.6, 18mm, here.

This is actually a scan of a print, from July 1991: That's available light on Kodacolor 100, in Balboa Beach, Calif., about here.

Cubs pitcher Carlos Zambrano warms up before yesterday's game at Wrigley Field, Chicago: Canon 7D at ISO-400, 1/800 at f/5.6, 171mm, exactly here. In this shot, I corrected the color to 7500K (based on a gray card reading), pushed the contrast, and desaturated. Later today I'll have another shot of Zambrano in which I did almost the opposite.

The Daily Parker may miss a couple Photos of the Day over the next week or two as I'm ramping up a new project. I've got a few photos in the queue for the feature, but it takes time to find them, edit them, and post them, time I won't have lots of until probably the end of July. Here, however, is Four Courts, Dublin: 22 June 2008, Canon 20D at ISO-100, 1/125 at f/8, 18mm, here.

Whiting, Vt.: 17 October 1992, Canon T-90, Kodachrome 64, exposure unrecorded, here.

Yet another view of PNC Park, from the Warhol Bridge, after the fireworks: 9 July 2011, ISO-1600, 1/30 sec. at f/5.6, 29mm, here.

Continuing the Pittsburgh theme, a view of PNC Park as the groundskeepers set up for the .38 Special concert: ISO-3200, 1/15 at f/2, 50mm, here.

The Roberto Clamente Bridge in Pittsburgh, after Saturday night's fireworks, from the Andy Warhol Bridge: 9 July 2011, ISO-6400, 1/4 sec. at f/5, here.

Pittsburgh, Pa., exactly 24 hours ago: ISO-100, 1/250 at f/5.6, polarizing filter, here.

Snapshot from the corner of Franklin and Randolph recently: 22 June 2011, Canon SD1200 at ISO-100, 1/160 at f/13, 14mm, here.

The Tower of Belem, outside Lisbon: 7 January 2001, Kodak DC-4800 at ISO-100, 1/90 at f/2.8, here.

Columbus Park, in Chicago's Austin neighborhood: Today, ISO-100, 1/80 at f/8, here. The Chicago Park District describes the park: [Designer Jens] Jensen's vision for Columbus Park was inspired by the unimproved site's natural history and topography. Convinced that it was an ancient beach, Jensen designed a series of berms, like glacial ridges, encircling the flat interior part of the park. In the center area, following the traces of sand dune, he created a "prairie river" flowing from two brooks. Two...

Louise: October 1984, Canon AE-1P, 70-210mm, Kodachrome 64, exposure unrecorded

The British Museum: 11 February 2001, Kodak DC-4800 at ISO-100, 1/180 at f/2.8, 6mm, here.

Scotland, on the Kyle of Lochalsh train: 23 June 1992, Kodachrome 64, Canon T-90 with Tamron 35-210mm f/4.5-5.6, exposure unrecorded, probably about here.

Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) in the Chicago Pride Parade this afternoon: ISO-200, 1/800 at 4/5.6, 250mm, here. I've got more photos from the event up on SmugMug.

In honor of last night's historic law in the Empire State: 25 July 1984, Kodachrome 64, exposure unrecorded, 50mm, here (I think).

Avoiding the traffic jam somewhere in southern Wisconsin: 13 October 2003, Kodak DC4800 at ISO=100, 1/700 at f/8, 13mm.

You can see the past photos of the day in my SmugMug gallery.

On the James River, just downstream of Richmond, Va.: 1 February 2003, Kodak DC4800 at ISO-140, -1 EV, 1/90 at f/3.4, 11mm, near here. This came from from my old Kodak DC4800, which I mentioned yesterday. Like yesterday's, it looks great on the blog at 500x750, but it doesn't have much more resolution than that, and Adobe Lightroom helped it along a little.

The Guggenheim Museum, 31 December 2000: ISO-100, 1/125 at f/4, Kodak DC4800, 12mm, taken here. I mentioned a while ago that only with my Canon 7D have I gotten digital images with about the same resolution as film. Even though I made this photo on a 3Mpx camera, I shot it at 1536x1024 because I had, I think, a 64 MB card in the camera, which could hold only about 300 shots. Still, the shot looks decent enough at Web resolutions. I spent part of the weekend organizing photos from the last decade in...

At a campaign rally in Burlington, Vt., 26 September 1992: Kodachrome 64, exposure unrecorded, Canon T-90 probably with Tamron 35-210mm at 35mm.

I'm not sure if this worked, but I liked the shot anyway. Trump Tower is on the right; the Equitable Building is on the left: 17 June 2011, ISO-100, 1/250 at f/5.6, 55mm, taken here.

Last one from Lisbon, on the plaza surrounding the Castelo de São Jorge: 13 January 2011, ISO-400, 1/250 at f/8, 55mm, here.

I've always thought this photo looked cool: October 1985, Northbrook, Ill., Kodachrome-64.

Another one of my favorites, from Maho Beach, Sint Maarten: 14 February 2009, ISO-400, 1/2000 at f/8, 31mm, here.

Another repeat, because I'm lazy, but still one of my favorite shots of Parker: 27 February 2010, Mars Hill, N.C. ISO-800, 1/1250 at f/6.3, 125mm

Shanghai, China, 15 April 2011 (reposting the photo with some new tweaks): ISO-100, 1/250 at f/5.6, 18mm, here.

Surf fishing in Half Moon Bay, Calif., on Sunday: ISO-400, 1/2000 at f/5.6, 123mm. Approximately here.

Shanghai, 18 April 2010: ISO-400, 1/800 at f/8, 47mm. Taken approximately here.

Yesterday, just north of San Francisco:

As threatened, I've gotten a public photo page at SmugMug (http://punzunltd.smugmug.com). You can now browse the few that I've published so far, and possibly even buy one. It's not incredibly impressive right now as I don't have full-size copies of much yet. That will change, though. I'm having a lot of fun with Adobe Lightroom and its one-click integration with SmugMug, too.

Eleven-month-old German Shepherd Dog Rex watches his mom carry in the barbecued chicken yesterday in Chicago: ISO 3200, 1/125 at f/2.5, 50mm prime

In May 1986, I went to Boston with my school choir (all 130 of us, plus chaperons) and took about 240 photos. Here's one of them: When I got back home, I printed the shot. This took about five hours, and some help from Mr. Sylvester, the photography teacher, because instead of Photoshop I used an actual darkroom, with an easel and Ilford #3 paper. Here's the result: Now, in 2011, I've finally scanned the negative, and in about 20 minutes with Adobe Lightroom, produced a reasonable facsimile: Not only...

Monday night I played around with one of my favorite slides from 1986. Today at lunch I rescanned the slide at 3600 dpi, after giving it a good dusting, and with the scanner's Kodachrome corrections. Here's the result: For comparison, here's my previous attempt, using the 1200 dpi scan I made during my first pass: The differences are much more apparent at full size, especially since the top photo's dimensions are nearly four times longer than the bottom one's. Public Garden, Boston, 10 May 1986....

As I play around with high-dynamic-range imaging, I remembered a photo I took in 1991 while driving through North Dakota. I remember taking about a bunch of bracketed shots because of the scene's wide exposure range. Last night I looked for the image and found that one of the two negative strips covering the bracket is gone. Not only gone, but I wrote a note to myself in May 1992 on the negative holder pointing out that it's gone. Without the full bracket, an HDR image won't work. Fortunately, I have...

I had a few minutes before work this morning to try out HDRSoft's Photomagix software. The program takes digital photos taken at different exposures and combines them into one image, a process called high dynamic range imaging, or HDRi. For my first attempt, I used three photos of the park near my house that were only 1 EV apart, so the result may fail to awe you: Here's one of the three originals from Monday evening, at the "correct" exposure: The HDR image looks better, but not that much better. In...

Why didn't I get Adobe Lightroom earlier? Even its basic photo-editing tools dramatically improve photos (or at least get them back to where they should be). I'm going to re-scan this one at higher resolution, after carefully dusting it, and with the appropriate filter, but for the moment, I think I've gotten pretty close to what the original Kodachrome image looked like: This one came close, but not quite: Both: Public Garden, Boston, 10 May 1986. Kodachrome 64. Exposure unrecorded.

This morning we had weather about as perfect as a human could hope for, 26°C and sunny by the lake, with a gentle breeze out of the southwest. I hopped on my bike for an actual workout, complete with heart-rate monitor, for the first time in a couple of years, then came back, grabbed my camera, and walked the dog. Some results: ISO 400, f/6.3, 1/640, 225mm ISO 100, f/5.6, 1/500, 55mm As I continue to evaluate Adobe Lightroom, I'm trying to figure out how best to use it. Since about 2000, I've kept the...

(This is the 2,500th post on The Daily Parker. And now back to our current thread, already in progress.) Version 1, pretty much as it came out of the camera: Version 2, processed from the raw camera file: 8 April 2011, 18:16 BST, 1/1000 f/5.6, ISO 100 Subtle differences—but noticeable. OK, walk the dog, thence bed. I feel like I learned a lot today, including that I have to learn a lot more.

A few days ago I experimented with photo processing to try out a technique a photographer suggested. I neglected the most obvious transformation of the photo in question: I've also downloaded Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, though I may want to go full-bore Photoshop in a couple of weeks. Lightroom looks like a fabulous way to organize photos, which would be helpful as I've got north of 25,000 right now and that doesn't include about 170 rolls of negatives I've yet to scan. It has some basic editing...

Generally, I prefer to learn new things by reading first, then doing. I mentioned Wednesday that I've grown dissatisfied with my photography skills, so naturally, I'll go first to Amazon. You know: read about a technique, try it out, post the results online, rinse and repeat. So it seems somewhat odd to me that most of Amazon's top-rated books on photography—like this one on Photoshop—have Kindle editions that cost almost as much. Because nothing will help someone understand how to do advanced photo...

I'm slowly coming around to the notion that no matter how perfect the composition, digital photographs almost always benefit from some post-processing. Back when I shot hand-rolled Tri-X from bulk and printed everything myself, I routinely changed papers and printing filters, dodged, burned, cropped, and distorted, in search of the perfect print. (I have a great before-and-after example that I will post when I receive the subject's permission.) Ansel Adams, recall, did most of his work in the darkroom....

I mentioned earlier today that I've got a new film scanner, which makes scanning negatives leaps and bounds easier than my old flatbed scanner did. As threatened promised, I've started sending people some copies. But unless someone spontaneously grants me publication permission, I'm going to restrict myself to posting only shots of subjects that have no privacy interests. Like this creek, for example: My notes have that one at the Walters Ave. bridge in Northbrook, Ill., looking south, mid-November 1985.

I met one of my oldest surviving friends in York this afternoon, thanks to the fast and cheap railways they've got in the UK. It's one thing to stay in a hotel built before my home town was founded; it's quite another to walk along a wall built over a thousand years before that. First obligatory photo: York Minster, which opened as a small wooden church in 627 CE, and achieved this form somewhere around 800 years ago: We also took advantage of an open house hosted by the York Glaziers Trust, who work to...

The last Kodachrome processing machine is gone: In the last weeks, dozens of visitors and thousands of overnight packages have raced [to Dwayne's Photo in Parsons, Kansas], transforming this small prairie-bound city not far from the Oklahoma border for a brief time into a center of nostalgia for the days when photographs appeared not in the sterile frame of a computer screen or in a pack of flimsy prints from the local drugstore but in the warm glow of a projector pulling an image from a carousel of...

The slide scanning project is almost done. I'm right now scanning the end of 1998, right around when I switched to digital cameras. Here are three from the mid-1990s showing bits of Chicago that no longer exist. First, in this view from the Sears Tower from April 1993, you can see Meigs Field and Soldier Field, both since destroyed: This April 1995 photo shows the view from the Michigan Avenue Bridge that now would encompass Trump Tower: The sun, however, still rises above Lake Michigan:

Autumn in the Green Mountain State: Cornwall, Vt., 17 October 1992. Same here: Just up the road in Whiting, same day: And up in Weybridge, 1 November 1992:

During the few months I lived in Vermont, Bill Clinton got elected President. He spoke at one big rally that year, up in Burlington, and thanks to a press pass from a friend at a radio station, I got to see him in person: I think you can see the Secret Service agent pushing me away in this shot, though Clinton himself couldn't get enough of the rope line: Then-Vermont-governor Howard Dean was there too:

The trip I took in 1992 went from West Sussex, England, to Nice, France; Genève, Switzerland; Strasbourg, France; then back to the U.K. As I continue the (excruciatingly slow) process of scanning all these slides, I'll continue to post the better ones. Like these, the first from Nice: And Strasbourg:

Like many Americans, I backpacked through Europe right after graduating from college, in the summer of 1992. I've been scanning all of my slides, gradually, for a couple of years in fact, and I'm now up to that Europe trip. (The trip starts on slide #2362, and I'm just today up to slide #2500.) Here are two. First, Chichester Cathedral, England: Then, from Rolle, Switzerland: I'm glad I took slides—almost all of them on Kodachrome 64. Some of the earliest photos still have perfect color and grain, 27...

Reggie (below) gets to walk on or near a beach almost every day. Today I got to tag along. Here's the actual walk: For some reason, on this trip I've taken a lot of photos—782 so far this weekend. Digital photography is wonderful like that. Plus, had I only 36 shots per roll at a cost of about 33c per photo, I might not do a lot of experimenting. On the other hand, I might have a higher proportion of good shots. On the third hand (?), the shots I've posted this weekend are only the highlights, as my...