HEIC? What the heck is THAAAAAT???

Had to take some photos with my iPhone and send them to my personal e-mail account.  But when I was about to use them I was hit with a shock: the pics were in something called HEIC format.

I had no idea whatsoever what that meant.  Only that it wasn't readable by my usual image software, much less usable for most critical purposes.

So I did some quick research and found that HEIC, or HEIF, stands for High Efficiency Image Container.  It was adopted over ten years ago by Apple for use primarily in their mobile devices.  But for some reason I'm only now hearing about it.

Basically it makes the same photos that you usually work with as JPEGs and ummm... makes them smaller in file size.  Sort of like how we used to compress files with PKZIP back in the day.

If you're reading this, you're probably wondering how to turn HEIC/HEIF off so that you can have your full resolution JPEGs.  That's what I'm going to tell you to do.

It's really simple.  Go into your iOS devices Settings, and find Camera.

Look for the Formats setting.

Change that from High Efficiency to Most Compatible.

And that's it!  Hope this quick tip will help you if you're also confronted with the HEIC hobgoblin :-)

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Had an interview tonight...

 ...and I hadn't gotten a haircut since January.  What can I say?  I've been busy on multiple fronts.  But I needed some fine coiffing before this evening.

Here's how it came out, along with what my "office space" looks like most of the time:

Among the items in the background: my Eagle Scout medal.  Poster of Vault Boy from the Fallout game series.  A MAD Magazine Hot Wheels car.  Waterjet-cut metal "Crimson Omen" from the Gears of War video games (made by a good friend).  One of my school board campaign yard signs.  Various CDs that have special meaning (including the Transformers score album signed by Steve Jablonsky).  The LEGO Doctor Who set (bought at a LEGO Store in San Diego, and I wound up giving a presentation about Doctor Who and explaining stuff, this one teenage girl said "you should be a teacher!").  A Funko Pop! doll, also from Fallout.  A Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man doll.  What you can't see: a LOT of books covering everything from Christian theology to local history to Harry Potter to plasma welding.  A few Warhammer 40,000 minis that I'm especially proud of my work on.  And a framed portrait of Dad.

For the interview I got dressed up, including the lucky Millennium Falcon neck tie that's a gift from a good friend:

I'm not usually one for "selfies".  Keep thinking that photos of me never come out looking very good.  But I was pleasantly surprised with these two.

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The closest person I had to a grandfather

 A few nights ago I was propped up in bed, just randomly looking up things with my iPad.  And I came upon something truly, truly special.  It is for me anyway...

It's on the website for the Order of the Arrow lodge of the Boy Scout council that I was in.  This photo dates to 1954.  The man on the right, in the light uniform shirt, is Allan "Doc" Lewis.  He was a lifelong educator and advocate for Scouting.  In the photo he and the other man (C. Lin Adams) are wearing their Order of the Arrow sashes, which indicate that they were Vigil rank.  The OA was especially near and dear to Doc's heart, as it symbolized true brotherhood and service.

I know these things about Doc, and much more, because he was the grandfather that I never got to have.  I suspect a lot of young men felt the same way about him.

I first wrote about Doc fifteen years ago, on the occasion of what would have been his one hundredth birthday.  Doc was born in January 1908, so he would have been about 46 in this picture.  That was thirty-one years before he and I met for the first time.  I was eleven and a half and a newly minted real Boy Scout.

I'll never understand why Doc took a shine to me as he did.  How it came to be that he brought me under his wing.  I think we definitely had a "master and apprentice" relationship going on.  Doc would often tell me stories of his interesting younger years (he once took Katherine Hepburn out to dinner, he used to hang out with George Burns and Gracie Allen, and he served on a committee with Norman Rockwell).  Doc was a well traveled man too and I think I inherited some wanderlust from him.  That year-long meandering across America that my dog and I did a few years back?  I was definitely channeling pure Doc for that one.  He often shared his witty sense of humor, and his belief in chivalry toward the opposite sex.

There isn't much to say that hasn't been already.  Doc Lewis really did fill a role in not just my life but the lives of many others.  He was very dear to me.  He still is.  And that's the earliest photo I've come across of him.  Seeing that, it's like I can still hear his voice speaking across the decades.

Well, it was just a neat find and I had to blog about it.  Doing what I can to keep his spirit alive and well in our hearts.  Thanks for reading this :-)

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Something I made a while back...

That's my little girl Tammy, in a photo made by my friend Tim Talley.

Just one of many things I have learned in the past few years.  And anyone who claims that a dog or cat doesn't have a soul, has obviously never owned one.

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The Big White-out of February '15

During last night and into early this morning, a huge swath of the state got blanketed with 4-8 inches of snow. Here's how it looked at my house around 7:30 this morning.

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Photographs of American Revolution veterans, and 3D images from World War I

Old historical photos hold a special fascination for me.  So I find this next couple of items positively amazing...

Peter Mackintosh
Photo Credit: Joseph Bauman

On the right is a picture of Peter Mackintosh, taken sometime after the early 1840s.  Mackintosh was 16 years old and an apprentice blacksmith in Boston when he watched as a gang of young men barged into his shop, smeared ashes from the hearth all over their faces, and then just as quickly stormed out of the place.  Mackintosh later discovered that they were part of a mob on their way to Griffin's Wharf to throw boxes and barrels of British-taxed tea into Boston Harbor.

That was on December 16th, 1773.  And the teenaged Peter Mackintosh had witnessed the first moments of the Boston Tea Party.

Later on Mackintosh served in the Continental Army, shoeing horses and repairing cannons.

Mackintosh lived long enough for his photograph to be taken at the dawn of the art.  And his is but one of a collection of photos of Revolutionary War heroes who survived long after America's war for independence.   Some of these men served personally under George Washington.  A few witnessed Cornwallis' surrender after the Battle of Yorktown.

Think about that: we are looking into the eyes of men, whose own eyes looked into those of Washington, Hamilton, Greene, and perhaps Cornwallis himself.  These aren't painted depictions, but captured moments of these people in the twilight of their lives.

1776 wasn't all that long ago, when you consider it.

Much closer to our own epoch, a World War I-era stereoscopic camera discovered two years ago has yielded some incredible 3D photographs of the Great War.  It will be a hundred years next August that World War I broke out in Europe but if you don't mind the absence of color, images such as this one are practically as fresh as those taken in any modern conflict...

Two French soldiers help another who has been shot,
as another lies dead in the background.

io9.com has several more photos of World War I in 3D at the link above.

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33 most beautiful abandoned places in the world

Nothing of man lasts forever.  In the end, all crumbles to dust.

But some things sure do give us haunting beauty during the course of their long toil to entropy.

BuzzFeed has compiled photos of 33 places build by man throughout the world, left to ruin but gorgeous to behold.  There is quite a poignancy in these images.  I thought the one on the left - of the remains of the bobsled track from the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo (at the time in the now-disbanded country of Yugoslavia) - was especially moving.

That was one of the most well-remembered Olympiads of the past half-century.  And now, look at what remains  A long concrete chute, left to decay amid the foliage.  A few years after those games, Yugoslavia disintegrated into ethnic warfare and religious strife which cost the lives of countless thousands.

"All is vanity", as the Preacher at Jerusalem cried.

There are plenty more photos at the link above.  Some are of structures that will leave you wondering how the heck they were built at all and others... well, you'll be bugging your eyes out trying to figure out what the heck it is you're looking at (try staring at the one of the House of the Bulgarian Communist Party without getting a migraine).

Tip o' the hat to Danny de Gracia for a great find!

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The Shroud of Turin? There's an app for that!

Before I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark in the theater (yeah I was that young: it was a weird weird childhood) and got hooked on archaeology, the Shroud of Turin had grasped my fascination.  All I knew at the time was that it might have been the cloth that Jesus was wrapped in after His death and that somehow, His picture got transferred into the material.  I've been reading every serious article and journal paper about the Shroud for most of my life and my curiosity about it has grown more and more.  Especially at this time of year.

What do I think of the Shroud of Turin?  Well, despite many attempts to reproduce it, those have always failed.  And then there is the forensic analysis: just this week scientists announced that the Shroud is almost certainly a product of the First Century.  When you figure in that pollen grains from plants found only in the region around Jerusalem have been extracted from the Shroud and well... if nothing else it is a historical relic of the utmost intrigue.

This being Holy Week, for the second time in history (the first was 1973) the Shroud of Turin is going to be televised live, beginning tomorrow.  And if you want a REALLY up-close look at the Shroud, you should check out The Shroud of Turin 2.0 for iPad and iPhone.

Haltadefinizione is the studio that did the high-definition photography of the Shroud five years ago.  It was the best photo documentation of the Shroud to date and now courtesy of those same folks it's all in the palm of your hand (or your lap). The Shroud of Turin 2.0 takes the 1,649 pics of the Shroud, combines them into a 12 billion pixel image weighing in at 72 gigabytes and streams it to your device (be still your heart: the actual app is only 50 MB in size).  You can download a free version, or pay $4 that gives you the option for even higher-resolution images.  If you want it, mash down here to find it on Apple's App Store!

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The strange Cold War bar codes across America

The "bar code" at Walker Field, Maryland

Adjacent to the runway of a Navy airfield in Maryland is a paved rectangle.  And within that area are a series of quadrilaterals painted bright white, in pairs and ascending in size.

By itself its existence would be a mystery, or at least a curiosity.  Except that it is one of dozens to be known throughout the United States, with most of those found near military bases and other restricted facilities.  Some remote locations have entire arrays of the "bar codes" stretching for miles toward the horizon.

So what are these test pattern-ish arrangements?  Based on available evidence, they seem to have been put in place by the government during the first few decades of the Cold War.  With tensions high between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, the advent of high-altitude aircraft reconnaissance - and then "spy" satellites - became an important asset of military intelligence.  And as with any other system of optics those high-flying cameras needed a means of determining that they were properly focused.

The rectanglular codes, therefore, are apparently intended to calibrate the zoom and resolution of aircraft and satellite photography.  F'rinstance: letting an SR-71 use one to adjust its precision camera before sending it to fly across the Iron Curtain.

From the original article at Mail Online...

Consisting of a concrete pad measuring 78ft by 53ft and coated in a heavy black and white paint, they are decorated with patterns consisting of parallel and perpendicular bars in 15 or so different sizes.

This pattern, sometimes referred to as a 5:1 aspect Tri-bar Array, is similar to those used to determine the zoom resolution of microscopes, telescopes, cameras, and scanners.
The targets function like an optician's eye chart, with the smallest group of bars discernable marking the limit of the resolution for the camera being tested, according to the CLUI.

'For aerial photography, it provides a platform to test, calibrate, and focus aerial cameras traveling at different speeds and altitudes,' the CLUI adds.

'The targets can also be used in the same way by satellites.'

Ironic, aye?  That military secrets from fifty years ago are now wide-out in the open because of that same technology and Google Earth.  Anyone with a desktop or tablet can now view what likely had been classified top secret by the CIA.

I wonder what else might be on the ground across the fruited plain, waiting to be discovered...

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1956 TV appearance by Samuel Seymour

Good friend "lowbridge" informed me about this a few years ago, so I've got to credit him with the find. It's a story that's gained renewed interest because of a certain upcoming movie.

So who was Samuel Seymour? He was the last surviving witness of the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.

And Mr. Seymour lived long enough to talk about it on national television (sharing a stage with Lucille Ball, among others).

From February 9 1956, here is Samuel Seymour's appearance on I've Got a Secret:

Pause for a moment, and consider: Samuel Seymour was five years old when he heard the gunshot in Ford's Theater and saw John Wilkes Booth jump down to the stage after shooting Lincoln in the back of the head. Seymour was 96 when he passed away two months after being on I've Got a Secret.

No doubt there are many still living today who watched Samuel Seymour tell his story on television.

A century and a half seems such a long time... until we consider how few lifetimes fit within it.

There are photographs existing today of veterans of the Revolutionary War, posing in their uniforms. Photography was invented in 1826: the same year that Thomas Jefferson and John Adams passed away. It was within the realm of possibility (though it never happened) that we could have had real pictures of either or both men before they died.

A relative of mine passed away ten years ago this month. He witnessed the Hindenburg explode. I got to hear him tell me about it from his own lips.

On the scale of history a hundred years is nothing. A thousand years is nothing. Between now and the time of Christ, there have been a mere twenty lifetimes.

Think about that. I certainly do.

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Behold the world's oldest known color motion picture!

In 1901, Theodore Roosevelt became President after the assassination of William McKinley. The Wright Brothers were still experimenting with gliders and motorized propellers. Tsar Nicholas II reigned in Russia and the British Empire mourned the passing of Queen Victoria. A child named Walt Disney was born in Chicago. Guglielmo Marconi used his newly-invented radio to send the first trans-Atlantic signal.

Meanwhile in England, a photographer named Edward Turner was experimenting with color negatives and the recent advent of motion pictures. Among other things Turner recorded footage of his three children, Hyde Park, and traffic in London.

More than a century later and after exhaustive research, it is now being reported that Edward Turner's film is the oldest color motion picture that has ever been found.

Wanna see it? Of course ya do!

The palette of the macaw is particularly striking. But after watching the soldiers marching and the Union Jack flittering, I can't help but wonder what might have been had Turner's process and Kinemacolor later on become more widely available. I mean, just imagine the color footage that could have been made of World War I a few years later.

Edward Turner himself passed away at the much-too-young age of 29 in 1903. But it's great to see him and his work getting appreciated today.

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Hound of the Baskervilles?

It is seriously foggy this morning. Like, the kind of fog that Arthur Conan Doyle used to vividly describe as covering the moors of Britain in his Sherlock Holmes stories.

So after letting Tammy out to do her "doggie business", the notion struck that there might be a photo opportunity.

And here she is, bounding out of the mists like a ferocious creature in murderous pursuit of prey...

Okay, granted: a four-month old miniature dachshund puppy is not that ferocious. But please don't tell her that :-)

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Photography at 1 trillion frames per second

My mind is reeling from thinking about the applications possible with this...

A sharp-thinking dude named Ramesh Raskar and his team of techies have come up with a way to take photos... at 1,000,000,000,000 frames per second. That's fast enough to watch an individual packet of photons from a laser moving through a soda bottle and being able to observe how the light particles scatter throughout.

And if you watch the video, you can also see how this technology might find its way into everything from medical imaging to search and rescue.

One thing that comes to mind is that in another decade or so, with enough refinement something like this could be put into a smartphone. The result? Your very own ESPER straight out of Blade Runner.

And then there is the notion of aiming this camera at a house, from across the street or from an aircraft, and being able to search it without having to acquire a warrant...

Well, as with all such things, with anything really, it's not the tool. It's how we choose to use it. And I'm thinking there are going to be some very neat uses for this.

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Our first Christmas together

Still on my traditional holiday break but I couldn't resist sharing this photo from yesterday of Kristen and I on our first Christmas as boyfriend/girlfriend! :-)

Incidentally, plans had to be changed and so we weren't able to watch this year's Doctor Who Christmas special, "The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe" together. But since we'll be together again tomorrow (for our six-month anniversary, yay!!) we're gonna catch it from DVR then and I'll post a review soon after.

In the meantime, hope y'all are still enjoying some Christmas :-)

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John Travolta and Kurt Russell are also time travelers!

Remember two weeks ago when startling photographic evidence came forward via eBay about Nicolas Cage being a time traveler?

Well folks, two other well-known actors have also been spotted traipsing around the Civil War era! First up we have John Travolta...

From the photo's eBay listing (which has mysteriously gone defunct)...

I've had this interesting photograph for years and i've been unable to part with it. When you look at it and into the eyes of the sitter you will see what I mean!

I believe this is the photograph of a very young John Travolta taken around 1860 and I mean ..in the year 1860. This is a ruby glass ambrotype photograph and it is one of a kind. It hasn't been changed, tampered with or altered in anyway. It is clear and is as nice as the day it was taken roughly 151 years ago. I know..you are saying..John Travolta is alive today in 2011 and he doesn't look 151 years old.

For those of you who don't know, John Travolta is a Scientologist and many Scientologists believe in a type of reincarnation. Of course Time travel can't be ruled out as well. This photograph is from approx 1860 and the young man looks to be around 18 to 20 years old. Unfortunately the youngest photos available to the public for comparison of John himself are about 5-8 year older than he is in this photo.

The photograph is a 1\6th plate ambrotype that is housed in a full case. The repaired case has again come apart and could use some tape.

The thing that I always found striking about this photograph and I'm sure that you will too is the amazing identical EYES, HAIRLINE and most importantly John's very unique trademark CHIN. Remember that the antique photograph that you are looking at was taken in 1860 and the sitter is wearing a period hairstyle as well as clothing. I also found it very difficult to photograph. It looks much better in person. Everyone who looks at it tells me that the more they look at it ..the more it 'freaks them out'.

Meanwhile, Kurt Russell has also been located running amok the time-space continuum...

I don't know whether to make a Stargate joke or wisecrack about "Hey Snake, you should be dead!" As of this writing you can still bid for this photograph, a tintype from the 1860-1870 era.

Incidentally, if anyone finds a photograph from the 1940s era that looks a lot like me in Great Britain hanging around SHAEF, just ignore it. It's only a coincidence.

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Nicolas Cage is a time traveler!

A few years after the Civil War ended, Nicolas Cage was transported into the past and posed for this photograph in the vicinity of Bristol, Tennessee...

You can purchase the above photograph on eBay, provided you've got $1,000,000 to fork over for it.

From the item's eBay page...

Original c.1870 carte de visite showing a man who looks exactly like Nick Cage. Personally, I believe it's him and that he is some sort of walking undead / vampire, et cetera, who quickens / reinvents himself once every 75 years or so. 150 years from now, he might be a politician, the leader of a cult, or a talk show host.

This is not a trick photo of any kind and has not been manipulated in Photoshop or any other graphics program. It's an original photo of a man who lived in Bristol, TN sometime around the Civil War.

I've had a lot of questions asking where I purchased this. As followers of my website know, I collect antique memorial photography - images of dead people - from the 1800s. This photo was found in the very back of album that contained an unusual number of Civil War era death portraits (which is why I purchased it). All of the other people in the album, living and dead, were identified by name - this man was not.

Submitted for your approval.

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Photo of a ghost at Annie Penn Hospital?

Annie Penn Hospital is the main medical facility in my hometown of Reidsville, North Carolina. It was founded in 1930. There's the original building and then a few additions that have been constructed over the years. Today it is part of the Moses Cone Health System based in nearby Greensboro.

And it was at Annie Penn Hospital where this photo was recently taken...

The photo comes courtesy of James Hodges, a good friend, writer and pastor of Burton Memorial Missionary Baptist Church in Reidsville. The photo did not originate with James but it was made by someone that he knows.

Feel free to leave whatever comment you are led to make about this image. Could it be that this is photo documentation of a ghost at Annie Penn Hospital: a place that has a long history of reputedly being haunted?

EDIT 3:35 p.m. EST: Okay, the mystery has been solved! And turns out... it is a Photoshop job. But quite a neat one! Dwayne Corum who also hails from this burg submits this...

"It was a Photoshop...sorry to let you guys down. I know the guy who took the pic and put the "ghost" in the pic...sorry to let your supernatural heart down..lol"

Nah, it's all good Dwayne. This probably gave a lot of people a good thing to catch on a Friday when nothing else is going on but the heat around here! Just shows that even us small-town folk can have some high-tech fun just as well as everyone else ;-)

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Color photographs of the Great Depression

How easy it is to think of eras gone by as being more drab and subdued than our own time. Especially the Great Depression: I think imagining it as being all black and white must be the "default" setting in the minds of many.

And then photos like this of a grocery store in Washington D.C., taken in 1941, show us otherwise...

Between 1939 and 1943 the Farm Security Administration and the Office of War Information made some of the only known full-color photographs of small-town life during the Great Depression and early years of World War II. These became part of a Library of Congress exhibit in 2006 called Bound for Glory: America in Color. And now the Denver Post has made them available online. Some of the photographs are curiously sweet. Others are especially haunting. And each of them brings to stark crisp life a forgotten facet of the way we used to be, once upon a time...

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Photos of Eyjafjallajökull eruption

In case you're wondering, I've heard from an authority on the subject that the name of that volcano in Iceland that is currently plaguing air travel in Europe (and elsewhere?) should be pronounced "AY-uh-fyat-luh-YOE-kuutl-uh".

The Reykjavík Grapevine has published - and will probably publish many more now that Eyjafjallajökull's activity is apparently intensifying and may even trigger the eruption of a bigger volcano nearby - several photos of Eyjafjallajökull wrecking havoc.

Anyone else think it's kinda funny that this is all happening on the same week as Earth Day?

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When insects sleep...

Miroslaw Swietek, a physical therapist in Jaroszow, Poland, has perfected the art of going out with a camera and flashlight in the early morning hours to capture stunning photographs of insects asleep and covered in drops of dew. That's a dragonfly resting on a leaf that you see above.

Nothing else needs to be said: Swietek's photos speaks for themselves. But if you want to see more of his handiwork, The Daily Mail in Great Britain has several other "sleeping insect" images that Swietek has made.

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