Plog 7-19-08: Still Hot Out Here

Trip to Zion over the weekend. I didn't get a lot of images - it was SO dang hot (over 100f) and crowded too. Normally I go to Zion in winter when it is perfect.

Anyhow, I found this little guy who ran up to drink water that was splashing out of the drinking fountain while some guy was filling up a water bottle.

Plog 7-15-08: AWESOME!

Ok, so I JUST discovered that I can email photos to my Smugmug. Somehow I missed that info when I was looking at the account stuff.

Anyhow, this is so great because the smugmug upload URL (just that one) is blocked at work. So now I can actually email photos and just move them to the Daily Photo gallery. I'm so excited! I will be able to more easily get daily photos out and hopefully not miss most days.

About this image, it is a shot of my watch that I took yesterday for a photo scavenger hunt. Love this watch :-D

Plog 7-13-08: Baseball, Baseball, Baseball

Went to my first night baseball game since 1994. It was tough, to say the least. In my opinion, I came out with pretty much zilch in the manner of decent shots. I was using my 70-200L with 2xTC and fully open at 5.6. I still ended up having to turn the ISO up to something like 500 or 640 for everything, just to keep the shutter speed high enough. Everything is SO grainy it is horrible.

I'll be downloading noise ninja this week to give that a try, but overall so far I'm very disappointed with the way my images turned out. Perhaps I'm not meant to do sports shooting anymore, I don't know. Sure these would work fine for B/W newsprints, but put them online or in color 8x10 or 11x14 prints and judges would rip me a new one.

:sigh:

Plog 7-8-8: Woohoo!

So a month or so ago I was checking OfficeMax for a printer. Well, while I was there I checked out the clearance bin (of course). In the bin was a 120GB laptop hard drive (new) for $10!! I didn't need it at the time, but I went ahead and got it.

Yesterday I ordered a very sweet enclosure to put the drive in and installed it tonight. It took about 5 minutes to set it all up and format it on my Macbook. I'm very impressed with the build quality of the enclosure and it works great! Self-powered via USB2.0.

Plog 7-7-8: Ungh.

So here's the deal. I'm not posting a 4th of july picture with fireworks. Why? Because you've seen enough and also because I already have a whole gallery of fireworks shots.

What is this photo? You may be wondering. Well, this was my treat to see on the way to work. On the block, only my idiot neighbors were shooting off fireworks - including shooting them off ON MY PORCH while I was not home. The deal is that this is the tree in my front yard. Yes, the idiots set it on fire on the 4th.

Did they leave me a note? NO. Did they appologize? NO. Did they call the fire department? NO. They did however set off the security alarm with the fireworks - so at least my husband ended up rushing home, but at 10pm didn't notice the charred tree.

So, I got to spend 2 hours after work today cleaning it all up and documenting the mess. The police will do nothing, the HOA will do nothing. The tree is going to be fine, it just charred the outer bark.

Plog 6-18-08: It's Hot Out There

Went to the "Strip" with the camera club tonight. Had a good time, though the time went to fast and I had to get home for bed. I liked the sad faces on the statues in a fountain, this is one of them. I think I might try some photoshop stuff on some of my other images, but this is all I have processed so far.

Time for bed.

Plog 6-15-08: Microphotography

Macro is soooo last year. The new black is Microphotography. Well, at least for me. I built my own lens today and this is one of my first test shots. It works great! Needs LOTS of light and is strictly Manual settings (no way to control the aperture as there is nothing to adjust).

This photo is a wheel on a train on the back of the UTAH quarter -this 100% crop really bad image I just took http://darkdragon.smugmug.com/photos/313636128_67ZE8-L.jpg

Plog 6-8-08: Ouch! Who Put the Wall Here?

Went out for more baseball shots. Some day I'll actually figure out how to get a nice sharp image, but until then at least the players do some funny things.

This guy was going to catch a fly ball and as you can tell was WAY off, and he slammed into the wall. Nobody was hurt but the home team did score a triple off his error.

Plog 6-7-08: Portraits

Got a very awesome new flash bracket which I'm testing out tonight. My first portraits in my new "home studio". Using my limited gear and the new bracket (which has a flash umbrella on it) I think I got some very decent shots. Then my flash ran out of juice. Will be working on some more tomorrow, but I'm happy with what I got tonight so far.

What do you think of this shot?

Plog 6-4-08: Baseball OOB

What can I say? I started with a baseball shot I took and made an OOB experience out of it. I think it works well with the shot.

[EDIT] This photo actually won 1st place in the "Creative" category and I have had many comments (good ones) as it now hangs in the hallway at the hospital the camera club meets at.