Live and learn. This fall, I learned that squirrels will chew through the wiring harness of your car, disabling part or all of the electrical system.

Lucky for me, the good folks at Boardman Mitsubishi figured out pretty quickly what had happened. Between them and Progressive, I had my car back within a few days, new wiring harness and rodent-proof tape installed. (Any pest that takes a nibble of that tape will have a really hot mouth; it's made with pectin, the stuff that makes hot peppers hot.)

How is this related to photography? Simple. I was planning a landscape-shooting tour of the area when the leaves were just starting to turn. Instead, I wound up spending time in a rental car that I wouldn't take into the boonies the way I would my little Outlander.

So, not only did squirrels disable my vehicle, they kept me from doing the photos I'd planned.

Sigh. Maybe next year! In the meantime, I'll be looking for new fall possibilities.

Once upon a time, Americans made things and sold them to the world. That day is long since gone. Now, we're buying stuff from all over the world, because it's cheaper (and sometimes better).

Hardly any professional cameras have been made in America for decades, so photographers have, by default, fueled the balance of trade woes. Kodak made a very good, if horrendously slow, DSLR for a few years, but dropped out because it couldn't keep up with Canon and Nikon, the same way Fuji dropped out a few years later.

Anyway, I heard a politician explaining how we can look forward to a new wave a manufacturing in this country ... because of China. Seems China is thinking about hiring Americans in this country to make certain things, the same way Toyota started to do way back in the 70s.

Not only will China own our debt, they'll be a major employer in the U.S., if this fellow's correct.

At least we'll be making things again. The question is whether working for China is going to be a great thing. Wish I knew the answer to that.

Did anybody feel their SyFy universe tilt this week?

First, a computer geek from Eureka is sent to Warehouse 13 to install an upgrade to the old computer system. Which, of course, unleashes havoc on Warehouse 13.

But while we're growing accustomed to that, the promo during Warehouse 13 shows Claudia visiting Eureka!

Come on! We know Claudia is brilliant and all, but she's just as likely to blow up Warehouse 13 as anything else. So how is it that uberbright Claudia is being allowed anywhere near Eureka, where educated and uberbrilliant people are always putting the entire universe at risk?

Oh, well. Guess we'll have to watch to find out.

(Sorry for the seriously off-topic item, but the visual of Claudia in Eureka has me laughing.)

Finding new outlets for photographs is easy, but finding some with as many options and as much outreach as Fine Art America isn't easy. Please feel free to go visit my new sites on FAA and its sister site:

Fine Art America

Artists Websites

Both sites offer the same sizes and options. You can get prints large or small and even boxes of greeting cards that you can customize with your own message printed inside.

Lately, I've been looking at Youngstown in a different light. Literally. I've been taking photos with an infrared camera adapted from a Fuji S3. It's a lot easier to use than the ones that depend on framing pictures and then shooting through dense filters. The filter is over the sensor, blocking all visible light.

Samples of the experiementation are under the "A different light" portfolio on the site here.

The company that adapts the cameras provides a tutorial on how to adapt the images once they're captured, but I'm learning to add my own twists to the process.

Interested in IR? Give me a shout.

This blog is going to be random, sometimes about photography, sometimes about other stuff that's on my alleged mind.

The site is about to undergo some changes so it more clearly represents the art/journalistic/commercial end of what I do. Up till now, it's been composed mostly of random images that were culled from other photographic adventures.

I'd like to encourage people to put their comments here or, if they don't want to go public, use the "contact" page here to send a message directly. After all, everybody likes to hear from folks who are viewing their work.