Day 39 - Year of the Monkey

Chinese New Year‬ welcomes the year of the Monkey at Slover Library where Curious George‬ rules the 2nd floor.

Day 27 - Book Tunnel

Norfolk Public Library has 210,000 additional volumes on shelves at its Administrative Center in Norfolk's Industrial Park. There's not enough room on the shelves at the NPL branches for the vast collection. All of these are catalogued and can be requested by any patron. This isle has photography, art, architecture and other nonfiction books. Some real special books on these shelves.

What I'm Reading - Day 124 #CY365 @ncsulibraries

Behold "bookBot" at North Carolina State University's new Hunt Library. This robot-driven bookBot automated book delivery system holds up to 2 million volumes in 1/9 the space of conventional shelving, enabling the library to provide more space for learning and collaboration. The bookBot is 50 feet wide by 160 feet long by 50 feet tall and is excavated 20 feet below the first floor. You know your a geek when you drag your wife to see a high tech library on your wedding anniversary. Canon G15 1/40 sec @ f/3.5, ISO 800.

Arranged - Day 71 #CY365

Today's challenge was to arrange something in a stack and use a shallow depth of field to create a blurred effect. I love photography books, well to be truthful, I love everything about photography. Anyway, I stacked some of my recent favorites, used a couple of LED litepanels, a macro lens and voila - we have a photo of the day. But back to the photography books - someone once said the two most important things you can do to improve your photography are: 1) take lots of pictures, hence the 365 project and 2) look at lots of photographs with a critical eye. While digital photos on a computer screen are pretty cool, in my opinion nothing beats the printed photograph for appreciating the work. Photography books are a great place to both see good photographs and understand how they were made.

Canon 5D Mark II, 1/250 sec @ f/5.6, ISO 400.

Cattus Petasatus - Day 61 #CY365

Happy Birthday Theodor Seuss Geisel, a.k.a. Dr. Seuss, who was born on March 2, 1904. This is a Latin translation of the children's classic first published in 1957. It belongs to my son Michael who teaches high school Latin and it's looked over by my prized Lucky Cat. iPhone 5, one LED Litepanel and the Camera+.

Caring - Day 25 #CY365

Caring - “There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart.” - Jane Austen from Emma.
"There is nothing to be compared to it. Warmth and tenderness of heart, with an affectionate, open manner, will beat all the clearness of head in the world . . . "

Canon 5D Mark II, 1/3200 sec @ f/8.0, ISO 1600, 100mm macro lens, converted to black and white using Silver Efex Pro II.

Made the Cover

Pretty exciting day. I came home from work to find the arrival of the printed copy of my good friend Greever Williams' first novel On Tenterhooks which features one of my photographs. I was honored last year when asked if I would do the photo for this book. I read an early draft and now I'm excited to read the final version. I must say, it is very cool to see your work published. The book is great, I highly recommend it! Available digitally on Kindle and Nook and the "dead tree" version at Amazon. Canon G1X, 1/4 sec @ f/2.8, ISO 400.

LLoyds Register

Dozens of old copies of the Lloyds Register Register of Ships line the shelves at the Norfolk Public Library's Service Center. The Register, published annually since 1764, lists information on all sea-going, self-propelled merchant ships of 100 gross tons or greater. Canon 7D, 1/125 sec @ f/4.0, ISO 1600, 85mm prime lens.

Support Your Local Book Store

- Made a visit today to one of our favorite local bookstores, AFK Books Music & Movies. They sell mostly "like new" books, CDs, DVD,s and an amazing collection of vinyl records. They also buy your old books, tunes and movies. You don't get a lot for them but every bit helps in paying for the new stack we haul back home. Canon Powershot SD870 IS, 1/40 sec @ f/2.8, ISO 200.

Classics in the Stacks

- Took a tour of the library at the new Portsmouth Campus of Tidewater Community College this evening. Great new building and the library has 96 computers but I was happy to see that there are still old fashion books and stacks. These are in the "PA" section using the Library of Congress Classification System - Greek and Latin Literature. I'm sure my son Mike the classicist would be happy to know the community collge still has these in its collection. Canon G11, 1/125 sec @ f/2.8, ISO 400, converted to B&W using Silver Efex Pro 2.