Chris Howard's Writing Blog

Little Mermaid

Digging through a box of old photos and found this one from a 1998 trip to Disneyland.  So, here are our kids, Chloe who's now almost 14, and Christopher who's now 12.  Chloe's looking doubtful: I'm willing to go along with the charade, but are you sure this is the real Arial?  I mean, that's a total wig.  Christopher's expression with the one raised eyebrow says it all.

An interesting point: unlike all the other characters the kids met--Winnie the Pooh, the Genie, Snow White, a bunch of others--where the lines were full of little kids, Arial's line was half kids / half groups of college guys waiting to get their picture taken with a mermaid.

My other plane's a bomber

Shot this one of the San Martin airport from the car south along 101:

Seagull on the rocks

Kelp Forest

Butterflies

Just posted a photo set of butterflies on Flickr, Creative Commons licensed. Click one of the thumbnails below the big image to jump over there.    Some rights reserved

 

Stratham & Exeter pics

Bunker Hill Ave.

Heading to Exeter

Exeter Town Hall

This one goes out to Baltimore

Shot this one this morning, a pair of orioles nibbling on half an orange in our front yard. The male is hogging the orange.  Click to see the large view.

Apollo

Apollo (Aπόλλων), the son of Zeus and Leto, brother of the huntress Artemis (they're paternal twins).  (I took this in the museum at Delphi).  Click the pic for the large view.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo

Sift and post

As promised, I have spent exactly ten minutes scrolling through 1200 images, and pulled these three nearly at random.  I took these on two different islands, Patmos and Mikonos, and then in Corinthos.

Click on the images to see the large view

Windmills Without Wind

Narrow Path

Corinthian Capital Prototype

Lost and found

Digging around on some old CDs for something else, and re-discovered a pile of photos from a 2001 trip to Greece.  I'll post more when I get some time.  Here's the Erechtheion--this is where the fabled contest between Athena and Poseidon took place to see who would become the patron/patroness of the city of Athens.  Guess who won.  Poseidon struck the stones with his trident and water gushed forth...but it was saltwater, which didn't do the Athenians a bit of good several miles inland.  Athena, always the sharpest goddess around, gave the Athenians the olive tree.  Damn, she is smooth.

Foxy

One of these days I'll get some good ones--not like this guy doesn't come through our yard two or three times a week.  Not great shots, but I had like 9 seconds to get these off, or not get them at all--and I'm shooting through a window with a screen in the garage.  And to make matters worse, while I was off snapping away with my camera, distracted by the fox, the dogs ate my bagel.  Bastards.

Click any or all of the images to see the large grainy view.

Lone Oil Tanker

I submitted this shot to National Geographic, a lone oil tanker in Puget Sound.  Took this on our trip out to Seattle last July.

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/your-shot/submit

boxes of foxes

Well, just one fox, cutting across the edge of our front lawn.  He crossed the street--looking both ways before doing so, and headed up the hill.  It's a bad shot, but I only had a few seconds to grab my camera and start clicking.

Doggy update

A few shots of the pups from Alice.  Click the pics to see them larger.

Lykeia "Keia" is 5 months old!

A few pics from my phone I took last weekend.  Her birthday's October 4th.  Click the pics to see the larger view.

Snowing again...

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Winter wildlife

A couple deer wandered into out backyard this morning, but didn't move far from the forest, and didn't hang about long--probably that guy with the clicking camera.

Birds...lots of them this winter.

Nothing stops these guys...

And these are our girls, Lykeia "Keia" is a 12-week old German Shepherd, and Penny is a four year old Jack Russel/Australian Herder mix (with a good shot of her one brown eye, one blue).

One crow for sorrow

Took this one this morning, a single crow atop a power transmission tower.  Click the pic to see it larger.

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Georges Island

Here's a very cool shot of Fort Independence, Castle Island Georges Island in Boston Harbor by Alice. 

http://www.mass.gov/dcr/parks/metroboston/harbor.htm

Castle Island is the oldest fortified military site in British North America.  More at the Massachusetts Historical Society.

Click the pic to see it larger.

http://www.masshist.org/objects/2005june.cfm

The Rain in Maine...

...falls humanely in the drain.  Okay, so me and Alice and the kids drove around southern Maine for a few hours this afternoon.  Let me back up and say this all started on my birthday when Alice--kind and wonderful--gave me a zoom lens for my Nikon D40X.

 

We've been busy and haven't had time--until today--to run out to take a bunch of close-up shots of long range things--and the best place to go for that?  That's right.  We hit the road for Maine, which is like 8 miles away from us, so not really a journey, but more of a way to spend a few hours, catch an early dinner at Wild Willy's Hamburgers, one of the best hamburger places around, and cruise along the beautiful York coast, snapping photos.

Brenda's Bloomers (http://brendasbloomers.com)

Whaleback light...in the pouring rain:

Looks like a really bad dinghy, skiff and rowboat pile-up...

And here's the cause.  The light's always green!

Finally, some important information for those mooring (or planning to dive from the boats) in Kittery Harbor. Click any of the pics to see them larger.

Blue Heron

Well, the tail end of one.  I had a few seconds to get this shot off after a murder of crows swooped cawing and screeching out of the trees to spoil everything.  Love crows, but these were a pesky bunch, and I had such a beautiful clear shot of this gorgeous bird.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Blue_Heron

Click the pic to see it larger.

Here's where I took the shot, Stratham New Hampshire along the creek that runs under the east side road of the 33/108 traffic circle:

Foggy day warrior

I Flickr'd a set of shots of this very cool Argiope sp. spider, common garden spider, hanging out in the fog in New Hampshire.  Click the pic to see this beautiful member of Arthropoda up close.

See the whole set here--including a pretty cool (if not quite focused) shot of the web.

Video book trailers...

...and a plug for a service I found very easy to use.  I'm goofing with the idea of creating a video book trailer.  My book is only tentatively scheduled for an April 2008 release, but doing something with video is exciting, and worth wasting time on.  Video...it's just cool.

So, my camerawoman Chloe and I drove all over North Hampton, shooting anything that moved along the way.  Forty-five minutes of video and I may end up using about four seconds of it.  Crazy.  Still, it was fun.

I don't have anything to post yet.  I'm storyboarding and playing with a very simple editor--Microsoft's Movie Maker, which is really for piecing together home movies and maybe dumping them to DVD.  (I guess it's sophisticated for it's intended purpose.  It has transitions and video effects, one separate audio track plus a way to pull sound into the video track's audio).  It's simple.  It's fun, and it might even be enough to get the job done.

I'm trying to do this really cheap because I haven't made up my mind on it's usefulness or repeatability. I'm not going to spend bucks on a nice video editing package and use it once.

I'll post something soon.

I did spend a few bucks on stock video and stills, and did it all through a service out of Canada called, iStockPhoto.  Some nice clips, stills, vector art, etc., royalty free and good prices.  I know hi-res video isn't cheap, but iStockPhoto has several size/resolution levels for video and still photos--at a level I'm looking for.  If you're in the market for video and photos, check them out. 

Links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trailer_(book)
http://leecarlon.com/2007/book-trailers/
http://www.istockphoto.com

The Wall

Check out the posts and pics from Gabriele at Lost Fort on Hadrian's Wall.

http://lostfort.blogspot.com/2007/06/wall.html
http://lostfort.blogspot.com/2007/06/and-for-fun.html
http://lostfort.blogspot.com/2007/06/more-wall-pics.html

 

Horseshoe crabs in New Hampshire

We (the whole family) spent an hour or so down by the shore of the Great Bay at Sandy Point, watching dozens of horseshoe crabs glide into the shallows and swing back into deeper water.  High tide was on its way in and they occasionally pushed themselves right up onto the beach.  We found one on its back three feet above the waterline.  Really sad.  (The crab did seem to move when we placed it back in the water).

• http://www.greatbay.org/
  http://www.greatbay.org/sandypoint/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_crab
• http://www.horseshoecrab.org/act/sighting.html

See the whole set on Flickr

Feed – Subscribe to chrishoward.author's photos

Doggies gone wild

Here's Penny (Jack Russell/Australian Herder mix) kicking it up with her neighbor, Bertie Birdy (Dachshund pup).  (Click the pics to see them larger).

BEA NYC SICK

I know I said I'd post about BEA, but I have been sick.  Really sick.  Virally sick, like I can't seem to make it past 2:00 in the afternoon kind of sick, like I'm burning up with the A/C set to 63F and everyone else in the room is freezing  (Alice and the kids took the train down with me--to their detriment).  I'm a wreck.  Literally.  I totally ate it on the big marble steps leading to the BEA main level.  I mean stumbled down three stairs and went face first across the landing, backpack tumbling, papers flying.  (I do all my own stunts.  Ask Skott.  I'm sure it looked spectacular.   All I saw was marble coming at me really fast--and experiencing the inability to get out of its way).  It all started with a cold on Wednesday, and went downhill from there.  Alice picked up a batch of Ricolas, Airborne, Kleenex, and other good stuff.  Still isn't working, though.  I returned to the hotel yesterday (staying at the Hilton Times Square on 42nd just up from 8th ave), took a nap and didn't wake until 7:00 in the evening. 

I walked/stumbled out with a bag-load of ARCs, chatted with Paula Guran, the editor of Juno Books along with several other pub industry and technology professionals.  Long story short:  I'm posting a few NYC and BEA pics instead of anything thoughtful.  (Click the pics to see the full-sized images).

Jodi Picoult Keynote (One of my favorites, and a terrific speaker):

CCC's Beyond the Book was standing room only with a panel discussing, Giving it Away: Should Publishers Reconsider this Value Proposition. (Chris Anderson of Long Tail fame second from the left, host and moderator, Christopher Kenneally on the left).

Washington D.C.

I spent much of the day yesterday doing some business in and around the Hart Senate Office Building in Washington D.C., and took a few pics from my phone.

...I'm only a bill.  Sittin' here on Capitol Hill...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%27m_Just_A_Bill | School House Rock

Painting workspace

Here's a shot of a seascape on which I'm currently working.  I'll post a scan of it later on.  I've been working late--and all week--on a project for work, and finally took some time to relax this afternoon.

Click the pic to see it full-sized.

Upside down cats

Here are a few shots of Christopher's (my son) cat, Niki.  No bacon, however.  Niki's full name is something like Nikoletta Pandora Howard, and here she is lounging in her favorite loft seven feet off the ground.  Niki refers to Christopher as "Food Boy." 

My Photo Album

Starting something new.  In between all the other junk I post, I'm going to post a pic from an ever growing number of digital images I've taken on vacations, business trips, and in my own backyard.  (Click to see the larger version of the image)

Kouros head 
Archaeological Museum of Corinth
CJH - October 2001

This is one of the pieces stolen from the Archaeological Museum of Corinth in 1990 and returned in 2001.  I believe the nose was broken in the theft because there's an older pic on the museum site with the nose intact.  Sad.

I took this one during a trip my father and I took to Greece and Turkey in 2001.  You want to know where I go for inspiration?  I can look at this shot for an hour.  The rings of hair, lips, carved in stone...theoeidês.  Simply amazing.

This was the inspiration for my Kassandra close-up: