27 Feb 10 Shooting On King Street, Charleston
When I started taking photos as a young boy, it was with a Kodak Brownie B, which took a roll of 626 film. 8 shots. I would get ONE film for a week’s vacation. It was 2-3 weeks allowance to get it processed, and it took 7-10 days to come back, after I’d dropped it into the local pharmacy.
I used to wish I could have color, but that was too expensive to buy, let alone develop.
Then I got my first film SLR, a Minolta XG1. I had that camera 20 years. Strange thing was, that although I could now afford color, I used to love to shoot Black & White. There are, of course, ways to manipulate Black & White that you simply cannot do with Color.
I used to get a 64 ASA (ISO) black & white slide film, quite often.
I still have all those slides, and one day, I’ll get around to getting them digitized.
Now, with my DSLR (Canon Rebel XSi, or 450D to Europeans, and those in the UK), I shoot everything in color, and post process some in Photoshop to black and white.
To get the best results,I don’t simply use the monochrome option on the camera, nor just de-saturate the color image. Both of those options are one way destructive. I work with RAW files, and use adjustment layers to end up with a high quality black and white jpeg.
That way I still have the original color RAW file. I also save the PSD, particularly if I’ve used a few steps to get to the result, so I can re-produce the image again if I wish.
I’m not a professional photographer, this is (aside from photographs I take for web-site work), simply a hobby that I enjoy.
If I had bottomless pockets I would no doubt carry around a few thousand dollars worth of equipment, but, like most people, I haven’t.
Still, one can even get excellent results from some of the higher end Point & Shoot cameras out there these days, so it’s not imperative to have a back pack full of gear to get some decent photographs.
Tags: adjustment layers, back pack, canon rebel, color image, decent photographs, europeans, final result, king street charleston, kodak brownie, minolta xg1, professional photographer, psd, raw file, raw files, slide film, strange thing, taking photos, thousand dollars, white slide, xsi
25 Aug 08 Jaiku
Jaiku has been down all weekend. I looked about five minutes ago (10am Monday morning here), and it’s still down.
Strange thing is, I’ve heard barely a murmur about it, unlike when Twitter is even out for a hour or so.
Now I’d expect Twitter, which still needs to find some way to monetize the service, to be more likely to have periods of outage, than Jaiku, which is owned by Google.
Although there seems to have been somewhat of a Twitter hate campaign of late, it’s obviously still popular. Jaiku on the other hand is still (to my knowledge) still in limited ‘invite only’ beta, and therefore still relatively unused.
It seems to be the way of apps that get swallowed up by Google. Everyone waits with bated breath for new features and integration, and it doesn’t happen – well not for months and months at least.
Don’t get me started on Grand Central now.
Tags: apps, bated breath, five minutes, google, hate campaign, jaiku, monday morning, murmur, new features, periods, strange thing, twitter
02 Apr 08 That Time Of Year
It ‘s getting warmer.
Now, I’m never one to complain about the heat. I’d love it to be summer all year around. I don’t care about the seasons. I don’t want crisp frosty mornings, and I’ll be a happy camper if I never see snow in real life ever again.
Having said that, I don’t like stuffy. Somehow the heat at the beach or even in main street in the middle of August is better than a hot house.
A hot house? Yes, you know, when it’s not really that hot outside but indoors it’s really sticky.
The condo here is the pits for that. It’s two levels, and while downstairs is usually fine, and can even be fairly cool in the summer, upstairs is a different story. Recently, we’ve had the regime fees hiked up to an outrageous amount to pay for much needed and long neglected repairs and maintenance.
We’ve got a new roof, which has ridge vent tiles. It’s not made one iota of difference to the temperature upstairs. Right now, I have the sun room door open, and the front bedroom windows. There’s no real breeze though. It’s only 68F outside, but it’s 82 in here at this desk. According to my little gizmo on the desk here, the humidity is only 58% too.
Well, the strange thing is, it’s been around that most of the day, but now, around bedtime, it feels really warm and sticky in here. OK, I hear you say, what’s wrong with running the air conditioning?
It uses too much electricity.
No, I’m not a tree hugger. I’m a dollar hugger. The electricity bills hover around the $100 a month mark at this time of year, but once that a/c kicks in, I know it’s going to be on until well into the fall, and that monthly bill creeps nearer to $250 then. Working mostly from home doesn’t help, as I can’t turn it off in mid-summer, but then again, with the gas prices heading up and up, I’m saving more on gas than I’m spending on the electricity.
I guess I should look for a job within walking distance, then I’d save gas and electricity. Thing is, there doesn’t seem to be many IT companies within this immediate neighborhood, and anyway, I generally like my independence.
Still, it’s time to quit computers altogether for a few hours, and go take up that horizontal book reading position for a while.
I’m still looking forward to summer.
Tags: bedroom windows, bedtime, different story, downstairs, electricity bills, frosty mornings, gas prices, gizmo, happy camper, home doesn, iota, mid summer, pits, ridge vent, strange thing, sun room, time of year, tree hugger, vent tiles, walking distance
