11.24.07
Busy Week
I have been somewhat distracted in the past few weeks between Leopard arriving, shooting the red carpet at the American Music Awards and then, our fourth daughter arrived at 5:15am Friday. She had the good grace to let my wife enjoy my thanksgiving feast that I cook up each year and she did not take too long in the delivery room. All in all, a very accommodating child so far 
When I got the gig to shoo the AMA red carpet and private party afterwards, I bought a new SD800 flash and rented a 18-200mm VRII Nikon lens which proved to be a lifesaver at the event. Between the reach of the 200mm zoom and the vibration reduction, I was able to get some killer shots
My client was Johnny Rockets and I had almost full access to everything at the event. The contact sheet is just a small sample of the pictures from that shoot.
I have been using Leopard on my new MBP and I have to say, it rocks. It is quirky at times but overall it just rocks. I have not had a single crash of the OS yet. Some of my apps are twitchy but as the vendors patch them for Leopard, things have calmed down alot. Photoshop just plain screams on Leopard. I have been working on some 24×36 inch posters and it’s a joy on the MBP. My iMac is nice but I did a new install of 10.4 on a firewire drive and I see just how dogged out my current installation is for some reason. So I’m slowly building a new install on the firewire drive and I will move it over as “live” in a few weeks. I suspect since my current install was transfered from two other machines (G5 to Intel to new Intel) that something did not quite make it. With a clean install, 10.4 works much better. I have to keep 10.4 on my iMac since virtually none of my scanning apps are ready for Leopard yet and thats a problem for me.
You can see my new poster here.
The new iDVD and iPhoto are really nice. I did not have any issues on my MBP like I did on my iMac and I was able to make a DVD for JR in less that 6 hours which was uploading two flash cards, sorting the images, applying minor touchup/cropping and building the DVD complete with JR playlists for music. The rendering still takes a while but it never missed a beat and did a fine job with something like 200 images.
If you are a fan of Little Snitch, you really owe it to yourself to get the new version 2.0 and install it. They really did a nice job on improving it and making it more usable. I was able to work out the Amazon S3 servers ip subnets by using it and watching the rules that needed to be built when I used S3 services. Handy stuff.
11.27.07
Camera, Lights and Action
Posted in Commentary at 7:48 pm by hackamac
I have been spending alot of time lately getting up to speed with my photography and Photoshop. My other site, www.lightandimages.net is coming along nicely and my skills on the Nikon and CS3 have increased. I know this since I was asked to do a photo shoot for Johnny Rockets at the American Music Awards and one of my pictures of the CEO will grace their company magazine. For the record, I have been shooting with a Nikon D80 and a rental 18-200mm VR Nikon lens. The VR (Vibration Reduction) is amazing technology. I have been able to get sharp hand-held images with as slow as a 1/10 of a second shutter speed.
Here is a sample of the latest pictures:
Full size here
If you need to rent a lens for cheap and outstanding service, try Paul Friedman at lensprotogo.com A months rental (4 weeks) for the 18-200mm zoom plus insurance, plus shipping both days plus a cool pelican box for the lens shipping was 190 bucks. Cheap!!! and the customer service has been super. Between a few questions and a possible problem, Paul was willing to do whatever it took to keep me a happy customer. Thanks Paul!!!
I have some new toys coming and one is a Nikon 1.8 50mm lens which should work nicely for my typical low light work and portraits. Another is a pocket diffuser which works with the pop up flash on the camera. That would be alot easier to use than my SD800 Nikon flash which I love to death but it’s a bit bulky.
Other news is some cool online shops like www.picnik.com which ties you into an WEB2.0 photo editor and effects machine plus you can use your images from Flickr, webshot, facebook, Photobucket and others. The effects are things like frames, icons, stamps and more to help dress up a picture for the birthday party or a holiday shot. The bad news is that many of the cooler effects are an premium package deal but for 30 bucks a year, it’s cheap enough to upgrade. Thats less than a single date for a movie
and it lasts an entire year!!! How cool is that?
To make pictures, posters and framed posters, take a look at www.imagekind.com and see what they offer for you. I have been putting up some posters I made and smaller prints to see how well it works. So far, it’s very easy and the quality is good.
I found a hot-shit DVD for learning lighting in studio work from www.dongiannatti.com and called “Create Professional Looking Lighting for Under $100”. The DVD is about 40 bucks and has quite a few extras along with the expected video tutorials. Check it out if you are a “strobist” and likes to shoot well and cheap.
Here is one of the best lists of photography and lighting blogs/sites that I have found.
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