Don’t Get Ripped Off! The Spade & Co Watch is a Scam!

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Update: This is a minor update of an article I wrote 4 years ago. Two things have changed since then. The BBB changed the rating for Spade and Company from “D+” down to an “F”.  And there are now 151 reviews from mostly unhappy customers.

If it sounds too good to be true . . . .

Don’t get scammed by fake review articles posted online by the company that sells the lousy product. This is just the latest example of a cheaply made Chinese product touted as a high tech wonder. The watch does not work as advertised.

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The Best Scenic Photo Location Guides

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Some of my favorite photo location guides.

Some of my favorite photo location guides.

“If you want to be a better photographer stand in front of more interesting stuff!” – Jim Richardson, National Geographic photographer.

A good scenic location guide can save you hours of precious time searching for the best spots at a new location. The best scenic locations guides are written by and for photographers. Photographers are much more in tune with what other photographers want to photograph. And for each location, photographers will tell you the best season of the year and the best time of day to get the best images. Some will give you additional photography advice for each location.

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Video: Patrick Demarchelier, Fashion Photographer

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The Devil Wears Prada was on TV last night. In the movie, Amanda (played by Meryl Streep) is the particular and tough as nails editor of RUNWAY magazine. She tells Andy (Anne Hathaway) her clueless new 2nd assistant to “Get Demarchelier”. Andy has no idea who that is. A few seconds later, Emily (Emily Blunt), the very with-it 1st assistant, holds up the phone and says “I’ve got Patrick”.  I am a huge fan of Demarchelier’s work. He is one of the best of the best. This video is about Demarchelier.

How To Pick Your Best Photos

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Contact Sheet. Catherine Ursillo by Al Gruen.

Contact Sheet by Al Gruen is an interesting and worthwhile book. It is about picking your best photos from a contact sheet. (And it also works for picking your best digital images.)  In the darkroom you can lay all of your negatives from one roll of film on top of a sheet of photographic paper. You expose the paper and develop it and you have miniature photos of all your negatives on one piece of paper. It is called a contact sheet. An example is the image above. You can look at the little photos with a photographer’s loupe (a kind of magnifying glass) and pick your best images to make enlargements.

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Colorado Fall Color Travel and Photography Guide – 2026

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Maroon Bells and Maroon Lake. Mid-morning. September 24, 2015.
Maroon Bells and Maroon Lake. Mid-morning. September 24, 2015.

Headed for Colorado this fall (or any other time of year)? Welcome to my complete Colorado fall color photography and travel guide with 133 photos, 18 maps, and over 100 pages of information (if you print it all out). I cover some of the best known fall color locations in Colorado, and most of these locations look great any other time of year. Spend anywhere from two days to two weeks exploring the beautiful Colorado Rockies at a gorgeous time of year.

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Curiosity: My First Photo with Exposure Metadata

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Adobe Bridge

While using Adobe Bridge to do a quick search in my “most important photos” folder for some photos, a curiosity question came to mind. Modern digital cameras save a lot of information in each photo’s metadata. Today that is a lot of stuff, but years ago they only saved the date and time of the photo. I wondered which of my photos was the first to have the exposure information recorded in the metadata. So I went back to 2003 (the year I bought my first two digital cameras), and went looking.

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Happy Birthday, John Muir!

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John Muir

John Muir

Today is John Muir’s birthday! He was born April 21, 1838. He had a profound influence on how Americans viewed our wild lands and his influence led to the establishment of many of our National Parks and other protected lands. He was nicknamed “The Father of our National Parks”.

Here are photos from some of my favorite national and state parks along with quotes from John Muir.

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Pelicans at 318 Yards

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Pelicans on Lake LaShane this morning. April 9, 2026.

Last night I was photographing these pelicans under cloudy skies. The images just didn’t “pop”. This morning I had a 30 minute window with sunlight on the pelicans before the clouds again moved in.  This is the full uncropped image, resized for the web.

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California Poppies

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California Poppies

California Poppies, April 3, 2001.

I was in Fremont California when I spotted these poppies growing in a school yard.  I got out of my car, walked to the poppies, and lay down on the ground to put the sun partially behind one of the flowers blossoms. I used a small lens aperture like f/16 to turn the sun into a sun star.

California Golden Poppies

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California Golden Poppies

California is famous for California Golden Poppies in the spring. I was at the Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge when I photographed these poppies on April 1, 2017. This particular wildlife refuge is a favorite of mine and I try to spend some time there any time I am in the Bay Area.

 

Texas Bluebonnets

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Bluebonnets and Paintbrush, Texas.

Bluebonnets and Paintbrush, Texas.

One of the best places to photograph wildflowers in late March and early April is central Texas and the Texas Hill country. It was March 31, 2001 when I photographed these wildflowers in central Texas.  Driving along I-35 there were vast expanses of wildflowers as far as the eye could see.

Upside Down Ice Goblets at Lake LaShane

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Ice Goblets at Lake LaShane. February 20, 2026.

Back in February our dog Rowdy and I came home from a trip to our favorite lake. My wife asked me about the messy stain on my pants. I told her I found an interesting ice formation at Lake LaShane and the only angle I could use to capture the image was to lay down in some wet, messy glop at the very edge of the lake shore with my camera close to the water.

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The Best National Parks to Photograph in Spring

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Ocotillo. Big Bend National Park. Texas.

Ocotillo. Big Bend National Park, Texas.

Which national parks are at their very best in the spring? If I could go on a fabulous spring photography trip to the national parks of my choice, all expenses paid, which ones would I pick? Here are my choices, grouped by state from west to east. This list includes the favorites I have been to and want to go back to again, plus the ones I haven’t seen and most want to photograph.

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How To Find Solar Noon (and Sunrise and Sunset) for Your Location

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NOAA Solar Calculator – Home Page

You can determine Solar Noon, Apparent Sunrise, and Apparent Sunset for any place in the Unites States and pretty much any other place on the planet. Solar Noon is the exact time the sun is due south of your location and at its highest point in the sky for the day. Solar Noon is not the same as noon on your clock.  First go here and you will see the U.S. map above.

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It’s Official, Spring is Here!

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Canon 5D Mark III, Canon EF 11-24mm lens.

Long time friends know my routine. At the precise minute spring, summer, fall, and winter begin, weather permitting, I take a picture of the sun with the same camera and lens in the same location. Today it was at 9:46 am CDT, the precise moment when the sun was directly over the equator. Here in Iowa, clouds often mess with my project.

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20 Years Ago Today

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Jan, Receptionist.

I walked into the doctor’s office and signed in with the receptionist, who had a BOTOX shirt on. She had a great smile so I asked her if I could take pictures of her. She said yes. I took about a dozen photos. I almost always have a camera with me because you never know when you might need it.

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“The Human Web”

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“The Human Web”, March 16, 2001.

I created this image 25 years ago today for a class I was teaching at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts (KIA) in Michigan. It was so popular that Jim Riegel, the head of the photography department, asked if he could exhibit it in the KIA faculty exhibit at the annual Kalamazoo Art Fair in Bronson Park in June. Jim was in charge of the faculty exhibit. When June 2 rolled around, he used it as the centerpiece work of art for the KIA exhibit. At the end of the day he told me it was the most talked about work of art in the faculty exhibit. All kinds of people stopped by to ask questions about it.

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Favorite Photo – March 10

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The Orion Nebula in Orion's Sword

The Orion Nebula in Orion Nebula, Canon 7D camera, 300mm lens, and an iOptron Sky Tracker.

It was 10 years ago tonight, March 10, 2016 at 11:04 pm. I had acquired a simple star tracker and was ready to test it out.  I set up in a park west of Lamoni Iowa. I was using a 70-300mm lens on a Canon 5D Mark III. The aperture was f/11 and the shutter was open for 177 seconds. Without the star tracker my shutter speed would have been limited to about 1-2 seconds to prevent the everything from blurring due to earth’s rotation.

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