Well, the two on the right are Burros... Keane's Picture Web Site

Fog
Me and the Fog and Mt. Rainier...

Notes and Comments

This site is about pictures. Any verbiage I throw in is worth what you paid for it. That's why this site is called 'Keanespics' and not 'Keanerunsoffatthemouth'...

Index to Notes and Comments
About this site
About the design
About the content
About panoramics
About filenames
About photographing theme parks
History

About this site:

While most pictures I want on this site are on this site, there's a bunch of places that still need some narrative. This will get filled in over time, though I did try to at least include a summary with every topic.

There are also many descriptions and comments that will be filled in on the picture pages. Most of the locations, descriptions and comments are from original spreadsheets when the photos were initially organized.

I am currently in the middle of a project to rescan all of my slides and negatives. The Theme Park section is mostly up to date, but there's a lot of Road Trips and Other pages that will be updated soon with new scans and the larger size format. (Generally 600 pixels on the short side instead of 500px.)

And I know my spelling is atrocious, and much of my grammar is... questionable. :-)
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About the design of this site:

This site started as a simple exercise to learn HTML. Mostly, so I could look at a source page and figure out what it was trying to do.

I started with an old HTML book that was lying around the office (and yep, three or four years is old these days), read it, and put together a page using frames. It did everything I wanted. It took me less than a week.

Then I pick up a new book, and find out they want to get rid of frames, and is destined to become unsupported. (Like anything is supported in the first place...) And suddenly, I'm reading about XHTML and style sheets. As the site grew, Javascript slowly worked it's way into portions of the code.

So what was once a very simple markup language, has become abstract documents in which you need to know three different syntax and command sets, CSS (style sheets), Javascript (sort of a programming language) and HTML (a markup language), just to create a web site. (I don't want to talk about server side programs. I also don't want to talk about the differences in all the different popular browsers.)

After all that was figured out, then I had to design a standard interface so I could write a html code generator. I still have to make improvements to it, but it does what I need it to do.

Yes, I know I could have bought a program to do all of this for me, but I'm not sure I could make the pages behave exactly the way I wanted, and that wasn't the point of this exercise in the first place, now was it? :-)
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About the content:

The hardest part about this site was the data organization and content. I haven't counted yet, but there are some 8000 different images on this site, from Maine to California; from Washington to Key West. Worse is trying to extract information from those cryptic notes you made about a trip 15 years ago. Sure it made sense to you *then*...But at least I *have* notes.

In the places I've written comments, I've noticed I jump from past tense (like I was there) to present tense and back. I've tried to be consistent, but sometimes, I'll lapse into one mode or the other. I find I like to use present tense in trip reports, and past tense in other things.
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About Panoramics:

This segment got too long, and too large. There's another page called About Panoramics that you can access from here.
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About Filenames:

One side effect of developing this site, was to unify all of the filenames to a common algorithm. I can theoretically now take every photo I have and put them in a single folder with no file name duplication.

There are two different types of filenames. Those are BD (Before Digital) and AF (After Film). There are exceptions, but those two are the general types.

All of my AF images have EXIF information, so I have a date and time stamp for every picture. The time is probably accurate after 2003. Earlier than that, it might be off by an hour if I actually adjusted the time for the time zone I was in. After 2003, all of my timestamps are in Central Time.

Anyway, here's a couple of examples.

Example 1: 200612FL_101C04102

The first four digits is the year, and the next two digits is the month. (December 2006 in this example.) That's followed by a short mnemonic for the trip (FL is Florida, in this case.)

The number following the underscore, is the sequence number. It could be 2, 3 or 4 digits. (Since I'm usually combining pics from two or three cameras, all the pictures are combined and sorted by date, then each picture is assigned a sequence number.)

The next letter is the source. Common sources are:

The two digits after that is the day of the month, and the last three digits are the time. 102 (in our example) was taken from 10:20 to 10:29 in the morning.

Example 2: 200509DSW_05770583C15170

If there's a double wide sequence number, the image has multiple exposures, usually a panoramic. In the above example, the panoramic is composed of images 577 through 583.

On the other hand, I have no such luxury with my BD (Before Digital) pictures. The closest timestamp I can narrow a BD picture to, is the day. Sometimes, the month.

Example 3: YYYYMMDD[desc]_[seq][Src]RRFF[old description].EXT

Negatives and slides were scanned in using an HP Photosmart S20 and an Epson Perfection V750 Pro. I did a review of those scanners versus a mediocre $150 digitizer. The S20 comparison is here, and the V750 Pro comparison is here.



Finally, do you find it ironic that most of the pictures on the index pages have me in them and couldn't possibly have been taken by me? I do...
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About photographing theme parks:

You need a wide angle more than a telephoto. My current Canon G12 has a 0.5x to 5x zoom, and I appreciate the wide angle more than losing on the telephoto side. The consequences of that choice also means you're going to spend more time in post-processing correcting for perspective and barrel distortion in close quarter shooting of large objects, like buildings.

Learn how to frame a shot quickly. A good picture can be a fleeting thing. By the time you turn the camera on, play with the zoom and take the picture, the moment could be gone. If I'm in a hurry, I tend to take a picture as soon as the camera is ready, then reframe and zoom if the subject is still where you want it.

On the other hand, if your subject isn't moving, you might want to bracket your exposures by a couple of stops and use some sort of HDR program to overcome the lack of density of a CCD. During very bright days or at night, know how to adjust your EV so you don't burn out the light areas in the picture.

Learn how to use your camera before you get to the parks. The last thing you want to do is flip through your instruction booklet in the parks. A flashing exclaimation point is usually bad news, learn what it means before you find out your shots are ruined.

Night shooting:
You really need a tripod. I have a lightweight aluminum tripod from Slik, with quick release leg extenders. (It's a Slik Insta-Lok 500G-FL) It's half the length of a baseball bat, and about as thick around. It has tilt and pan adjustment, and goes from 17" (fully collapsed, but legs fully open) to 46", fully extended. It probably won't handle the weight of an SLR, but for a digicam or consumer videocam, it works great.

You can also use a monopod, but you have to brace it against something, like a low wall, or a bench. The monopod I have is about as long as my tripod, but I have a tilt and pan head on it. It extends to 5 feet, making it very comfortable when video taping a parade, for example. But remember a monopod is *not* a tripod, and won't keep a still camera steady enough for long exposure times.

On the other hand, I have successfully used hand rails and garbage cans. If you look at the night shots at Saratoga Springs, I put the camera on the ground...

Even with a rest or tripod of some sort, you don't want to press the shutter button. As Charles Bronson said in The Magnificent Seven, "Squeeze, don't push." (Okay, so it's not an exact quote.) On a very lightweight tripod, even this isn't enough.

Previous to my G7, I would have used the infra-red remote control that came with the camera. Canon cheaped out and discontinued that feature. So now, I set a shutter delay of 2 seconds, press the shutter release and let go. By the time two seconds have passed, any shake has stopped, and I get some pretty good results.

Other tips:

Look at some of your recent pictures. Are there some you don't like? Why? If you can identify the problems in your own photography, you can probably eliminate those problems as well. They're your pictures. If you like 'em, they're good enough. If you show them to someone, and they start saying things like "Rule of Thirds", tell 'em to go soak their head. :-)

Now even if the reason you're taking the picture, is to take a picture of a friend, that doesn't mean the friend is your only subject. For instance, if your friend is in front of 'Partners' in front of the Castle, the Castle is probably a subject. If you can, you frame the entire castle and your friend, without cutting off any of the castle or your friend. If you're not sure, take it both ways and throw one away. Digital is cheap after the up-front costs... :-)

Learn how to use a good photo editor. I use Photoshop, because that's what I know. You don't need to use an editor as powerful as Photoshop, but for me, it works. It's tightly integrated with the other Adobe apps I use...
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Site History:

02/13/2007 - Project started.
01/06/2008 - First beta.
05/01/2008 - First deployment.
05/06/2008 - Addition of About Panoramics.
06/02/2008 - Addition of 64 1969 Disneyland pics and 41 1969 Marineland pics (to Sea World section.)
06/15/2008 - Other/Yes: 25 additional pictures added, all slides rescanned. 06/30/2008 - Addition and modification of various resort maps.
09/03/2008 - Update of National Museum of the United States Air Force.
02/25/2009 - Addition of 2008 SouthWest vacation and 2008 Theme Park Trip Report.
03/01/2009 - New version of IllumiNations in place.
03/04/2009 - Update of All Star Resorts page.
03/05/2009 - Update UO Hotels, City Walk
03/07/2009 - Update IoA, USF.
04/17/2009 - Great Movie Ride Video
04/15 through 05/30/2009 - Major reorg of site: Replace all picture html to version 1.5. Breakup of large picture directories into smaller index fragments, and provide links to major topics in the index. Eliminated all 3 deep nests.
08/30/2009 - Fixed About Pans links broken by above... :-)
09/24/2009 - Replaced video page (new index prototype); Added several videos, osborne lights
10/04/2009 - New links within long picture strings implemented and completed.
10/24/2009 - WDW vs. DLR size comparison
11/24/2009 - Addition of 1983 WDW Vacation Guide, removal of unnecessary tree traversing page links
12/29/2009 - Addition of Dec 2009 Trip report
01/15/2010 - New Animal Kingdom Lodge page. (Added Kidani, reboot to 600px pics.)
01/16/2010 - New Crescent Lake Area page. WDW_Other becomes WDW_DD (Downtown Disney) and Boardwalk section in Cresent Lake.
01/17 through 01/24/2010 - Integration of Dec 2009 trip into their respective WDW web pages; Minor text updates.
02/05/2010 - Add Venice, more descriptive road trip links
Through mid-May 2010 - Complete upgrade of ThemeParks to 600px on the short side
06/16/2010 - Added Joan Cusack Meet and Greet page
12/26/2010 - Added 2010 Trip Report
01/04/2011 - Updated site, made more standard
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