19 posts from 2007

As a member of a craft mafia, I get asked by other crafters how to create or join one in their area. I've been asked about this by a woman in Houston, a woman in Dallas, a woman in Clevland, and 3-4 women in LA every year for the last three years. II respond to each of them with a moderate amount of information and encouragement to start their own group, or their own craft show. I get grateful responses from everyone, except for the women in LA. I hate to generalize about people in cities that are so stereotyped, but I find it very interesting. And confusing. Why do I get such dramatic differences between people living in LA and people living in several other cities?

14 inches and 5 pounds later

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A few weeks ago I got my hair cut. Like seriously cut. I got 14 inches (it was past my waist) of hair removed from my head and it felt great. It still feels great, actually. It was dull and lifeless for quite a while and I'm glad to have a little body and bounce back to it.

But this creates a conundrum for me now. Now that I have hair that barely skims my shoulders, I can't put it in a bun. Which is what I've been doing during warm weather when I want it off my neck. It isn't even long enough to turn into a ponytail. So how am I keeping from getting heat rash on my neck this summer? Pigtails. For the first time in about 25 years I'm going to be wearing pigtails.

I think I need a whole new wardrobe that is far hipper than I have to go with my pigtails as well. Or I could rock the Japan-teen Loli look? Or I could just not give a flying fig what people think of me and go for comfort. Which is probably what will happen.

10 years ago I graduated from The Ohio State University with a Bachelor's of Art in Journalism and another in Photography. My heavens! Things have changed a lot in the past 10 years in photography. Especially in regard to digital photography. I've been using a high-tech point-and-shoot for 6 years now. And I really liked the camera. It had most of the features I wanted but I saw how much better the quality of grain was with a DSLR and how much better the tones were with a DSLR. Taking pictures and then seeing the same photos that others took at the same place made me realize how much I was missing with my camera. And it made me envious. And pictures I took just started to look flat and empty and lacking. So I'm hoping that expaning my skills again with this DSLR will give me back some of what I've been missing. But there are just some basic rules that I learned when using film that don't hold true now in digital. And it is going to take me a while to get used to them.

For example, with film, one of the rules was "get it right in the camera." Make sure that you've got whites lit to come out white, and that you've got the exposure correct on film instead of trying to extrude better quality in the darkroom. But I'm realizing that this doesn't hold true entirely with digital. For example, I spent a good portion of this weekend trying to fiure out how to adjust the white balance in the camera so I didn't have tweak later with software. And I figured out how to do it, and it is simple and will certainly come in handy. But after doing some reading on digital photography and RAW vs. jpg I realized that it would be better for me to shoot in RAW, import the image into my laptop via software that lets me tweak the white balance. Why? Because my computer has better memory for doing alogrithmic interpolation work than my camera does. And I realized that RAW was a lossless compression whereas jpg is lossy (which means it loses data, creates an average based on the info you give it and has to ignore a lot of the info you provide it). Which means that I have to figure out how to switch my camera to shoot in RAW when I'm taking pictures that I'm hoping are Photographs and then switch back too jpg when I'm taking pictures.

I've not taken anything that I'm proud of showing off yet, but I imagine that will change soon. I've been doing lots of bracketing testing and tests of ISO and shutter speeds and aperture and the like. I may end up posting some of them as a combined photo to show how things change for my future reference.

And I'm realizing that I really miss the macro setting on my older camera. I think I'll either be investing in a 28mm lens with a macro function or I'll take the cheaper route for now and snag a macro ring for my 50mm lens. A lens which two people have told me I should get and one other person confirmed. I may end up missing the zoom function on my camera, but I'm thinking it will make me rethink how I shoot. And I need that. I need to relearn how to "zoom with my feet" as someone told me recently. She's right. It makes me more an active photographer. I'm looking forward to it.

I'll be the proud owner and user of a Digital Rebel XTi. I've let myself convince the budget in my brain that I can afford this, and I'm excited (for once) by the possibility of taking photos of my work to liven up my website. It's a business expense, this camera, don'tcha know?

I called Central Camera (downtown on Wabash) and spoke to a wonderful gentleman who I talked with a few weeks ago. I told him what I wanted, he asked where I wanted it shipped and I said "Well, I'm hoping to take it on a trip next week. Do you think it will be in by then?" I could hear him smile (I remember the days of working retail knowing I could make a customer happy) as he told me, "I could ship it out this afternoon." Glee leapt into my voice as my squeaked, "Really? That fast?"

So tomorrow afternoon, I'll be heading downtown to pick up my new camera and my 50 mm lens and my 2gig card and my camera strap and lens cleaning kit and UV filter. He even said, "Play around with the camera for a few weeks to learn its strengths and quirks so you can come in and try out some other lenses. That way you'll know what you like and what you don't like about the lens."

And at this point next week, I'll be taking pictures with my new camera in New Orleans. I'm excited about this. Much more excited than I thought I would be. "This is a tool, not a toy," I keep saying to myself. But I'm looking forward to playing with this new tool.

I am this close to calling a local camera shop and having them put an order in for one of these for me. It's a Digital SLR camera. Nowhere near the top of the line,  but still pretty good. I've been hanging out on Flickr looking at all varieties of sizes and photos that were taken with this camera and I'm pretty happy with it. I'm not entirely sure how well it handles low-light situations, but I still have my Canon G2 which does really well there so I think I might keep that for my taking around to places camera so I can use it to get snapshots.

I got to play with Ari and Michael Brown's camera at SXSW and loved it. The buttons just made more sense to me (since I've been used to having a Canon for 6 years now) and it felt better in my hands. It just fit better. Sort of like how Henckels fits better in my hand than Wustoff, even though they're both great knife manufacturers. I've watched Cecily grow by leaps and bounds since being on Vox. I've gotten caught up in Paul's desires for an SLR. I've seen the amazing photos that so many othe rpeople are able to get with their SLRs. I've looked at my product photos and seen them sorely lacking.

And we're going to a wedding in Key West at the end of July. And we're going to New Orleans in a few weeks for our anniversary vacation. New Orleans is a place that makes me feel so creatively alive its almost electric. Every crack in the sidewalk full of termite eggs jumps out at me. And I know that some of it is because it is a new place and I'm not used to seeing it. But a lot of it is the energy of the city. Energy that I don't feel able to capture with my point and shoot. Energy that I want to capture. And what better place to play with a new creative tool? The vibrancy when the sun shines. The haze that settles to mute everything and tamp it down just before a storm. If I'm going to purchase it I have to do it quick. But I think I ought to sleep on it overnight at least. At least.

And I'm very glad that I came across Reseller Ratings. They give you reviews of camera shops. I was considering ordering from a place online because the deal was so great. But after reading reviews on this place I realized al the cheap places seem like scams. And in the "practice what you preach" vein, I've decided that a trip to my favorite local camera shop is better anyway. If nothing else, I might get to try out some lenses before I decide to purchase them.

What was your version of teenage rebellion? 
Brought to you by the movie Georgia Rule.

My parents got off lucky. I rebelled by reading, learning, and hiding from people my own age as much as I could. I really didn't fit in at school so I sequestered myself and had contests to see how many pages I could read during a week. The following week I would try to break it. So this resulted in me staying up late reading by flashlight.

Although, my senior year I was bored to tears in some of my classes so I would skip them and hang out and watch daytime television at a friend's house. She didn't have cable and we really weren't friends since she wanted to get stoned and I didn't. So it worked for her cause I was sober I could hear if her mom was coming and she didn't require much interaction from me so I was able to channel surf and read and chill out and drink Fanta soda instead of sitting in my remedial level classes that I was way too smart for and therefore bored. Luckily for me, there was a freshman boy who had a crush on me and he would delete my name from the absentee list every day. That was awesome, but I never really appreciated him or thanked him cause I thought it was kinda weird that he, the cute skateboarder, would have a crush on me.

What's one of your favorite quotes? 
Submitted by Georgie-boy. 

by Tom Robbins:

In the haunted house of love, art is the only stair that doesn't creak.

Bitch magazinehas moved to Portland, OR. They've hired a number of web designers over the past 10 or so years, and since they're not tech-folks, they've essentially gottne screwed. So they've rustled up some cash (they don't say how much but they do say that it is likely less than the going rate) and they'd like to hire someone who is tech-nically proficient enough to do the things posted below. If you are this person, or if you know of someone in Portland who would be interested, feel free to contact Ray directly.

Thanks, Voxland. You rock!

Here's what they write:

>:::Immediate Changes:::
>* Add our staff bios and photos
>* Add our contact information
>* Find our back content (it's somewhere on the interweb, we swear)
>* Post our back content in its own section of the website
>* Add 2-3 blogs that run side by side on the main page
>* Add archived issues of our newsletter
>
>:::Long Term Changes:::
>* Build in a system to allow charging for online content
>*An updated look that's more in line with the style of the magazine
>*A podcast
>* Interactive videos (video clips with an ability to leave comments 
below)
>*A sectioned off portion of the site that can only be reached with 
>an account name and password
>
>:::We're looking for someone who:::
>* Lives in Portland and can meet in person at least occasionally
>* Has a strong understanding of coding and designing
>* Will respond to our questions/ requests in a timely manner
>* Can make regular updates to the site
>* Can communicate well
>* Ideally, will be able to make a minimum of an 12-month commitment 
>to Bitch (who would help with the transition to a new person)

Contact ray@bitchmagazine.com

Dear Laptop,
I know you're sluggish. I know you overheat. I know you have a very hard time keeping up with me. But if you could please hang on till Adobe releases Creative Suite 3, I would be so very, very grateful.

Thanks,
Your owner

Dear Adobe,
I've read that Creative Suite 3 will be released sometime in March through July of 2007. Could you please do me a huge favor and release it sooner rather than later? I have a laptop that is waiting for this to happen so it can go to the great Scottsdale in the sky.

Thanks,
Your customer

Dear Apple,
The next time you're ready to release a major overhaul of your system, can you please contact the companies that make the software that a lot of your customers use earlier so we can use your gigahertz of dual-processing power with the software that we want to use?

Thanks,
Your troubleshooter

Dear Stool Pigeon,
If you know when Adobe is releaseing CS3, could you please let it slip to me? I'll pay you and I'll promise not to share.

Thanks,
Your Secret Admirer

Dear Taxman,
When you process our tax forms, can you do your best to not make it cost us a whole lot? See I want a new computer, and if you're going to tell me I have to empty my savings account to pay you, I'm going to have to wait longer to buy a computer and that will make me sad. Very sad.

Thanks for your assistance,
Your client

Dear Self,
You really do need to make a decision about whether you go with the 15" MacBook Pro, the 13" MacBook, or a refurbished laptop that is older. And you need to decide if it is a better deal to get a new computer or a refurbished computer. And you need to decide if the $350 gamble to get the Apple Protection Plan is worth it. I know you hate making these kinds of decisions. But the more you read about this, the more confused you get. So maybe you should stop reading and start deciding? Just a suggestion.

Thanks,
Your Id