Category: personal

I’ve got friends in snow places

Jason2 Comments

Okay, it’s a lame title, but my day has been centered around the blizzard conditions in and around the metro Denver area.  With some areas near where I live experiencing whiteouts, we had a fun time of things today wit traffic, early closures, and the whole 9 yards.  Tracy actually was the one who took the day off ahead of schedule (smart gal that wife of mine) and then braved the elements to come pick me up after the mass transit shut down service to my parking place.

After a fender bender of her own – we finally got home in one piece (but not the car).  Of course, in the midst of all of this, our dog Maggie was just happy as could be frolic-ing in the snow.  Props to Tracy for having the idea to take a few snaps!

snowmoo

But, all is not fun and games in Bronco/Rocky Mountain land.  I’ve been helping a friend work through a bad time, and things just took a turn for the worse with him a few days ago.  Let me set the stage here for hyou.  Imagine you are a Photoshop/Adobe guru.  You know the crap outta all things Adobe.  Working in the industry for roughly ten years.  Now, imagine the company hiring some young gun.   You’ve been asked to train a new guy, then after four months or so of teaching a wet-behind-the-ears newb how to do things, you get laid off.

You knew that was coming right?  Well, now, imagine this:  as work becomes more and more challenging to find (despite the fact that you have practically every Adobe certification that exists), your beloved pet comes down with a time-sensitive medical issue that requires surgery to fix.  And you have no dollaz to pay it!  That, my friends, is no picnic.  Yet that is exactly what happened to my good friend David Zarzacki.  Finally, after some pushing from me, he’s set up a blog to explain the status with his pet, and Paypal links for donations.  He’s had some very generous contributions, but is still only about a third of the way to having enough for the vet bills.  (It’s surgery, after all, which isn’t ever all that cheap to begin with!)

So, please, today, take a moment and stop over to the blog to help save Mojo!  Make a contribution, even if it’s only a dollar or two.  And if you can’t contribute financially, then help spread the word by making a Twitter post, or a comment on your own blog – heck even just comments, thoughts, and prayers are welcome.  Every little bit helps!

Anyway, enough of the friends and snow places – I’ve rambled enough for the week.  I’ll leave off with the link to Mojo’s site.  Happy Shooting all and we’ll see you back here on Monday!  Have a great weekend:

Help Save Mojo


Thanks in advance to all that take the time to visit, share their thoughts, prayers, and contributions.

Urgh – thith code hath sthopped the blog

Jason3 Comments

Nyquil, Robitussen, Theraflu, Zicam, Sudafed – all for nada, zip, zilch, and a big fat doughnut.

Sorry all, the fog is just too deep to come up with anything coherent.   Don’t drop me from the feed reader just yet, as I think the haze is starting to clear some.  Be sure to stop back friday for a hopefully more coherent post about something related to photography – perhaps even a podcast (if you like the sound of hacking lung, runny nose, and pregnant pauses as I try to remember what it was I wanted to say…).  In other words, today is officially a “no blog” day.

In all seriousness, I should be back to form tomorrow – just ran out of hours in the day today, and this cold is kinda kicking me out of the game early at night time due to well…the meds.  Batter up on Friday!  Happy shooting!

Tidbit Tuesday

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Been fighting a bug that’s been going around for the past few days so don’t have much news or information from a photography perspective to share.  On a personal note, I finally caved in and got an iPod for listening to the spate of podcasts that I enjoy during my daily commutes.  The playback, interface, and storage capacity makes for a world of difference.  For those that are interested in which iPod, I put together a little YouTube video to show the “unboxing”:

Enjoy and Happy Shooting!  We’ll see you back here tomorrow (when I’ll hopefully have a podcast ready for all…)

Some assembly required

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As promised from yesterday, here is the assembly line of computes I unboxed:

img_00071

And then here’s the boxes that I consolidated all the accouterments into:

img_0011

img_0009

img_0012

Thankfully, the laptops didn’t come in today, so we had a brief respite.  Monday’s gonna be fun though!  I think I am going to try and enjoy this weekend!  You be sure to do the same.  Happy shooting and we’ll see you back here again on Monday.

Unboxing strategies…

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The folks over at This Week in Photography (aka TWIP) had a post earlier this week that gave a suggested checklist to follow when unboxing new gear.  As you all know how much a fan of checklists I am, I started giving this some thought about what sort of unboxing strategy would work best in my own patterns of gear management and setup.

Then toda at work, we got in 23 new computers.  This means we now have:

  • 23 CPU’s
  • 23 Monitors
  • 23 keyboards
  • 23 mice
  • 23 VGA cables
  • 23 USB cables
  • 23 power adaptors
  • 46 power cords (one each for the computer and monitor)
  • and 46 boxes (one each for the computer and monitor)
  • 23 Reinstallation CDs
  • 23 Owners Manuals

We needed a strategy!  So, we opened three of the boxes, took all the acouterments out.   With three boxes now empty, keyboards began piling up in one, power cables and adaptors in another, then mice and VGA cables in the third.  It became an assembly line of sorts.  Thank God we had a tech room to sort it all out.  By the end of the day, all but the first three boxes were cleared out.  Tomorrow, the switch will be set up so that these can all be prepped with our standard image over the weekend and we’ll have 23 new happy end users (that’s what computer geeks call everyone else in the world).  Then come the new laptops… *sigh*

I belatedly thought I should have taken a picture of the before, during, and after.  Instead, you’ll just get an end result tomorrow.  (It looks kinda cool after all was said and done!)

The point today though, is that with a checklist and a strategy, you can make pretty much any task go easier.  You will get more consistent results with whatever the task is, and the chances of being able to repeat your results will also increase with practice.  So, make sure you are always practicing your technique, because the same concepts hold true to photography.  Thanks to the good folks over at TWIP for the creative genesis for this post today.  Happy shooting all and we’ll see you back here tomorrow (with pics!).

News and Updates

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Just a few little tidbits for everyone today:

The “Name Your Dream Assignment” is in full swing – you can describe your ideal dream photo assignment and with enough votes (it’s entirely a popularity contest) you could win $50,ooo toward actually getting it done!  I did an entry just for the heck of it as well.  If you would like to enter the contest (or vote on my entry, stop over here:  Win a Dream Assignment You’ll probably notice a graphic for it in the sidebar too…

Also, a reminder that the Twitter/Blogging poll I set up a few days back is a month-long poll here, so if you’ve not stopped in to vote and share your thoughts, feel free to do so.  Quick link to the poll is here You can also follow my updates on Twitter here

For those of you that read the comments like I do, you’ll notice that Terry Reinert had some extensive and interesting insights on the bracketing posts I did a short time ago.  He’s got some excellent work over on his own site, so I would highly encourage you to visit.  Here’s the link:  http://www.tkrphoto.com

Kind of a busy day so I’ll leave you with those web links.  If anyone has some useful resources or sites that you’d like to share – feel free to email me or post in the comments section – consider today a web link day and most any post to the comments will be allowed unless it’s blatant spam.  Happy shooting and we’ll see you back here tomorrow!

DST Blues

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sleeping

Yep, the ole Spring Forward/Fall back bug bit us this past weekend.  On top of that, a rather late night on Saturday has re-doubled its effect on me today.  Since I am an admitted night owl, the mornings did not afford me the time to put together the blog post for Monday.

So…sports fans, today is officially a bleary-eyed no blog day!  Tune in tomorrow for the (semi) weekly podcast, some photo goodness, and a tweak in the podcast format for even better delivery to the fabulous listeners.  In the meantime… zzzzzzzzzz

Go soak your gear!

Jason5 Comments

It pays to review your web traffic periodically because I just learned a way that your bathtub can be used for photography!  Not only is it a good place to mellow out after a stressful shoot, but it also makes a heckuva softbox!  I was on a forum that had referenced the blog and a guy had some product that he placed in his tub.  I thought it was an interesting idea, and decided to give it a try.  As it turns out, the tub is a great place to put your gear!  Granted, not to soak it (sorry, but I had to tease the title that way), but to act as a great background and softbox combined in one.

Here’s a few sample shots.  For all the tech-types, these are pretty much straight out of camera (or sooc) – all I did was adjust the WB for Flash and adjust the ACR sharpening from 25 to 75.  All are resized to 650px wide for the blog.  Here’s the setup:  I took the Canon kit lens (18-55) on my 40D, threw on the 550EX, and set everything to default values.  Shutter at standard sync speed of 250, aperture at f8 and ISO at 100.  I powered the 550EX at it’s standard setting, on camera (relax strobists – I can hear you shuddering from here),  and started firing a few shots.  I pointed the flash to camera right and got this:

ruler1

Yup, that’s a God-awful shot, with a nasty shadow.  Perhaps I could ditch the shadow.  Since we’re not exactly using conventional wisdom here, let’s try it with the flash pointed straight at the subject:

ruler2

Hey!  That’s actually not too bad.  It’s not that great, and still definitely a “Meh” kind of shot as it’s still got something of a shadow.  So, I spun the flash to fire above me and bounce off the ceiling:

ruler3

Voila!  You know what?  For being a spur of the moment thing, and without a lot of pre-planning or preparation, that’s not bad at all.  And, it was shot in a bathtub!  Anyone else out there have a bathtub?  Try some shots in it for different items.  I used a tape measure, but what about a pen, or a microphone, or a printer, or even a lens?  I bet you could get some pretty cool results with very little setup!  Anyone else have some odd or unusual ways to get clean backgrounds and even lighting on the cheap?  Feel free to share your thoughts, ideas, and feedback in the comments.  Feel free to link your own efforts there too!  Happy shooting all and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow!

Great Green Gobs of Grapes!

Jason2 Comments

This week has been a particularly creatively filled one here on the blog:

  • Monday I shared the HDR image workup from last weekend and published the weekly podcast
  • Tuesday had another shot showcasing the benefits of looking all around for ideas (including behind you!)
  • Wednesday was the more detailed explanation of the Lensbaby Composer and selective focus

And now today, another source of inspiration from the kitchen!  I was cleaning some grapes for lunches and was struck not only by their size (these things were huge!), but also by the cool way the light in the kitchen was bouncing off each grape in the colander.  It helped that the colander is stainless steel and reflected some nice green tones back onto the grapes themselves, making them look even greener.  On instinct, I took a few, and here’s the best of it (and although it was taken with a 70mm Macro, this was not taken from macro range – that should tell you the size of these guys):

Grapes Galore!

Not too shabby for a “spur of the moment” capture.  Nothing like what you’ll see over at Mike Palmer’s blog (he does a lot of cool shallow dof work with food photography, and is a friend-of-the-blog), but a step in the direction of creativity anyway!  Catch an cool colors in your kitchen lately?  Share your thoughts, perspectives, links to other images, ideas and feedback in the comments section!  Keep on shootin’ and we’ll see you back here for the Friday post!

Look out behind you!

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We’re always looking forward, upward and downward to find a unique perspective or angle on things – to create something unique and interesting.  Well, today, I’ve got an example of how sometimes the interesting shots are behind you!  In this particular case, it’s doubly true.

This is also from the photo walk out in El Dorado from last weekend, and what makes it doubly true is because we were out looking to capture the beuaty of the mountains, the trees, and the amazing Colorado skies.  At one waypoint between hiking trails, we took a rest stop and used some of the provided *ahem* facilities.  On returning to the vehicle, I saw this reflection in the rear window of the Expedition:

Rear View

So, the view was created from the back window reflection, and I only caught it by turning my eyes away from the mountains, landscapes, and opportunities in front of me!  When’s the last time you turned 180 degrees to get a shot?  Got any fun stories of when it did?  Share them in the comments!

Don’t forget to stop over and pick up the new feed in iTunes for the podcast and share your thoughts about the new show format!  Here’s the link:  iTunes feed Happy shooting all and we’ll see you back here tomorrow!