Cousins Day

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I posted about the Cousins Day at the farm last weekend. I finally got to putting the pictures up on annieandchris.net. Most of them turned out fairly good for unposed candids in pretty harsh light.

I don’t know how I would manage it, but I have been reading about using reflectors and diffusers recently. I have been rereading Scott Kelby’s Digital Photography 2. It is all about lighting. A lot about studio lighting, but there are many things to learn/remember that could be useful. I would just have to buy more gear. There is always something.

Today, David du Chemin talked about just those kinds of things. There are the very expensive studio kind, and the just a little expensive, portable, they work pretty well kind, that maybe I could consider.

Now I just have to figure out how to get Kate to walk around and be my assistant.

Update: Here is another blog entry on using the diffusers.

Business Card

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So, I decided to create a “business card” from one of my pictures. I don’t really need a business card in the traditional sense, but it would be good to have something to hand out. I never seem to have a pen when I want to tell someone about my site. I really should put my flickr address on there too. Maybe on the back.

Christopher Ward Photography

I’ve had some comments about the picture and the font. The font seems inconsistant and leaves some pretty big spaces between some of the letters. I don’t have kerning on elements, which is unfortunate. Not sure if would fix this font. Might need to try another.

I kind of like this picture, but others have said that it makes them think of a florist, or that it is not a striking photo, or some such thing. What do you think?

Rumors again.

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Well, here is hoping I was wrong, and that the D90 is about to be announced July 1. Nikon Rumors believes it confirmed that a full frame D300 and a couple of primes are coming July 1. They are also holding out that the D90 will be announced on that day. Here’s hoping. I have been hoarding my pennies for a few months now. I wonder when it will be available, even if it is announced then.

I need more speed Scottie

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I was out at a family event, on a farm in Rochester with several families and more than a dozen kids. I decided to make myself the family photographer, as it gave me something to do. I was using my Nikor 55-200 f4-5.6 to get pictures of the kids. It was great during the day, but as the evening came, and the sun started going down I was getting frustrated.

In shadow, I could no longer shoot at ISO 200 with any sensible speed. I was down to a shutter speed of 50-60. Too slow to get kids. I bumped the ISO up to 400 then 800, but the shutter was still slower than I wanted. The lens is just too slow.

What are the options? Not much. The Nikor 70-200 VR f2.8 is huge, with a huge price tag of $1700. Yikes. Sigma has one with similar specs, no VR for about $800. Getting better. Even still, this wish item is likely to stay a wish.

My Provider is not #1

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I use 1 and 1 as my web provider. Can’t say that I am completely happy with them. The site can be slow at times, and yesterday and today there have been periods where it was down completely. I do like that I have a full working shell, and can SSH and SCP files to and from that box easily, but the shell can be ridiculously slow. I tried to look for a replacement. I signed up for dreamhost for a bit. When I started with them, it seemed good. The shell seemed much better… but gallery sucked. Gallery is what I use with the family photo site. After looking around the internet, I discovered that many people did not like running gallery on dreamhost for performance reasons. I heard it was the use of remote NFS shares for drive space, but don’t know for sure if 1 and 1 did anything different. Sigh.

Welcome friends and family

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I probably should have posted this earlier, but I just wanted to welcome anyone that was coming to this blog for the first time today. I sent an email (spamed ya) out to friends and family to let them know that I was officially up and running again. Nice to have you here.

You can’t take pictures here

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This happened earlier this spring, but I didn’t have my blog going then, and I am just getting around to posting now.

So what constitutes public property? I was wandering around work looking for things to take pictures of near by. I saw a couple of motorcycles parked at the side of a building, so I walked down a sidewalk between the Law Enforcement Center (a county building) and a parking lot. I had just taken this picture :


when a police officer asked what I was doing. I said I was just taking pictures, and she said it was private property. I politely told her sorry, I thought that the land surrounding a county building would be public. She pointed at the one arm bandit gate on the parking lot and said this parking lot was private property and you had to have a parking pass to be here. I didn’t feel like arguing with the officer, but I didn’t follow the argument, so I left.

I am starting to hear of all sorts of stories about photographers getting hassled taking pictures. Don’t even think about using a tripod. See Scott Kelby’s story here.

I got directed to PhotoPermit.org that has lots of stories and info about getting and trying to avoid being hassled by security guards or police.

There is a great PDF on a photographers rights here. Just don’t expect to be left alone for waving this paper around.

Where is the new D80/D90?

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Nikon last released the D60, before that the D300, and before that the D40x/D40. I have the D40. What’s next? I am hoping it is a refreshed D80. Call it a D90. The rumors have been flying recently for a release this month, June. Nikon has released quite a bit recently, so thinking of a D90 in June seems a bit premature, but that seems to be the prevailing wind. The D80 is two years old now, so people think it is time for an upgrade. I think that Nikon has had it’s hands full taking over the bottom end of the spectrum. I think that September is more likely. Why? That is when the next big photo show is. Photokina 2008 is in September in Germany. Last year this show was where the D60 was released. It will make the D80 long in the tooth, and I am hoping for sooner rather than later, as this rumored camera is targeted as my next purchase.

Bring on the cards.

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The cards are here. The fedex truck drove away a few minutes ago. I blogged about this deal here. The deal is even better than I thought. There is more in the box than just the card. With each 4gig Extreme III card, there is also a card reader, a little pouch that can hold at least two cards (in their tiny cheap plastic cases) and some rescue software. Sandisk also claims to warranty the cards for life. Pretty sweet. Now to see if I get the rebate, which would put the price at $20 apiece.

I also ordered a batery for my D40. I am going to try the Adorama branded one. Hopefully it will work fine as a backup. Not sure how to test it short of just holding the trigger and counting shutter clicks vs doing the same with the Nikon version.