This coming Fall Semester I will again be teaching a course in panoramic photography. The course is structured around the making of multi-exposure panoramas which can be done with any camera provided one has access to software that can stitch individual digital frames together into a continuous image. This is a fun course to teach in large part because the students have so much fun working on the assignments. I seldom have the problem of having to push students into creating more images. Often I get buried in multiple variations and disparate subject matter so that it can be a challenge to get the student to concentrate on composition and to develop an intellectual point of view in their work.

The class has never failed to produce some exciting imagery. Sign up now. Enrollment is limited.

Retrieved from an animal shelter along with his brother, Laddie,  by the Northeast Ohio Collie Rescue Society, Ernie and Laddie were infamous for their destructive mischief. None-the-less we adopted Ernie into our home in Oct. 2002 and soon became skilled at replacing window glass (he always forgot to open the window before trying to jump through!). Over time, he became a great family dog who fearlessly fulfilled his role as protector of the flock. Died yesterday. We miss him greatly.

After a short experimental run with the tiller the tractor is now set up for winter. Bring on the snow!

Carol and I drove to New York City to visit our son, Nathan, last weekend. We took a tour of his ceramics studios and visited the Occupy Wall Street demonstration in Zucatti Park. The winter storm that hit the east coast rolled in on Saturday morning with high winds and a miserable mix of rain, snow and sleet that left several inches of slush which made walking an adventure.

All in all, though, it was an enjoyable weekend with Nathan and Scott and we were able to toss some symbolic support to the Occupy Movement.

Yesterday, White’s Farm Supply delivered our new Massey-Ferguson tractor. What a beast it is! Along with the tractor we have a front-end loader, a snow blade, and a 66-inch rototiller. I’ve been asked why we invested in this machine since we’ve lived on our 10-acre property here for almost eight years without a large tractor. Well, if you’ve seen our driveway, you can image that it might be a real chore to clear it of snow and ice in the winter here in the snowbelt. Using our little John Deere lawn tractor with a 44-inch blade to do this has at times taken up to 6 hours to make the driveway passable—and then the county snowplow will come by and close the last 10 feet with about 18 inches of ice, snow and road crud.

When a little sunshine or warm temperatures follow a major snowfall, the foot or so of snow that has built up on the barn roof will come sliding down and leave a 3-foot pile of snow that’s 10 feet wide and forty feet long lying in front of the barn. This blocks access to the barn (where Carol parks her car) and prevents use of the turn-around loop. Needless to say, the John Deere is no match for the job of clearing this pile. So the combination of the 72-inch snow blade and the front-end loader on the new tractor will handle this task safely and in a reasonable length of time.

There are also many tasks around the property that we simply have had to ignore because there was no practical way of getting them accomplished. The previous owner cleared many trees and left the stumps in place which are obstacles to almost anything we would want to do in the yard. Some of those are going to be gone in short order. We also need to remove several trees each year that fall from high winds or excessive snow loads. Up to now we’ve had to pull these out with a hand-powered winch—a laborious and very time-consuming task that you don’t want to have to do on a hot summer day. So we do hope to catch up to some of these tasks that have been put off or simply ignored for a long time.

But a more important reason for having this equipment comes from our involvement with Hiram Farm—a not-for-profit organization that has established an employment and therapeutic program for people with autism. Hiram Farm is located on a 120-acre organic farm in Hiram, Ohio. The land is leased from the Trust of the late Al Couch who was one of the first organic farmers in the nation. You can get the full story of Hiram Farm at the Hiram Farm website.

One of their most pressing needs right now is to develop the capability to use more of the land to produce income for the organization through farming. The program at Hiram Farm is now supported almost entirely by donations and Medicaid reimbursements. While it has been remarkably successful up to now in starting and expanding the program, this is not a funding model that will work over the long haul. They currently have no equipment available to do more than till about one acre for planting vegetables which they sell at a road-side stand. We intend to make this tractor available for Hiram Farm to use to expand their farming operation and, hopefully, develop the farming activities into a significant revenue stream. So it will be spending an extended period of time at Hiram Farm tilling the garden for a fall cover crop and, next spring, perhaps putting in a hay crop or whatever they decide to do.

Two days ago I received a promotional e-mail from Blurb, the online self-publishing service that makes it easy for almost anyone to be the proverbial “published author.”  The promotion offered a discount for publishing a notebook format book that could include numerous pictures and little or no text. Since I’ve been spending a lot of time in the past couple of years doing photographs to promote Hiram Farm, I thought this might be a good way to use some of those pictures to provide another promotional channel and perhaps generate a small amount of income for their program of providing vocational services to adults with autism.

So, I downloaded their “BookSmart” composition software complete with the notebook template, and in a matter of a few hours developed a finished layout for the book. While the BookSmart software doesn’t give one the kind of flexibility and control I’m used to with applications like InDesign, it was adequate for this simple project. In less than a day’s time I was able to complete the layout, make a few revisions and finally publish the book which is now available for purchase on the Blurb website. Hiram Farm will also have a few copies for sale at their upcoming fall festival.

Over the past few years, photographers have begun to use Blurb, or any of several other self-publishing services, to make promotional books as well as wedding albums, portrait albums and other products that expand the income potential of their core business. One of the best features of these online publishing services is that you do not have to purchase large numbers of books up front. Just make it available online and customers can order as many as they want. No extra work for the photographer, just collect your [small] royalty from each sale.

http://www.blurb.com/books/2452519