Had one of those DUH! moments today.

I was on the phone with a client introducing them to their new WordPress site. The client couldn’t remember the password I set for him so I went into the user area and reset it. While I was there I noticed that I still had the default admin user set up so I deleted it per my customary practice of not making it any easier for hackers.

I then guided the user through making his first post once he logged into the backend. Everything was going fine until we went to look at the post he created and the site’s content was gone. The theme was still there, but no content. I went to the All Posts list and the All Pages list and everything was gone.

“Let me call you back when I get this figured out”. I thought that maybe with both of us in the database something got corrupted.

First I looked at the database and confirmed that the data was all there. It was.

Then I got online and started researching and it seems there’s been some reports of the database getting corrupted but a quick SQL fix database should make it better.

So I logged into phpMyAdmin and ran a fix. No errors were found and the content was still missing. After scratching my head for awhile I went back and looked at the data using phpMyAdmin. That’s when I noticed it.

All the missing pages were in the trash. When I deleted the user, I forgot to check the box to reassign the posts to my username. I had built all of the pages signed in as the default user admin.

Certainly I was distracted by doing this while I was on the phone with a client and should have waited until later. But if all of the sudden you have content missing in your WordPress site, think back did I just delete a user?

To correct it I had to manually change the post_author and post_status fields. Fortunately for me, WordPress doesn’t actually erase the records, it just changes the post_status to trash. Change it back to publish and your content reappears.

Picture of the Month – February 2012

One of the many historic Victorian homes in Ferndale is named Fern Cottage. Obviously in a town called Ferndale, you can expect to find a few ferns, and early reports of the area include descriptions of the valley floor being covered in them. Now it’s mostly pasture land and the ferns have the surrounding hills as their refuge. But it’s easy to see how the early settlers would have wanted to call their home Fern Cottage.

In Rhode Island or England, you’ll find homes that are described as cottages only because they were not the family’s main residence. For those of us living in 1800 square foot homes, these “cottages” are mansions beyond belief! Fern Cottage in Ferndale doesn’t quite reach those epic proportions, and it might have started out as a cottage, but it is now the reflection of a family that grew and grew, the house growing with it.

Earlier this month I was riding my Triumph down Highway 36, one of my favorite rides, and one I’ve done very often. But this ride on the way out I noticed this little cottage, covered in ferns. I made a mental note of where it was so that I could photograph it on the way back.

Because my return was later than I had planned the light was getting dim, and I didn’t have a tripod. But I did have my  24-70mm 2.8 with me, and opening it wide gave me just enough to be able to hand hold the exposure.

Certainly this little relic can claim the title to be the true “Fern Cottage”. This too me is what a cottage should look like.

Several months after downloading the WordPress app for the iPhone I’ve decided to check it out and see what it can do.
So here’s one of my favorite February views. The blooming daffodils mean that spring is almost here.

Tintype photographs are the easiest type of antique photograph to identify. Despite what the name suggests, the substrate was usually a thin sheet of iron. The tintype process was patented in 1856 by Hamilton Smith and as the photo below shows, the tintype process was still being used at the turn of the century. Dating the clothing in the photo puts this image’s date around 1900 to 1905.

Scanned with scanner defaults

A tintype is a very underexposed negative that is on top of a black varnish finish. Because it’s a negative, the areas of the image that recorded shadows are clearer and show more of the black background. Conversely, the areas of the image that recorded highlights have more silver and show less of the black background. But since silver isn’t as bright as the white paper we’re used to seeing as a film substrate, tintype images tend to be dark and they don’t have a lot of contrast.

Therefore, when making digital copies and restorations of tintypes, the most important step of the process is getting a good scan of the original. This is one case where you do not want to use your scanner’s default settings. Doing so will get you an image that looks exactly like what your eyes see.

Scanned with adjusted settings

Instead, we want to look at the scanner’s preview image and set the histogram so that the black point is the darkest part of the image and the white point is the lightest. For most tintypes, this means you’re going to be using less than half of the contrast range your scanner provides. Because of that, it’s important to use the highest bit depth your scanner offers.

For example, if your scanner has 16 bit scanning depth, it can record 65,536 levels of gray. But due to the lack of any light grays and whites in a tintype, the values in a tintype will only use the lower range of that 65,536. So we may only be left with 20 or 30 thousand values to work with. It’s important to get as many values as you can in the scanning step so that when you get to the Photoshop work later, you have the most amount of information to work with.

When the image is scanned those 30,000 levels are going to be spread out over the full range of  65,536 levels. So all along the range there will be holes. If those holes are too big, you’ll notice definite steps in gradations of gray levels.

In the image shown here, there were numerous spots and scratches, way too many to fix by with the clone brush or the healing brush. Photoshop has a Dust and Scratches filter you works quickly, but it works by blurring the image. Since tintypes are usually pretty soft to begin with due to the technology of lenses back then and the small size of most images, it’s not desirable to make them even softer. What I did with this image was to duplicate the image on a new layer, use Dust and Scratches on the duplicate layer, and then set that layer to darken. That way the only pixels that were affected were the missing pixels.

Final Restored Portrait

That fixed about 80% of the problems with this image. After that I used the healing brush and the clone brush to fix a few other areas.

The final step was adding a Contrast adjustment layer with a slight S curve, just to deepen the shadows a bit.

Picture of the Month – January 2012

During the Centennial Celebration for Fernbridge, Jerry Lema used his antique flat bed truck to ferry a bevy of beautifully dressed women across the historic bridge. One of those women was my wife Lori looking gorgeous as usual in her period garb. Sitting next to Lori was a young woman who I had never met before, but she had the most astounding period look. She had the perfect hair, face and makeup; she looked just like an old photo that had come to life. I instantly knew I wanted the chance to photograph her.

Luckily, Lori had found out a bit about her and knew that her mother Paula worked at the Ferndale Post Office. Lori will strike up a conversation with any woman how has long hair, which mother and daughter both have. So through Paula we found out that Kellyanne would be interested in modeling, but she was only going to be in Humboldt for a bit longer as she was going to Switzerland in a few weeks.

So we scheduled a shoot for just after the holidays, but on the day of the shoot I wasn’t feeling like I should be outside of a 5 second perimeter of a bathroom. So I had to cancel. First time I had to flake on a model after having about a 50% record in the other direction. I felt bad, but really there was nothing I could do.

When I next ran into Paula at the Post Office I found out we still had a small window to shoot before Kellyanne departed for the land of chocolate, fine time keeping machinery and anonymous bank accounts.

On the day of the shoot we first dressed Kellyanne in some vintage lingerie and an Edwardian dress. She looked just perfect in that ensemble, and when I get some time I’ll add those photos to our vintage clothing website.

Next we had her try on an Edwardian costume that Lori made and it looked spectacular on Kellyanne. I’ll post more photos of the dress on Lori’s web site once it’s ready to go.

I’m looking forward to Kellyanne’s return from Switzerland and having her back in our studio again.

Picture of the Month – December 2011

Ferndale’s Main Street is a beautiful sight year round, but at Christmas time it has a special glow about it, dominated by America’s tallest living Christmas Tree. I’ve taken photos of the tree every year we’ve been in Ferndale, and for this year’s photo I wanted to take a panoramic view of Main Street and the tree.

Cruising down Main Street I was lucky to find a parking spot right in front of Valley Grocery. This put me directly across from the Ferndale Emporium, one of the prettiest Victorian buildings on Main St. No sooner than I pulled out the camera, someone came and parked his truck right in front of the Ferndale Emporium. Somewhat disappointed, I figured he had every right to park there. But then he never even got out of his truck. I was tempted to ask him to move but I figured he’d eventually move. He didn’t.

So I started taking the photos and when it was apparent his truck wasn’t deserving to be the center of attention, I moved down the street a bit and started over. Taking a panoramic, especially at night is an extended process as have to take several exposures as you pan the camera around, in this case 180 degrees. I was just finishing up the last exposure when the fire siren went off, so I had to pack up and leave before the last exposure was done.

I figured I could always try again another night this year. But then we left to go out of town for Christmas and when I got back I came down with a flu that kept me a short distance from the bathroom for several days. By the time I was feeling better, the lights were off. So my grand plan for a Main Street Christmas pano never got realized. Which was really a shame because we had some great weather and some beautiful sunsets that would have made great pictures.

Picture of the Month – November 2011

This year for Thanksgiving we were invited by our friends Greg & Penny to spend the weekend with them at Ripple Creek Cabins near the Trinity Alps.

Lori and I both had busy, stressful weeks, so having down time with friends was a great way to spend the holidays. Traveling there was a breeze, the Thanksgiving travel rush in that direction meant us and a couple of other cars.

When we arrived Thursday morning the turkey was still cooking so we took a walk around the area. We came across this lovely old barn with these wonderful hand forged hinges. The color of the aged wood reminded me of the bristlecone pines, so I believe the wood is some type of pine. Great texture and color that speaks to a time when things were built by hand.

Picture of the Month – October 2011

This month’s POTM isn’t so much about the picture, as the camera that took it.

12 years ago I purchased my first digital camera, an Epson 850Z, that cost me just under $1000. What did I get for a grand? I got a 2 megapixel camera, that could take 20 pictures before the card filled up, or the batteries died. It did have a hot shoe though so I could use my studio lights with it.

My latest digital camera cost me $299, and it has four times the resolution as the Epson did. It also shoots 1080p HD video, let’s me check email, surf the web, play anything from my entire music collection, oh, and I can even make phone calls on it.

If I want to play James Kirk, I can even talk to my camera and command it do what I want.

What an amazing amount of progress in just 12 years. My new iPhone 4S is the best camera in the world, because it’s the one that’s with me.

It was with me when I ran out the door responding to the Ferndale Volunteer Fire Department for a traffic collision on Fernbridge. I had just purchased the camera a few days earlier so this is the first time I used the camera function.

Steve, you left us with an amazing piece of technology to play with.

Picture of the Month – September 2011

For the last eight years, I’ve been taking photos of Laura East’s Ferndale Dance Academy productions and each year the production has gotten bigger and better. Now Laura is starting off on a new adventure, the Humboldt Dance Force, which will provide FDA dancers more opportunities to perform.

To kick off the first season of Humboldt Dance Force, the dancers, Laura, and I headed over to Fireman’s Park in Ferndale. First we did individual shots of all of the dancers posing on the playground equipment. Then we did one final group shot, that involved a lot of trial and error in poses to get everything to work. Thanks to the dedication and patience of the dancers, it all worked out into a dynamic and exciting group shot.

Because HDF will be known for their use of bright colors (see their web page for an example!) the saturation of this shot is boosted way beyond what I would normally do. But sometimes it’s fun to break out the box you construct for yourself.

Picture of the Month – August 2011

On August 7th, Ferndale celebrated the 100th anniversary of Fernbridge. Rick Phillis, who chaired the celebration committee, went above and beyond the call of duty when he decided to light the bridge for it’s birthday party.

Rick borrowed several generator powered construction lights from Wendt Construction and placed them so each arch was lit.

I owe Greg Rumney for the use of his tripod, since I foolishly walked out of the studio without mine.

I took this shot by wading into the Eel River until I was waist deep in the water. I did remember to bring my waders!