Archive for April, 2007
- Science: Just Another Word for Mythology? - April 29th, 2007
- Finally, Some Common Sense — Bill Would Overturn Increase In Internet Radio Royalities - April 29th, 2007
- But Wait, There’s More - April 26th, 2007
- What’s The Buzz? - April 26th, 2007
- Pirate Keyboard - April 25th, 2007
- Writing by Hand … - April 25th, 2007
- When Things Just Work… - April 24th, 2007
- Profundity - April 23rd, 2007
- What Lens is This? - April 22nd, 2007
- On Fire! - April 20th, 2007
- Friday flowers - April 20th, 2007
- The Country - April 20th, 2007
- Given a Choice … - April 18th, 2007
- On Letting Go - April 18th, 2007
- As If the RIAA Weren’t Bad Enough … - April 17th, 2007
- Long-lost relative? - April 16th, 2007
- Overly Optimistic? - April 13th, 2007
- And I Thought They Were Just Neat Wooden Toys - April 12th, 2007
- Food chain in action - April 12th, 2007
- Not Pretty… - April 11th, 2007
- Jamestown Settlement - April 10th, 2007
- The XTi Report … - April 10th, 2007
- Bird report - April 10th, 2007
- We Are Back … - April 10th, 2007
- I Know Why They Died! - April 8th, 2007
- Williamsburg - snowy Saturday - April 8th, 2007
- Williamsburg in April? - April 7th, 2007
- Room With a View - April 7th, 2007
- Colonial Statement? - April 6th, 2007
- Pooched - April 6th, 2007
- Welcome to My Morning - April 6th, 2007
- Williamsburg Vacation - April 6th, 2007
- Nikon CLS v. Canon E-TTL II - April 4th, 2007
- Couldn’t Do This Yesterday - April 4th, 2007
- Like an OM1, Only Digital - April 4th, 2007
- Bounce Adapter for Sigma Flash - April 3rd, 2007
- Utter Frustration - April 2nd, 2007
Mythos is a Greek word, meaning story, or legend. And, every culture has stories, or myths or legends, attempting to explain the forming of the Earth, and animals and man. Science attempts the same thing. Does it not follow that science, then, is myth?
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A few weeks ago, I commented on a story about the Copyright Royalty Board sticking it to non-traditional broadcasters with regards to music royalties, setting rules that would force internet and cellular “radio stations” to pay up to 300% more than traditional over-the-air broadcasters.
Fortunately, there are some in congress who have some common sense.
U.S. Reps. [...]
I finally got around to ordering/downloading/installing Adobe’s Lightroom program. I wanted to take advantage of their $100-off introductory pricing.
After having played with the public beta versions, and even with the original trial version, I must say that the final release version is a vastly different program, at least under the skin. Loading and operating [...]
As you know, we’ve been busy here, upgrading equipment for our photographic business, Orchard Studios. With a new camera, from Canon instead of Nikon, came the need to make a decision about new flash equipment. To this point, we’ve been using Nikon’s wireless “creative lighting system,” based around an SB-800 and a pair of SB-600 [...]
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What does “writing by hand” have to do with photography? A lot really. It’s all about planning, according to this article by Oscar Colorado on the new Canonites photography forum site.
The gist of the article is that, by imposing certain restrictions on yourself, you can become a better photographer. Treat your memory cards like film, [...]
I just love it when things just work. For instance, this morning, I added wireless networking capability on the little production sub-LAN at work. I selected a Linksys WAP45G wireless access point. Within about 10 minutes, I had three laptops and a PDA up and on-line.
That’s the way, uh-huh, uh-huh, I like it, uh-huh, uh-huh!
Post [...]
The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
Niels Bohr
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I posted a few more pictures from Friday’s Brookside Gardens trip to my flickr photo stream. All my Brookside Gardens images may be seen by clicking here.
So, what lens do you think I used for this image? (Those of you who have looked at the image info at flickr can’t guess). Look at the [...]
Since it was such a gorgeous day (and since I’d just picked up a Tokina 12-24mm f/4 wide-angle zoom for the Canon), Donna and I decided to head down to Brookside Gardens after she got off work today.
In honesty, the light was mostly too harsh, but, I figured I’d go ahead a shoot. It’s not as if I [...]
We went to Brookside today, since the weather was nice and I wanted to be sure to catch the tulips in bloom. Came away with several I liked — reasonable results with the Tokina 12-24mm (which I inherited from Geren when he went Canon a few weeks ago) and Tamron 90mm macro lens — here they [...]
Today’s Photo Friday theme is “The Country.”
It’s been a while since I’ve participated in any of the photomemes. There just hasn’t been the time. But, this morning, the theme fit this image, which I already had in my library — as soon as I saw the theme announcement, it came to mind. Nothing says “Country” to a Marylander [...]
I went down to Penn Camera today to buy a couple of new lenses, one of which was planned to be a Tamron 70-300mm f/4-5.6 zoom. I took my camera with me, so I could try the lens out before bringing it home. While I was there, I compared it against the Canon 70-300mm f/4-5.6 [...]
One of my flickr friends, Samantha Murphy, has written an very powerful commentary on following her dream.
I get letters from young kids telling me how much they dream to do certain things, but their well intentioned parents have expressed not only displeasure but have instilled the belief that it can’t be achieved. I totally get [...]
It seems that the RIAA hasn’t been able to exert enough power to control what we listen to, and how we get to listen to it. Now, the record companies have, through the “Copyright Royalty Board,” chosen to charge non-traditional broadcasters (meaning, anything other than standard over-the-air AM and FM radio stations) increased royalties — [...]
I think I found a long-lost relative of my mom’s side of the family when we were in Jamestown last week! Click here to see the full post on my Flickr page.
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NEW YORK (AP) — Pledging to rebuild “the competence of government and the confidence of the American people,” Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton says she wants to streamline the functions of the federal government and boost its accountability to taxpayers.
[Full story here]
That’s a pretty tall order, considering just how long our government has been in [...]
brio \BREE-oh\, noun:Enthusiastic vigor; vivacity; liveliness; spirit.
Though my judgment was no doubt affected by all the wine we’d consumed, I remember being elated by our performance that night: our inspired spur-of-the-moment dialogue, the actors fleshing out their roles with such brio.– Gail Godwin, Evensong
For him, life must be a party, a ball, an [...]
Visit my flickr stream for the food chain in action: Double-crested Cormorants having their lunch in the James River on Monday.
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Last night, we purchased a new hard disk for my laptop, and I began the setup process. The laptop BIOS recognized the new drive instantly, and all appeared to be going well. I partitioned and formatted the drive, and then began a program to attempt to clone the setup of the old drive. With this program [...]
Here are some pictures from the Jamestown Settlement, which is an interpretive living history exhibit and museum located adjacent the actual National Park. All of the images were taken with the Rebel XTi, and in no case did I use flash.
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The XTi is off probation, for sure. If you haven’t already, check out some of the images on this site or my flickr stream. I did find some of interesting things, though ….
If you have the ISO set too high in bright light, the image will be horrible. In other words, shooting ISO 1600 in bright light yields a [...]
While in the Jamestowne historic areas, we watched:
two Brown-headed Nuthatches hollowing a new nest out of a dead tree
two Red-headed Woodpeckers, also working on new nests
one adult Double-crested Cormorant chowing on a huge catfish (which it ate from the inside out) and one juvenile (who swallowed his smaller fish whole)
one BANK SWALLOW
Bald Eagle in its [...]
Well, folks, we are back from our trip to Williamsburg. We rolled in around 10:30 last night. I’ll try to get some “trip wrap-up” pictures posted today — I was just too exhausted to do it last night.
The laptop (remember the laptop?) seems to have been able to get over at least some of its [...]
Today, we ventured down to Jamestowne for the day. I know why so many of them didn’t survive that first winter. That place was cold!
This is the part of the marshy area that separates James Island from the mainland. This was made with three images, and the PhotoStitch software that came with the Rebel XTi. This is [...]
Visit my flickr photostream for my take on our snowy Saturday in Williamsburg! (see link at lower right)
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As I mentioned early today, we woke up to a bitter cold, snowy day here in Williamsburg. But, we didn’t let that stop us from getting out and getting lot’s of pictures.
We really didn’t expect the snow, and neither did anyone else…
Occasionally, the sun would pop out and give us some light, and cause [...]
Or, who’s frigging idea was this?!?!?
Here’s what we woke up to this morning. Yeah, this is shot through the hotel room window.
Mind you, this here vacation we’re on was Donna’s idea of having a nice trip to Williamsburg to see the tulips in bloom and have everything be nice and spring-like and …
WARM!
WITHOUT SNOW!
We [...]
This was about the first thing we saw once we finally made it to the historic area of Williamsburg. A little odd, we thought, this being Easter weekend, and all.
We wondered around the area, generally scoping out for shooting for the next couple of days. I pushed the XTi a bit, doing pretty much [...]
Damn if my laptop isn’t pooched. I had got the most important stuff off the drive (I hope), and asked Norton Disk Doctor to have another look. It, again, indicated that it couldn’t work on the drive because something else had it in use, and that I should schedule a repair and reboot the computer.
And [...]
Yes, we’re heading out to Williamsburg at some point late this morning. At least, I think that’s the plan. Donna had a couple of medical tests to go to this morning before we left, and I figured I’d take the time to fix what I thought might be a minor problem on my laptop.
Ugh.
So, what’s [...]
We’ll be heading off to Williamsburg for the Easter holiday. If there’s time, we will try to visit the Eastern Shore National Wildlife Refuge, near Cape Charles, VA.
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Previously, I promised that I’d comment on some of the tidbits I’ve gleaned from various documentation about Canon’s E-TTL II flash and the corresponding wireless control, and how it relates to the Nikon CLS system.
From a basic standpoint, they’re pretty much the same thing. Both systems allow for wireless remote control of a number of [...]
I wouldn’t even have tried this shot with the D70s. This is a German Dwarf Ram swimming around in our aquarium. It’s not a perfect image, but, here are some particulars:
f/3.2 at 1/125, ISO 1600, using available light. Lens is the Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8 on the Rebel XTi.
[Update: Forgot to mention -- this is [...]
Some of you may remember back to the early seventies, when Olympus introduced the OM1. It was, very simply, the smallest 35mm full-frame SLR made.
It was an excellent camera, coupled with superb optics that rivaled the Nikkor, Canon and even Leica lenses of the day. But, man!, was it small! When I chose my first 35mm SLR in the late [...]
This struck me as pretty funny. In an era where everything has to be fancy and expensive …
This is the bounce flash adapter sold by Sigma for their 500-series flash units. According to the Sigma web site:
Soft and natural lighting with a surface light source.
A three dimensional effect is created, making this an ideal accessory [...]
We spent the weekend at my parents place on the Eastern Shore, and Sunday, even though the weather was marginal, we went over to Assateague to do some shooting.
What I ended up with was 229 exposures that were utter crap. To say that I am frustrated is an understatement.
Here’s an example. This is a [...]
