Silhouettes

The North Star shines brightly as the sun sets west of Arthur Friday night.


I had to go shoot the fair for the last night Friday. I haven't been very excited about the fair event though it could breed a whole bunch of good photos. In fact, I had some really good ideas for photos, but no motivation to shoot them.
Steph, Dana and Patti came down this week so the last thing I've wanted to be doing the past couple of nights is working.
Plus I put in a ton of hours last week. Hopefully this weekend will give me some rest so I'm motivated for the next week.
I think I'll start a silhouette collection on here. I shoot shots of these far too much, but I guess as long as I make it part of a collection I can see how different I can make them.

Strobist+Time+Insomnia=This Post

This was the closest I could find to a life-like subject.


I haven't been following Strobist's newest lessons as much as I would like to, so I decided to go ahead and start following a bit closer. These are my shots from section 1.1 about angles. The lesson revolves around moving the camera rather than the light source and how it affects the dimensionality of the object. In this case a keepsake ornament. (Because I don't have a live subject.)

It's an easy, basic, but very knowledgable lesson. I'll try to work on lesson 1.2 dealing with distance in the coming days. Steph will be here tomorrow with her sister Dana and friend Patty. Should be a good time this weekend.

I'm getting severely pissed at my ebay slaves. They won't sync any higher than 1/125 and most the time no higher than 1/30. I need the 20D back severely. It should be here late next week I'm hoping barring no setbacks.

Then it's time to get serious about shooting. I'm going to emphasize portrait personalities. It may seem a bit different than what I do on a normal basis, but it's something I love doing. I did another one with John Wienke, the Tuscola quarter back who verbally committed to Michigan the other day. I'll post it after Friday when it runs in the paper.

Paper's getting a bit of a shakeup in the next couple of weeks. My editor resigned Monday. We'll be looking for a new one soon and I can only hope we can get a fresh face with some serious newspaper design experience. I think that's the only thing lacking from our paper right now is the design aspect. It may take time to transform it, but it will get there. If you know anyone interested let me know. I'll try to get the word to the right people. And they have to promise to run absolutely no more than 3 photos on the front page and one of those must be at least 4 columns wide and above the fold. I'm not complaining, I'm just saying...

Oh and if you didn't notice I redesigned. I'll probably be tweeking stuff for the next few days trying to give a different look. I'm not entirely happy with this, but it something new and more appealing than my last template.

He's Going the Distance

Nike+iPod continues to change my life.
Do you have what it takes? When you hit the point of wanting to quit or pushing on will you choose to grit your teeth and accept the blisters you knew you were going to have or will you quit, giving excuses as to why things didn't workout for you? Today I taught myself just how mental running is.

In celebration of the 10th of July I decided to run a record breaking 10 miles today. Farthest I've ever run. Actually it's purely coincidence I ran it on the 10th. In fact I didn't realize until about 10 minutes ago. My previous record is 7 miles, so ya, I blew that one out of the water. I'm not looking forward to the aches tonight when I try to go to bed or the blisters I'll have in the morning, but I feel very accomplished. I wanted to know if I could do the 15k EIU will be holding at the end of the month and I can. I'm a bit of a slow runner when it comes to very long distances, but at least I can do them.

I've always held the belief that running was purely physical until today. I understand why long distance runners typically go through deep psychological hypnotisms each week to prepare for incredibly long distances.

You hit a point where you say to yourself, "Well, I think this is far enough," but you have to push beyond. Then comes the stage where you start to ache. It could be lack of oxygen, blisters on your feet, in my case my hip. I favor one side over the other so at about mile 5 my hip was trying to tell me to just give up. But I didn't. I knew I would have felt unaccomplished if I did.

My next step is a half marathon. I think I'll try to improve by a mile each week until I make it to 13.1 miles. That way I could do the San Francisco Half-Marathon sponsored by Nike in October. All you have to do is pay a nominal fee to participate and complete your run on I think October 21. One of my life goals is to finish a marathon. I'm clearly not going to break any records, but how many can ever say they completed a marathon? Not many.