Day 196: The Bag
September 24th, 2008
I realize that I probably don’t need to label these by day since I blew the whole 366 thing in July.
This is another macro shot of my new bag that I bought at the KC Art Faire. I’ll take a shot of the entire bag soon.
Also, I have been waiting patiently for this. The part about this preview that makes me smile the most is the comparison shots from ISO 1600-25600. The 25600 shot is about the noise level I get with 1600 on my camera. Happiness 
ETA: The press release says delivery at the end of November. Just in time for the December celebrations!
Online photo editing tool
March 28th, 2008
To quote:
Give your friend a tragically oversized head or get rid of the mole on his cheek that’s the size of a small asteroid. It’s totally up to you.
Online photo editing tool: Adobe Photoshop Express.
Price: Free
I’m uploading today’s photo right now to try it out.
ETA: It is in beta. For real. But nice for people who don’t have basic photo editing tools. Very basic.
Searching for a new tripod
March 13th, 2008
My next camera toy, something that is seriously needed in my arsenal, is a tripod. We have a tripod, but Mac bought it along time ago before I had my camera. It is wonderful for Mac’s camera or for our camcorder, but the legs collapse under the weight of my camera and lens. It is a source of great irritation to me trying to make it work, and a great irritation to Mac to listen to me bitch at the tripod.
Here is the best part from a review
It is also taller than many of the other options which keeps you from have [sic] to stoop over as much which can really save on your back after a long day of shooting.
It will not be a problem for my back. I wonder what it will do for my calves since this tripod can extend to two inches above my head*.
*Not a great accomplishment. Most things extend above my head.
Fantastic online photograph showing
February 25th, 2008
This is one of the most well done online photograph showings that I have seen. Beautiful way to display photos to sell the book. Plus, the lighting in the photographs are fabulous. Look through the excerpts gallery. There is even an overlay on the Woman’s Ward, Island 2 photo.
Warning, this site will play music without asking you first if you wish to hear it. The music is fitting, but I hate sites that do not give me the choice before blasting music at me.
Stephen Wilkes’ photographs of Ellis Island Hospital.
He photographed it over the course of 5 years. It makes me want to seek out the book to see the full collection of photos.
Washed out images
February 4th, 2008
I started my search by Googling Flickr and color space since that is where I was thinking the problem with my desaturated photos originate. It turns out, yes and no. Flickr at one time stripped out the color profile during resizing to save space, but apparently doesn’t do that anymore. The biggest difference is that I changed from importing my photos with Picasa in Windows to importing them with Image Capture on my Mac. I have it set to sRBG when I export photos from Lightroom, but I’m thinking that they aren’t. I need to double check to see if a color profile is being set on import.
Also, Safari is the only browser that respects color profiles in images, so if you want to know what they really look like, use Safari*. They look fine there. Maybe someday all browsers will respect color profiles, and it won’t be such a PITA.
ETA: Fixed. Changing the color space used on import along with double and triple making sure it exports as sRBG is working. I replaced James’ photo that I posted today, and it looks better.
*For those not-in-the-know, you can get Safari for Windows. I have it installed on my work desktop for testing.
Interesting Flickr sites
February 1st, 2008
Here are two Flickr sets created by the Library of Congress to show some of their photo catalog. They started The Commons Project to give the world population a chance to not only view, but comment and tag the photos. Well, the world population that consists of Flickr members.
1930s-40s in color
News in the 1910s
I cannot wait to look through these.
Ghostly Baby Toes
August 15th, 2007
Those who look at our Flickr account won’t be surprised when I say that when I want to practice shooting, I use my children as my subjects. Something was up with my camera, and I was shooting pictures that mostly look like this when I was trying James. This is exactly how the picture came off of the card. I just used Photoshop to save it from RAW to a jpg. I wasn’t going to post any, but they were so ghostly, I decided to go ahead and upload them. I ended up going into my camera menu and resetting everything to default values. The shot of Ada came out much better because of it. No idea what had been set to what.
People will give me eyes for this, but I love this time of year. I love it because of night. I love it being in the mid to upper 80s at night. It feels great! My mother and I headed out last night in the convertible because we needed to mail something too big for our neighborhood mail drop*. We took down the top, and took a leisurely drive home. It just felt wonderful. I also love sitting outside at night during this weather, and kids and work doesn’t afford me much time to do that anymore. Maybe tomorrow night I need to head outside with Ada and we can hang on the deck and enjoy this weather.
Our convertible ride last night was the last for us for awhile because we sold it–to my brother. We are now down to only three vehicles at our house instead of five. He came today and drove it away. He does come to visit though, so we’ll see it again.
James
July 21st, 2007
I took a few pictures of James this morning. I decided to open the door that goes out to the deck to let in sunlight. I couldn’t for the life of me get him to smile. I also had a hard time getting Ada to quit crawling on me and trying to push buttons on the camera. Now, I have a headache, but I’ve have a bazillion things to do around the house–including folding a ton of laundry. I need to mop our kitchen floor, which should be pleasant on my incision.
New view to my world
July 19th, 2007
I’ve never been interested in photography beyond snapping occasional special events with a cheap film point and shoot because I never had money to buy anything other than a really cheap film point and shoot and I couldn’t afford to develop a lot of film. Then, right after college and working in the real world with my first real salary paycheck, my love of technology prompted me to buy a digital camera — a Canon A10. It was 1.x or maybe 2 megapixels and slow at taking pictures, but it was all digital and it was cool! I could see my pictures right away. I had them on my computer, uploaded somewhere and sent out in e-mail in no time. I started just taking pictures of things to take pictures of things. I still wasn’t a photography whiz, and I did all of my settings with their choices of automatic modes, but still, wow!
Then one day before a vacation to Vegas, I decided to buy a Canon G5. It had just been release and a big chunk of money. OMG, wow! Manual settings and taking pictures without a flash–which turned out to be a crucial thing for the event I was at. It was faster. I could even buy different lenses for it (although I never did). It was bigger and heavier than my old camera–going the opposite direction than most who want smaller and sleeker. I loved it. Although it is still slow, and really grainy at low light.
I became more and more interested in photography. I started eying digital SLR cameras. I researched different ones. I looked at the cost–which held me back for awhile. I thought about lenses and the cost of buying lenses. Finally, I decided that I was going to get a Canon Digital Rebel, opting for a mid-range camera with an affordable mid-range price. Then Mac surprised me with a Canon EOS 20D for my birthday! It was such a phenomenal change from the G5. Wow. It takes pictures fast! It takes it clear! Then I started playing with shooting mostly in manual mode. I’ve never used an SLR camera, so I was a complete beginner. I started reading and learning some. My good friend, M, imparts some of knowledge for me to learn, which is much appreciated. I was still having problems with dark situations and the background being really dark and lack of details in the subject, but it wasn’t grainy and possible for me to shoot without the flash most of the time which greatly improved my shots.
Then my good friend M surprised me with what should be a lifetime StuDay present, and bought me a 35mm lens to replace the kit lens that came with the body. He picked a great one for my shooting situations–pictures of my kids in my dark house and not wanting to use a flash. It was even better. The lens was quieter. The picture was sharper even to the point that you could see the individual hairs in low light pictures instead of it looking sort of like a hair helmet. There was no darkness in background, and you unfortunately could tell that I needed to replace my living room carpet–too much detail almost.
Then that same great friends sent me some books to read, saving me the money to purchase some books. Now I’m learning a lot more about exposure and how film speed, exposure and aperture will change your shot. I’m going to learn more about low-light shooting techniques here soon as time allows. Maybe gather more info on shooting outside. I started eying the L-series lenses from Canon. I read up on all the different lens types. I got input from M. Then I decided on lens you see here. It is way bigger, way heavier, has a lens hood. It is even quieter than my 35mm. It is sharper! It is so "I’m serious about this photography stuff" looking. It is a big amount of money, so I have to be serious about this hobby. I have two more lenses I would like to add, but not anytime soon. I’ll keep learning more and keep trying to improve. My work and life schedule is such that I cannot completely immerse myself in it, so it will have to be slow and steady.
Tags: photography, hobbies
Lost opportunity
May 31st, 2007
I went outside about an hour ago to get something from the car. I looked up at the sky, and noticed the spotty clouds surrounding the moon. They made a beautiful contrast with the peeking moon, but also gave off the illusion of rays shooting off the moon in all directions.
It would have made a beautiful photograph, but not having my camera out, and only getting the instructions for taking night photos this evening, I lost the opportunity to capture that image for sharing. I doubt I will ever see it like that again.