I've used various digital cameras since 1996. Since that time, I've been putting pictures on my Web server. For quite a while, most of these images have been inaccessible unless you knew the exact URL. This page is a partial remedy; it's a list of all of the pictures that might be of interest to a relatively wide audience. I'm still working on a long-term solution for accessing the entire library.
| Blizzard pictures | Pictures from the January 1996 blizzard in the Washington, DC area. I used the original Apple QuickTake 100 camera to take a few pictures after the snow had stopped. |
| Pictures from Stockholm | When I worked for the now-defunct Concept Five Technologies, I frequently traveled to Stockholm, Sweden to work on a project with a Swedish bank. These pictures are a few that I took on my first trip to Stockholm. An Apple Quicktake 100 was used to capture the images. (April 1996) |
| Pictures from Charleston | I took a business trip to Columbia, South Carolina in August 1996. I had a little extra time one afternoon, so I drove to Charleston and took a few pictures. Photos were taken with a Kodak DC50 digital camera. |
| Clouds | A few photos of some interesting clouds preceding a summer storm (July 1997). Photos were taken with a Kodak DC120 digital camera. |
| National Airport | Several photos of the terminal at Washington National Airport (August 1997). These photos were taken within a couple of weeks of the opening of the new terminal, which is an architecturally-striking place (and a huge improvement over the dingy old terminal). |
| San Francisco | August 1997 vacation pictures to San Francisco and Napa Valley. |
| More Clouds | Photos of an interesting atmospheric effect: ice crystals in the atmosphere created a "ghost image" of the sun. September 1997. |
| São Paulo | Photos taken during a December 1997 business trip to Brazil. |
| San Diego | December 1997 vacation to San Diego; lots of pictures from the San Diego Zoo and the Wild Animal Park. |
| Baltimore Aquarium | Some digital photos from a "behind-the-scenes" tour of the Baltimore Aquarium. Taken January 1998. |
| London | Photos from a trip to London (March 1998). |
| Sarah Jayne Bodoh | Our friends Carrie and Dave Bodoh had a daughter on March 13, 1998. These photos were taken when Sarah was a couple of weeks old. |
| Still more clouds | Another set of cloud photos; you can see the same atmospheric effect as in the photos taken in September 1997. |
| More Pictures from Stockholm | More pictures from another trip Stockholm, Sweden. Taken August 1998. Holly came to join me during that trip, so I managed to do some sightseeing too. |
| Måns Tånneryd's house | A few pictures of the house that my friend Måns Tånneryd and his then-fiancée Angelica bought just outside Stockholm. Taken August 1998. |
| San Francisco and Napa Valley | Photos from our August 1998 trip to San Francisco and Napa Valley. |
| Matthew's Barracuda | My brother Matthew bought a classic muscle car in early September 1998. Here are some photos of the car. He and my father drove it across the country to California. |
| Michelle and Adam's Wedding | Our friends Michelle Gardner and Adam Rifkin got married in Connecticut on September 7, 1998. Here are some pictures from the event. |
| San Diego | Pictures from a September 1998 trip to San Diego. |
| Bristol, England | I had a business trip in September 1998 to Bristol, England. Here are a few photos. |
| London | My parents happened to be in London at the same time I was in Bristol. I took the train to London and spent the weekend there. We visited the newly-reconstructed Globe Theater while there. |
| Bristol and Coventry | I then went back to Bristol, then on to some meetings in Coventry. I stayed at a lovely inn in Coventry. Called Coombe Abbey, it dates to the 12th Century. |
| SFMOMA | A couple of photos (taken in October 1998) from the lobby of San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art. The building is photogenic but the lobby's the only place one can take photos. One interesting architectural detail: the striped pattern in the granite you see in these pictures is achieved by alternating between a polished and rough finish; the material itself is the same. |
| Chicago | Photos from a November 1998 trip to Chicago. |
| NYC | December 1998 trip to New York City. |
| Aspen | January 1999 ski trip to Aspen, Colorado. |
| Stockholm | February 1999 business trip to Stockholm, Sweden. My colleague and friend Bryan Slavin went with me on this trip. Because of Stockholm's northerly latitude, February is a dark time in Stockholm; there aren't many hours of daylight. I've been in Stockholm for both the longest and the shortest day of the year; the difference is really striking. It's a beautiful city regardless of daylight, though. |
| St. John, New Brunswick | A (very) few photos from an April 1999 trip to St. John, New Brunswick. |
| Mike Corrigan's going-away luncheon | Mike Corrigan left Concept Five Technologies in May 1999; these are a few pictures from his going-away lunch. |
| Toronto | I gave a talk at a conference in Toronto in May 1999. I took a few photos of and from the CN Tower while I was there. |
| Napa, Sonoma, and San Francisco | I attended the JavaOne conference in San Francisco in June 1999. Holly and I also went to Napa and Sonoma Valley on this trip. |
| Paris and London | Just a couple of pictures from an August 1999 trip to Paris and London. |
| Paris | Photos from a September 1999 business trip to Paris. This was the first of many trips to Paris for Spotcast Communications. |
| Spotcast | Photo of Spotcast Communications staff members, October 1999. |
| San Diego | November 1999 trip to San Diego. |
| Grand Illumination | Some fireworks photos from Grand Illumination in Williamsburg, Virginia. December 1999. |
| Hoover Dam | I went to the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2000. All but one of these photos are from a tour of Hoover Dam; the first photo in the series is actually an indoor photo of the shopping area at the Venetian Hotel. |
| Napa and Sonoma | January 2000 trip to Napa and Sonoma. |
| Snow | A couple of pictures from a brief January 2000 snowstorm. |
| Concorde | I took a few photos of the Air France Concorde when I was in Paris in February 2000. This aircraft (Air France F-BTSC) was involved in a tragic crash later in the year. |
| Spotcast Office | Spotcast Communications office - February 2000. |
| New Orleans | Photos from a business trip to the Cellular Telephon Industry Association conference in New Orleans, February 2000. These photos are obviously of the non-business portion of the trip. |
| Hong Kong | A few photos from my first trip to Hong Kong - March 2000. |
| Clouds | Some more interesting photos of clouds, taken from somewhere over New York if memory serves me correctly. |
| Paris | Huge collection of photos from a May 2000 vacation to Paris. |
| Spotcast Office | Spotcast Communications moved from its one-room office to larger quarters in Silver Spring in June 2000. These photos were taken before the move-in, in May 2000. |
| More Paris | More photos from Paris in May 2000; this trip was a business trip, however. |
| Doug's Z3 | My friend Doug Austin bought a BMW Z3 in June 2000. |
| Smithsonian | A few pictures taken around the Smithsonian in June 2000. I was trying out a new digital camera (a Canon S100) at the time. |
| July 4 | Some July 4 pictures taken at Spotcast Communications' offices. A combination of unfamiliarity with the camera (this time a Nikon 990) and poor location made the fireworks photos pretty bad. |
| Maine | Some photos from a visit to Maine. July 2000. |
| McIrvin/Wilkinson Wedding | My friends Matt McIrvin and Samantha Wilkinson got married in New Hampshire in July 2000. |
| Cows in New York | Photos of fiberglass cows on the street in NYC. July 2000. |
| Münich | Some photos from a business trip in July 2000. The first photo is fairly amusing. Memo to self: think about possible interpretations in foreign languages when naming a company. |
| Paris | Another large collection of Paris photos. I was fortunate enough to be in Paris on Spotcast business on Bastille Day. There are also a number of odd photos mixed in with this set from an equipment inventory; I'll eventually get them edited out. |
| Williamsburg | Photos from a trip to Williamsburg in July 2000. |
| Janie | My colleague Harry Wickes brought his dog Janie in to the office on August 10, 2000. She was well-liked by the folks there, with the possible exception of building management. |
| San Francisco, Napa, Sonoma | Holly and I vacationed on the West Coast again in August 2000. |
| Matthew's Graduation | My brother Matthew graduated from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena in August 2000. There are some great pictures in this set from Matthew's project exhibition. |
| Hong Kong | I went to Hong Kong in September 2000. |
| White House | Holly was invited to the China Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) signing ceremony at the White House in October 2000. |
| London | We spent a few rainy-but-pleasant days in London in November 2000. |
| Grand Illumination 2000 | Photos from Grand Illumination in Williamsburg, December 2000. |
| Spotcast Holiday Party | Pictures from Spotcast Communications' holiday party. Who'd have guessed that the company would collapse less than a week later? Someone else at the party (I'm not sure who) took a second set of photos that might be of interest to some. |
| Laura and Nils | A few pictures of my friend Laura Randers-Pehrson and her son Nils, from December 2000. I was very pleased to see that Nils took an immediate interest in our remote controls; clearly, this man has a bright future! |
| Las Vegas | Some pictures taken while I was attending the 2001 Consumer Electronics Show. The Hoover dam pictures were taken during the "hard hat tour" of the dam, which is unfortunately no longer offered. (January 2001). The highlight of our trip: we took our friend Janet to look at a digital camera I was recommending that she buy; instead, she won it in a giveaway! |
| Spotcast Alumni Happy Hour | Some of the folks formerly of Spotcast Communications got together on January 25, 2001. This actually turned out to be the day that Leap Wireless agreed to purchase the Spotcast technology, though we didn't know this when the event was planned. |
| Killington trip | Holly and I joined Geri Micek and John Halper for a ski weekend at Killington in February 2001. The trip was a lot of fun, though we had trouble getting home; a snowstorm closed the airport and we (read: John) wound up driving all the way from Vermont back to the DC area. |
| Leap Wireless | Photos from one of the first meetings with Leap Wireless. Everyone pictured (as well as Nigel Shaw and Dave Jones, who were in attendance by telephone) came from Spotcast to Leap. (March 2001) |
| San Francisco | I spoke on computer security at the April 2001 Apache conference in Santa Clara, California. (Apache's a popular Web server application). Following my talk, Holly and I spent a couple of days in San Francisco with friends. |
| Nils | Nils Randers-Pehrson (son of our friends Laura and Michael) posed for these pictures at our house on April 14, 2001. |
| Chicago | Photos from a trip to Chicago on April 29, 2001. This was a very pleasant trip. I was on business travel in Chattanooga, Tennessee for two weeks; Holly had a weekend meeting in Chicago. I was able to take advantage of one of the deeply-discounted last-minute airfares to go meet her for the weekend. We had a terrific time. |
| Slice launch | The Spotcast technology was first used to launch a service on Leap's Cricket Communications service called "Slice." Chattanooga was the first market to launch; these are photos from the May 21 service launch. |
| Tennessee Aquarium | A few pictures taken at or near the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga, May 22, 2001. |
| Alexandria office | Some random photos taken in Leap's Alexandria office on May 31, 2001. |
| Atlanta | Pictures taken in Atlanta on June 5, 2001. I was attending the Supercomm telecom show. The first couple of pictures are of a really odd location for some of the exhibits; the remainder of the pictures were taken at Coca-Cola's "museum" in downtown Atlanta. |
| NYC | A few pictures taken at a picnic with friends in New York on June 24, 2001. |
| Paul Boston's 90th birthday | My grandfather turned 90 in June 2001. These are some pictures taken in Salina, Kansas when we were there for his birthday celebration. |
| Albuquerque | I was in Albuquerque, New Mexico on business in July 2001. These are pictures taken on that trip; most of them were taken from Sandia Peak. |
| Sandia Peak from the air | When leaving Albuquerque from the aforementioned trip, we saw Sandia Peak from the plane. |
| Mount Vernon | Pictures taken from a July 2001 visit to Mount Vernon. A couple of these pictures are in black-and-white; I was experimenting with the camera to see if image sharpness was improved when the camera wasn't having to interpolate colors from its sensor array (it didn't seem to help). |
| Albuquerque | More pictures from Albuquerque; these were taken on a trip in July 2001. |
| Venice | Vacation pictures from Italy, August 2001 |
| Florence | Vacation pictures from Italy, August 2001 |
| San Gimignano and Siena | Vacation pictures from Italy, August 2001. We were in Siena the day before the Palio (a very famous horse race); preparations were already well underway. |
| Florence | Vacation pictures from Italy, August 2001 |
| Charleston | Photographs taken on a long weekend in Charleston, South Carolina (October 2001). |
| Sonoma | Vacation pictures from a trip to Sonoma in November 2001. |
| NYC skyline | Photos taken from the window of the plane while on a business trip to NYC on December 19, 2001. The WTC towers are sadly and conspicuously missing from this picture; see an older picture for a comparison. |
| NYC | Pictures from a trip to NYC on December 25, 2001 with my brother Matthew and his then-friend Songlan (they're married now). |
| Las Vegas | Photos from our January 2002 trip to Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show. |
| NYC | Another trip to New York City in January 2002. |
| UPS | In February 2002, Holly got to visit the UPS logistics center in Louisville. She got a pretty terrific tour of the facility while there. She even got to pilot a full-motion flight simulator! |
| Jeb Spencer's farewell dinner | Jeb Spencer left Leap Wireless in March 2002. These are a few pictures from his farewell dinner. The light wasn't too good, so the pictures aren't good either. |
| Holly's Asia Trip | Holly traveled to a number of locations in Asia in April 2002. |
| Tokyo Disneyland | While in Asia, Holly visited Matthew and Songlan in Japan. They went to Tokyo Disneyland. This was in part "research," since Holly has a strong interest in how companies adapt their products and services to best serve their international markets. |
| Bowling | Leap Wireless had a social event where we played a couple of rounds of bowling. I'm proud to say I was terrible at it. |
| Astronomy Day | My friend Walter Sanford organized an Astronomy Day event at Huntley Meadows Park in Alexandria, Virginia on April 28, 2002. Students got to construct their own working sundials and observe the sun through a solar filter-equipped telescope. |
| Huntley Meadows | While at the Astronomy Day event, I walked around Huntley Meadows Park a bit and took some pictures. The park is primarily a wetlands preserve, so there were a lot of things to photograph. |
| India | Holly took a business trip to India in May 2002; these are her photos. |
| Great Falls | Holly and I drove out to take some pictures from the Maryland side of Great Falls. |
| NYC | We went to New York City in late May 2002. A number of the photos are from the restaurant Artisanal. If you like cheese, this is a must-visit restaurant. There are also some interesting photographs taken inside the Guggenheim, which had been painted black for an exhibit on Brazilian art. |
| Susanna ver Eecke's farewell | My colleague Susanna ver Eecke departed Leap Wireless to be a full-time MBA student. These are a few pictures taken at her farewell. |
| Leap IT Social Event | Leap Wireless sponsored a deeply serious information technology event at Dave & Buster's in San Diego. |
| Southern California | These pictures are from the first part of our June 2002 vacation. Photos are taken at the Reagan Presidential Library (Simi Valley), as well as Disney's architecturally-impressive Grand Californian Hotel (Anaheim) and at their California Adventure park. |
| Aspen | Holly and I continued our June 2002 vacation in Aspen, Colorado (certainly a contrast from southern California!). Quite a number of these photos are from a particularly picturesque tour around the top of Aspen Mountain. |
| Star Trails | I took some pictures using a Canon D60 digital camera on the evening of August 10, 2002. While not that exciting to look at, these images are interesting from a technical perspective. All of the exposures were extremely long for a digital camera (averaging maybe five minutes with some as long as 20 minutes). The low-light performance of this camera is terrific. I'm going to repeat this experiment sometime soon; as you can see, I didn't quite get the camera's focus set correctly in the dark. |
| Moon | Another low-light experiment using the Canon D60; be sure to click on the image for a closer look. The images were taken on August 11, 2002. For the curious: the unprocessed images are available for viewing as well. |
| Acapulco | Holly had a business trip to Mexico in August 2002. It was apparently less fun than it looks here; temperatures were consistently 100+ and the workload was immense. |
| Boeing | Holly's business trip also took her to the Boeing plant near Seattle. This was a lot of fun for her; she got to walk around the production line for the Boeing 777. I'm especially fond of this photo (suggested caption: "Please remove all packing material before using aircraft.") |
| Solar Observing | The Northern Virginia Astronomy Club and Fairfax County Public Schools' planetarium program (represented at this event by the leaders of the Sandburg and Thomas Jefferson planetaria) sponsored a solar viewing event at Huntley Meadows Park in Alexandria, Virginia. |
| Africa | Holly traveled to several locations in Africa in October 2002 (Mauritius, South Africa, and Botswana); these are a few pictures from her travels. |
| Lunar photography | A few photos taken using a Canon D60 digital camera coupled to a Celestron NexStar 11GPS telescope. While the photos aren't that spectacular, I'm relatively pleased with this first attempt at lunar photography through the telescope. |
| John and Vicky Dobbin's wedding | John Dobbin is a friend of mine from college; these are a few pictures from his wedding. |
| Paris | Holly and I went to Paris for in late November/early December 2002; these are a few pictures from the trip. |
| Chicago | A few architectural photos from a late-December trip to Chicago. |
| Las Vegas | Some photos from a January 2003 trip to Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show. |
| Africa | Holly traveled to Africa again in January 2003; these are some photos from her travels. |
| NOVAC MOS and Astrophotography | The Northern Virginia Astronomy Club held an observing session for members (MOS) on March 8, 2003. These are a few photos from the event. Also notable are some early attempts at long-exposure astrophotography; the results aren't very good but the technique shows promise. |
| Africa | Photos from Holly's May 2003 trip to Africa. She brought back one spectacular photo of a cheetah. |
| Jordan | Photos from Holly's June 2003 trip to Jordan. |
| Southern California | Holly accompanied me on a July 2003 trip to San Diego; here are a few photos (mostly of her visit to Sea World). |
| Africa | Photos from the African segment of Holly's August 2003 trip to Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. There are some great zebra pictures in this series. |
| Thunderstorm from the air | Phil took a few photos of a thunderstorm on a flight to San Diego |
| Australia and New Zealand | Photos from Australia and New Zealand, taken by Holly in August 2003. She got to visit an offshore drilling platform while on this trip! |
| John Avellone's radiotelescope installation | NOVAC's John Avellone deployed an amateur radiotelescope in August 2003. The telescope has since been moved to the roof of the Physics building at George Mason University, and is used by fellow NOVAC member Dr. Harold Geller. |
| "Gray Frame" photo subtraction experiment | I took two photographs with my camera pointed straight up on August 16 from my light-polluted location in Vienna, Virginia. For one photograph, the camera's lens was focused at infinity. For the other, the lens was defocused so that stars would not be visible--just the overall light pollution. This is a variation of a technique called "flat fielding" that's used a lot in CCD imaging of astronomical objects. The third image is the result of subtracting the second image from the first. I've used star charts from this region of the sky (the constellation Cygnus) to determine that this technique makes 7th-magnitude stars visible. Stars that bright are just barely visible to the naked eye from a completely dark site, so this technique did a lot to reduce the effects of light pollution! |
| Williamsburg | Photos from an August 2003 visit to the College of William and Mary, where Holly and I both went to school |
| San Francisco | Many photos from our November 2003 visit to San Francisco |
| Las Vegas | I visited the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January 2004. While there aren't any photos of the show itself in this set, there are quite a few nice photographs of the Las Vegas skyline in this set. |
| The White House | Holly took some photos during a January 2004 visit to The White House. |
| NOVAC Robotic Telescope | Photos from a meeting on NOVAC's Robotic Telescope special interest group. Taken in February 2004. |
| NOVAC Monthly Observing Session | Photographs from NOVAC's Monthly Observing Session in February 2004. Quite a few people showed up, but the lack of clear skies proved frustrating. |
| Africa | Holly took these photos during a February 2004 trip to Africa. |
| Palomar Observatory | My colleague Bryan Slavin and I visited the Palomar Observatory in February 2004. Visibility wasn't great, but the 200" Hale Telescope is an impressive instrument nonetheless. |
| Jo Leung and Ken Murray's Wedding | Many photographs from Jo Leung and Ken Murray's wedding, March 13, 2004. |
| New York City | A few photos from our stop in New York City following the aforementioned wedding. Taken March 15, 2004. |
| Dan Buchbinder's Going-Away Party | Photographs commemorating Dan Buchbinder's departure from Leap Wireless; taken April 1, 2004. |
| Astronomy Day 2004 | Photographs from NOVAC's Astronomy Day event on April 24, 2004 |
| Africa | Holly visited Africa in May 2004 and brought back these pictures. There are a couple of really good elephant pictures in this batch. |
| Alaska Cruise | Holly and I took a cruise to Alaska in July 2004. We got a lot of good photos; this set is an edited set of the best. |
| Los Angeles | We visited Los Angeles in August 2004; there are some good photos here from the Getty Center. |
| Morocco | Photographs from Holly's September 2004 visit to Morocco. |
| NOVAC observing session | Photos from NOVAC's observing session at Crockett Park; September 2004 |
| Rhode Island | We visited a couple of the (spectacular) mansions in Newport, Rhode Island in September 2004. We also took a few pictures in Providence. |
| Image stacking test | A few astrophotographs testing the technique of "image stacking." There's an especially good one of M31, the Andromeda Galaxy, in this batch. |
NOVAC Star Gaze | Photographs from NOVAC's annual Star Gaze event in October 2004. There are a lot of photographs here, so they're broken up into sections. |
| Egypt and Israel | Holly visited Egypt and Israel in October 2004; she brought back these pictures. |
| Lunar Eclipse | I took a bunch of photographs of the October 27, 2004 total lunar eclipse. Quite a few of them came out well. |
| Arica Young & Eric Miller's Wedding | Holly and I attended Arica Young and Eric Miller's wedding on November 13, 2004; here are the pictures. |
| Jordan | Holly's photos from a December 2004 factory tour in Jordan |
| Morocco | Holly visited Morocco again in December 2004. There are some really interesting photos here; note in particular the dye vats from a tannery in some of the photos near the end of the set. |
| NOVAC observing session | Photos from NOVAC's February 2005 observing session |
| Udvar-Hazy Center | Photographs from the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum's Udvar-Hazy Center (near Dulles Airport). |
| Africa | Photos from Holly's February 2005 visit to Africa |
| India | Holly's April 2005 visit to India |
| Janet and Mark's wedding | We visited San Francisco in April 2005 for Janet Lee and Mark Johnson's wedding. There are a lot of photos in this set. |
| AHSP | NOVAC and VOLT sponsored a "star party" at The Mountain Institute (near Spruce Knob, West Virginia). It was cloudy most of the time, but we got a few hours of observing in on the last day that made it worthwhile. The tour of the radio telescopes at Green Bank was pretty amazing, too! |
| AGOA ceremony | President Bush appeared with five African leaders in June 2005. Holly was invited, and she took these pictures. |
| Africa | Photos from Holly's July 2005 trip to Africa |
| VWS Balloon Ground Photos | The Vienna (Virginia) Wireless Society launched a camera-, radio-, and GPS-equipped weather balloon in July 2005. These are photographs from the preparation, launch, and recovery of the balloon. See below for in-flight images. |
| VWS Balloon Download-Looking In-Flight Photos | Photos taken by the downward-looking camera in the VWS balloon (see above). Images are cross-referenced to the GPS-reported position and altitude. |
| VWS Balloon Side-Looking In-Flight Photos | Photos taken by the sideways-looking camera in the VWS balloon (see above). Images are cross-referenced to the GPS-reported position and altitude. |
| London | Photographs
from a September 2005 trip to London |
| Barcelona and Cruise | Holly and I visited Barcelona in October 2003. We took a round-trip cruise from Barcelona with stops in several locations in France and Spain. |
| West Wing Tour | Photographs from a December 2005 visit to the West Wing of the White House. |
| Thunderstorm | Photographs from a thunderstorm in April 2006. There wasn't anything particularly unusual about this story; I was experimenting to see what sort of image quality I could extract from high-definition video. |
| India and Pakistan | Holly visited India and Pakistan in May 2006. |
| Taj Majal | One stop on Holly's May 2006 trip was the Taj Majal... |
| Africa | Photos from Holly's July 2006 trip to Africa |
| Ken | Photos of Phil's one-month-old nephew, August 2006. |
| VWS ARISS Contact | The Vienna Wireless Society worked with Virginia Run Elementary School in March 2007 in order to orchestrate a radio contact with astronaut Suni Williams aboard the International Space Station. |
| Radar activity | Phil worked on a project in April 2007 to help science students at Carl Sandburg Middle School understand the behavior of light, sound, and radio waves by using police radar as an illustrative tool. |
Phil Wherry, [email protected]
