a little more mobile

So, I got a new toy a week ago. Ever since this device came out I have made fun of them, over sized ipods. But to be honest, I knew from the beginning that this may be my holy grail. I have always wanted a truly mobile computer. Since the  mid 90’s I have bought a number of handheld computers. This is the first one that I really feel is what I want.

No, it is not a replacement for my laptop. I can’t run Photoshop on it, and I don’t want to. I am also not a fan of the app store. So much crap that should be free. I guess I have spent too much time with Linux.

So, wait. My big machine is Win 7, my netbook is Ubuntu and my tablet is iOS.

 

Okay, onto the picture. Just a crop and some adjustments in ACR.

I set the white balance off the keys on the keyboard, plus a few other adjustments.

Oh, and again with the original.

Why you got to write on the walls?

Assholes, A historic cabin in a national park and someone has to leave their mark

So, at least in the digital work we can easily clean things up

What’s going on?

Okay, I’ve been quiet here. Actually both here and on flickr. I’ve been working and oddly enough I have been busy on my weekends. The temps have been high and at the end of the day I have been worn out. But that is slowly changing. I am once again earning enough money that I have something to spend on my craft.

The first thing I’ve bought? A 1 TB external hard drive. That’s photography? You betcha. For the last year I have been spending too much time burning to dvd’s and deleting files on my main hard drive, freeing up space.

So, why a 1gig drive? The 2TB drives were only about $30.00 more. I serious thought about it, but 2 TB’s? That is over 3 years of RAW photos! That is too many to have in one place. 1 TB is really too much but it is hard to find new full size hard drives under 1 TB.

So, this time next year I’ll be putting this hard drive in the closet and buying a new one. If I ever start doing this professionally I’ll have two backups, one at home and one else where.

Believe it or not, a friend just called while I was writing this telling me her hard drive just crashed! She had not backed up anything and there is over a year of photos on it.  No backups.

So, other then work I did do a shoot for a now defunct band. Oh well, I did learn a few things. Here are some pics

I hate power lines

One of the things about photography is that there is little room for imperfections. What? Yeah, I said that. When you look at a person or a scene you selectively focus on the parts that please you (or upset you). We selectively focus all the time. I look at my mother and I don’t notice the hard winkles on either side of her mouth. The woman is 60, she has wrinkles but I selectively ignore them.

Same for a downtown sunset looking though a maze of power lines. Or the picture below, a blue Lambo on the road surrounded by everyday ho-hum cars and SUVs. Here is what I saw.

And here is what the camera saw

unedited SOOC

So, yeah. Even simple uninspired snap shots get a little editing. I don’t really care to show you what the camera sees, I just want to show you what was in my selective vision.

I made heavy use of Photoshop’s clone brush. The Content Aware Fill did help but it is not perfect. Be sure to feather your selections when using Content Aware Fill. The trees directly above the Lambo look like they have a bit of glare on them, this was shot though a dirty windshield. Maybe I should have done some burning there, or is that dodging ( I always forget which is which).

Chris

Progression of an image

Some times is it not enough to get a good composition and exposure. This bird and tree posed a few problems that took a little more work then I expected.

The shot was at 200mm from about 30m away. At 100% crop things looked pretty good but when reduced to a thumbnail the leaves were too small and regular. The berries and the cardinal were visible but had no impact.

Something about Food and Me and Getting Older

You know how most people bitch about getting older and stuff like getting fat or body parts aching? Sorry about the language, but you do know, right? Well, I am 40 and yes I do have to watch what I eat or I will become very fat. My left knee and right shoulder hurt regularly. But you know what, I can deal with that. I really can.

What I can not deal with are these new food allergies I seem to have developed. One of them is wheat. Okay, it is not an allergy but a food intolerance. Bread causes heartburn, acid reflux. Bread. I love bread. My mother bakes this swiss cheese, bear bread and it is delicious. It is salty and savory, my mouth waters just thinking about it. Not just bread but brownies, cake, pasta, pizza. If it has wheat in it, I get acid reflux.

But that is not all. I may be allergic to dairy too, or  oil. I am thinking it is dairy but right now I have none to test it with. But yeah dairy. You see for a while when I ate out or had some fast food my sinuses would stop up, totally. I thought it was fried food, so much fried food out there. Then I noticed something. I have cheese with everything. I like cheese a lot. Cheese Burgers, alfredo pastas, grilled cheese sandwiches, breakfast cereal, ice cream. Dairy and bread go together.

Bread and cheese. Isn’t that the food of life?

Okay, I do like asian foods and I have had no issues with rice. All proteins seem to be okay and that is good. So no more wheat and no more dairy. I have tried soy cheese and, no, it is not a substitute. I am not much a fan of soy milk either. I have heard that corn can be as bad as wheat so I need to test some corn bread and corn tortillas.

Something About Racing

Here is something about me you might not know, I love Formula 1 racing. I enjoy rally races, road races, TTs. Really just about everything except circle track and to a lesser extent drag racing. So, yeah, no NASCAR or Indy. I just find circle track boring.

Ah, but F1. That is something I will awake at 2am to watch. Lately I haven’t had to get up early. Fox has been carrying the race. It is tape delayed so they can butcher it and spread out to 2 hours with a crap load of commercials.

You might get the feeling I do not a fan of Fox. I am not. They bought Speedvision a number of years ago and basically turned it into NASCAR Tv. No more rallies, no more road racing and F1 got very hard to find. No more reruns of F1.

This year they have decided to place 4 races on Fox. I guess this is good. More exposure to the American populous. Maybe more American fans. Maybe that F1 track in Texas will happen. We only have two races on this side of the world, Canada and Brazil.

F1 is the pinnacle of auto racing. It is a shame we do not have a track, team or driver. I would love to see Ford step up. I can always dream.

Little Worlds

There is a technique that turns a panoramic into a sphere, creating a little world, a little planet if you will. I know it is a fad but it is interesting. In some ways I like them better then a regular panoramic.

Why? Well, you can see the whole image at a glance. Any of my 360deg views are about 5 times wider then they are tall. Viewing one at full height means I am going to have to scroll sideways quite a bit. After all the years of scrolling up and down on websites, it is just plain weird to scroll horizontally.

So here are some samples, and a quick tutorial.

Spaghetti Sandwich

I love Spaghetti, I eat it at least once a month. Really, it is good stuff. I would say my spaghetti is not like yours. I am not trying to be elitist or anything, but long ago I gave up on bottled spaghetti sauce and spice packets. I also gave up on ground beef too. It is too bland. I use Italian Sausage.  If I was crazy I would use fresh tomatoes too, but I never have that much time. You see, time is always a factor and that is where the Spaghetti Sandwich came from. It takes at least 20 minutes to cook pasta, 2 minutes to make toast. 

Mountain trip

Krista on a Bridge

So I head up to the Smokes with my friend Krista yesterday. I took nearly 200 photos, I have whittled them down to 36 and really, in the end I think the number will be down to 5, maybe 7. Still, this one was the best of the day.