Statrix Redux

It’s not my birthday, yet. Tomorrow, 1/11/2007, I’ll be for 49 years old. That’s about an hour from now, though technically speaking I was born several hours into the morning. Given my current timezone, HST, midnight is just about right now I suppose.
I have no special plans though, it’s just another day of work. Ah me, it was so much more fun to have a birthday when I was in elementary school.
And to the other 18,000,000 (give or take) folks born on 1/11, HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
Aloha!

Today was another busy day getting acclimatized to my new site. I haven’t completely figured everything out, especially with images, but at least I’ve got a few up now. I need to learn how to resize a little more efficiently.
On other fronts I think I’ve figured out IMAP access to my mail which is nice, now I can pretty much access anywhere without multiple copies, something I never could do with Yahoo!
And finally, I discovered the beta K2 theme for WP. It’s excellent. As you can see I’ve even managed the flickr RSS feed.
Aloha!

Well I managed to survive the move from Blogger to WordPress/ANHosting and my own domain. I’m certainly glad I did before I had too many posts as I don’t think there’s a simple way of moving things over. I did it using MacJournal. I copied my posts from Blogger into MacJournal, then posted them again to here. Afterwards I tweaked a bit to get the dates and such right, but now I should be fine!
It was a long day though with no time for photography and it’s time to call it quits. Tomorrow promises to be fun as I explore both WordPress and my new host!
Aloha!

Yesterday I was pleased to find that the eBay trigger and slaves I’d ordered had arrived. This is actually quite impressive as I’d ordered them four days before and they had to travel from Hong Kong. I’ve had orders on eBay from the mainland take quite a bit more time.
The package was an unassuming brown envelope, rather smaller than I’d imagined. This rather pleased me because I was afraid they might be larger than would be strictly useful. I have the hot-shoe variety, not the cabled variety (though they can be used that way I gather). I took this image quickly with dreaded on-camera flash just to illustrate what I received. There a better image in an article on the DSLRBlog about them. The item under the equipment is a homemade bounce diffuser I made with instructions linked on Strobist.com.
I unpacked the lot and spent a couple of minutes figuring out how to attach them to my D-80 and my SB-800. First the batteries went in and I managed not to break anything. The construction quality is about on a par with what you’d expect from inexpensive items such as these. I had no problems though.
It took a bit longer to figure out the setting on my camera. As it turns out, my trouble wasn’t with the settings (I used manual), but in seating the slave on the SB-800. I hadn’t completely attached the unit to the flash so no matter what settings I used the flash didn’t fire, though the test lights on the trigger and slave suggested they were communicating. A couple of tries later I got it and found to my delight that both slaves worked fine and fired the flash as expected.
I don’t have any images to show for all this yet though. I seem to be coming down with a bit of a cold so I’ve decided to take a break from all this and watch a movie or two today. The weather the last couple of days has been rainy off and on and as I ride a moped I get caught in it quite a lot. That hasn’t helped this possible cold.
I did, however, go out last night and pick up a book on lighting for outdoor portraits. That’s what I may be doing for that senior picture I mentioned previously. I’m not going to name the book because I’m not all that happy with it, but may change my mind with further reading. I also don’t feel I’m a qualified judge of photography books. I will say I don’t care for much of the work in it, though it does contain the sort of images I expect I’ll be asked to create for this assignment. Some of the problems I note in the images have to do with the models’ clothing distracting from the focus of the image. More on this topic can be found on Chuck Gardner’s site and compositional tutorials. I highly recommend his site and especially his tutorials on “Concepts for Lighting and Still Photography.”
Aloha!

Happy New Year to any and all MGPS folks who drop by for spell. As you can see by my photo I’m healthy, a bit too healthy by the look of my double chin!
Feel free to look around , leave a comment, whatevahs!
Aloha!

Here’s a quick shot, the kind I post to the Weather Underground “Wunder Photos”. The are generally grab shots I take from the roof at work or wherever I happen to be. They are almost always taken with a my FinePix F30 as it’s easy to take to work and carry in my pocket. Here’s the shot…

You can see it again here if you like along with all my others on that site.
As you can see, I don’t make too much of an effort to do more than document the weather. It’s hard to do much more than that in a few minutes break from work. Speaking of which, break time is over.
Aloha!

My, my, there’s so much to do here if I want this blog to be successful, at least according to “informed sources.” That really brings up the question of what this blog is intended to do. I like to think of it as a “starter” blog, at least it’s my “starter” blog.
I remember when I was a kid many moons ago I grew some “starter” beans. No giant came down a beanstalk, but it sure was fun. I grew them hydroponically on our lanai and had, as I recall, about five plants growing out of a plastic dish tub. The setup actually produced enough lima beans for a good meal for myself and my mom and dad.
Well I guess that’s what I’m doing here. Trying to grow at least one good meal with some “starter” beans.
My two big interests these days, at least those I’ll talk about, are photography and travel, preferably together. I’ve only been taking a P&S along, most recently a FinePix F30, which I love. It’s a great camera, especially in low light. A lot of my weather photos have been taken with it. I’ve also recent acquired a Nikon D80 which is a bit more flexible as you might imagine and quite a bit of fun. I’m mostly using it with Nikon’s 18-200 VR lens which may not be sharpest tool in the drawer, but is fine for my purposes.
Travel, my other big interest, is great. Especially if you have time to make some images. I haven’t gotten to the point where image making takes precedence over vacationing, but I have a good time. My recent trips, in order, have been:

• Toronto
• Bangkok
• Seattle

That’s enough for the moment, I need to work on a couple of grab shots I just took on the roof here at work as there was a great rainbow outside. The biggest “trick” to photography I’ve learned so far, “CARRY A CAMERA EVERYWHERE!”

Christmas has come and gone for another year. Instead of spending a fortune shopping or completely ignoring the gifting this year, I decided to do something different. Since I’ve been doing more and more photography, I took an image I’d recently taken, tossed on an appropriate thought, printed a bunch of them, stuck them in frames, and gave them to my family members. They loved them, more for the fact that I created them I think than any real artistic value. But it was fun.

So there I am at the party when my sister mentions that a friend’s daughter is graduating from HS this year and would I be interested in taking some “senior pictures.” I’m pretty sure this is different from the actual graduation picture. I believe these are shots that they can include in the yearbook, give to friends, what have you, in addition to the “official” head shot.

To be honest, I said no at first. I suggested they hire a professional to make sure it came out right. They said no, my sister would be taking them with a point and shoot.

My sister is a talented woman and I love her dearly. She may be a very talented photographer though I haven’t seen any of her work. It was the point and shoot thing that got me. Mind you I use one all the time. I like them. I carry mine everywhere. I still think it’s a little hard to control the results, though I’ve gotten some nice images from them…

The upshot is I agreed to take the images. Of course I don’t have the equipment for the task. Currently I’m shooting a Nikon D80 and generally use their 18-200 VR lens. I’ve got an SB-800, but only one, and not much else. What to do…?

Well the last time I did a favor for someone, I ended up buying the SB-800. A friend wanted me to shoot his living room after it had been refurbished so he could send the images to his partner for her approval. I knew enough to know I’d need more light, hence the SB-800. The images came out okay, not brilliant but up to the task. Of course the favor cost me $300, but I did get a great flash out of the deal, and thanks from my friend.

Let me state here, just in case this is actually read, I’m not complaining. The flash was on my list of things to get and all this did was push it up a month or two.

Of course having only one SB-800 isn’t very flexible. I got to thinking I need more light and need to learn something about lighting. I discovered Strobist.com.

I still haven’t heard if I’m going to be allowed to take the pictures, but just in case…I’ve gone hog wild and ended up ordering…

• Another SB-800 (Hey! It increases the rebate, so there!
• Two light stands and adapters
• Four umbrellas (two came with the stands [white], two were added [silvered])
• Cheap eBay radio slaves (just in case the we’re outdoors and the sun overpowers Nikon’s CLS)

Overkill? Maybe, maybe not. However, it’s another case of moving things up the list a bit. Since I’ve found the Strobist.com folks I’ve been on a lighting bent and realize that it’s probably far cheaper than getting faster glass and perhaps more importantly, even faster glass won’t put light where it’s not.

Anyway, now that I actually have a topic to talk about, I’ll see if I can keep this blog going for a bit, at least until I take those darn photos!

Aloha! Bob