There is a small cafe within walking distance of our apartment in Arlington called The Lost Dog. There is also the adjacent and similar Stray Cat run by the same people. It was started by animal lovers and they run a animal rescue foundation in association with the resteraunts. They serve sandwiches, burgers and pizzas and have a HUGE selection of beers.

The Lost Dog's menu is very large... There are 2 pages full of sandwiches, another of pizza and more for other items like salads, burgers and sides.

A frosty root beer.

First off I want to say I developed this recipe from several sources including from The Big Red Cookbook from Betty Crocker (9th edition, only 10th is now available) and a very old Joy of Cooking. I’ve had good luck with everything I’ve made from both, but the Betty Crocker is a bit less intimidating if you are just starting out, or want “simple” recipes. I recommend picking up a copy if you see it. I have modified the recipe significantly so I’m posting it and don’t believe this is copying either of their recipes. In any case, a basic scone recipe is a basic scone recipe. Just about every cook book agrees on the basics: flower, sugar, salt, baking powder, egg, butter and milk cut together… The differences are in the details and even then they are all basically the same.

The final product.

This recipe is quick and easy. It makes a great breakfast hot out of the oven but also keeps well for later use the next day or even longer. It can be made very rich (use cream) or relatively healthy (use 1% or skim milk). To make this “right” you should have a food processor. It can be done by hand, but I’m never that happy with the results and it is to much work.

New Zealand is one of those places where quirky and fun home businesses have a chance. It is the sort of place where you drive 10km down a back road that leads no-where and find someone selling the best honey you’ve ever had, or sweaters, or whatever. This post is about something in that vain, although, it is quite popular and well known. I didn’t think of it as distinctively New Zealand before my trip, but now I do.

Steven instructs one of the students taking park (like myself) in how to heat the steel before forging the blank into a rough blade.

Lonely Planet listed a little place called Barrytown Knife Making in Barrytown (map) on the west coast as something fun to do and I thought “why not, I’ve got the time,” so I signed up. It is a full day event and you literally go from mild steel to a finished knife all on your own.

In addition to my dolphin tour, I went on the Albatross Encounter offered by Encounter Kaikoura. Kaikoura is home to many species of Albatross including the wondering albatross as well as many of the “smaller” species (which are still huge). In addition to Albatross, you see many other terrestrial as well as pelagic sea birds. On our trip, the ocean was nearly flat with very little wind. This was good for keeping the camera study, but not so good for seeing albatross in the air. They need the wind to get air born. Most of the great and wondering albatross were just bobbing about on the water. We did see many of the smaller species in the air though. They seemed to be less picky/lazy.

A Salvin's albatross soars low over the water.

The albatross were something between amazing and totally comical. Their wings are so huge, even compared to their large bodies, one wonders how they don’t break a wing frequently. Their landings on the water are essentially a mild crash (they don’t seem to go much for style points) and they often unfurl their massive wings during squabbles so that two or more birds have the 1 to 2 meter wings sticking straight up while they snap with their beaks. However, while in the air, the efficiency of their bodies can be seen. They rarely flap their massive wings and glide very low over the water. I routinely saw them drag wing tips in the water while turning.

This week is National Park Week (April 16th through 24th, 2011) and all national parks are free. Adrian and I headed to Great Falls, somewhere we’ve been trying to go for a while. The weather was wonderful today (68F and sunny) which is a marked improvement over yesterday (raining, tornado watches, etc). Because of recent rain, as well as increased flow due to the spring snow melt, the Potomac was rocking. The falls were more of a bump and less of a fall. The park was also packed. We arrived relatively early and got in and parked. When we left at 15:00, the parking lots had been full for a while and they were only letting cars in as cars left. The line of cars was around a mile long and getting longer at a quick rate. Isn’t living somewhere overcrowded fun?

Normally, the Potomac falls over rocks in many small water falls. Kayakers run this section of river when it isn't flooding. No one was out this day.

It was also apparently view camera day as I saw no less than 4 out and about. Three were in a single group of people with quite a bit of nice gear including the view cameras, a Rolliflex, a modern medium format, a couple range finders and a spattering of DSLRs. I’m guessing it was a school group, but maybe not. In any case, gear envy ensued…

I was working with my D700 and either my 28-70 f2.8, 70-200 f2.8 or 70-200 f2.8 + x1.7 converter, which are no slouches. The long exposures are obviously tripod based and the rest hand held. The long exposures were as long as I could make the exposure given the bright sun, even with some pretty severe ND filters. The first image in this post was shot at ISO100 (LO1), f22, with 6 stops worth of ND filters and it was still a relatively short 0.6s.

One of my stops in New Zealand was Kaikoura. It is a very popular destination for tourist, and it isn’t hard to see why. The terrain is rugged and beautiful (it reminded me of northern California in many ways, only much prettier). The ocean is teaming with life including seals, dolphins, whales and terrestrial and pelagic sea birds. The only drawback to the area was its popularity. It was a bit mobbed with tourists.

Dusky's jump in the distance.

I took a dolphin tour and swim with Encounter Kaikoura (I also went on the albatross encounter, but that is for another post). They operate environmentally responsible dolphin tours that take you to see wild dusky dolphins in the waters around the peninsula. A few people (first come, first serve) are allowed to swim with the animals. They are wild and whether they give you the time of day, or simple continue to swim on ignoring you depends entirely on their mood that day. In our case they hung out and observed us (what are theses strange splashy black sausage things?!?!?) while they socialized. Dusky dolphins are one of the smallest dolphins, but also the most naturally acrobatic. It wasn’t long after the tour started before dusky dolphins were jumping and flipping all over the place.

A friend of mine works at JSC and happened to be hosting a talk by an outside scientist. As part of his visit, they arranged for him to land the full motion shuttle simulator. It has 5 seats and they had one open. My friend asked if I wanted to come join in (do you even need to ask?!?!?!). We started with a tour of the old Apollo control room and current mission control and a few other “normal” tid-bits. After that we headed to the simulator.

After a safety briefing, we strapped in and got to ride along with the motion enabled while one of the NASA engineers with experience talked us through a launch and R.T.L. (return to launch site) abort.  After the demo, we played musical chairs and each got to attempt a landing without the motion control (which during landing didn’t do all that much anyways since it is a smooth ride without much g-force involved). It was really quite simple (which isn’t to say, that it is simple to do in reality, when say, something could go wrong and kill you). In any case, I, unlike some of my fellow fliers, and despite my friend’s best attempt to make me fail by deploying the landing gear at 5000 feet instead of 500 feet, landed safely and not even to badly.

These are some of the hydraulics that drive the full motion simulator. I didn't have enough time for it, but I would like to have spent some time looking at and photographing the mechanism. It was visually very interesting.

I had another opportunity to photograph Houston’s favorite 80′s cover band, Molly and the Ringwalds. Dekan Ringwald gave me some free publicity and prompted me to take pictures of him so I did. I don’t require much encouragement.

For this shoot I used a BFT (black foamy thing) with a DIY foam reflector on camera with the strobe gelled for CTO. This gave me direct lighting from an area about 8″x8″ Not huge, but better than a point light (the naked direct strobe). I let the great low light performance of my D700 and my fast lenses do most of the heavy lifting and just used the strobe to give it some punch. I’m pretty happy with the results despite the fact that the continental club is horrible from a lighting stand point. The ceiling is black and there is a curtain at the edge of the stage so using bounce flash is basically impossible. The results are a little edgy lighting wise, but it works for an 80′s cover band.

Here are 5 of my favorite images. The rest can be seen here.

Dekan Ringwald