Fremont Summer Solstice Parade

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Fremont Summer Solstice Parade

Fremont Summer Solstice Parade, originally uploaded by ChrisB.

I’m in the process of going through my photos from this year’s Solstice Parade — everything’s imported, named, and tagged, but I still need to decide which ones get fine-tuned and uploaded.

In the meantime, while there’s a few thousand photos up already (and it’s increasing by the hour) either floating around loose or in the group pool, this set from ChrisB really deserves to be seen. A high vantage point and a tilt-shift lens make for a look at the parade that’s very different from everyone else’s shots!

Ladybug

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Ladybug

Ladybug, originally uploaded by djwudi.

Not quite as cute when seen this close up, are they?

Saw this lil’ guy crawling around in the grass at school the other day and wanted to see what I could get. Shot with my 24mm f/2.8 Nikkor reverse-mounted with a reversing ring, somewhere around f/16 or so, 1/8th of a second, handheld, with the onboard popup flash. At full size, you can see the hairs on the ladybug’s legs!

So. Incredibly. Cool. Here’s some more shots.

Summertime!

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A number of updates this evening…

  • It’s summertime! I had my last final exam today (yesterday was the Chem 101 exam, I e-mailed my Philosophy 100 final paper in this morning, and had my Programming 142 exam this afternoon). No summer classes for me, so it’s time to relax. Yay!
    • I actually really enjoyed this quarter. I was a little unsure about the lineup at first, but it ended up working well, and I had very enjoyable teachers. All in all, I’m pretty solidly sure of getting all A’s again this quarter (knock on wood). We’ll see for sure in a couple weeks.
  • The relaxing doesn’t actually begin for a couple days, of course (isn’t this always the way?). Prairie will be at graduation activities for her students most of tomorrow, and I’ve got to work in the afternoon/evening. On Saturday we’ll be going to the Fremont Solstice Parade (I was bummed that I missed it last year, and have been looking forward to this year’s for a while), doing our best to exhaust ourselves, and crash out early, because…

  • …early Sunday morning I drive Prairie out to the airport for a four-day trip with my mom and my sister-in-law Emily. Mom decided a while ago to have a “WHPUWHM” trip — that is, “Women Who Put Up With Hanscom Men,” (those brave and stalwart women who actually choose to associate themselves with the Hanscom family), and the weekend has come. My aunt Pam wasn’t able to join, unfortunately, but Mom, Prairie, and Emily will be spending four days on their own, commiserating with each other about all the things they have to put up with. ;)

    • This does mean that I’m on my own, bachelor-style, for four days, from Sunday morning through Wednesday evening. Even better, I have a three-day weekend from work, with Saturday through Monday off. Now, the chances are extremely good that I’ll merely end up spending far too many hours in front of my computer, but with any luck, I’ll be able to get some amount of socializing in. (Is the Mercury doing anything on Sunday nights these days? Preferably something that doesn’t need a membership?)
  • We got a new toy! We’d been batting around the idea of getting a laptop computer for a while now for the two of us to share, as with my continuing on through school and our tendency to travel whenever possible necessitating a portable dumping ground for photos when we’re on the run…and Prairie decided that today was the day to take the plunge. Admittedly, there is definitely going to be a ‘period of adjustment,’ as our finances limited us to a price tag in the $600 realm…which meant no Macbook for us, as Apple doesn’t really have a low-end laptop. No, instead, we’re now the somewhat bemused owners of a Gateway MT6705 Notebook PC (oooh, now how’s that for snappy, in-your-face, can’t-forget-it branding!).
    • Getting the computer was a minor pain. Neither Best Buy nor Staples came anywhere close to impressing us with their customer service, but there was a very kind young man at Office Depot who ended up helping us narrow things down.

    • The computer itself seems to be quite nice, though I’m not exactly sold on Vista just yet. While it’s all very nice and shiny, I had rather ridiculous issues getting it hooked into our home network…and to top it off, the Gateway tech support person, while very nice, was clueless (to the point of not knowing what “Static IP” was). I eventually figured it out, and after spending some time setting up user accounts for Prairie and I, and spending some more time removing some of the useless adware that comes pre-installed, I’m now puttering away on the new toy while Prairie putters away on her iMac.

      • I have a bad feeling my G5 is going to be jealous when I get back to it….
  • Lastly, as long as we were setting various bits and pieces up on the new laptop and figuring out how to pull photos from Prairie’s little camera on to it, we also spent some time setting my girl up with her own Flickr account and her own weblog (titled ‘Domesticism’ — a fitting and amusing complement to my ‘Eclecticism’), two things she’d been considering for some time and finally decided to get started on. She’s started off with the story of our quest for our new ‘puter…stop by and say hi!

And…yeah, I think that that pretty much covers it.

THE Final Exam

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(I have no idea where this originally came from, I’ve had it bouncing around my hard drive for years. Given that I’m midway through finals week, though, it seemed appropriate…)

Instructions: Read each question carefully. Answer all questions. Time limit: 4 hours. Begin immediately.

HISTORY: Describe the history of the papacy from its origins to the present day, concentrating especially but not exclusively, on its social, political, economic, religious, and philosophical impact on Europe, Asia, America, and Africa. Be brief, concise, and specific.

MEDICINE: You have been provided with a razor blade, a piece of gauze, and a bottle of Scotch. Remove your appendix. Do not suture until your work has been inspected. You have fifteen minutes.

PUBLIC SPEAKING: 2,500 riot-crazed aborigines are storming the classroom. Calm them. You may use any ancient language except Latin or Greek.

BIOLOGY: Create life. Estimate the differences in subsequent human culture if this form of life had developed 500 million years earlier, with special attention to its probable effect on the English parliamentary system. Prove your thesis.

MUSIC: Write a piano concerto. Orchestrate and perform it with flute and drum. You will find a piano under your seat.

PSYCHOLOGY: Based on your knowledge of their works, evaluate the emotional stability, degree of adjustment, and repressed frustrations of each of the following: Alexander of Aphrodiseas, Ramses II, Gregory of Nicea, Hammurabi. Support your evaluation with quotations from each man’s work, making appropriate references. It is not necessary to translate.

SOCIOLOGY: Estimate the sociological problems which might accompany the end of the world. Construct an experiment to test your theory.

MANAGEMENT SCIENCE: Define Management. Define Science. How do they relate? Why? Create a generalized algorithm to optimize all managerial decisions. Assuming an 1130 CPU supporting 50 terminals, each terminal to activate your algorithm; design the communications interface and all necessary control programs.

ENGINEERING: The disassembled parts of a high-powered rifle have been placed in a box on your desk. You will also find an instruction manual, printed in Swahili. In ten minutes a hungry Bengal tiger will be admitted to the room. Take whatever action you feel appropriate. Be prepared to justify your decision.

ECONOMICS: Develop a realistic plan for refinancing the national debt. Trace the possible effects of your plan in the following areas: Cubism, the Donatist controversy, the wave theory of light. Outline a method for preventing these effects. Criticize this method from all possible points of view. Point out the deficiencies in your point of view, as demonstrated in your answer to the last question.

POLITICAL SCIENCE: There is a red telephone on the desk beside you. Start World War III. Report at length on its socio-political effects, if any.

EPISTEMOLOGY: Take a position for or against truth. Prove the validity of your position.

PHYSICS: Explain the nature of matter. Include in your answer an evaluation of the impact of development of mathematics on science.

PHILOSOPHY: Sketch the development of human thought; estimate its significance. Compare with the development of any other kind of thought.

GENERAL KNOWLEDGE: Describe in detail. Be objective and specific.

EXTRA CREDIT: Define the Universe; give three examples.

Frahnk-en-steeeen!

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In the vein of “The Producers” (the recent film version — y’know, the film version of the musical stage version of the original film — had Prairie and me practically in tears of laughter when we watched it, and quickly gained a permanent spot in our movie collection), Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein is being turned into a stage musical (no word…yet…on the eventual film version of the musical stage version of the original film).

As is becoming something of a trend (one that I happen to be quite fond of), the show is premiering here in Seattle before opening on Broadway.

And Prairie and I have tickets for August 7 — opening night.

Nosebleed section, of course — Mezzanine 31, Row V, sets 7 and 8, virtually the very top rear right of the building — but opening night tickets none the less. We’re quite excited about this.

“Wasn’t your hump on the other side?”

(pause)

“What hump?”

Inappropriate Thoughts

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Slightly tangentially related:

I once knew someone (in fact, I still know him, though I hesitate to identify him for fear of recrimination — or, perhaps, incrimination) who told me that, upon meeting the new husband of an ex-girlfriend of his, had to suppress the urge to say, “I took your wife’s virginity.”

Wrong. Rude.

And — in my world — very funny.

Snorkel Practice

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This coming August, Prairie and I will be heading to Hawaii for a week for her sister Hope’s wedding. We’re really looking forward to the trip — three nights at the Hilton Waikoloa Village with the rest of the family for the wedding and associated events, and three nights camping at Volcanoes National Park — and so we’ve been working on planning ahead and picking up what supplies we’ll need well ahead of time.

This morning, we picked up a couple sets of fins, masks, and snorkels, as part of the hotel we’ll be at is the lagoon (“Teeming with tropical fish and rare green sea turtles, the four-acre ocean fed lagoon is a protected oasis perfect for snorkeling and swimming.”), and as neither of us have ever snorkeled before, we wanted to get some practice time in before hand.

We hit the pool for a while this afternoon (it is so nice having a pool available on hot days), and got to play with our new snorkel stuff. So far, so good — we probably looked like dorks, but we were having a lot of fun. I am going to figure out what to do about my face fuzz, though…the mustache breaks the seal on the face mask, so I’m either going to have to shave it or experiment with finding ways to make it work (some websites have suggested chap stick, vaseline, or some such greasy goo in the ‘stache to help keep the seal).

So now we’ve got flippers. Apparently, this makes Prairie a mermaid…and me a frog. I don’t know, I just report what I’m told…. ;)

Photography Workflow

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I just had someone ask me through my Flickr account about my photography workflow and sales experience, and I figured I might as well put my response up here for…um…posterity? Ego-stroking? ;)

I’ve not yet started to actually try to shoot for a living (though it’s a nice dream), as school and work take up enough time that I can’t devote myself to my hobby. Still, for what it’s worth, here’s what I can tell you….

What is your photography work flow?

These days, I shoot pretty much everything RAW. I haven’t had the money to upgrade to Apple’s Aperture or Adobe’s Lightroom yet, so I use iPhoto for organization and sorting, Adobe Photoshop for RAW conversion and touchups, and then the Flickr Export plugin for iPhoto to upload everything to Flickr.

The basic process is this:

  1. Shoot (lots!) in RAW (with my camera set to the Adobe RGB color space).
  2. Import into iPhoto.
  3. Name and tag everything (I’m using Bullstorm’s Keyword Manager to help with tag organization and editing, as iPhoto’s built-in keyword management is one of the least useful aspects of an otherwise excellent program).
  4. Do a first run through the shots, tossing what’s probably worth uploading into an album.
  5. Do a second run through the shots. Most of this run is converting the RAW files and doing any touch-ups (which I keep to a minimum, generally little more than exposure and white balance tweaking, occasional cropping, sharpening, and setting the color space to sRGB), but I’ll also make some last decisions on which photos will or won’t be uploaded.
  6. Upload to Flickr, assigning shots to sets or sending to one group during upload. Later set management or submitting photos to more groups is done online through Flickr when I get around to it.
  7. Do a third cull through the shots, selecting the best of the bunch to be printed out.

[Where] or how do you market or promote your work?

I’ve never really actively done much promotion other than uploading things to Flickr and then telling people about it. When I can, I’ll let people involved in an event know about any event photos I’ve taken (sometimes by e-mail, other times through making posts in online communities focusing on an event or artist), or if I can identify and contact the subjects of shots, I’ll try to let them know directly. Other than that, I don’t do a whole lot.

Have you had any success with online promotion or selling your work through a website, if so which ones are you using?

Nothing major here, really. I’ve experimented with some of the services that have popped up online for helping people sell their work, but as I’ve never really taken the time to actively pursue anything, I can’t really report any great sucesses (or failures, really — I may not be selling much, but I don’t see that as failure when I’m not really trying to sell anything).

What few shots I have sold or had used elsewhere have happened more or less through blind luck — people stumbling on a shot through photo searches, deciding I had something that would work for a project, and asking permission to use it.

I have started getting a few people asking me to shoot events, but it’s not something I’ve started charging for yet (while it’s very flattering to have someone ask, I’m not entirely convinced I’m “pro” enough to ask for money…though I’m certainly not going to refuse if any is offered, either!). Right now, I pretty much just chalk it up to learning experiences, with possibilities for future benefit.

And if you can think of any other ideas for a photographer that is ready to start selling his work full time (my goal). I would greatly appreciate it.

Nothing much comes to mind, mostly because I’m not quite heading that direction yet. Good luck on your quest, though!