More Photography

Today, Laura and I drove out to Richmond to take pictures of our friends’ daughter’s birthday party. It was our first “official” birthday party gig that we were asked to take pictures at – and we even brought some business cards so that the other parents could order prints of the pictures. I don’t expect to make money off this engagement really, but I wanted to build some solid experience. Plus, it helps build the portfolio.

The wedding we did last weekend really prepared me for this party – which was much easier. For our first time, I think we did great on the wedding and I have about 1000 or so pictures from that event to turn over to the main photographer [after I do my tweaks, of course…]

Wedding Practice

Today we practiced shooting our first wedding. We are not the “main” photographers, but we will be doing most of the shooting as the photographer is part of the wedding party. It looks to be quite an educational experience as well as fun and rewarding in all kinds of ways. We have already learned a lot from the practice pictures we took today – things about exposure, lighting, manual mode – etc. We also walked around Winchester, VA and took some practice shots. We have never been downtown Winchester before, and it’s very nice and quaint – I only wish it weren’t so far off the beaten track for commuting to DC…

We’ve even been doing research online looking at other professionals’ sample shots. We’d like to get some good ones like those, but I do have to remind myself that they have been doing this much longer than I.

Tomorrow, we will see how well we do…

Great Weekend?

Did you have a good weekend? We did. We had a great visit with our friends Rob and Mel and their children. Sure, I’m still tired from last week’s work stress, but I think I got a little rest.

Next weekend will be even better – Laura and I will get to assist at a wedding photo shoot. It will be great experience for us and we’ll make a little cash, too.

One Of Those Days

Why does everything seem to fall apart on Friday? That’s what’s happening at work. It’s as if everything just waited all week to break today. So – I haven’t been able to relax all morning, but at least I’ve been able to help on one or two things.

I will say that not all is bad: the weather here is WONDERFUL. Riding in the mountains is quite nice, so today had its reward early on. It’s just when I actually got into the office that things began to go downhill. At least it’s Friday. This week will end and I will go home and visit with my friends Rob & Mel, who are coming in tonight to visit.

Mondays

Mondays are always hard. I think the weekend should be 3 days long every time. I just can’t seem to get the focus I usually can get mid-week. It took me a bit today, but I eventually got going and working. It’s just harder on Mondays.

At least the weather is great for riding.

We’re Havin’ A Heat Wave

It’s supposed to get into tripple-digit temperatures here in the DC area today and maybe tomorrow as well. Everyone here is really moaning like no one has ever seen this kind of heat before – except for the last time it happened in 2002, or the time before that, or… Well, you get the idea. It happens all the time, but people forget. I forget, too. I forget how hot it was in Texas before we moved until I experience something like this again. Feels like home. Only, it feels like the part of home I don’t miss.

So, today I will tough it out riding in the 100 degree heat, and I will try to remember that it will pass…

LAN Slowdown

My Gigabit switch has died. Why? Who knows… I certainly don’t. I’m disappointed. I came home this evening and my switch had only one light on it and no link lights on at all. I have for the moment replaced it with a 100MB switch, but I wonder if Linksys will repair/replace it for me…

[UPDATE 7/28/06]: Well, what do you know? Looks like Linksys is going to replace it for me. They say it’s got a lifetime warranty. I’m lovin’ that!

Lightroom

I have just had my first experience with Adobe Lightroom [the beta version] and I have to say that it is VERY cool. You can do all sorts of things with it and I think that using it for managing photos is probably much more productive than using Canon’s DPP + Adobe Bridge & Photoshop CS2. Lightroom combines the functions of DPP and Bridge together… which would make editing and organizing take place in the same application. That would usually mean that I might actually do it instead of putting the orgainzing work off until later.

I haven’t done much with it yet, but from what I’ve seen, it’s RAW processing capabilities are quite sophisticated. I’m anxious for the final version…

No More Vista… For Now

That’s it for my Vista running for a while. I’m gonig back to XP. Why? Well, over all, Vista is great, but there are a couple of issues that bother me for my specific needs.

  • First, there’s the fact that I cannot use the Microsoft RAW Photo Viewer to view my RAW photos. I have to use the Canon utilities and that means that no thumbs show up in the Windows Explorer.
  • Second, my laptop “loses” the monitor when I toggle to another computer on my KVM. Aparently, this is a known bug with the nVidia drivers [not a MSFT problem…]
  • And finally: [the big one] my laptop has never run hotter and the batter dies after about 15 minutes of use while unplugged. I don’t like that.

So, it’s back to the factory image for me. I like not having to install all those drivers. I will definitely go for Vista again, but the question is whether or not I wait for the RTM version due in Q4 of this year.

Oh – and I forgot: Virtual PC 2004 doesn’t work real well on Vista. I need that, too.