My Dream
Posted on March, 5 at 4:42 am
Tonight, this is my dream where I come out of the cold shadows and enter up into the light. Each step I take I can feel the heat from the light warming my skin and the most calming feeling begins to flood my body. I can not see clearly what will be waiting for me with each step towards the tranquil light. I do not fear the light as the body soothes from the heat. I slowly look back to only see the shadows growing closer and darker as they morn the lose. My own shadow is almost out of the cold shadows as it tries to hold on to the dark. The grass around my feet is slowly becoming less weighed down from the tears of the shadows as the light dries the tears away allowing my feet to flow freely through the grass. The colors start to flourish and become rich all around me. The dark and ill colors of the shadows are too weak to even notice as they have given up hope and no longer see anything but the wet, cold ground from their tears. As the light becomes brighter I must squint to try and see what is up ahead. The trees beside me are standing tall, guiding me and the warmth of the light is reassuring and encourages me to keep going. I stop and turn around for one last look and I notice my very own shadow is no longer taller than me. My shadow is being consumed by the light as it fades. I whisper to my shadow, it’s alright, you will always be with me. I reach out to my shadow and as I do, I can see my shadow has faith in me that we are gonna be safe. The shadows in the back are confused, scared and can only feel a sense of loss as they question the little faith they have left. I begin to feel sorry for the shadows, but I can not help them now. I turn around and raise my hand up to to act as a visor to try and see what is up ahead of me. The light surrounds me with it’s warmth and I slowly walk and feel with each step the burdens lift off me. I look down at my feet and as I raise my head back up, I can no longer see anything as I am now consumed by the light. I can hear the happiness, feel the joys in the light and I no longer feel physical. I am not alone and feel the love in the light. I have become a part of the light, I am the light, I am the hope and I will wait for all to join me. I will shine upon you till you are ready to join the light.
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Travelin
Posted on March, 3 at 5:10 am
Last weekend I did something that I haven’t done in a very long time. I drove down to Bismarck, ND and met up with a wonderful gal that I have been chatting to since end of December. It felt great to get out of the area and to have fun. The first thing we did was checked out Bobsphoto store to check out the photography stuff and I finally got a camera bag that I am satisfied with, Lowpro Flipside 200. I was surprised at their prices, they were right in line with other online retailers and were very friendly. I know I could definitely spend a lot more money at that store if I really wanted to. I had the will power to hold off tho, ehehe. We then went over to BestBuy and looked at laptops. We then had a wonderful meal at AppleBees followed by movies. Her babysitter plans fell through so we had a young chaperone along with us. The chaperone was a hoot tho, I think she could bring a smile and a laugh to anyone. So now what? Well I guess we just go with the flow. March is a hectic schedule for me unfortunately. It could be a little rough going for time with spring arriving with the forecast of flooding every where, it could make traveling interesting. Let’s hope the flooding just stays away.
The picture I captured of the Bald Eagle was on my way home. I was cruising along and looked up and had to come to a stop pretty quickly. I was surprised it stayed there long enough for me to grab a shot. I would of preferred my bigger lens, but I figured there was no way it was gonna let me switch out lenses. I always stress to people to carry a camera with them at all times, you just never know when the shot will be presented.
I finally started working on CJ’s dvd graduation video. Scanned in a bunch of pics. I’m glad Ally lived in the digital camera age, it will be a lot less photos to scan in with her. So as you go through the photos you get to take a trip down memory lane. I just wish I knew how to take better pictures back than, lol. I got to work on her senior announcement also. She picked out a template so I just got to get it all lined up. I saw Bobsphoto will do the cards for .99 cents a piece, which I thought was a good price. I should get a test print into them to see how they match up with my monitor. Time is ticking and it’s March already. The year is whizzing by and graduation will be here before we know it. Her plans are to move right away, she seems to have everything under control. I don’t have any doubts in my mind that she will do just great on her own. I do hope she becomes a bit more social tho in college.
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Mother Nature needs to take a nap
Posted on February, 16 at 3:34 am
The snow just keeps coming and coming. It seems like mother nature is getting a nasty habit of rolling in bad weather for the weekends and making getting to and from events a mess for many. Hockey season is in full motion and a lot of our games are away games, so it’s making it rather interesting for teams to travel. I should also mention the college indoor track is also on with them trying to travel also. I bet this weekend will be beautiful tho as I am working it. It seems to never fail the weekend you get to work the weather is just beautiful outside. It’s just not our area that is getting dumped on, seems the whole USA is battling weather and areas are getting dumped on with snow that are not normally custom to even seeing it. It’s sure gonna make for an interesting spring if this keeps up.
I was suppose to head out over the past weekend and have a date, but we will try that again in a couple weeks and hopefully the weather will cooperate this time. So I got to spend some time with Ally and we watched some Olympic girls hockey, also she had a game on Sunday. She than tried the snowboard, but we soon discovered that soft snow does not work with snowboards. One needs a groomed trail or something for that.
February is over half done already. The year is definitely moving quickly. I finally sent in my taxes the other day.  I need to invent some more deductions, if only pets were deductible, eheheh. I am hoping March will be a quiet month as far as weather. If we get into flooding situations, I so want to get up in a plane to take aerial photos. Lets hope for no flooding tho, that would be better.
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In Rolls February
Posted on February, 1 at 3:30 pm
I had a nice 4 day weekend and got the opportunity to get out and get some pictures. I would of preferred a bit warmer temperatures, but January in North Dakota is usually cold. We did get our January thaw tho and I did get out during that time too. I am looking forward to spring tho, just not the wood ticks. I was reading the other day on the NOAA site that the spring flooding situation isn’t looking good. I know we got a lot of snow and hopefully it’s not full of moisture, but a lot of areas did get a lot of rain in the last blast. Hopefully the rest of the winter will remain quiet as far as moisture.
I did make it back into my favorite place over the weekend. Usually one can’t drive back in there in the winter time, but they are in the process of moving the old house off the farm so they have the road open. It’s tough getting around in there as the snow is deep and all you do is sink. One needs to look into some affordable snowshoes to get around.
Luka sure enjoyed getting out and exploring. She did run into another coyote and thankfully the coyote took off immediately and she didn’t pursue. She sure tuckered herself out tho plowing through the snow. Wednesday sounds like it is gonna be a nice day and maybe we can get back out on Wednesday for a quick trip.
Ally also made it out and we had a great day snapping photos.
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Firefox goes Bing, ewwww
Posted on January, 22 at 12:40 pm
Instead of Mozilla forcing upon the people Bing, they could of at least warned or gave an option during the install to change or keep your current search engine, good grief. So how do you get back google as your default?   Well, luckily it’s easy with only a few steps.
1. Open up Firefox and in the url box type in about:config and you get the pretty warning box, continue to click on I’ll be careful, I promise! button.
about:config
2. You should see a screen like this now:Â
about:config page
3. Now you see at the top, a Filter url box, so we need to type in that box keyword.URL and presto, we see the line we need to change. Please note the url you see is different as I already changed mine.
keyword.URL
4. Go ahead and double click on line and you will get a pop up box to enter your new url. You will want to enter in http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&q=
Changing URL
5. Click the OK button and Restart Firefox for good measure and you will now be back to good old google search engine. Try typing Kate Beckinsale into the URL box of firefox, you should get google and Kate 
  I do say Enjoy! Also, I hope for the love of pete when microsoft changes the name of their search engine that they come up with something better than bing. They keep changing their name to convince you it’s new and better, blah! Just Google It! Shame on Mozilla tactics!
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January Thaw
Posted on January, 18 at 9:07 pm
Last week brought our January thaw and I missed out on most of it due to having the flu. It wasn’t the full blown flu, just enough to feel tough and need lots of sleep. Thursday and Friday were the two worst days and by Saturday I was doing pretty good again. I did manage to get out on Monday tho and drive around the country side and capture the beautiful sunset. The back roads are tough getting around on. It doesn’t take long for the wind to blow in the roads.
Last Saturday I got to take Jody and Terry’s engagement pictures. We did it at the office and I am using digital backgrounds on them. I forgot how much work it was to deal with digital backgrounds. I think so far they are turning out good. I will be shooting their wedding too. That should be interesting and it’s planned to be an outdoor wedding, which I think is great, as I don’t have to fight low light conditions of a church. I so need to get the 70-200 f/2.8 lens.
I am enjoying the ISO 3200 feature tho. At the last hockey home game I got to try it out and was able to stop action shots as I was able to pull up my shutter speeds. I still need to figure out the lighting where some pics turn out pink. It’s really weird at how some turned out perfect and the next one is pink. I read that is due to the cycling of the lights, something else to read up on I guess. I was reading at how people are strobing their sporting events. Learned some great tips and would be so cool to try it out, but I would need a more reliable wireless triggering system for the flashes.
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It’s a New Year
Posted on January, 13 at 7:44 am
It seems we have hit our January thaw this week with temps reaching up to 30 F degrees! Hard to believe it is going to be the middle of January in a couple days. Just think tho, in like 2 months we will be heading into Spring! I sure hope it does come early this year and it doesn’t come with a bunch of water. I’m pretty sure the people have seen enough water in the past year.
I’m on track with my New Year’s stuff/plans.  I have retired off the ambulance and search and rescue squad. People keep asking me why both and I’m just saying because it is for my own personal reasons that I feel are best for me. I want to focus on other things in life and I had to start there. I will miss it, but it’s all good. So step 1 is complete and we will see where the next step will take me. Step 2 involves being very open to anything, just taking things in for a while and see which direction to go in the Spring. Things will just continue to roll along after that. This is the first year I think I have laid out some sort of plan or goal to achieve. I was told it’s important to have goals in your life for many years and I didn’t pay much attention to it. My goals have pretty much been take things as they come and deal with it on a daily basis. Sure that works, but everyone needs a direction to go in. Hopefully your direction is headed to a positive horizon. Maybe I am just getting older and realizing things about life. The big one would be, I’m not getting any younger. Each year seems to fly by faster and faster. My dad always told me to never wish my life away when I was a kid. I did a lot of wishing as a kid to get time to go faster. Now I am wishing for time to slow down. I’m noticing people around me are getting older even. Things and people are changing and it’s showing. I’m in no rush at the moment and just gliding through the winter here and I’m pretty happy about everything so far. Let’s just be happy and don’t take things seriously and avoid the drama as much as possible.
Oh btw, my first photo for 2010 was on the way home off of work on New Year’s morning. It’s the blue moon that won’t happen again till like 2028.
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Christmas
Posted on December, 27 at 6:38 am
Christmas has come and gone and it was an interesting Christmas for many as the weather raged across the nation. We still enjoyed our small and quiet Christmas tho. Everyone seemed to have a good time. Darwin made it in before the weather turned bad. I was able to use the new softbox and get a complete pic of all the kids together.
I got framing tools and stuff for pictures, which was a great idea as they will come in handy when building frames. I even got prefabricated oak material in 4ft lengths to cut up into frames. All I need is a glass cutter setup and I’d be set to go. I don’t want to get into big or anything, but it is nice to do the occasional frame here and there.
I decided to go outside about 3-4am and snap some pictures of my poor car that got buried in the blizzard. Pretty much just the roof was left for visibility.  The drift in front of the garage is like 7 ft tall. Thirteen inches of snow with the winds really made some huge drifts. The town is still digging out, at least most of the streets are re-opened, but still need work. I’m hoping the weather will settle down now for a while. There is a lot of places in the nation without power, we were pretty fortunate.
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Christmas Time
Posted on December, 23 at 6:05 am
2 days till Christmas and another major winter storm is moving across the plains. We missed the last one, but this one is gonna hit us. It looks like we will be on the edge with 5-9 inches of snow. It’s going to move in on Christmas Eve and than stick around through Christmas day. So many people on the go, hoping people will put safety first. I know people want to be with families and what not, but people got to realize that when they venture out into this bad weather and need to be rescued, they are putting others at risk. The weather updates have been predicting this so it’s not like a surprise.
I was looking around on ebay the other day and came across a round softbox and decided I would give it a whirl. I got it yesterday in the mail and of course didn’t have anyone to try it out on, so I went for a self portrait(pic above), which is a challenge in itself. I only used the softbox, nothing else. I think it turned out pretty well and can’t wait to use this in conjunction with my other lights in the right environment.
The EMT refresher is a couple weeks away. The decision to carry on with it or not is closing in. I’m still leaning towards not renewing. I’m more interested in focusing on things that are fun to do than to deal with politics and more rules to deal with. I wish it could just go back to when the squad was happy and one was able to do things without a new rule being enabled at the next meeting. Like I keep saying to myself, focus on the happy and good stuff in life and work with that.
New Year’s resolution, hmmmmmmmm. I think I will work on health. Get the stress level down, get the cholesterol down, and regular diet of vitamins and exercise. Why is it hard to dig up motivation to exercise daily?  Seems like you can start it up, but than a few days later you forget all about it. When you were younger, you didn’t have to worry about health, or at least I didn’t and now with middle age crawling in, it’s like you have to work at keeping your health. I dunno, I think the “Golden Years” is a fairy tale.
I hope everyone has a safe and happy holidays!
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Luka ISO 3200 Test
Posted on December, 17 at 5:11 am
I ran across a thread for “hacking” your camera to enable features. I shoot the Canon Rebel XT/350D which is limited to ISO 1600. With my recent hockey shoot I had, I was so wishing I had ISO 3200. Anything I can gain in shutter speed would help. I than ran into this thread and thought wow, this would be super. I wasted no time at all in doing it. I was about as nervous as one could get when it came to flashing the firmware. I had the biggest fear that the camera would never power on again. I read about the success stories so went a head and did it. When I was able to select 3200 in my camera, I was just thrilled.
So I needed a test shot to play with. I knew noise was going to come in, but felt confident that I would be able to clean it up. I’m not going to be using ISO 3200 for portraits, just something to help in these poorly lite gyms and such. So I got my dog Luka to sit pretty and snapped a picture. I only used the available light in the room, which was basically a ceiling fan and another ceiling light that was behind me. I did not use any flash at all, f/2.8 1/25 hand held with the nifty fifty lens. Some quick adjustments in Adobe Camera RAW and final edits in photoshop. The Noiseware plugin is invaluable tool. I recommend it highly. I did read that Nikon makes a really nice noise reduction software, think it is called NIK or something. Some say it is better than Noiseware even. I might have to see if I can find a trial of it. I am pleased with the results and think this will work great for indoor sports actions. I was gonna try it out this weekend, but my daughter is out with an injury. I will have to wait a bit longer to try it out.
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Winter is Back…
Posted on December, 9 at 1:56 am
December 1st brought back winter after a beautiful November. The snow and cold weather came in and it’s been kinda hard adjusting to the temperatures. The snowfall brought in over four inches of snow and made a mess of the roads. Once again it will be a white Christmas in North Dakota. Has there ever been a time that North Dakota hasn’t had a white Christmas? Tonight we have bitter cold with wind chill warnings out and a big storm is moving to the south of us. I’m glad it is staying to the south of us and I hope everyone in the path will be safe.
Last weekend Ally had their first hockey game in town. It didn’t take me long to learn that I am not a hockey fan at all. It’s just plain cold to be there. I attempted to take pics and this time I worked with shutter mode to try and get better pics. I have picked up some good tips since than and will apply them to the next home game. I still think with a larger aperture that the pics will be soft looking. I am told this is not true and most hockey pics are done at an f/2.8 around 200mm. So I will drag out my 75-300 f/4-5.6 and I can underexpose slightly to get down to the f/3 area and see what happens. I can than fix the lighting in RAW. My 28-135 goes to f/3, so if I have problems I can switch to that lens and still reach out to 135mm. Shooting indoors is the pits I tell ya, especially action shots.
Sunday the Christmas tree went up and I dragged out my lights to snap a portrait shot of Ally. It’s been so long since I got to snap a portrait shot, it felt good to actually do one.
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Events to Sanctuary
Posted on November, 30 at 6:26 am
Events in life come and go. Â Some events are better than other events. Â We never know when events will happen in life. Â Part of my job is waiting for events to happen. Â When events happen, they have to be dealt with. Â Sometimes the events are handled well and at other times they are not. Â Events have many external factors that can produce a good ending or a bad ending. Â These events can affect one person, multiple people and/or an entire region of people. Events can leave many questions unanswered. Â We can not ignore events. Â When events are neglected or tried to be forgotten, the longer and more severe they can become.
How do you handle and share events?  Of course the good events are easy to share as one can barely contain themselves to tell someone the good news.  What about the bad events?  Suddenly we aren’t so eager to share.  One tends to drift off quietly to try and deal with the bad event.  We have friends, family, support groups, public services and ministers to contact.  It seems natural for people to feel as if tho they are burdening others with their events, so they tend not to.  There is also people out there that tend to abuse the system in the opposite way and cause a hinder to the system.  They tend to cry wolf and than refuse all help in repeated attempts.  In either event, it’s  another event just waiting to happen.
When bad events happen around me and I am involved, I like anyone else, need to put closure on it.  I find that I need some way for it all to make sense so the brain doesn’t replay and re-question everything.  Give me the facts of the events and explain to me the unknown or parts of the event that I don’t understand and I can lay it to rest.  My mind will analyze an event over and over and come up with “what if” and it’s those “what ifs” that I need to resolve.  A “what if” can prevent me from being at ease for a long long time.  I usually will try to seek out the answers to the “what ifs” to put it at ease.  The mind is a very powerful thing and can be very stubborn in it’s ways.  Usually I have to have my time to absorb an event.  It’s usually overwhelming at first and I don’t grasp everything right away.  I need to let it sink in and digest it.  Sometimes I can than lay the event to rest by doing just this.  If I can’t, than I will gather the unknown and try and seek the answers from others.  This can lead me to being able to lay the event to rest as I learn more.  I will run into events or parts of an event that can’t be explained or understood.  I have to live with it as frustrating as it may be.
In the mean time of trying to find peace with events, I like to grab the camera and dog and head out to find something to photograph. Â Walking through the country side or driving around the country side lets the body refresh itself. Â Last Friday, I did just this. Â The picture in this post is not the first time I had photographed it. Â I just happened to come upon it again when the sun was behind it and was causing it to glow of a wonderful warm color that made me feel warm inside. Â This is what I needed to find and I had no idea I was even looking for something, but once I saw this, I knew it was what I needed. Â Sometimes I need big signs to see something. Â I also had dear friends that asked and expressed feelings. Â I still have questions, but I am at a much better level of peace with it all. Â I can let most of the “what ifs” go now. Â For others, the healing process will be much longer and I hope they can come to peace with it some day. Â One day at a time, one foot in front of the other.
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My Favorite 2009 Photos
Posted on November, 20 at 11:55 pm
My favorite portrait. I still remember this shot, once the shutter went click, I knew this was gonna be a great shot. It’s currently hanging on my wall in a beautiful frame, pic size 11×14.
My favorite HDR. This is the outlook of my hunting spot on a beautiful afternoon with the harvest dust floating in the air.
My favorite Senior pic. My oldest daughter of course. My only wish is that we would of had more time to take more pictures.
My favorite Animal pic. Luka of course, she is my true right hand. She is always ready to go for an adventure.
My favorite scenery pic. I just love the colors of this one, shot on the way home, almost drove right past it.
My favorite Saved Pic. I did not take this picture, someone from the Minot press did, but it seriously lacked life. I only had a small version of this picture to work with and thanks to some great tools I was able to make it happen and hanging on the wall it is.
My favorite Restored pic. My mom as a flower girl. This photo turned up last summer and was severely faded and old. A scanner and photoshop and I was able to restore this picture. The little girl is my mom.
My favorite Buddy. Buddy is still hangin around keeping the cat company.
My favorite burn out pic. I don’t remember who’s car this was, but they made some great smoke.
I’m hoping 2010 brings lots of opportunities to keep expanding the photo collection.Â
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Moved, Good-bye Solidinternet!
Posted on November, 19 at 11:52 am
Well I just couldn’t take the solidinternet hosting service any more, so over the past few days I slowly moved stuff over to a new host. The first two wordpress moves went really well, but for some odd reason when I moved this one, I have weird looking ? in a black box all over the place. I can edit the post and remove them, but I won’t be doing that for every post I made to this blog. It would take way too long to do that, so I will have to live with it.
Myacen had always a good hosting company and it seems like when they came up with their reseller stuff is when issues started up. I tried the reseller thing for a while, but gave up on it as the service was just crappy. I than just stuck it out with myacen and enjoyed many years of good service, but this fall has been horrible and rumors circulating around they are closing down in December. I asked for confirmation and no answer. When the site was down I sent in tickets and emails and got no response. I got lucky the one time there and got Robert on live help and solved most of the problems only to all come back within a week. I don’t see how a hosting company can have servers down for days at a time. Someone isn’t doing their job. They closed down the customer forums even. Any time a server is down for days, someone should be sending their customers an explanation instead of leaving them sit in the dark. I had to sit and keep waiting for the server to come back online and when she did, I backed up what I needed.
I really hope this new host works out, fatcows. I’ve been seeing slowness and database connection issues, but supposedly they are good host. I guess I will find out. I also have surpass hosting for another site, but they are kinda expensive. Surpass Hosting has been a great experience and they let their customers know of any important events. Fatcows offered more and had a better price, but like I said, hope it doesn’t come back to haunt me. Fatcow’s customer support has been great so far. They offer the live chat help and that is so nice, no waiting and more waiting for a reply. I just wish they had c-panel instead of this weak lame control panel. I got a year to find out how good they will be. I would like to eventually move my surpass stuff over to here and just have one bill with one hosting company.
Let’s keep our fingers crossed
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Calendar and Bits
Posted on October, 28 at 3:23 am
I have narrowed down this year’s pictures to 30 pictures that I like the most for a calendar. I now need to narrow it down to 13. The 13th one is for the cover, that is why 13. I kept most of the photos to the ones taken in the past year, a couple are from late last fall. I sent in a “testing calendar” just to see how the prints would turn out. I didn’t order it with the extra heavy stock paper or anything fancy. I just wanted to see how they did for printing and I was quite happy with them. I than decided I would make up a calendar of various things you would find in Cavalier County if you passed through.
Narrowing down the pictures was harder than I thought it was gonna be. I fired up picasa, love that program for indexing pictures. I started scrolling down in picasa and you soon realize how many pictures one takes in a year. I noticed tho, compared to last year 2008, I took way more people photos. My landscaping pictures were way down compared to 2008. I’m sure the weather had something to do with it also. We only had a handful of really nice days. So as I sorted them out, I thought why not make a youtube video. Take Me Home, Country Roads by John Denver just fits the whole situation.
I was able to get out to Minot, ND over the past weekend and visit Darwin. I wasn’t feeling the best as I battle this sinus infection and the weather was cold and rainy, but we were able to get out and do some pictures and do some shopping and top it off with a splash in the pool at the hotel. Ally was able to come along, but CJ had to work so she didn’t make it. Pic above is of Ally and big brother in the pool. Talk about low light conditions in the pool area, yikes. Pic from the Scandinavian Heritage Center we went through:
We definitely need to do this again when the weather is nicer. It’s kinda funny tho, every time Darwin comes home it rains here and than when I go out there it rains there. It must be a cruel joke of old mother nature. Darwin comes home in mid-November, see what happens with weather than.
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Ally Ally Ally
Posted on October, 19 at 5:13 am
What would I do without Ally? I can call her up and at the drop of hat be ready for pics. She comes up with her own ideas and I have to seldom direct her. I just let her do her thing. I still correct her on posture and what not, but she makes the job so easy. We headed out on Sunday with camera and 2 off camera flashes to get some fall pics in. I was hoping to get better colors with fall colors, but with the early frost and snow, it just killed that dream. We found a spot that provided us with good background and we made due with what we had.
Again, her own idea. She wanted to go for a serious look this time and I said go for it. She loves it and I couldn’t agree more. She is just so photogenic.
I prefer her smile tho and a quick change of lights to light her up from behind helps make the photo. Regardless, this little red riding hood can handle herself. I learned that I need to come up with a better way to do OCF as shooting on a slight hill side makes it difficult to place lighting.
I had to laugh when she asked to take pics of her in her winter coat, she says she looks like an astronaut going to space.
I’ve been teaching her photoshop and she is starting to edit her own photos. She wants to learn more about using the camera so I guess I will have to teacher her what I know. She even got a request from her cousin to edit his senior pics after seeing her work. I didn’t have anyone to teach me photoshop and I still learning it, but she catches on to it very quickly. She hardly asked any questions as she worked. I see I need to go thru a proper work flow with her tho. I do think she would make a good model, a little short tho. At 5′ 1″, it’s definitely not model material, but I’d push her to try it. I just need her to stop chopping her hair off. If she can’t make it as a model, maybe she can make it as a photographer. She’s only 13 so she’s got a while to figure things out. So I got a few more years with her and don’t know what I am gonna do when she goes off.
I leave you with one of Ally’s edits
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Back Again
Posted on October, 6 at 3:51 am
Well after the site was down for a week or so, we are back and in a new location apparently. My life kinda flashed before my eyes when the site was gone and ftp wouldn’t even work. I pretty much figured everything was gone. Customer support was hard to get a hold of, but once I did, Robert had it squared away in no time. Everything is still here, woot!
I haven’t been able to get out and do much of anything lately. Darwin made it home for the early doe season and was successful in getting his deer. I managed to come down with the flu at the same time. What is it with the flu and the headaches? Nothing can even touch the pain of it’s headache. Anyway, it took me about 5 days to get back to feeling like myself again.
I am so craving to getting out and taking pictures. The fall colors are moving in and making for some beautiful scenery. I miss the studio setup I had. I got to practice a couple dusk shots with one flash briefly before the weather turned bad. Last night, parts of North Dakota got 3 inches of snow. It’s been rainy and cold and just plain miserable. The forecast isn’t looking good for the rest of the week. People really need to see the sunshine and get back outside instead of having too much idle free time to get into trouble.
I got my CPR renewed last night, so I am good again. I’ve been slowly getting back involved with the ambulance again. Sometimes I have to ask myself why as the frustration is still there. My re-certification is coming up spring of 2010 for EMT license. As of right now, I do plan to renew it. I have a hope down inside of me that things will get better, so I just can’t let it go. I do hope we are able to get people for an EMT class so we can get more people on the squad. The rural areas are feeling the crunch on maintaining a squad. It’s just not easy and I can’t help but feel that the most important part is over looked. The people that are volunteering are the most important thing to a squad. The training and dedication the people put into it on their own time besides maintaining a job and family is amazing. Yet it seems like it isn’t enough and more is expected. More jobs get added and more hours get added without the bat of an eye. It’s no wonder people are becoming less reluctant to sign up. 45 minutes to an hour on top of the call just to do the paper work and enter it all in. Yea sure you are being paid to do this, but seriously. There has to be a better way to balance the free time one has to be able to belong to a squad. Just look at what a transfer to Grand Forks takes for time. You are out 4-5 hours at a minimal. This can’t be helped as it’s a 1.5-2 hour drive. I dunno, I would just like to see more appreciation for the amount of hours volunteers are putting in.
I’ve decided to cut tylenol intake down as the ringing in my ears were getting worse. It’s been two days now and the ringing is much better. Aleve works so well, but can’t take it as it raises my blood pressure. I tell ya, it seems like anything a person likes is bad for ya. I was talking with someone about eating healthy and it’s amazing at how expensive it is to do. Health insurance company’s help with exercise/gym memberships, maybe they need to look into food market also. Could exercise and eating right out weight the claims that insurance companies pay out? I have no idea. It’s like that cash for clunkers thing. They want to get rid of gas goozlers, but they need to make the economical cars affordable, not more expensive. That’s a whole another subject tho. I just know this growing old stuff is for the birds.
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Artist
Posted on August, 20 at 3:54 am
Well, we finally got to do some indoor pics. I was pretty please at how the lighting went. Thanks to another photographer that gave me a tip on checking the correct exposure in adobe camera raw. I would of had some under exposed pics if not for that tip. It seems so easy to under expose than to over expose, at least for me it is. I had the camera connected to a tv so we could see the shots much better than on the lcd screen on the camera. This is a fantastic tip also, just not always practical to carry a tv around with you, but those portable dvd players I guess work really well too. I can’t believe how much money they get for a portable dvd player, sheesh. I think I will be holding off on that purchase.
I set up the lights with the two ultra white lightning 600s in front at 45 degree angles and than I used my beauty dish I made on a make shift boom that was placed behind her to her right, my left at 45 degrees. I also used a reflector to fill in. I feel the beauty dish worked well from behind to give that separation of the subject and background.
I have to give Alien Skin Bokeh credit for this photo. It’s a great plugin and easy to use for great effects.
I was happy to see the catch light in all the pics
CJ and her artwork that she created
So I think for my first time of doing a studio type shoot for production turned out pretty good. We captured 15-20 good pics. Another thing I need to study is posing and I need to start collecting props. I guess that will be my next goals. Background also, still trying to think of something for that, inexpensive backgrounds that is. 4×8 sheets of styrofoam are nice, but not practical for storage or durability. It is nice to work with tho, light weight, no wrinkles, and can be painted, I just hate painting.
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CJ’s Studio
Posted on August, 14 at 5:55 am
CJ Studio
So I got my Ultra White Lightning 600 back after sending it in for bulbs and upgrade. I have to say that Paul C Buff has great service and prices. The service was fast and I was expecting a much bigger bill, but for $70.00 I got it upgraded and 2 new bulbs and that comes with a 6 month warranty. Friendly people to work with, I highly recommend them along with all the other satisfied customers.
I wanted to test it out right away and decided I would take a snapshot for the behind the scene look. I wasn’t going to bother moving all the stuff out of the building just for a practice shot. I got the floor done (8×8) and back wall (7×8) all painted and dubbed it CJ’s Studio since all this work was for her. We are scheduled to do some indoor senior pictures tonight.
I’m still working on getting a hair light setup. With my current system, I seem to loose the hair light with the flash of the strobe. Everything looks greats before the strobe goes off, so I have to research that some more. It’s not a show stopper. I’ve discovered I am gonna need a fan, unbelievable at how warm in gets quickly in the building with a few lights going.
I also started to work with composites like above. It’s a pretty simple technique and it can give a photo an extra boost. I hear these can really be big sellers, so definitely worth looking into it. It’s going to make it interesting with cropping tho. A 4×6 and a 8×10 are two different crops. I myself prefer 8×12 with landscapings, so this is also new for me. I always work with a 4×6 in a 300 Resolution which is like a 1800×1600 pic. I find 8×12 prints from the lab are really nice at that size. I have also done 11×14 and the results are good, but never had a reason to go bigger. Now if I could just find a reasonable framing solution. Building frames myself is just to time consuming and I’m too self critical about them. It’s amazing at how much stuff has to be done from the CF card to the final pic hanging on the wall.
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The Senior
Posted on August, 2 at 6:35 pm
Courtney is finally getting around to taking some serious pictures for her senior pics. We jumped into the car over the weekend and hit some various spots for photos. I used two off camera flashes for this shot in an abandoned barn. ISO 100 at f/5.6 at 1/125
Ally came along to be the equipment manager. Amazing at how much work it is dragging all that stuff around. I used the 50mm prime on this shot at f/2.5 to give some nice DOF. This was shot at a look-out and she was right at the edge of the cliff. She says she really likes this one
This is my favorite pic of the session.
My second favorite.
We got in about 20 shots and we want to get a couple more outdoor ones and than we will do the indoor ones that she wants to do in all white. I got some painting to do before we can do those and than we can get serious about them.
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