Photography
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Monday, May 19th, 2008
before and after
After much heckling from my sister and Andru plus even a few people at work I’ve trimmed the beard. Are you all happy?
…
Update: Apparently the answer to my closing question was no. After further heckling by Andru I the next unfortunate step:
after, AFTER!
I now look 17 and homosexual. I hope you are happy Andru.
And I still don’t like Zoos
Monday, May 19th, 2008As my parents could attest I never was much of one for zoos as a child. I had set one of my 101 goals to go shooting at the zoo to see if this was still true, and it is. Out of an overly-hot afternoon at the zoo my favorite shot was one that clearly didn’t need a trip to the zoo to take (assuming I could find Bamboo anywhere else in Seattle):
I guess not everyone has to be into zoos. Personally I don’t much find animals interesting. Sure I love Skype and having him around is a blast, but I enjoy his companionship rather than a fascination with his non-humanness. From a photographic perspective zoos don’t really do it for me because of the cages and glass – I far prefer getting up close and personal with my subjects, really interacting with them to get the perfect shot.
Oh well, I had fun, learned something about myself as an adult, and avoided heatstroke for another day. All in all a positive way to spend a Saturday afternoon even if I won’t repeat the experience.
Bacon!
Thursday, May 15th, 2008
Inspired by this man and his bacon-filled Whopper I decided to try a burger with wonderfully excessive bacon myself. Having seen that even a man of such awesomeness that he could think of such a thing not be able to finish it I decided to back off on the bacon for a first time experience and go for what was described to the puzzled cashier as "as much bacon as beef please".
Clearly, I got what I asked for.
Unlike my bacon hero I was able to completely conquer my tasty bacon sandwich. This is a feat that was a complete dismay for my arteries and assault on my tract. In the best interests of my long life I regretfully doubt it is an experience I will allow myself to repeat.
Check out the bacon set on flickr for additional bacon goodness!
An evening of photography with Alissa
Thursday, May 15th, 2008
Although I’m exhausted today thanks to an evening of night photography with Alissa, it was totally worth it. The idea begun ages ago when she pointed out the shadows cast by the wiring shown in the above photo and ended up being one of my 101 goals. Alissa best captured the beautiful shadows better than I did, but I really enjoyed the evening and the shots that I did get.
Time to get more coffee – I’m too old for this whole staying up late thing!
Becoming my father?
Wednesday, May 14th, 2008
My sister says I’m starting to look like my father. Looking at this image objectively I have to admit that it’s true. Add a few pounds and a little gray hair and I would _become_ my dad!
Metaspark
Thursday, May 1st, 2008Or: Further experimentation with personal aggregation services
After my initial experimentations with personal aggregation basically failed I’ve decided to take another stab at it, but this time with a DIY bent. I registered metaspark.net and am working a complicated series of WordPress plugins to attempt to create the functionality I want.
Unfortunately it’s not entirely baked yet, but keep your eye on that domain – once I get a few RSS aggregation, twitter update, and posting date issues sorted out it should be ready to go fully live, and with style no less.
Stay tuned!
Experimenting with aggregation
Saturday, March 22nd, 2008In an effort to bring together the wonderful wide world of Sparky* I’m experimenting with Tumblr as an aggregation service. The hopes of my experimentation is to create a single point of contact for all my personal web content. Currently to get every last drop of Sparky goodness (and who doesn’t want that) visits to my blog, Flickr stream, Facebook profile, and Twitter are necessary. By providing this aggregate source of Sparky – henceforth referred to as Meta-Sparky – a single website can be visited to consume Sparky, Sparky, Sparky, and more Sparky.
Without further ado: http://sparktography.tumblr.com/
Update: Tumblr ended up being close to what I want, but not quite it. Tumblr will only allow short form content and won’t import long format blog posts. I also noticed it copies Flickr photos locally and re-compresses them which adds a slight color cast and loses the tack-sharpness that so much effort goes into on the front end.
Anyone know of a better aggregation service with similar features that I could check out? Leave a note in the comments with a link to it. If I don’t find anything readymade I guess I’ll have to roll up my sleeves and make something.
*wonder, wonderment, and wonderfulness not guaranteed. All Sparky all the time has been known to cause health complications in certain situations. If you experience a Sparky lasting more than 4 hours consult with a physician immediately.
Red point
Saturday, March 22nd, 2008
A sunset inspired photo from my downtown jury duty adventures last week. This is from a giant wall of red glass downtown. I’m also a fan of this photo of a very different part of the same building but red point is my favorite of the two.
Two Union Square by Aperture 2.0
Saturday, March 8th, 2008I recently discovered Apple Aperture 2.0 and have simply fallen in love with it. It’s hands down the most performant and powerful photo management software out there. Coupled with Adobe Photoshop CS3 (technically the entire Creative Suite) my workflow has been entirely revolutionized. Aperture makes managing a set of 5 photos as easy as managing 10,000. By stacking and grouping photos it’s possible to quickly triage a shoot, find the good shots, and archive the bad shots all with GPU accelerated speed.
Unfortunately I’m come to realize just how unorganized my photos were in iPhoto and am being forced to go on a holy reorganization quest – luckily a not quite as monumental now that I have Aperture to help me out. As a bonus I’m finding lots of old photos that with a little tweaking come out great. It’s like finding rough jewels in a mine, only I don’t have to get all dirty and sweaty – I can just dig away at my desk.
A new entry into my series of Two Union Square