It's cool... the people you meet...

Randomly got invited to the Zombie Walk last year by a guy named Jesse. He even loaned me his D40 battery when mine went dead that day. Anyway, he and I went for a little wander around downtown San Jose last night and took a few shots. There's a few I don't despise.

Here they are in no particular order:


This guy had a bunny rabbit (a real live one) and the coolest Sharks hat of anyone I saw:Here's Jesse snapping a photo of the clock tower at SJSU:And this gentleman apparently liked the acoustics in this parking garage: And a couple of randoms:

Speaking of my previous entry...

...I took a little time and did some editing today. I'm not ecstatic about the result, but it makes me a believer in a little post-production editing.

Unfortunately, I totally destroyed the bokeh in the edited image.

Before:

After:

Lightroom2

I never thought I would be much into editing my photos, but WOW. Lightroom 2 has me impressed. I think I was initially scared to even try any Adobe products due to the scare I had with Illustrator a long time ago. That program confused me so much I don't think I did anything "good" with it until I put it back in the box and out of my mind.

But I'm having a lot of fun with it. The magic wand tool is fantastic, and the vignetting tool is also great. I can see now that Lightroom2 is a basic editing tool, but it really would handle probably 90-95% of whatever I wanted to do to my photos.

...now the scary thing - Do I go spend $100-$200 on new CF cards (8gb ExtremeIII) so that I can start shooting in RAW? The advantages are limitless, really - mainly considering the ability to full adjust white balance. I'd never have to worry about shooting in anything but Auto-WB every again. That, alone, is VERY tempting.

YIKES! Decisions, decisions!

Downtown night shoot...

Well, I should rephrase. It was more of a downtown walk-around-get-chicken-and-hang-out shoot than anything else. But I captured a few that I'm not terribly distraught over. Especially seeing as I chimped the whole night, and still only ended up taking about 65 or 66 photos.

Ben, Tristan and I were discussing last night how if you get 5 good photos out of 100, you should be happy. I got about 4 or 5 that I don't mind, so I'm a happy camper.

Unfortunately, WB was WAYYYY off in most of these, so I spent the most of my night re-learning how to set WB properly. Oddly enough, for once, Auto-WB did the best.

A little evening at home to myself...

...and what do I come up with? Something kinda' neat, I think. I like my editing of the colors. I don't like the shadow of my ear. The shadow at the bottom of the image bugs me a little bit, but not enough for me to dislike the rest of the photo.

Anyway... Cha-ching!

35mm f/1.8 and SB-600 off camera right through a snoot... not that the snoot actually did a whole lot.

When the wife is away...

...the hubby will play. Well, not in the sense that most think of when hearing that statement. But I've done a few manly things that I normally don't do when the wife is around. Left dishes in the sink, let the dog sleep on the bed, and took some additional time to take some photos AND make some delicious sausages.

A little side yard BBQ'ing and some chicken sausages with freshly grated Colby Jack, freshly diced onions, ketchup and hotdog relish all on "gourmet" (used loosely) Trader Joe's buns. Delicious.

I do wish there was better lighting on my face, like maybe if the BBQ had been facing the other direction. But I love the contrast in colors between the blue sky, the yellow incandescent bulb, and my red hoodie. As for the focusing, I had to do some guess work. I can't really tell if my face is in focus, but my pants are! HAHA!

Delicious...

So, I'm turning over a new leaf. More riding, more photography, more cooking at home, less television, no caffeine, soda, or candy... and somehow with doing more, and having lower blood sugar and energy, I'm going to make it a No. 1 priority to spend more time with my wife, encouraging her, and all those things that a husband should be doing.

To start things off, a few days ago I made fries (baked) and burgers.

To relate this to photography, I always chimp with flash. ALWAYS. It always take me at least a few shots to get the darn thing right. Well, I only chimped twice on this one, and I like it, and it was delicious. TRIPLE THREAT!!!