My Birthday Weekend ... Day 3

Espresso & fresh baked yummy donut at the Urban Bean Coffeehouse on our way to some estate sales.

John & Sherry invited Stella & me over for birthday dinner.

Stella LOVES them & the feeling is mutual.

Luckily, Stella didn't see the 3 lizards overhead.

Do I smell steak???

Happy Birthday to us! For 6 days (March 3-8), Stella & I were the same age in dog years. How cool is that?!? It's highly unlikely to happen in your lifetime!

I had to blow Stella's candle out. I was afraid her fur would ignite.

SQUIRREL ! ! !

My Birthday Weekend ... Day 2

Amazing lunch at The Bread & Board.

Chickpea & Farro crispy fritters (aka falafel), tahini, spiced yogurt, tomato-parsley salad, cucumber-mint jam HOT

Sunset in Mary's backyard.

My Birthday Weekend ... Day 1

I think Google wants my photogenic birthday cupcake.

When I tried to take a pic of it, it landed upside down on the deck.

Google offered to lick up the frosting.

Still photogenic!

We went to the Jacksonville Zoo so I could shoot more tests with the Sony RX10-IV. Of course I used my iPhone to shoot this snack bar sign ...

& the swamp gator

The next 6 zoo pix are with the Sony ...
Angolan Colubus Monkey

I always enjoy shooting the Rainbow Lorikeets.

Flamingo

I think the Emu resembles our President!

Coyote

After the zoo, we took a ride on some back roads & to shoot one of my favorite subjects ... rust & peeling paint. First stop, an abandoned motel in Yulee.

Apparently, this souvenir shop still sells film!

Beetle in the garage ...

This abandoned BBQ is definitely not open!

Stella's 8th Birthday Weekend

We started off Stella’s 8th birthday with a bacon & spinach souffle & whipped cream dessert at her favorite breakfast restaurant.

Old bike sculpture at Panera Bread in Jax.

I put a tablecloth on the coffee table so I could shoot some pix of Stella with her birthday cake. She jumped right up there thinking I wanted her to pose.

Mary snaps a few with her Pen-F.

Yum! Homemade peanut butter carrot cake with banana cream cheese frosting.

The March birthday girls!

I think Stella & Google would rather be eating cake, than posing for photos.

Stella couldn't wait to dig in!

Iron Mountain Trip

My first trip to Iron Mountain was in June 2014 with Chris. This time I went with Tracy to meet up with Fred, the Iron Mountain Digital Studios team & the folks at the Bettmann Archive. We recently relocated our entire film collection to our vault there & had meetings about digitizing our archive.

It's really an amazing place. Most people know Iron Mountain (founded in 1951) as a paper shredding company but it's much, much more! A few stats about the former limestone mine: 220 feet below ground, 2700 employees, 26 miles of roads & only one tenth of the mine is developed. The largest active vault is 220,000 square feet ... the size of 6 football fields!!! INSANE!!! The history is fascinating & security is really tight.

Definitely watch these 2 videos. The first one is about Iron Mountain & the second one is about the Bettmann Archive collection. It was so amazing to see the Bettmann Archive vault ... 20,000 square feet filled with the most famous photographs in the world.

The new visitor center

We were in a golf cart following Bethany & AJ underground.

Iron Mountain Digital Studios HQ.

One of the two Hasselhoff Hasselblad scanners being used to digitize our archive.

I'm not sure if Fred is inbound or outbound.

Tracy & I in our vault.

Fred checks out some of the boxes.

Everything is very well organized.

On my last trip here, I was so bummed I wasn't able to visit the amazing Bettmann Archive. This time, Leslie & Sarah gave us an awesome tour.

The broken glass plate negative of the historic 1932 image of "New York Construction Workers Lunching on a Crossbeam" is stored in Pelican Cases.

When they opened a random drawer in the archive & I saw Lynn Goldsmith, I immediately asked if I could see some Bruce pix. So awesome!

Files upon files of the most famous photographs in the world!

Old card catalog

Ditka's for dinner with Tracy.