Posts from — January 2008

Hard to believe it’s been 31 days! My youngest is sick with a fever, though once the Tylenol kicks in, he’s in good spirits, like here when he’s running trains down the hill.

When David announced Lighting 102 back in May of last year, I was totally psyched to dig in.  I’d done a few of the Lighting Boot Camp assignments the previous year and had a ton of fun doing it. Yet as summer rolled forward, any time that would have been dedicated to that was consumed by marathon training. I still read the articles knowing I’d want to revisit them at some time. I’d remembered the assignment on film noir style hard lighting and decided to give it a try. I know I’m going out of order, I just had this one in my head tonight.

My son, again as a reward for modeling got to take some shots of me, but none really turn out to well. He’s been snapping away with his point and shoot lately, I probably need to clean off his CF card one of thee days.

Every time I use Adobe Flash, I end up feeling like a “very special” computer user, except one that is also drunk and wearing mittens. I can honestly have called myself a computer programmer of some sort since I was 7 (though I don’t list Apple Basic on my resume these days) and I’ve gotten to be a fairly competent Photoshop user, yet something about Flash is not clicking for me.

Tonight, I needed to update the banner that is on the home page at WMSE.org for an upcoming promotion they are having. It should have been pretty simple. There is a main SWF file that does the banner rotation, and I’ve edited that before, groping my way through ActionScript. It basically loads several other SWF’s to display as sort of a slideshow, but tonight I had to create a whole new SWF for it to display- nothing fancy, no animation, no video, and someone already did the artwork. Yet for the life of me it took almost an hour to figure out how to make it a clickable image. In the end, after much Googling I figured out how turn the image into an object, make it a button and set the action to getURL.

Oh yeah, WMSE has indeed updated it’s web site. I was a little premature back in December, but it’s been live now for a few weeks.  They will be promoting it on the air soon. There are still a few bugs that crop up from time to time (like random users can’t access the archives - if you’re one of them know I’m still trying to get to the bottom of it), but for the most part it is pretty solid, and is only going to get better from here.

As I mentioned last week, I upgraded my Samsung Blackjack to Windows Mobile 6.  I wasn’t one of those people itching for this upgrade.  I was pretty happy with the phone as-is(was?) Casually browsing different forums you’d see various people lambasting AT&T for delaying the release of the Windows Mobile 6 upgrade for the Samsung i607, better know as the Blackjack. Nonetheless, a co-worker mentioned it was available and I jumped in feet first.

So far the coolest feature is the key shortcuts in email. I don’t know how I stumbled across them, but if you are looking at the main list of your emails or messages, hold down the zero key.  Up will pop up a list of key shortcuts for acting on your emails:

0 - List Shortcuts
1 - Reply All
2 - Reply
3 - Mark Read/Unread
4 - Flag
5 - Move
6 - Forward
7 - Delete
8 - Download Message
9 - Send/Receive

I mainly triage email on my phone. Generally, I’ll read the email, and if I only need it for future reference, I’ll file it away in a folder.  Now, I hold down “5″ and the folder list comes up, I pick the folder and I’m done. Doesn’t save a ton, I could hit menu, 4, but it is one less keystroke.

In addition to getting my corporate e-mail over the Exchange ActiveSync connection, I get email from two IMAP accounts I have (one for this domain, one for my photography business) . Since I’ve yet to figure out how to get it to check those mailboxes on the same schedule as ActiveSync, I check them manually (it took two nights in a row of getting a new email notices at 3am before I knew I had to stop that in order to stay married.) Pressing and holding “9″ kicks off the send receive and I’m in fresh mail business.

I have no idea if this shortcut list was there in prior version.  I’ve been using some version of Windows Mobile for Smartphone for about four years now and don’t remember it.  Nonetheless, it does make life a little easier.

I took a few shots on my commute home, holding the camera against my dash to steady it.  One second exposure to make it seem like I’m driving at warp speed.  I figured the rain might make for some cool street reflections.  Unfortunately the windshield kept getting pretty dirty as well, so this was actually one of the few shots where it wasn’t too bad.

Sunrise from my driveway.

“The Mom That Rocks”

Trying to knock out another NYIP Project - this time having the subject (my son and his shirt and self-styled hair) in the foreground and off to one side (rule of thirds).  I want to get a shot of him with mom in the background and it took several takes to get it right (he generally wouldn’t stay in one spot), plus the room was pretty dark, so I had to add some light via a SB-24 into silver umbrella high camera left.

Warm inside, Cold Outside

This originally started as a shot for a another photo project - I’m enrolled in the New York Institute of Photography’s Professional Photography class. For Unit Two, I have two more photos left, one using framing, the other using the rule of thirds and putting your subject large in the foreground.

While I think I got the subject (this funky looking cactus that I’ve had since age 14) up front, the snow covered tree outside still dwarfs it.  I think I’m going to use it for the “framing” assignment though.

One of my first attempts at street photography.  I was down in the Third Ward around lunch and it was bitter cold.  Hopefully this conveys that a bit. This was shot on Broadway near Chicago. 

My Trusty Samsung Blackjack got a makeover!

I upgraded my phone to Windows Mobile 6 today and it get the honor of being today’s shot. I constructed a makeshift light tent out of some 11×17 copier paper and fired my trusty SB24 through the right side at 1/8 power. Here is my trusty phone, complete with pocket lint in between the buttons (and a nasty ding on the screen).

The only work done in PS was cropping out the sides of my light tent.  You can see in the setup shot it’s pretty small, so I had to stretch the background out: