OK, so a few times recently my camera has taken a very odd looking photo. I know it’s not an error on my part, because I cannot associate it with any action. So I’m tossing it out to you, what’s going on?
Here’s a few samples:
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Here’s the skinny…I’m taking my wife on a cruise for our 10th Anniversary. We’re going to visit many cities in Great Britain and Ireland. I hate the pre-packaged excursions you buy through the cruise-line. I’ve written a detailed page, you can see the tab above, and I’m interested in your input.
I need tips and ideas on what to do and where to visit. I’m especially interested in photographic locations and places you live or have actually visited.
Please head over and read the article I wrote, and comment there. Commenting has been turned off for this post.
Thanks!
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Don’t forget, in just 15 days, the December Challenge will begin.
All you need to do is commit to shooting a portrait a day, each day of December, 2007. You don’t need a blog, just upload them to Zooomr (or Flickr if you must). Tag them with, “decemberchallenge” so that I can track them all easily.
During the month, I’ll write a couple of posts, tracking our progress. You should too, if you blog. With each post, I’ll also include some of my favorites from the Challenge.
Now, there are many of you out there who seem interested, but you’re concerned that the Challenge is too much for you. Don’t be discouraged! It’s really not that hard. I’m going to make a nice long list of everyone in my life who I can shoot. A friend from church, who flies for the US Navy, the comical lady who watches our kids on occaision, my pastor, a friend who is a local deputy sheriff, one of my wife’s pretty friends, all people who are great subjects. You only need 31 people. Everyone knows 31 people!
If you don’t know how to pose someone…try this. Have your subject stand or sit, however they feel comfortable. Now, use a lens that is somewhere between 30mm and 100mm. Set your camera to Aperture Priority and shoot at f/2.2 (or 1 stop above your lowest f-stop setting possible.)
Now have your subject close their eyes. Give them an emotion. Any emotion will work. For example, let’s say you say “giddy”. Tell them to think about the last time they were giddy. Interact with them, make them tell you about that situation. Keeping their eyes closed, have them talk about it until you see their face begin to “go back to that moment”. When you think they’re ready, have them open their eyes. Now! You’d better have focused and framed the shot. Right when they open their eyes, shoot away!
There are many methods that work well. This one is what I’m using, and will try to see how it works over time. Don’t be afraid to use emotions that lack a smile. Sadness, depressed, anger, melancholy, thoughtful, etc.
I hope you all decide to take the Challenge, and we’ll enjoy the ride!
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OK, so a good friend who will go unnamed, gave me a tripod. The only problem was that the head was broken. So, I have a good set of tripod legs. No problem, I just set it aside until I could afford to buy a nice ball head for it.
Fast forward to today…
I just bought a nice Giotto ball head. Great? No! Neither item has anything that looks like it can connect with the other. Help!
Below are a couple of images so you can see:
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First off, let me start with a clear proclamation…
I am not interested in offending anyone who is not a Christian.
However, having no other more appropriate podium to announce my concerns, I will venture into an area of theological debate that will cause many to become polarized.
Over the last several years, I have observed an increasing trend within the Church that causes me great concern. Early on, I stood by and watched churches embrace a modern marketing approach to managing their church. An approach that placed marketing surveys and trendy schemes over teaching the Word of God. Many of these churches are simply emulating the numerical and financial success of a small number of massive churches. An important note to observe would be that no where has anyone observed tremendous life change or transformation, just a lot of people “praying the prayer” and giving their cash.
Then I began to witness as many of these churches and many more begin to take the post-modern mantra into their elder meetings. The embracing of an attitude of rebellion began to permeate their whole church, manifesting itself in as many ways as possible. This movement decided that they were emerging from something that needed to be emerged from. The most concerning acts I’ve seen here are the embracing of practices that have traditionally been considered hertical and pagan. The two most scary influences seem to have been the meditative approach of the Hindus (eastern religion) and what was once considered Christianity, the Roman Catholic church.
Now, catholics, I’m really not trying to attack you here. What I am saying is that if modern day Protestant Christianity agrees that the Reformation was necessary, then we must come to a place of nonagreement over what is Christiandom.
So, if what Martin Luther had to say was relevant, then Protestant Evangelical Reformed Christianity must NOT accept the teachings of any catholic after the Reformation. And if anything close to Christianity wants to admit that the Bible is THE Word of God, then nothing the East has to offer should even be allowed on our Tivos.
Here’s a couple of real men of God sharing their perspective:
So, you can take your yoga, contemplative prayer, secret prayer closets, and your ex-catholic monks and take a hike.
Me? I’ll be over here, reading the Word of God.
“But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction.” 2 Peter 2:1
“For nothing is hidden except to be made manifest; nor is anything secret except to come to light.” Mark 4:22
“Yet in like manner these people also, relying on their dreams, defile the flesh, reject authority, and blaspheme the glorious ones.” Jude 1:8
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So, it’s been a while since I’ve said anything about my Ubuntu travels. Well, it hasn’t gone away, I promise. I ran out of money and time in building the older machine. However, we did get a couple of Mac minis, which are Intel boxes, and perfect Ubuntu testers.
So with that in mind, I’ve loaded up the Fiesty Fawn Live CD a few times, playing and testing. It’s amazing! Even on the Live CD, all I had to do to get the desktop effects was check a box in the settings. Sweet! Also one of the coolest is that I get the Flash plugin, since the Mac mini has an Intel chip. (The pre-Intel Mac’s have processors that are not supported with the Flash plugin.)
I must say, I’m ready to dump OSX on one of the machines. My wife’s is probably the most likely candidate, since all she has that is Mac only is a bunch of iTunes purchases.
My machine is used for a bit more, like Garageband, iMovie, etc. I’m also quite comfortable with my Mac’s podcasting software apps. And since I’m getting ready to record my last Scribe Music Show, but also getting together the stuff to launch a new show, with a coworker, I’ll need my podcasting stuff. Until the Linux multi-track audio editors get much better, I may need OSX for quite a while.
The only thing holding me back right now is the iTunes purchases. I’m stuck on having my music library on this exact Mac, so, moving it to my machine is out.
I’ve scoured for some open-source tool that will easily convert my DRM’d AAC’s to plain AAC’s or MP3’s, but nothing works with the newest iTunes. We also have too much to just burn to CD and then re-encode. So what do I do?
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I hereby declare that my dishwashing expertise offers me the freedom to wash dishes via my own, proven, methods.
I will not be questioned.
Background…
Sometime in junior high school, our dishwasher broke in my home. It was never really addressed. Then, a long time later, I was informed that it had been fixed. The problem was that I was legally old enough to drink alcoholic beverages by this time.
IT HAD WORKED FOR OVER 10 YEARS!
I am an expert dishwasher. I have a black belt in dishwashing. I can train military dishwashers, I’m that good.
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Let me tell you that anything you do or say within seconds of being woke up you are not responsible for.
What do I mean? Well, let’s just say that your spouse is not fealing well. Let’s continue to say that during the night they awake with the need for care. Let’s also say that they make an attempt to solicit you providing them with assistance.
Continuing…
Let’s also say that you some how offend your spouse. Bummer.
I herby state that you are free from guilt and consequence for anything you say and/or do after having been waked from sleep, for the first 60 seconds.
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First, let me tell you that I’m posting this as a help for someone close to me. I’m just trying to help him/her use Skype. Make sure that you have Skype installed. If not, see below.
What is Skype? Well, check it out.
I’m also trying to try out Skitch. What is Skitch? Well, check it out.
So, follow along with my screenshot path below:
1. Press “Command-space” and type “skype”
2. Next, select Skype from the list that appears.
3. Now, watch the Skype icon bownce in the Dock.
4. Once the Skype app has loaded, you’ll be presented with your Contact List. (In order to make sure that you’re signed in to the correct account, look at the circled name in red below, I’m signed in as “trevorscottcarpenter”.
The circled blue names below are my contacts.
5. In the Contact List, right click (Ctrl-click) the contact with whom you want to start an instant message chat. I’ve selected my wife’s Skype name.
6. Start typing. When you want to send your message, hit “Return”, and presto, the message will be sent. Wait for their response.
Now you’re Skyping! Yes, it’s a verb now, just like “to google”.
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So, years ago, I learned a little HTML. I checked out a few web sites that showed me the basics and I just barely began to understand. Having absolutely no programming experience, I had no place to start from. This spiked my interest and I enrolled in a community college course on basic web design. It really wasn’t a design course, since we never covered any design priciples. It was just an HTML course. I’ve still got the text book.
Having learned the basics, I had just enough to be dangerous. However, what was most important was that I had learned how to deconstruct a webpage. This was when my learning began. I probably learned more over the next few years, just from “View Source”-ing my way through a page. One big feature I never picked up on was CSS. There were more, but this one has come back to bite me on more than one occaision.
So, things have changed quite a bit. Now everyone is using PHP, or some other tool to make web development smoother. Of course CSS is important, and I’ve been in the dark. To top it off, these whole CMS apps have really emerged as a great tool for organizing information.
Well, back in 2005, when I launched my first podcast, I learned that blogging tools would serve the podcast well. So, I tossed together the easiest WordPress install I could find. But, as time drug on, I decided that I wanted to customize my WP. Not as many plugins existed yet, so I had to do it by hand. I checked out the wiki and slowly began to realize that I had a lot more to juggle this time around. The code I was reading was similar in style, but it wasn’t anything I had learned in HTML. I quickly discovered what similarities PHP had with HTML, and I found a some good online help to learn the basics of customizing WP.
The problem I found was that I had began to learn about just the code that was used in WP. This wasn’t helping me learn how to code in PHP, generally. Since I wasn’t learning good PHP skills, I still had to use help for any problem that emerged with my WP. This began to frustrate me.
Additionally, I’ve been observing the amazing Web 2.0 shift. Great tools and services are started everyday. I’m a big fan of Zooomr, you know this. There’s others like Zoho, Pownce, Twitter, and Facebook. All of these, being web applications, were developed with some amazing tools that I want to learn.
Am I to become the next Kristpher Tate? Probably not. But much of the bread and butter of web development isn’t on the front page of anything huge. I just want to fit in.
Do you have any input for me? Where do you think I should start? I’m working on a follow up post, one that details my plan of attack. I’ve got a Lynda.com hook up, so I’ll be taking several of their online courses, to get started. Today, PHP basics.
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I just discovered the most rockin’ new DVR replacement.
For several months, I’ve been using Transmission. It’s a great torrent app that is straight forward and pretty easy to use. Go to it’s site for more information about that app, I’m not reviewing it here today.
However, I don’t know where I heard it first, but a newer app called TVShows was brought to my attention yesterday. So I checked it out, since I’m addicted to the television. Well, it rocks! Basically you start the app, and it presents you with a very long list of almost everything on English speaking television. You scroll through and “subscribe” to all the programs that you want, telling it which episode you want first. In the preferences you set where you want the torrents stored.
When you quit, it loads a daemon that finds the torrent files for the programs you’re subscribed to, downloads them, and then loads it in your default torrent app.
Legal release: I do not endorse, encourage, insight, or cause anyone to download copyrighted content, nor do I do such things. This whole post is simply a “what if?” and is to be used for educational purposes only. DON’T BREAK THE LAW PEOPLE!
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Hey you, yes you! Are you a photograher? I’m looking for advice and wisdom for an upcoming series of shoots. A close loved one is an interior designer. She has challenged me to shoot several of her finished homes for her portfolio. I am growing rapidly in my photography skills, however, I have limited experience and knowledge for shooting architectural photography.
So, do you know how to shoot interior shots? Have you dont architectural shooting before? Well, let me know what you think. Here’s my equipment list:
Now, I planning on getting a few things too:
My lighting plan consists of using the light kit to fill in for what the natural and existing lighting doesn’t supply. I figure that many of the existing light fixtures will over expose, so I plan to bring along a few of my own 20 or 40 watt bulbs, just in case.
I also know that shooting when the light is coming in, but not directly in, the windows will help me get good natural light.
What else? Please help? Comment away!
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************************************ Attention football fans! If you attended the Ventura County Badgers football game in San Bernardino, on May 3rd, head to my special photo gallery to view and purchase the photos from the event. ************************************
A product of Oxnard, CA.
trevor [at] trevorcarpenter [dot] com
