Mielke Photography

I find myself distracted slightly today. I have a ton of pictures to share with you and a number of upcoming blogs. A review of and pictures of the class I took with David Tejada, some golf courses that I have had the pleasure to play. I put all of those aside when I read this. Though old it still struck a chord with me. I will get to all of the ‘fun’ stuff, but for a moment I want to share a story.

I did not know Johnny Stallings. I did read the book Another Season and enjoyed it. Gene Stallings is not me. His reactions were not mine. He was/is a father from a different era and a different person. I did understand many times what he thought and felt as he watched his son grow up. I have walked that path with “Buddy” and still see some glimmers. Gene Stallings and I do share another bond. Johnny was his only son and “Buddy” is mine.

Though we never met nor was I a fan of any of the teams that his father coached. I was sadden to see that Johnny had passed for no other reason than the moments through reading the book that I spent looking into his life and the depth that was there.

I share the obituary from the Dallas Morning News.

John Mark ‘Johnny’ Stallings: 1962-2008

12:00 AM CDT on Tuesday, August 5, 2008

By JOE SIMNACHER / The Dallas Morning News

jsimnacher@dallasnews.com

John Mark “Johnny” Stallings defied the expectations of both his lifespan and his likely impact on the world following his 1962 birth.

John Mark Stallings was often by his father, Gene, who said: ‘I say John is lucky, but actually we’ve been the fortunate ones.’ ” height=”123″ width=”175″>

FILE 1988/Staff photographer

John Mark Stallings was often by his father, Gene, who said: ‘I say John is lucky, but actually we’ve been the fortunate ones.’

Doctors told his father, Gene Stallings – then an up-and-coming football coach – that his baby had Down syndrome and wasn’t likely to live to his 5th birthday.

Johnny not only lived nearly 10 times longer, he did so with a caring flair that seemed to capture the hearts and minds of people he met throughout his life.

He developed legions of friends and created good will as he moved with his father’s legendary career – which included coaching national champion Alabama and the Aggies, and serving as a Cowboys’ assistant.

Mr. Stallings, 46, died Saturday at Paris Regional Medical Center of a congenital heart condition related to Down syndrome.

Services will be at 5 p.m. today at Lamar Avenue Church of Christ in Paris, Texas. He will be buried at Hike-A-Way Ranch, his family’s home in nearby Powderly, Texas.

“He just had a genuine impact on people, really because he cared,” said his sister, Laurie Vanderpool of Brentwood, Tenn. “He would focus in on the people for who they were and what they were doing for him. He didn’t care about their success or their status.”

Mr. Stallings was also a good listener, who remembered the names of people he met and details of their lives, his sister said. One of five children, he was the family’s only son.

“He would remember what had been going on in your life,” his sister said. “If any of us sisters had been going through something hard, he would call us and ask about our friends and how they were doing.”

As a famous football coach, Gene Stallings could open doors, allowing his son to open hearts. Johnny had his photo taken with three presidents.

In 1987, the father-son team taped a public-service announcement for the United Way that aired during NFL games. The league reran the popular announcement a second season. Gene Stallings personally handled many calls from new parents wanting information about Down syndrome.

Gene Stallings co-wrote a book about raising Johnny: Another Season: A Coach’s Story of Raising an Exceptional Son.

Johnny enjoyed fishing and helping his dad, “Pop,” on the ranch, or occasionally accompanying him on the football sidelines.

At the University of Alabama, the football equipment room is named after Johnny. A playground at the campus’ RISE program for disabled children is also named after him. In 2001, he was one of four recipients of Abilene Christian University’s Change the World Award, an honor given to people who inspire others.

Mr. Stallings was born in Tuscaloosa, Ala., where his father was an assistant football coach at the University of Alabama. The family later moved to College Station so his father could coach the Aggies, to Dallas so he could serve as a Cowboys’ assistant coach and to St. Louis and Phoenix, where Gene Stallings led the Cardinals.

“Where ever the family’s been, that’s where Johnny’s been,” his sister said.

In 1988, Gene Stallings spoke to a Rotary Club luncheon in Paris, Texas, on behalf of a home for disabled children.

“Johnny’s lucky because he is with us,” Mr. Stallings said at the time. “But there are a lot of other poor retarded children who don’t have anyone.

“I say John is lucky, but actually we’ve been the fortunate ones,” Gene Stallings said. “This was very difficult at first. We didn’t want to believe it. But the good Lord knew what was best for us. Our lives have been very, very good. We have been blessed. He has put sweetness in our lives.”

In addition to his father and sister, Mr. Stallings is survived by his mother, Ruth Ann Stallings, also of Powderly; three other sisters, Anna Lee Young of Heath, Jackie Chalk of Argyle, and Martha Kate Gunn of Waco.

Memorials may be made to the RISE program at the Stallings Center, The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Ala. 35487; the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, 9400 North Central Expressway, Suite 1201, Dallas, Texas 75231, or the youth program at Lamar Avenue Church of Christ, 3535 Lamar Ave., Paris, Texas 75460.

I know this will sound like a Mac fanboy post, but sometimes the truth makes us sound like a fanboy, when we aren’t

I just switched to Mac this year. Now I’m the type of person who built his own computer for years and just plain got tired of Windows not working. I will admit that XP was a quantum leap forward, but still I couldn’t get my computer to stay on without crashing for a very long period of time. Now some would say that it was the parts and that was the issue. Well through 4 company laptops only one of which Standby worked the way it should have of, well I don’t think it was me. Windows just wore on me.

Now onto my Mac. I went with the Mac Pro. I did it for photo processing mainly, I went a different route than most. I was VERY hesitant. Gratefully my wife volunteered as a guinea pig to see how I would like it. We purchased a Macbook for her to use. Problem with that is I never saw it, she enjoyed it too much! Since I do photo processing mostly on my computer these days, not much into games and the aforementioned company laptop carries the business load. I researched how to make the “crossgrade” what Mac I would want to purchase and how I could/would change. Crossgrading was easy. I think there was one minor program that I used that wasn’t a Mac native. Most had serial numbers included or the serial number was the same. Now crossgrading with Adobe is ridiculous. If you give up your right lung to them, well they ask for the left. I still have effectivly found a way to crossgrade my Photoshop license.

I still wasn’t set though. Since I didn’t want to plunk down $2500 without some assurance that I would really like this machine. I went towards a Hackintosh. Now I know that’s not legal, but it was a perfect transition on my part. I got used to the interface, started looking at transitioning my programs and became comfortable with where to find applications. That made it a whole lot simpler. Now in my case the Hackintosh crashed more than it was up, but I knew if I purchased a Mac that issue wouldn’t be a problem. So I didn’t hold that against the OS. So I with a little trepidation plunked down the money for my Mac Pro and brought it home. Well the Mac just works.

A few months later I purchased old Powerbooks for my two children and now just recently because I travel alot for work I went out to Ebay and got myself a deal on a Macbook Pro. We are now totally a Mac household. Well except for that company laptop.

Well when the Macbook Pro arrived I found that the battery didn’t work. The computer just had an X where the battery was, I thought Oh no, I’m going to have to deal with returning this. That was a little scary with many of the stories you read about on Ebay. I haven’t had an issue yet, but I was nervous. I did some research and it looked as if it just needed a battery replacement. I wasn’t looking forward to purchasing a battery though when I had just spent money on the laptop itself.

My wife works near an Apple Store and she brought the battery into the store. She carefully outlined the problem to the genius bar. I found out that you should call them in advance to set up an appointment and things would go more smoothly. Well they looked at the old battery, put it in their machine. They found that it didn’t work. The same issue that I was having was on the sales persons machine. The person there kindly looked at her and said, “next time make an appointment” and slid her a brand new battery!

Wow! I guess what they say about customer service from Apple is true. I’m now happily typing away on my new Macbook Pro…With a battery. Thanks Apple.

Put Datacolor among the companies that I would do business with in the future. I really enjoy dealing with companies who stand behind their products. Though I have not blogged about it Adobe is not one of those companies. Because of this I make it a point to try and find any alternative to Adobe Software. So far I have been successful.

For Datacolor though I had the opposite experience. I purchased awhile back Spyder2Studio. This had in it’s very nice looking box a Spyder2 Colorimeter and PrintFix2 Pro which has a Spectrophotometer. The later is where I will concentrate this blog on. Not only is this suite cost effective, it makes very nice Printer profiles at a fraction of the cost of the high end products! As some know I made the switch to Mac earlier this year. Just recently I went about updating my printer profiles since I forgot to transfer them to the Mac from my windows machine.

Well guess what, PrintFixPro 2 didn’t work. In these instances Google is usually your friend and so I used him/her. Not finding anything I went to the Datacolor site to see if there was any info well…ahh, there. I didn’t find anything that resembled my problem, but I did find an update to the PrintFixPro 2 software. They were up to a Beta version for 3.5. Now most companies charge you to upgrade your software. Nope, no charge. Even after the upgrade though, no love from my spectophotometer. So I emailed Datacolor.

I will say they don’t answer their emails very quickly, about what I normally get from a tech support department though. A day later there was a response and we worked through a series of solutions, most I had thought of some I hadn’t. None worked. Just as I was expect that I would have to trash this one, they email back and tell me that they will replace it FREE!

About 4 days later a Brand New Spyder3Print shows up at my door. That is not a typo, it was the newer model. I will say after doing some googling again it appears to be exactly the same one I had, but just re-branded. So I’m now off to profiling and every grateful that Datacolor more than stands by their product.

Friends, don’t try this with Adobe.

I know this is off-topic, but since it is Scenes from Everywhere, I guess it fits. As most know from my previous blog entry on the dreaded “R” word. I guess I may owe a word of thanks for the movie Tropic Thunder. It seems since this movie has come out and not only it’s blatant disrespect for people with intellectual disabilities, but also for pretty much everyone. There will now be a national campaign with the included movie. For the DVD version of Tropic Thunder it will be an added PSA. Walmart will also be airing it in it stores starting in November. I couldn’t be more pleased. So in a back-handed compliment style of way, my thanks. It’s only a start, but it had to start sometime.

I’ve had many people ask about the picture of Buddy I posted in the last blog. So, I thought I’d take a minute to let you know how that shot came to be.

I have spent much time reading two important blogs. One is Strobist and the other is David Tejada’s blog. I highly recommend both blogs. Anyone can learn much from either site. I will admit that I am guilty of not reading Strobist much anymore. David Hobby was the first though to give me the creative spark that I could actually take a picture with these small pocket-sized light sources. David Tejada gives many more practical tools and applications to use them in. I will be taking a class this upcoming weekend from David T. so I can’t wait to learn many new techniques. I will blog about it when I get back.

Now back to the picture of Buddy. I wanted to keep practicing single strobe lighting. I had dragged along a shoot-through umbrella and also had a very beautiful Voice Activated Lightstand and wanted to try and get a nice shot of either Buddy or Punkin in front of the setting sun. After taking more macros of flowers we moved as fast as we could to the Japanese Garden at the Chicago Botanic Gardens, there is always a lot of good spots to shoot there. We quickly moved along the trail and came to a spot next to the river that runs through the Park. In this case Punkin, who is my normal model, was sulking and hiding in the dark. I asked Buddy and he seemed very excited to have his picture taken. I was using the D3 as well as the SU-800. My VAL, was holding an SB-800 and and umbrella (isn’t she talented) off of camera left. I also had the Stofen diffuser on top of the SB-800. I found a spot for Buddy to stand to try and frame him and also capture the last of the glow of the setting sun. I got a series of pictures of which this was the best of that bunch. As for one reason (already discussed in a previous blog) and for various other reasons, Buddy is 8 & he doesn’t like to sit still, so this is a rare and short-lived opportunity. This is the shot right out of the camera converted to .jpg from Aperture.

From Aperture I round-tripped into Capture NX. The reason I do this is because I love Nik Control Points. Yes I could purchase Viveza from Nik for Aperture for $245, but why when I could get a much more full-featured program and even better control points with using Capture NX. That would normally cost only $189 (a nice savings over Viveza), but I had an upgrade price of ~$119. I am all about saving money. In this case the control points allow you to selectively control anything in the program. Noise Reduction, sharpening and even Nik Color Efex 3.0. I mean anything you might want to do. Truly a remarkable piece of software and I highly recommend it.

When I sized up where I would like to use this program feature, I started with the background. First, I boosted up the setting sun with a Control Point (CP) on that part of the sky. I added some warmth and also some redness. I did a matching CP in the reflection in the water. This allowed them to look similar. Then I did some spot NR on Buddy’s face as well as in the sky – I was at ISO 12,800 after all! I only had NR in those areas…that is the advantage of using Capture NX. The next step was to put another CP on Buddy’s face to take out some of the redness and boost contrast. After removing the redness, I added back some warmth to give him a nice glow.

After looking at the picture I realized I wanted to get rid of some of the light surrounding him, I wished I had snooted the light while on location, but with CP’s I can easily adjust the amount of Brightness. I put 3 or 4 CP’s around Tyler in the areas where I felt I needed to bring the Brightness down. After adjusting those CP’s down, I got the final effect that you see at the top. This may sound like quite a bit of work, but with Control Points, well it was about 5 minutes (less time than it took to write it out). Everything was targeted and easy.

With apologies to my wife for such a poor title. I get asked this question quite often: Wow, that’s a big camera… are you a pro? Although I have spent much of my lifetime trying to take better pictures, I am indeed not a pro. But, I do like cameras. Today’s camera makes taking pictures much easier than in past years. Truth be told, I spend far too much money on the cameras I choose to purchase. It is my guilty habit. As men, we all have them. I discussed in a past entry about the X-Chromosome; well, for some reason, having a Y-Chromosome means many things, like enjoying beer, grilling and a dependency on purchasing expensive electronic devices.

As habits go, mine is very bad, but (as I justify to myself) I don’t watch much TV, I don’t drink much, my best cooking is still at home and I don’t feel the need to go and purchase a fast car. (Well not yet.. upon reaching 40 last year that desire for a convertible is gaining strength. I mean, we only go once don’t we?)

I do like cameras though, and all of the toys that go along with them. A camera though, unlike many items, has a life… it takes things for memories sake. A picture is worth a thousand words they say and for me that’s a small amount.

Above is a picture of my son. I almost always call him Buddy. Here we are at the Botanic Gardens. When some people see this, they may think something like “That is a nice picture.” But what I remember is how he patiently stood there and did his best at posing. You see, standing still has not been his strong suit, but he has gotten so much better. His sister, Punkin… (yes with an “n” and not an “mp”. Unlike where the link will take you I would never chuck her!) She wouldn’t allow me to take the picture with her in it. She was upset about something or another that she wanted to do, but Buddy just stood there, smiled at the voice activated light stand (Kate) and couldn’t have been more happy.
Now some may think that I could have taken this with just any camera, but truth is that I couldn’t, it is taken at ISO 12,800! Try that with your point and shoot. The camera and the technology does the heavy lifting here, it’s a D3. I couldn’t have gotten this shot or this memory with any other camera.

I now share with you a nice Lego structure courtesy of Punkin. What I remember about this series is how carefully she put all of these together and presented it to me in it’s finished form carefully displaying it on my desk. She said, “Daddy can we take a picture?” I of course was in the middle of work, trying to multi-task and be superdad as well as a world class employee, on these days it always seems as if my children get the short end of the stick. I wish I made different choices, and sometimes I do, but today I didn’t. I put her off, I asked her to wait. Later in the day and true to my promise I went to take pictures of the wonderful looking and daintily built structure. I could have just popped a picture with any camera, but wanted something worthy of the art that my daughter crafted and this, of course, again meant using that same D3. I mean she made it herself didn’t she?

As I started carefully moving the structure one of the walls collapsed and was now detached from the rest of the building. Then as I went to repair that, well the other side fell over and then next thing I knew the whole top had caved in onto itself and I was left looking at no longer a world class abstract art piece worthy of some placement in front of a City Center, Bank or Museum, but 4 clumps that I had no clue how to put back together. Well what is a father to do in this moment when he has made a promise and now can’t fulfill it? Pile it up on his desk and announce that it was time to eat lunch and hope she will forget! So as we are plowing through our bologna sandwiches, drinking our milk and eating a wonderful tasting and somewhat healthy Sun Chip, she leans over and announces to me and Buddy. “Heh Daddy let’s go and take some picture of my building!” Now in a moment of weakness and not wanting to disappoint my daughter – who I love dearly – I thought, “Well I can blame it on Buddy, since he can’t talk very well he can’t quite deny convincingly enough that he didn’t do it!” Then I got ahold of myself and realized that I had to set an example. I carefully looked at my daughter and with all of the guilt that I truly felt told her that, “We had a problem.” In my head I kept hearing Tom Hanks utter the infamous “Houston” before it. For me it was along the same degree of problem as NASA had. We left the kitchen table to show her the rubble that I had created and as we started walking up the stairs I started to explain to her what had happened. I went into detail to show her how upset I was that I couldn’t put it all together so we could get a picture. As I arrived in my office I sat in my chair and picked up the many pieces of the “building” I was waiting for the blow back as I had let my daughter down. Punkin picked up the pieces, jumped into my lap and gave me a big hug, she told me, “That’s OK Daddy, I can put it back together.” She also let me know that despite my wanton disregard for her art that, ” I still love you.” She kept hugging me for quite some time. She told me after a bit that she had the same thing happen when she tried to build it and that I had to be careful because it was very delicate. She also reassured me that she could get it back together so we could get a picture.

As you see from the pictures she got it back together and I attended to capturing this piece of art for posterity. Capture
d at ISO 6400 with available light which only the D3 could do. So while some might only see the cost, I grab onto the memories of that “shot that almost wasn’t” and the daughter who made it so easy to tell that “superdad” IS only human.