Follow my progress on Readernaut.

The first in a series of two shots of a backlit Bradford Pear.

I was up early yesterday and felt inspired to go take some shots. The above is the best of a bad lot: I should’ve overexposed the shot in-camera, had to crop heavily because of mediocre lens selection, and didn’t reset the white balance from the previous indoor shots I’d been doing at work. In other words, when I was in post-production, there was much swearing.

Today, I went out to go re-create that shot. I didn’t go early enough to match the light, but I think it came out okay…

The second in a series of backlit shots of a Bradford Pear tree.

See, that’s right out of the camera. Different lens, different color balance, different day, but essentially the same shot.

I don’t do this very often—revisiting a subject in the same light, twice—because a lot of what I take is concert photos where you get one shot. Of course, I shoot in a lot of the same places with a lot of the same subjects, so in a way, I get to re-learn there, but I’m pushing myself to try this more often so I can have benefit of my re-thinking.

I have much, much to learn.

I’ll keep adding photos to the Backlit Blooms set as I find that I’m happy with them.

Now, here’s why I love Twitter. I started with: “Anybody local wanna go grab a beer this evening?” This morphed into “Quick dash through the shower before I go eat Tommy’s Pizza with @jcreekmore and @abcreekmore…“, “Pizza + beer at the World Famus Bridge St.“, and then “Chilling at Bridge Street with Creekmores, Kings, and Granades. ” Sorry for those of you HSVLocals who already had dinner plans by the time this sprang up.

As for the look on my face here, I think I was trying to make Emily look at her mother. Oops.

So I was sitting inside the house, chilling on a Saturday morning, and I saw how the light was playing on the tree. Outside I went.

I can’t believe he’s five already.

I love happy accidents.

So I’ve had the two PowerMates for a while, and I’m now putting them to good use. I won’t let the focus of this entry be how I’m using the PMs system-wide [another day, if you're interested], but suffice it to say that I’m using the PMs for awesome in Aperture.

Now, I’m biased by Fraser Speirs’s photo workflow; before I was ever serious about the concept, I had read what he was doing. I don’t do stack sorting—in fact, I just closed the tab so I won’t spend thirty minutes delving into same and stop writing this entry—but I do use the PowerMates to power through the weaning process. My ratings are much like Fraser’s—if it’s okay, going to get rated up to one start; if it’s crap, I reject it. Here’s where the PowerMates come in:

Left PowerMate: clockwise rates up, counterclockwise rates down.
Right PowerMate: clockwise advances in the set, counterclockwise goes back.

A wee twist of the wrist is all I need to rate something up or down, or to move back and forth. I think that adding in stacks will make this even more powerful for me, especially when I’m off of my current kick of sports photography and back into concert stuff, when taking eight or twelve exposures at a swath is about catching an expression or some light, not a pass or a shot or a hit. But it’s really quite quick for me: fire up Full Screen mode, position my hands, and make the snap decision.

I do my editing in passes, typically. I do the reject/promote run the first time through, culling the crap. The second pass, I’m looking for stuff that is two-star level: something about the frame catches my eye, and it’s either good as is or needs some cropping, tweaking, or other. And so-on until I get to at least three stars, sometimes four. Depends on the shoot and how much I’m looking to push out to Flickr—sometimes three stars is my bar, and sometimes it’s four. But with just a bare minimum of movement, I can fly through the editing.

What do I use other than the PowerMates? Well, besides Full Screen, I use the C shortcut to fire up the cropping tool and the ` to bring up the loupe. Between those two, plus using all of my 24″ of iMac real estate, I can power through stuff faster than I ever have—and I’m just getting started at doing this.

The beauty of the PowerMates is that you can program them to do lots of things—volume controls, keyboard shortcuts, scrolling. You’ve got global settings and program-specific ones. I’m just scratching the surface.

I’m proud of these shots … especially this one. I think it’s because Matty and Chuck are such good guys. I pretty much talk to Matty after every game these days … always with the handshake-into-the-man-hug.

I should spend more time laughing.

JPG : RAW :: MP3 : FLAC

JPGs [and GIFs, and PNGs, and the like] are great for transport, as are MP3s [and M4A/AAC, WMA, etc.]: both trade fidelity for filesize. Good is the enemy of great, though. I’m sometimes asked why I don’t buy many digital downloads of music, or why I hoard hard disks like they’re gonna stop making them. The answer is pretty simple: I want all the bits. I believe in a future where our compressed copies are gonna be like the 8-track—we’ll remember them fondly for their portability, but we won’t have anything to play on them.

I am, also, the same person whose first act on opening a physical CD is to make a copy of it; after ripping, that CD goes back into its case and is rarely seen again.

Don’t make me cut you.

Update: Hunter smacked me later, noting that PNG is indeed lossless. I will now light myself on fire.

Design by Granade Graphic Design; name from Amy via an open Twitter inquiry.

So the greatest amusement of my day was UAH head coach Danton Cole coming up to me and Will while we were watching UAH’s first practice and saying, “Hey, do you guys think you can help me get information out over Facebook?”

This amused the two of us greatly, as Will started the UAH Hockey Facebook group, and I, well, do this kind of stuff all the time.

I mean, really … twist my fuckin’ arm, Coach.

[For the record, I'm buying season tickets this year, including a four-pack in good seats on the penalty-box side of the ice. Obviously, I am only one man and can only sit in one seat at a time, so if you would like to use my tickets for free, you just give me a call or drop me an email, eh? First come, first served.]

I’m thirty today. I’m excited, can’t you tell?

I’m also joining Mike and Rae in a 365-day photo pool called “Hacks and Cameras”, which I fit on both accounts. Whether be with my DSLR, my iPhone, or Photo Booth, I hope to shoot something every day of my 31st year on Earth. You can follow the pool or 30+N/365 set.

Thanks to all who have called, emailed, and the like to send their regards. It’s been a good day after a number of really bad ones in a row.

So Eli’s first soccer games was yesterday, so I decided to go and take photos. Because, well, two things: 1) I love the kid and 2) it’s soccer! I played for four years, but not at his age. When I started playing in third grade, you actually had to, you know, work at scoring a goal, because the kids had figured out defense.

So when he was self-upset about not getting to score in the first seven seconds, I told him, “Dude, do you know how long it was before I scored in a game? Four years!” I could see the wheels grinding, “Four years? That’s how old I am!” Exactly, kid. Did I tell him that I played 90% of the time as a goalie or a fullback? No, because at that age, they don’t get the concept of positions. Or, well, defense. [Okay, so there was the one kid on Eli's team that got defense. I wanted to run over to him and pat him on the back, then encourage him and teach him how to knock guys off-stride without getting carded. AHEM.]

There was the most comical moment of the morning when Eli suddenly stood on the goal line and waved his arms around, making himself look big and trying to distract the kid with the ball. This technique reminded me of, well, most every penalty kick I’ve ever defended, including the one I stopped because I was too scared to move and the kid, taught by his coach that I would be moving at the kick, went right for my feet. Heh.

At the airport, it was officially 100F today.

My car argues that it was hotter than that.

It was 83F in my office at 3:00 p.m.

Could be worse, but man … I hate summer in Alabama.

The high at the airport yesterday was only 92F or so, but Rita (my WRX) told me it was 96F … at the end of my drive home. When I started the car in the parking lot at work, the ambient temperature reading was 103, which makes sense given that the car was in full sun for several hours, and that the ambient sensor is somewhere under the hood.

But still, it’s just the first week of June, and already, it’s way too damn hot. When I was in the Midwest last week, I told lots of people that I’d live back up there if I could do what I do; living in the heat and humidity is my penance for getting the kick-ass job of putting hardware into space. [Could be worse ... I could live near Houston or Cape Canaveral.]

Unlike last summer when I posted readings like this, it’s not a dry heat. Our dewpoints right now are consistently near 70F, and with a Bermuda high over Georgia and western South Carolina, we’re not gonna see rain for the next week or so, other than spotty storms that rise from the heat of the day. Will Carroll told me today that I could have all of Indianapolis’s storms that I wanted—11 inches of rain over the last 24 hours? YES PLEASE!

question!

You’ve been doing such a fab photog job at shows, I was wondering what settings you were using? I’m giving it a shot at D+S’s show tonight.

call if you can.

– Michaela, whose photos I love (and use for desktop backgrounds)

My photos from the 4 Apr 2008 Caedmon’s Call show in Dyersburg, TN are online. I’ll work on the recording some tomorrow. This will be my first attempt at a matrix of a soundboard patch and an audience recording.

I aggregate all Flickr photos tagged with “Huntsville”, just because it’s fun to see how people see our fair city. [This does mean that I see photos from Texas and Ontario, but far less often than the city that put men on the moon.] There are times when I sometimes wonder why I do this.

Photos like these remind me that doing this is definitely worth doing. This is an absolute gem.

Somewhere, some Daylight Shifting Time proponent is thinking:

“Hey, dude. Not only did you get to see the sunrise today, you got to see the sunset, too! What a great workday!”

I want to find that asshole and punch him in the face.

[Why, yes, I rather do need a vacation. Why, yes, I'm a bit bitter that the one I had planned to take starting on Wednesday got screwed up. Why do you ask?]

Here’s me today:

A big difference, no?

When I started my Whiskerino journey, I never really thought that I’d get that involved. I figured that I’d stay out of the Hall of Shame—I actually got thrown in there shortly the first week, but begged my way back out—until work made me shave. Oddly enough, work never said a thing about it—okay, there was a little discussion of it at my last staff meeting, but that’s really been it. [My cover story from the start of 2008 on was that I'd trim the beard when we shipped our next set of flight hardware---because I knew we'd ship on 29 Feb, the last day of W'rino.] I never expected to win a King Beard or have Stephen pose with me. [Closest I got to a second KB was last weekend with a photo of my friend Megan in there with me. W'rinos like redheads, apparently.]

All I know now is that I’m hanging out some in the Talk and I can’t wait for 2009. I am happy that I’ve trimmed, though: I was getting tired of eating my beard, and it did hit 75F in Huntsville today. But I’m also very happy that I participated—because in doing so, I became a part of something larger than myself, which is always a fulfilling thing to do.

So, if you were a Whiskerino participant, and you were good friends with the guy who created LOLTrek, and Whiskerino had a LOLcats day, wouldn’t you involve him in the shot?

I would.

I did.

Well, this is as close as I’ll get to seeing Space Shuttle Atlantis lifting off. The Shuttle’s Engine Cut Off sensors—which NASA Administrator Mike Griffin has derisively referred to as “Launch Prevention Devices”—has again delayed the launch of STS-122, this time waving off the Saturday attempt. I got the phone call about an hour ago, and at that time, I indicated that I’m going to drive back tomorrow. Thus ends my attempts to see STS-122 lift off in person.

It was a good week, though. I wasn’t really in to all the rah-rah crap that they wanted to do, because I didn’t see that as a big deal. But it really kinda is. I’m fired up to get back and keep doing the good job that I’m apparently doing at work, because it’s really easy to feel that What I Do Is Important.

Having several days to hang out with Josh was great. We’re certainly different than we were sixteen years ago, but we have such a strong bond from growing up and a like-mindedness that allows all those years to melt away quite quickly. As a military brat, you grow up thinking that you’ll just have these friends for a year or four until you go on to your next base; it sucks, but you learn to adjust. But this week, Josh and I have proven that all the reasons for which we were friends for seven years are the reasons we will still be friends at 70.

I was struck by something Josh said as we walked out to get lunch today: “[This week]’s been just like when we were kids.” I think he meant in two ways—not only us being friends, but in the kicking ass and taking names that we did growing up. And yeah … it has been like that.

To my parents: thanks for all the time and energy you invested in me being a smart, hardworking kid over the years. They’ve paid off, but you’ve known that for a while. [Mainly when you didn't have to pay too much for my college education. ] To my friends, thanks for putting up with some of my … weird obsessions about work. [And with sometimes putting it above my relationships with people, because I certainly do that.] To my colleagues, thanks for making me look good, because y’all deserve this award even more than I do. And to my bosses, thanks for the chance to try—because it was as much a chance to shine as it was a chance to go down in flames.

And to Atlantis: get off the ground, will ya? The DCSU FSE hardware we built this year needs to get off the SSPF floor, and it can’t do that if you don’t go. So GO!

Derek Webb (and band) @ Exit/In

That said, I’ve had no problems with photos being used in quasi-commercial work; not only has Bryan used photos of mine in layouts for [derekwebb.net] and [andrewosenga.net], but Andrew used one of my photos for the link to the [andrewosenga.net] forum that he has on his sidebar. And if someone wanted to use one of my works commercially, well, I’d do it for a fee.

I feel like I’m starting to find my way with my photography, although concert photography is really still the only thing that really cranks my tractor. Last night, I dumped the photos off of my camera from last Saturday night’s DW show, and I was really happy with what I was seeing come out from the thumbnail view, which I hardly ever am. I guess Understanding Exposure took a little for me.