Happy Birthday to Me

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WindsurfingThis out of shape almost 40 year old with the awesome farmers tan is me from this summer. My sister took this picture of me when I was up to see my parents at their cabin on Lake Winnipeg.

Now as today I turn 40, I am sitting home sick contemplating what direction my mid life crisis should take me, and I was thinking about the last 40 years or so.

At one time, I used to windsurf a lot. I raced for the Manitoba team. I would spend every weekend on the water. I would cheer when the wind came up and everyone would leave the beach. Now, not so much. Things change. I have sold off all of my equipment. I just don’t have the same drive, and definitely don’t have the time.

What I have replaced just about all hobbies and activities with is photography. This what I now turn to for fun and a creative outlet. It is not quite as active, so I still try to run and play basketball every once in a while.

I fit photography and what ever else I can in around that which is most important to me: my family and my kids. The last 5+ years of living with my kids has brought many changes, but their energy, enthusiasm, innocence, and general intrigue with life are fascinating. There is so much that we can learn, or relearn from our children. I hope to be able to capture just a little bit of that on film.

Ok, now where is the map to the motorcycle store…

Gallery Showing

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Gallery Event

This was the setting of my first photo gallery. It was awesome. We had the perfect sized room at the front of the Fabulous Catering kitchen, who also catered the event. It just happened to be my birthday, but I concentrated on the gallery thing.

This was just one corner. Annie did a great job of getting frames, and then hanging all the pictures I had printed off. We are going to have a really full house once we get these back.

If you every get the chance to put on an event like this, I would recommend that you just go for it. It is such a rush to see your work on the wall, and have people looking at it and commenting on how great it is!

Anyway, it was a great event, and I want to thank all the people that came, Annie and her helpers for all the work they did, and Fabulous Catering where we had the event and all the great food they provided.

My First Gallery Showing

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Gallery Collection

Annie is throwing me a 40th birthday party. As part of the event, we are doing a gallery showing of some of my work. I printed up some of my new images, such as some of the DLWS images that I have shown lately. With the new images and some of the ones we had around the house, we had two dozen images framed. Very cool. Annie did a great job of picking out some frames.

I had the pictures printed from WHCC, and they were great as usual. I think that they were a little darker this time, but I had been using a different color calibration tool than the last time I had things printed. I think I may just have to try to turn down the gamma setting.

Anyway, I am looking forward to the part tonight. Thanks Annie!

I hate pair programming

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Hand in Hand 

First, to clarify, I don’t hate the two lovely girls in this picture, but they can be quite the pair. Second, my mother told me never to say hate, so maybe that was not a good title. How about “I detest pair programming.”

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to be stuck in a cave for a couple of months and then crawl out bleary eyed and pronounce that I have created the perfect piece of code. I love collaboration. I go to others for help, input, guidance,¬†or to reciprocate for someone else.

What I¬†don’t like, is sitting¬†in a cube with two people where one person types and the¬†other looks over their shoulder all day.¬†Maybe I haven’t had the right person to do this with. Maybe¬†that is why the pair of kids in the picture works. They have their issues, but they get along well, and have similar goals most of the time.

When I am paired with someone, and they have the keyboard, I just feel like one of two things occurs. I am sitting there bored wondering why they just don’t let me type, or they are whipping through some material I have never worked with, and I am lost when I don’t get to “drive”. When I have the keyboard, I just find it annoying to have someone asking if the code could be done differently every 5 minutes. I don’t mind getting feedback, and code reviews are great. I have no problem working on a task, checking for ideas, implementing my approach, then getting feedback, and maybe refactoring. I just don’t like it in real time.

I don’t see the benefit. Luckily it only looks like we are doing this while several of us are new. It won’t last forever. Have you ever had to work for an extended time period in a pair? Did it work?

Drawing the Eye

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Forest Path

Yes, Ok, you caught me. I just posted this the other day. But it fit with the topic well. Kinda wish I had kept it until today.

Anyway, David duChemin has a great e-Book out called Drawing the Eye. I am a little slow on this one. So slow in fact, that David has just come out with another called Chasing the Look. I tried to get this out before he put out another, but the guy has gone e-book crazy. He can write these faster than I can read them.

For the second “anyway” of the post… Drawing the Eye is a great read. This stands on its own just fine, or it could have been a fine chapter in a larger book. This book is about visual mass, and light, and what draws the eye. The really great thing about this little document, is that it doesn’t stop at telling you what draws your eye, he gives examples, and even step by step instructions in Lightroom on how you can do the same.

One thing I found really interesting about this, is that this concept of drawing the eye was something I was just learning about at the DLWS I was just at. In fact, I tried to do just that with the picture above. I lightened the road, darkened the edges, and lightened a spot down the road where the road winds a bit, as the lightest part. Did it work? Were you drawn up the road to that spot?

Head back to pixelated image and grab the e-book there, David does a much better job at explaining how this all works. Then give it a try on  some of your images. Tell me if it worked for you. This e-book is easily worth the $5.

Big Fat Business Card Giveaway Thingy

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Moo Business Card

David duChemin, over at pixelatedimage is running one heck of a contest right now. He is calling it “My BIG FAT Business Card Giveaway Thing”. What you need to do to enter is to put one of your business cards up on flickr. See his site (link above) for the prizes and the contest rules.

The image above is the business card that I entered. I grabed it from the moo site where I ordered the images, and the colors look a little off. The actual cards look much better.

I had several cards made. This is a grab of all the ones that I made.

My Moo Cards

I made a bunch of different images for fun. Some kinda silly, like the Lego, but it is one of the most popular. This way I hand people the stack and say “pick one”. That way I get to show off my work, not just hand out a card.

Happy Halloween

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Darrel

Happy Halloween everyone. Last night we had a little fire in the front yard where we handed out candy to the kids, and had a few people over. I tried to get a few pictures with just the light of the fire.

Amazing how little light this is. I shot with my 50mm f/1.8 wide open. I increased the ISO to 640, and on manual set up a 20th of a second. Then tried to get a shot where I was still, and my subject was as well. I am not that good at shooting at 1/20th! I felt that this one turned out though.

If you were looking for pictures of my kids, see here.

Annie and Jan

Friday

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Sunrise Boat

Another Friday, another week in a cube. I was spoiled by my trip last week. Didn’t really want to be in my cube this week, especially working extra hours…

Don’t forget to add a comment to this blog post to win “the War of Art”.

Into e-books? If you are not, you will be after checking out the recent stuff by David duChemin. I have the first two, but not  yet the third, but it sounds like it is worth the $5.

Have a happy Halloween to those that wish to be wished a happy Halloween.

DLWS Forest Shots

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Forest Path

Welcome to fall color. We timed the color about as well as you could for our DLWS Michigan trip to Traverse City. There wasn’t a lot of reds, but a whole lot of yellow maples were there. You couldn’t point a camera without taking a picture of one. There was the challenge. How do yo get a picture of fall color? You need more than just color in the picture to make it interesting.

I thought my winding path shot above was pretty good. After looking at it, I am wishing that I had zoomed in a bit more, and had it vertical. I tried a vertical shot, but it didn’t work with the focal length. Oh well. Some time I will get it in my head that I need to try things more before I move on.

Leaf on the Road
That leaf shot is pretty standard for me. I try to get it every year. I like this years the best. Just the right mix of leaf, color, road, and focus. I entered this image in a contest before, but the leaf wasn’t as sharp as this time around.

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