Remember how I mentioned yesterday that the little GF1 and E-P1 don't call much attention to themselves? Well, today I was driving down the road and got passed by some guys on custom motorcycles. So I grabbed the GF1 out of my pocket and snapped a few frames out the window. (See, this is the kind of thing I do, even though it results in a good picture about, oh, zero out of 1,000 times. But then, that's only so far.)
I wasn't looking where I was shooting—I was driving, going 40 mph in traffic, so I was watching the road. And the guys on the motorcycles were doing more than 40, because they were passing me. And there was an empty lane in between us. And I didn't have the camera hanging out the window—it was just pointed out the window. No chance the bikers would notice, right?
So where's he looking?
So much for unobtrusive. Pretty funny.
Mike
Featured Comment by Damen Stephens: "I'd say you were lucky to get out of there alive—I'm sure they're used to having guns pointed at them...and they're not happy about your camera making them look 10 pounds heavier!!"
Mike adds: That made me laugh, Damen.
P.S. Here's my favorite shot from yesterday afternoon/evening's bike ride. A factory about a mile from my house. This looks better bigger, though. And it looked better last night than it looks this morning, with the bright window behind the computer monitor. Speaking of safety, I need to get lights for Gruesome.
And another from a few minutes later (sunset pictures. Yeesh):
The Fox Head 400 sign always makes me a little sad. At the bottom of it, it brags "Brewed with Waukesha Water."
Waukesha used to be famous for its water. At the 1896 (?) Columbian Exposition in Chicago, they piped in water from Waukesha for the occasion, and there is an old spa on a hill that is now a spooky Bible cult something or other, where people used to come to soak in local water, for whatever that was worth. Nowadays Waukesha's water is so polluted we're soon going to have to get it piped in from somewhere else. My water bill was almost $600 this year, and that's for a small house with two people and one dog. They're amassing money for the big public works project to come, apparently. —MJ
Featured Comment by Jon Porter: "That Fox Head 400 beer sign really took me back to my youth. I've never heard of that brand, but at one time many bars and taverns along the Chicago & Northwestern railway in Wisconsin incorporated '400' into their name. It's based on the railroad's passenger train names and boast ('400 miles in 400 minutes'). Our train in Appleton was the 'Flambeau 400' between Chicago and Green Bay. Sadly, the fleet of 400s were all gone by 1971."
Featured Comment by Ed Hawco: "Please pardon these shameless plugs of self promotion, but here goes. This brings to mind a shot I took many years ago of a soccer goalie who was watching me take his photo at the critical moment when his eye should have been on the ball.
I even showed a close-up of his face, like you did, when I put that shot on my Monday Morning Photo blog a few years ago. In that case I wasn't doing stealthy shooting. However, I have an entire other photoblog dedicated to stealthy shooting (or as I call it, 'clandestine' street photography). This is why I'm anxiously awaiting the 14mm pancake for the GF1—because I need a very wide angle lens or I'll end up with the 1000:1 ratio you mention. As it is with my 24mm (equivalent) LX3, combined with a lot of practice, I'm getting about a 25:1 failure-to-success rate (depending on how you define 'success')."
