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Worked until 7:30 tonight. Suck. I've been doing a lot of reading on how to supplement your income with photography. It's pretty rough. I find myself daydreaming and grasping at the furthest fetched ideas of how to get out from under the IT stranglehold. Oh sweet Lotto, where art thou? Another day is gone. Before I know it, it'll be time to work again. What a way to spend my days.

A little photography humor...
The Smiths were unable to conceive children, and decided to use a surrogate father to start their family. On the day the proxy father was to arrive, Mr. Smith kissed his wife and said, "I'm off. The man should be here soon." Half an hour later, just by chance, a door-to-door baby photographer rang the doorbell, hoping to make a sale. "Good morning madam. I've come to......"

"Oh, no need to explain. I've been expecting you," Mrs. Smith cut in.

"Really?" the photographer asked. "Well, good! I've made a speciality of babies."

"That's what my husband and I had hoped. Please come in and have a seat."

After a moment she asked, blushing, "Well, where do we start?"

"Leave everything to me. I usually try two in the bathtub, one on the couch and perhaps a couple on the bed. Sometimes the living room floor is fun too....you can really spread out!"

"Bathtub, living room floor? No wonder it didn't work for Harry and me."

"Well, madam, none of us can guarantee a good one every time. But if we try several different positions and I shoot from six or seven angles, I'm sure you'll be pleased with the results."

"My, my, that's a lot of ..! ! ." gasped Mrs. Smith.

"Madam, in my line of work, a man must take his time. I'd love to be in and out in five minutes, but you'd be disappointed with that, I'm sure."

"Don't I know it," Mrs. Smith muttered.

The photographer opened his briefcase and pulled out a portfolio of his baby pictures. "This was done on the top of a bus."

"Oh my god!!" Mrs. Smith exclaimed, tugging at her handkerchief.

"And these twins turned out exceptionally well, when you consider their mother was so difficult to work with."

"She was difficult?" asked Mrs. Smith.

"Yes, I'm afraid so. I finally had to take her to the park to get the job done right. People were crowding around four and five deep, pushing to get a good look."

"Four and five deep?" asked Mrs. Smith, eyes widened in amazement.

"Yes", the photographer said. "And for more than three hours, too. The mother was constantly squealing and yelling; I could hardly concentrate! Then darkness approached and I began to rush my shots. Finally, when the squirrels began nibbling on my equipment, I just packed it all in."

Mrs. Smith leaned forward. "You mean they actually chewed on your um...equipment ?"

"That's right. Well, madam, if you're ready, I'll set up my tripod so that we can get to work"

"Tripod??

"Oh yes, I have to use a tripod to rest my Canon on. It's much too big for me to hold for very long. Madam? Madam?...Good Lord, she's fainted!.... "

I see stupid people. They're everywhere.

I can't seem to get going this morning. I feel old. I seem to remember being able to stay out partying until three and be able to get up and function productively all day on a couple hours sleep. It doesn't make much sense to me since they say that the older we get, the less sleep we need. Hmmm. These days, I go to bed relatively early... much earlier than I used to... and my body pops and creaks when I get up in the morning. I'm in disrepair. So, the coffee is complete ass in the break room today. Most days it is and I don't know why I even bother thinking that it may be different on a regular basis. I came in around 9:00 last night and cleaned out the coffee machine. I rinsed and flushed and all that good stuff... fresh filter and grounds... carefully measured and set up... *click*. It was brewing. It was probably the best coffee I've had here since the company stopped spending $200K a year on Starbucks beans. No wonder we're in debt. Anyhoo, I come in this morning and the perpetual pot has already started. It's like that place in LA that claims that always takes a tiny bit of chili out of the pot before they clean it to put in the new batch... the idea being that there is always at least some chili from the original batch in there somewhere. I think the original batch was back in the 1950's sometime. Our coffee machine is similar. Lazy fucks that love drinking weak office coffee simply dilute the existing burnt-beyond-recognition batch to increase quantity. The result is some coffee that goes weeks or months in the cycle until some network guy that is repulsed by this has to come in and work late at night and takes the time to correct it. Why don't I fix it during the day? Good question. It's probably because I can get better bean from any of the myriad beaneries within short walking distance of my building. Let them suffer. Speaking of, it's time for my morning dose. I've been writing reports all morning and I need an ergo break.

*BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP*

Alarm to go back to work.

Suck

Ugh! Just got home from work.

Suck.

It's been a good day despite the photo outing being a big flop. The pics were crap... pretty much all of them. EL and I went baby clothes shopping for her brother's new boy and had a nice lunch. I am dreading going into the office tonight. It's easy work, but just a pain in the boo-tay to drive in on a Sunday night to do some tedious cake job and ruin the end of a good weekend. Anyhoo, I'll post some of the photos here. I was especially disappointed at how the dragonfly shots turned out. Oh well, you have good days and you have bad days. Comments, good or bad, are appreciated...

Wow. Have I been a lazy non-poster or what? Friday was so damn busy I didn't have time to even think about the Net. Routing problems tending to mask other routing problems and when you uncover one and correct it, it uncovers the ones that where hidden by it's existence and a chain is born. Sometimes I wish that Joe and I were the only people in the company that configured network gear... we could avoid a lot of this rogue shit going on, but it's a big network and there are only two of us... and I like to have time not working, so that wish is simply impractical. Friday, after the chaos was sorted, Bob and Joe joined me for a couple of beers at The Flying Saucer. It was so busy and loud in there that we couldn't carry a conversation, so we migrated to the State Bar and Lounge for single malt conversation. EL and I had a nice dinner at home afterwards and went to bed early because we had a big Saturday planned. The premiere cast and crew screening of Xtracurricular. We made it Austin just before noon and met Sean and Tim at The Alamo Drafthouse on 5th. There were a lot more people there than I'd imagined would come. A large percentage of the cast and crew plus family and friends... it was packed. The movie was a tremendous effort for the two and I'm proud of how it turned out. For their first feature length film, it was really great... shot all in HD, original score, CG effects and other visuals... just great. There was a big cake cutting and celebration at The Bitter End afterwards, but EL and I couldn't stay long. We headed back to Houston. I have to work tonight, so I wanted to make sure I was rested. It really has been a busy last couple days. As we talked about all the wedding stuff left to do over dinner last night, I realized that it wasn't going to "settle down" soon... ugh! I woke early this morning... couldn't sleep... bad dreams. It's so quiet here in the mornings. Well, it's quiet here all the time, but especially the mornings. I've been sorting through bills and moving things about in my office... trying to be quiet so as to not wake EL in the next room. I finished UT2003 and started charging up camera batteries. I think I'm going to try to take some photos this morning sometime. It's been a while because of all the rain associated with Claudette. It will be fun. I hope everyone is having a wonderful weekend!

So funny I just had to share…

This morning I stayed home sick, still lots of sniffles and aches. Roll of tissue in hand, I managed to gather my miserable self up and out bed and onto the couch. No shower, no make-up and wearing sweats, I plopped down in front of the TV. Then I heard it, “ding dong”…who ever could it be. None other than the local Edward Jones “Solutions for your financial needs” sales guy at my door. At first he was polite and introduced himself. I said okay, nice to meet you – and hoped he would leave so that I could resume my pitiful couch position. He proceeded to explain that Edward Jones was opening an office in the area – again I said okay, that’s nice. Then came the pause…

“Are your parent’s home?” He asked.

I laughed.

So my sister turned 27 this year... I think. Yes, twenty-seven. Isn't it funny how the perception of time on an annual scale passes so quickly as we age? It seems like it was just yesterday when she was a tiny, little girl. EL and I drove down to my mother's house for my sister's birthday back in May. My grandmother lives in the same town, so I always try to spend a lot of time visiting her when I'm in town. I remember spending summer's at my grandparent's home... swimming in their pool (dug by hand) and exploring the pastures of my grandfather's land. They had a giant garden filled with all the traditional veggies, but also cantaloupe and watermelon that made the summer just that tiny bit sweeter. When my great grandfather was alive, he used to cut pieces of fresh sugarcane for me to chew on. Their yard was littered with pecan trees that would fill buckets every year and citrus trees of the grapefruit, orange, lemon, and lime varieties. Grandma had peach trees all around the property that always bore enough fruit for us and the squirrels to share without grandpa having to put the squirrels on our plate... which did happen anyway from time to time. This year, while visiting my grandmother over my sister's birthday, I was walking in her yard, admiring the various flora planted about. Cannas and lilies... petunias and queen's crown... this and that... my favorite flower has always been the iris, but in it's absence that day, my favorite in her garden was this hibiscus. It was so beautiful... the only one in the bunch blooming at that particular instant. So, I did what I tend to do a lot of these days, I photographed it. The full res version is here if you're interested. The image linked below is unedited except for cropping the left of the image out so the flower is more centered. Anyhoo, my grandmother's hibiscus won the PowerShot User photo of the day. Nifty.

Please go vote rate the photo HERE. Thanks!

"You know, there's a million fine looking women in the world, dude. But they don't all bring you lasagna at work. Most of 'em just cheat on you." - Silent Bob

EL's the best. On another note, this evening was pretty cool. I met Sam at Molly's for 18 holes after work and the Big Ass Beer special. They have this gig where any beer on the draught wall is on sale... $1.75 domestic and $2.25 import... 23 ounces of love. EL made a fab dinner and we chilled to some Kevin Smith. I wish everyday could be filled with the moments in between work and work. I love my home life. Really.

Interesting link for dragon hunters in the Houston area...

Lesson learned, once again. Never ever use baking soda that's been refrigerated. Not thinking, when we moved into the new house I stowed the baking soda in the fridge. Now the crinkles that I was making for Clayton to take to work with him tomorrow are flat as pancakes.

Sheeahht! As I was typing, Penny (the cat) just puked under the bed!!!

Why oh why do we have puking cats...ya know, it wouldn't be that bad if they puked on the tile that covers half the house. but OH NO! They have to crawl under the bed - make that gaud awful hairball gag noise, a brief pause and then gargle splat - a large pile of warm gooey puke just for me.

Lisa,

Sorry, I tried to explain before, but I'll give it another go...

First off... yes, you are correct. I use a few extra things to get the magnification in my macro shots. The Canon Powershot series of cameras is considered "point and shoot". They are not designed to work with external lenses or flash. The internal lens on my camera is small, but has a 35 mm to 105 mm range in 35 mm film equivalent terms. This is actually pretty workable for most point and shoot type use. You can find oodles of detail about my camera at the BeBit site.

First off, I knew I needed a way to stick other lenses on the camera, but there are no threads on the front lens plane like you get with SLR lenses (for filters and such). I purchased a lens adapter from CKC Power Digital for about $50 US that would give me 37mm threads just in front of the internal lens at it's furthest extension. Now, you can't put standard SLR lenses on the camera with 37mm threads, but you can add some specialty lenses and magnifiers called diopters. Diopters look like a magnifying glass... convex glass. Initially, I purchased a couple of diopters (+7 and +10... they came in a set) from Tiffen. A neat thing about these tiny diopters is that you can stack them to get a somewhat additive effect on magnification. There are definite limitations and you kinda have to play with some combinations to get good results... or "optical marriages". Important note: when stacking diopters, always put the largest magnification closest the camera lens.

One immediately evident byproduct of magnification is that depth of field (DOF) is related in inverse proportion. The higher the magnification, the smaller the DOF. Actually, at extreme magnification, the DOF becomes paper thin... seriously. This is troublesome when trying to get a moving subject in focus... or more specifically part of a subject. The widely accepted technique is to lock your focus and then rock the camera back and forth to shift your focal plane over the subject. It takes practice. I've been practicing a lot and I still suck.

Extension tubes are another way of getting some magnification, but I haven't tried any because of the limitations of my camera construction.

Another "trick" of the trade in the traditional film SLR world to get increased macro performance on a budget is to take an SLR lens and flip it over and mount it in reverse... using the filter threads on the end of the lens to screw it on. In order to do this you need accepting female threads of the correct size (ie. 37mm won't cut it) and a macro coupling ring. I purchased a 37mm to 52mm (standard for Canon and Nikon lenses) step-up ring and a male to male 52mm macro coupling ring. Michael had a splendid Nikkor f1.4 50mm lens that he let me borrow to experiment with... the larger the aperture the better because you need as fast a lens as you can get to flood the light in when reversing lenses. The reversed 50mm gave me much better results than the stacked diopters. It was harder to work with due to the even further reduced working distance, but the quality and magnification were better.

Working distance is another immediately noticeable artifact of macro photography. When using these techniques (macro on a budget), you will find that you need to get literally within inches (less than 1 inch in the case of lens reversal) to bring a subject into focus. You can readily see how this is problematic when an insect is shy. Flowers don't get embarrassed so easily. Heh. It requires some strategy and attention to technique. It's very challenging and something you will continually get better at... practice is where it's at.

Sometimes, you want to get a close look at a subject, but not too close... macro flora photography is an example. It's easy to get so zoomed that you miss part of the flower's beauty. Magnification and working distance... always a give and take relationship. Which brings me back to "optical marriages". My macro photography hero, Mark Plonsky, offered a technique where you use stacked diopters to up the magnification and then place a optical teleconverter at the end of the stack to increase working distance. I tried this with a 37mm Tiffen MegaPlus 2x TC and it was a great "optical marriage". The key is experimentation. Michael had tried taking a 105mm micro lens with a PN-11 extension tube and placing a reversed 24mm Nikkor on the end only to find that the magnification was phenomenally spectacular, but the DOF and working distance was damn near unworkable. It was a bad "optical marriage". You have to try out what works best for you and your camera for the shot you are trying to get.

Please understand that I'm just a beginner at this hoo-ha, so take what I say with a grain of salt. I just am sharing some tidbits I've learned over the last few months. I'm sure that over time my technique will improve and I'll probably figure out I've been doing some stuff wrong this whole time, but for now it's just great fun and a wonderful hobby. I like sharing my photos and I love hearing what you guys think of them.

Happy shooting!

Hey! Check it out.. male chauvinists can be entrepreneurs too!