o the terrifying ghost

the living dead

ghosts can have mullets too

the spoils

how the sausage was made

Twitter update

Why do they call them fun "size?"  These are easily the least fun size.

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Twitter update

We aren’t going home because O doesn’t have any candy Mom likes yet.

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The guy in front of me is 0 for 2. His truck has a Rays sticker AND a McCain sticker.

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Twitter update

We have murder mystery dinner theater, why not rape mystery dinner theater?

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Is math a part of nature that was discovered by man? Or is it a model created by man to describe nature?

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portraiture

There is not much demand for artistic portraiture amongst the public.  I love this style of photography; planning shoots that don’t look very planned, capturing someone’s essence with creative abandon, and so on.  Straight portraiture is tired and boring.  You will never find me shooting a high school senior leaning on his football, or a middle-aged couple wearing holiday sweaters in front of a flat paper fireplace with their schnauzer.  Yuck.

chrome

A friend rode his new bike over to my house last night.  The chrome was all I could capture in the darkness.  That is my lawn in the thingamabob there.  I am not a fan of vehicles beyond their capacity to get me from A to B, but this one was totally boss.  Then he started it up.  

The machine coughed up deep, loud rumblings that were both obnoxious and entirely intentional.  We have the technology, as a species, to muffle such noise pollution.  Yet, some choose not to.  I suppose the noise does serve as some sort of challenge to the other male Neanderthals.  Ego emissions, indeed.  

No offense to my friend, of course. ; )

shelf objects

Just playing with the new body, waiting for the 16-85mm to get here.  It should only be a few weeks. ;(

I-75

shot with blackberry at 82 mph

WTF? David Copperfield in Gibsonton? …Nahh

Twitter update

Gas gauge says 1 mile until empty.  Sign says 1 mile until exit.  Shit.

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Twitter update

At a Sharepoint seminar. Lots of big geek egos but no hijackers thus far.

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Sliced apples and Publix potato salad for dinner.  Mmmm.

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d300 screams at 6 fps

I thought I’d share the sweet sound of 6 fps with you.  That was 17 12-bit RAW images before the buffer choked!  It can get up to 8 fps using the MB-D10 battery grip.  I can’t wait to try this out in the field with AF focus tracking.

Twitter update

There isn’t a single camera shop in central FL that stocks a Nikkor AF-S DX VR 16-85mm f/3.5-5.6G ED?!?

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d80 out, d300 in

Close crop of the image below taken with my new D300.

This body is head and shoulders above my D80.  More updates soon.

This image doesn’t demonstrate anything really.  I just thought there should be another photo in this post.

lightroom 2 – tip #3

During import, it is important to embed your copyright and contact information in each file.  Just lick on the Metadata drop down box and choose new.  You will be presented with the form above.  I named mine “flashkube meta.”  If an organization or individual wants to use your photograph they will be able to easily find you to get permission.

Twitter update

Headed to Chick-fil-A for lunch. AGAIN! I should really be more creative in my lunch selections.

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Twitter update

Walked into Best Buy to get boring work stuff.  Walked out with a Nikon D300.  *shizzle*

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lightroom 2 – tip #2

I’ll be staying with the import dialog for these next few tips.  A very important option during this stage is file naming.  You can edit the way files are named by choosing Edit from the Template drop down menu.  What appears is shown above.  I chose YYMMDD-Custom Text-00X as my naming convention.  I then saved it with the name “my naming convention.”  Choose something that works for you.  I highly recommend you use custom text somewhere in your file naming.  If you end up with multiple image files in the same folder, you will be glad that a short description of the image will be part of the filename.

lightroom 2 – tip #1

Lightroom 2 has many new features over its predecessor so I picked up Scott Kelby’s “The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 Book for Digital Photographers” a few weeks ago.  I haven’t had a chance to dive in until now.  Scott Kelby trains based on his actual workflow rather than simply giving an item by item description of the software features.  Starting with this post, I’ll be sharing the most useful information I’ve gained from his new book (in my own words, of course).  If you find these tips useful, pick up the book at Amazon.  It contains many more tips than I will be posting.  Now on to the first one…

Photographers add keywords to their images to make them quickly findable.  In a previous post, I described in detail my new keywording strategy for Lightroom.  Sadly, that exhaustive method lasted only a few shoots.  Why did I give up on it?  Time.  It is time-consuming enough just to edit down a shoot to a useable number of photographs.  Tagging each image, even when done in batches, is just not worth the benefit.  The time it took to add keywords ended up much longer than just locating the file by date and folder name (assuming that I was having trouble finding that image in the first place).  So, what is the strategy that will give us the best balance of efficiency and usefulness?

First of all, add keywords during the import stage of your workflow.  This way you get it done before your images are even part of your catalog.  Also, it will force you to create more general keywords that encompass all of the photographs you are importing.  The flaw in my system was that I went on to keyword each photograph, thinking that I would be searching on such phrases as “large bowl.”  Scott recommends that you ask yourself what words or phrases you would later type into a search field to find these images.  I think that is great advice and will be using it henceforth.

Oh, and don’t forget to separate your keywords or phrases with a comma.

Twitter update

Just heard McCain say "Senator Joe the Biden." Awesome.

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Irony

shot with blackberry curve

Isn’t a wiper supposed to help you see better?

Twitter update

Just heard about palinaspresident.us on Off the Hook. Haven’t tried it yet. Is it funny?

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Twitter update

Uh oh. 25mph on the highway. :(

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chicago 10

 

I have been anticipating the television release of this movie since its debut at Sundance last year. Independent Lens showed it last night on PBS. It was amazing not just as an informational documentary but as a work of art. Brett Morgan used a ton of actual footage mixed with animation and voice actors. Much of the trial dialogue was verbatim from the transcripts. I’ve heard some of the audio recordings of the 1968 conspiricy trial and I have to say that Rob Sheider (of Jaws fame) did Judge Hoffman’s voice perfectly. It was chilling, really. Abbie Hoffman and the other defendents, as well as their lawyers, are American heroes and this film captures their message and does their story great justice.  The trailer is below.

 

Twitter update

I just found virtual Beer Pong on the Wii Shop Channel! No more ball wash cup…sweet.

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Twitter update

Never thought I’d be saying this but…I just did the half-moon, warrior, tree, and sun salutation.

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voter fraud fear mongering

Fear mongering by the Republicans about voter fraud is disgusting.  It is clearly a tactic to convince law makers to enact unnecessary ID laws that disenfranchise lower income people and minorities, folks who are more likely to vote Democrat.  If you don’t remember, the reason Alberto Gonzalez fired those U.S. Attorneys was because they weren’t taking more voter fraud cases.  It turned out that there simply weren’t many voter fraud cases to prosecute.  For more recent reporting on this subject, I suggest you listen to the entire episode of Democracy Now! that aired on the 9th.  On it, Ohio’s Secretary of State talks about the myth of voter fraud.

John McCain and his campaign have decided to continue this classic Republican strategy.  They have painted the community organization Acorn as a criminal enterprise that,

is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.

Is this accurate?  First of all, I have to say that Acorn’s policy of paying their registration workers per registration was a dumb idea.  They have now changed to an hourly wage for their employees.  I certainly don’t believe that the organization knowlingly and purposefully filled the voter rolls with fake names.  We have to ask ourselves why they would even do that?  Who would that help?  Do fake voter registrations actually lead to fraudulent votes?  An interesting article on ABC News reports that election experts say no.  A representative from Acorn debated a Republican election attorney on Democracy Now! aird on the 15th.  It was telling to hear the arguments on both sides.

It seems to me that Obama should be proud of any links to Acorn.

EDIT:  The most recent episode of Bill Moyer’s Journal came up in my iPod playlist just as I was submitting this post.  Please check out the video of his interview with Mark Crispin Miller about the challenges that legitimate voters will face this election.  Especially relevant to this post is his take on the fabricated scandal surrounding Acorn.

Wii Fit age is 26…

…should I take it back because I’m so fit?