Blogs

On Thursday April 9th I participated in a “Painting with Light Workshop” at Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta, GA. Judith Pishnery of Pisconeri Studio & Workshops brought us together for a night of photography and learning. We began the night around 7pm filling out releases and donning nametags on the porch of the visitor’s center. After an introduction by Judith and some words from the cemetery staff we were left to wander the cemetery to get acquainted and take some pre-nightfall photos. ...

Awhile back I got a flat rear tire caused by a damaged wheel, I must have hit a pot hole a lot harder than I remember, and it took me a couple months to get the wheel repaired and a new tire. Last weekend I took the bike out for a couple shake down runs checking the torque of the bolts keeping the tire on and brake caliper in place. After a two hour ride in the bitter cold I got home and gave the bike a good once over. ...

Adobe Lightroom I first wrote about using Lightroom on September 7th, 2008 after using it to process photos for DragonCon. Since then I have read Scott Kelby’s book “The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book for Digital Photographers” and used Lightroom to process all of my images. I am still amazed at how fast I am able to process photos that of a more consistent and higher quality than ever before. I recently shot a youth basketball game where I took around 300 pictures and using Lightroom culled that down to 97 good shots with meta-data, color correction, noise reduction, rotating and cropping all in under 2 hours. ...

If you love motorcycles you will love this museum. My wife was kind enough last year to give me a gift certificate for a weekend at the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum. I finally got to cash in on that gift this January and spent a Saturday touring the museum. I have always loved motorcycles, a Honda Shadow, while in the Navy and now ride my BMW R850R every chance I get. ...

I have recently received a promotion that has left me feeling disorganized and a bit overwhelmed. I spent time with my manager discussing how I could better prioritize my time and how to get and keep a clearer understanding of what my team is working on. I noticed that my manager uses a Franklin Covey Planner and it appears to work well for her so I have decided to follow in her footsteps and do the same. ...

I purchased a Drobo from Newegg.com and three days later the UPS man dropped it off at my door. My previous post to the blog outlines the reasons why I chose the Drobo as a storage solution. Setup was very easy, the top of the box full of cables shows the three steps to getting started and it really is that easy. I took the Drobo out of the box Removed the packaging material Inserted 4 Samsung 1TB hard drives Put the Drobo on my desk Plugged in the Firewire 800 cable Inserted the Drobo disc and installed the Drobo Dashboard Plugged in the power cable to the Drobo Here began my only snag, the Drobo appeared to go into a loop of restarting which it did not recover from. So unplugged the Firewire cable and then the power cable and restarted the computer. Once the computer cam back up I plugged in the Firewire cable and then the power cable and the Drobo jumped to life. The computer warned about the drive being unreadable and the Drobo began the process of walking me through partitioning and formatting the drive. I used a 16TB partition and HFS+ formatting. It was done in about 5 minutes and popped up on my desktop just like any external hard drive would. I immediately began copying my music library to the Drobo from an external USB drive This really is an amazing device; I was able to start using it within 15 minutes of opening the box. It is almost invincible on my desk; its sleek black case and solid construction give me confidence. Not having to install rails on the individual drives is also a plus. ...

I believe I first heard about the Drobo on This Week in Tech (TWiT) with Leo Laporte, but it may have been on This Week in Photography (TWiP) which is a podcast with members who are also on TWiT, but it is the photographers on TWiP that really convinced me that the Drobo is worth its price. I have always belived in making regular backups, for years I used CDs and then DVDs to backup my photos, documents, music, and all work related files. I even went as far as making three sets of discs, 1 for the office, one at home, and one at my parents house. My parents thought it was funny that I was giving them stacks of 20 or more DVDs every couple months. ...

In the mid 90’s I had a Mac, a Performa 600, and used System 7.5. I worked at a couple different pre-press printing jobs where the primary computers used were Mac’s. This is where I learned Photoshop, Illustrator, Quark, and a lot of little utility applications. But by 2000 I had moved on to Windows 95, 98, 98 SE, and finally Windows XP SP3. Back in the day I did not expect much from my computers, they were pretty process specific and even though they did many different tasks, their main purpose was either printing or the creation of multimedia. But as time goes by I have begun to demand a lot from my computers and the software that runs on them. My computers get used for everything from hard-core gaming to editing 200-megabyte images, managing a music collection with tens of thousands of files to instant messaging, from building dynamic web sites to hosting multiple virtual machines. I have no less than 100 different third-party applications installed on any computer I use regardless of operating system or the computer’s main purpose. ...

I have been using SmugMug to host and sell my photography and seeing their participation in the photography community is one of the reasons I continue to use them. Vincent was one of the first people chosen to test and stretch the limits of the Canon EOS 5D Mk III which he did wonderfully with “Reverie.” SmugMug hosts the video of “The Making of Reverie” along with other content from Vincent, here is his SmugMug home page.

Had a great time at the 2008 Wings over Marietta Open House & Airshow. This was my first opportunity to see the USAF Thunderbirds. It was a beautiful day with a wide variety of aircraft to see. Photos of the 2008 Wings over Marietta Open House & Airshow Gallery or you can view the photos as a slideshow.