First Ride of the Season

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. ...

April 5, 2009 · 3 min · 516 words · Dave Nelson

Updates to Previous Posts

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. ...

March 13, 2009 · 3 min · 575 words · Dave Nelson
Indian Motorcycle from Barber

Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum

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. ...

January 24, 2009 · 1 min · 196 words · Dave Nelson

Getting Organized

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. ...

January 15, 2009 · 2 min · 343 words · Dave Nelson

Feeling Drooby

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. ...

January 4, 2009 · 4 min · 707 words · Dave Nelson

My Mac Experience So Far

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. ...

January 2, 2009 · 3 min · 627 words · Dave Nelson

SmugMug Sponsoring Vincent Laforet’s Next Big Project

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.

December 22, 2008 · 1 min · 77 words · Dave Nelson

2008 Wings over Marietta Open House & Airshow

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.

October 26, 2008 · 1 min · 58 words · Dave Nelson

Red Sox vs. Dodgers

Today was a beautiful day for baseball. I had a great time photgraphing the Red Sox and Dodgers playing a great game at Pinckneyville Park. Photographs of the game are now available.

October 4, 2008 · 1 min · 32 words · Dave Nelson

Scott Kelby’s Worldwide Photo Walk

On Saturday August 23rd I spent a beautiful night participating in Scott Kelby’s Worldwide Photo Walk in Atlanta Georgia around the Buckhead – Lenox area. At 7:00 pm about 45 photographers gathers in front of the Terminus 100 building at the corner of Peachtree and Piedmont eager to attack the neighborhood. I did not really feel inspired until I got to Dante’s Down the Hatch where I stepped inside and got a couple pics of the crocodiles inside. The energy inside the restaurant and seeing the reptiles fired me up to get out there and take a lot of photos. ...

August 26, 2008 · 2 min · 305 words · Dave Nelson