Welcome to DixPix

Dick's picks of Dick's pictures!

About DixPix

Hello. I'm Dick Bower and I like to take pictures (that will have to do until I find a photographer's anonymous support group in my area).

I've always been interested in photography and have had a professional and personal interest in computers since before there were personal computers. The digital camera and the world wide web have made it possible to combine these interests and make some of my^‡ photographs available to family and friends — both old and new.
^‡ Actually, some of "my" best pictures were taken by Annie or Tawna — I try to note that by the picture. (Tawna took that great picture above of Annie and me.)

The website has smaller versions of the original pictures — this is mostly to keep the sizes down, but also to protect my rights to the pictures (all pictures on this site are copyrighted). If you'd like the full-resolution file or a "screensaver" background, or a print, just let me know and we'll work something out. Suggestions are welcome — just send me an email.

News

Visit the DixPix Facebook page (@DixPixPicks). Most of our recent stuff will go there first.
Goodies! I've expanded the items for sale at Cafe Press. Feel free to poke around, buy some stuff, and suggest other items or pictures.
More Goodies! Now on CafePress, many new note cards and a few greeting cards! Check them out!
I've added some "navigation" buttons to the picture pages (those with only one photo). For each topic that features the photo, there are three buttons: — the middle one () takes you "up" to the current picture on the multi-picture topic page, the other two take you directly to picture that precedes () and follows () the current picture within the topic. If you click the topic name, you'll get to the top of the topic page. It's probably easier to do than explain — try them out on the Seedpods picture.
Oh yes, the Logo story is here.

Best viewed at 1024x768 under the light of the full moon in July while Mercury is in Leo and six Pygmy Marmosets do the Lambada behind you singing "Kumbaya." ^‡

Topics

For now, I've organized the website into topics, each with a summary page, and detail pages for each picture. The topics come in three flavors — Collections of unrelated pictures, Studies of particularly favorite places or things, and Events, "documenting" a one-time event or trip. I expect to be adding pictures to the collections and studies from time to time. The events probably won't change, but may go away as time passes.

Let me know if you think of a better way to organize it! — email me with your thoughts!

One downside of the "topics" approach, is that some pictures end up duplicated… if that bothers you, or you just want to look for pictures that interest you — check out:

The Thumbnail Page!

These topics are here now:

Collections
- 8th Annual Calendar — Trip of a lifetime (added 01/06/2014)
- 7th Annual Calendar (added 12/10/2012)
- 6th Annual Calendar (added 11/23/2011)
- April 2011 visit to the Catskills (added 5/02/2011)
- Feburary 2011 Trip to the Cannonsville Reservoir area (added 2/11/2011)
- 5th Annual Calendar (added 11/24/2011)
- 2010 Trip along the Delaware (added 10/04/2010)
- Highlights of 2010 (changed 10/05/2010)
- 4nd Annual Calendar (added 11/13/2009)
- Favorites 2009 (updated 5/27/2009)
- 3nd Annual Calendar (added 01/10/2009)
- Favorites 2008 (updated 4/09/2009)
- Not So Recent Pictures (copied from old "Recent Pictures" 6/25/2008)
- All-Time Favorite Pictures (updated 6/29/2008)
- 2nd Annual Calendar (added 11/04/2007)
- 1st Annual Calendar (added 7/22/2006)
Studies
- Springtime Trees (added 5/27/2009)
- Sacred Heart Church (9/07/2006)
- Nature Close Up (updated 5/27/2009)
- Lake Eerie (updated 10/12/2006)
- Lake Inferior (updated 6/29/2008)
- Starrucca Viaduct (new 8/10/2006)
- Buttermilk Falls (updated 7/25/2006)
- Ashokan Reservoir (updated 6/29/2008)
Events
- Whiteface Mountain after early snow in May, 2008 (added 10/09/2009)
- Migrating Geese on Cayuga Lake (added 03/30/2009)
- Lake Placid Trip in May, 2008 (added 06/09/2008)
- Autumn 2007 (added 11/19/2007)
- Finger Lakes Trip in March 2007 (04/04/2007)
- Catskill Trip in February, 2007 (02/11/2007)
- October Foliage (2006). (10/12/2006)
- Adirondack Trip in September, 2006. (9/25/2006)
- Balloon Rally 2006 (8/07/2006)
- Winter Storm (2003) (8/03/2006)
- Catskill Trip on June 30, 2006 (7/25/2006)
- Catskill Trip in February, 2006
- Also, two "slideshows" done before DixPix was around:
  - Southern Tier Flood of '05 (April 3&4, 2005)
  - Catskill trip in March 2005

Technology

This wouldn't be any fun without a little programming work. For now, the pages are created statically by perl scripts on my home machine. The scripts are driven by semi-automatically generated description files and HTML templates. Eventually, I'd like to generate the pages at the server–based on a database containing similar picture and page information. Manually generated pages (and prototypes) are developed with Mozilla's Nvu.

The pictures are cropped and enhanced as needed, typically with Qimage Pro, then these full-resolution originals are resized for the appropriate pages. For this, I usually use ImageMagick called from a perl script. I also use CAM2PC for this and lots more. More drastic editing is sometimes required; for this I usually use Photoshop CS2.

Some of our favorite links

AnDix Indexing Associates — My "day" job!
DixPix Goodies at Cafe Press.
Apple Hills — Our friendly neighborhood farm market and cafe.
Joe Bergeron — Our artist in residence.
Fat Cat Comics — Our favorite SF & Fantasy store.
Mary and Dick Bayer's DixPix site.
York Staters — Great Blog devoted to Upstate New York!
User Friendly — My favorite "geek" comic strip.
Urban Legends Reference Pages — Your first place to turn for "is this real" questions!

All of the pictures and descriptions on this site are copyrighted by Dick Bower — please e-mail me at rabower@stny.rr.com if you'd like to reproduce them for any purpose.

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