May 16, 2008

Tap. Tap. [cough]. Um, is this thing on?

I built a blog so that the threshold would be low enough for writing posts that I'd be inclined to do it more frequently. Instead, I still keep finding myself putting it off "just a little longer" so that I can give an entry proper attention.

I've got to stop that since it's been, oh, about a YEAR since I really posted anything. I think Twitter, which some describe as "micro-blogging" has gotten me going again. That and the fact that I've got a million things to talk about these days. :)

Waaaay too many things have gone on in "the silent time" to really catch up, so I'll just summarize a little here and then TRY to get my butt in gear to post regularly now.

I'm doing a great deal more contract photography work now, both for the college and other individuals and organizations. I enjoy it a great deal despite it adding about a half-time job to my already greater than full-time job. Busy is good, really, and the added income pays bills and buys more gear to, of course, do more work. :)

On a related note, I re-arranged much of my home studio / office work space and built in a new permanent desk into the corner of the room that uses up one full wall and more than half of another. It gives me about eighteen feet of continuous surface at an ideal height with cable management underneath, good lighting, etc. I'll put up a VR of the space soon (the current one I have is outdated).

One significant and wonderful addition to the computing tools was adding an Apple 30" Cinema Display which, some months later, I mounted on a fully articulating hydraulic arm. I can move it around most any way I like with just a finger (up, down, side to side, in, out, 180 rotation, etc). I almost can't abide using the laptop's own 17" display anymore once I got spoiled by all the screen real estate of a 30" display. Throw in OS X Leopard's Spaces feature and you've got limitless screen room. With the MacBook Pro, too, I can open the lid and run both side by side which I might start doing soon with the Lightroom 2.0 Beta.

One nice thing about reworking my office space was freeing up the rest of the room for a small studio space with my strobes, etc. It's more than enough room for portrait work, product photography, etc. It's another reason I'm using the 30" display and arm, too, since I can swing the monitor into a nice position to see while standing across the room and shooting tethered. Great for high resolution previews of each shot right after it has been taken.

I'm always doing various things with my camera gear. Since I last wrote, I added a second body (Canon 30D) for convenience and backup, sold my Sigma 24-70 f/2.8 and replaced it with Canon's L-class equivalent, added an Epson P-3000 in place of my Hyperdrive, and misc other things including bags, etc. I try to keep my hardware and software list up to date here for anyone curious.

I've gotten involved in quite a few large new projects (podcasts, 3D modeling, etc), too, but I'll blog about each of those separately here in a few minutes. This entry is already meandering a bit with little or no real point other than to catch up on some technical minutiae.

December 3, 2007

Aaron's Equipment, Software & Tools List

Continue reading "Aaron's Equipment, Software & Tools List"

May 5, 2007

Williamsburg & Jamestown

Williamsburg & Jamestown

• HTML gallery
  
• Interactive slideshow (flash)
  

Williamsburg is one of my favorite places in the world, so I love any chance I get to do even a couple of hours of photography there (see: anniversary / pre-inauguration / inauguration). This past weekend, I traveled with my Dad and Aunt for two days in the Historic Triangle.

Our main goal was to see the fantastic new exhibits at Jamestown since this is the 400th year anniversary. A few new exhibits had just opened this past weekend that we wanted to see, so we decided to hit them while the weather was nice and before the security insanity of the Queen's visit or next weekend's celebration festivities.

The archaeological site being managed by the APVA is quite fascinating and their new Archaearium is beautifully laid out.

We also made visits to the Glasshouse and the Jamestown Settlement, neither of which I have been to since I was in grade school. The Jamestown Settlement in particular turned out to be absolutely fantastic.

As children, my Dad and Aunt both visited Jamestown in 1957 when the original museum and "festival park" was first established for 350th anniversary celebration. Because of this, returning to see the new, far more elaborate museum built in honor of the 400th anniversary was a nice twist. We hope to make a few return visits during the course of 2007 and 2008, partly to see the various installations of a multi-part exhibit entitled World of 1607.

I can honestly say that the permanent exhibit alone is one of the best I've ever seen and is certainly equal to, and in many ways, more elegant than a lot of the Smithsonian exhibits I've visited in Washington, D.C.

The photos in this set include sunrise shots of Williamsburg, the Jamestowne archaeological site, Glasshouse, and Jamestown Settlement.

I'm also in the process of reworking various parts of this site, specifically the slideshows. This is the first halfpress slideshow I've ever paired with music, so let me take a moment to also thank Magnatune and the Brook Street Band for their recording of Handel's Sonata No. 4 in G Major - Allegro A Tempo Ordinario.

Williamsburg & Jamestown

• HTML gallery
  
• Interactive slideshow (flash)
  

Enjoy!
- Aaron

(Note: The current version of this gallery is fairly bandwidth-intensive, so a word of warning to people on slow connections... I'm making adjustments as I experiment...)

April 24, 2007

Lantern Bearing

Lantern Bearing

• HTML gallery
  
• Interactive slideshow (flash)
  

In the eleven years I've worked at SBC, I've never witnessed a Lantern Bearing but have always been fascinated with the concept. From a photography standpoint, I've always had a weakness for low-light shots involving flames or other interesting lighting (Williamsburg Blacksmith - Paris, France - Canal du Briare, France). Lantern Bearing didn't disappoint in this regard...

Low-light photography is challenging enough. It gets even more challenging, though, when need to assemble six-shot, 360-degree panoramas involving people. Fortunately, the juniors here were wonderfully willing to oblige and patiently put up with my odd request to stand very still while I walk in a circle pressing a button on the end of cord. :)

Links to 48 images from last night can be found in the drop-down box above. I think the slideshow works especially well for this. Click on the images below to see two 360-degree panoramas from last night. You will need Quicktime to view these (Mac users are set already and Windows users who have installed iTunes should already have what they need as well).

For those not familiar with VR Panoramas, just hold down your mouse button on the image once it appears and drag around. Be sure to look up and down as well.

Enjoy!
- Aaron

March 9, 2007

In the month since...

A lot has happened since my little flurry of posts from San Francisco and MacWorld 2007. I stopped writing from there about halfway through the trip mostly due to having come down with a friggin' cold. I spent Wednesday evening and much of the day Thursday that week holed up in my hotel room, conserving energy so I wouldn't miss the podcasting party at Jillian's (a bar in Sony's Metreon). I'm glad I did since I had a chance to chat some more, however briefly, with Leo, John Foster, Alex Lindsay, Merlin and Scott Bourne. Inspiring guys...

Unfortunately, the time between MacWorld and today has had a few small joys and one tremendous tragedy.

My Grandfather died last October. While not sudden, it was nonetheless a deeply saddening experience. A few weeks ago on January 28th, almost three months to the day we buried him, my Grandmother also died. Her death, by contrast, was quite sudden and unexpected and involved a whirlwind 48-hour escalation from discomfort to emergency surgery to, ultimately, passing away in a virtual coma. None of us were in the least prepared, especially in the wake of my Grandfather's recent death.

I wrote a tribute to my grandfather on here the day that he died. By contrast, I've been silent here from just prior to my grandmother's death through the few weeks since. My grandmother was an incredible and unique woman who easily had as much influence on my life as my grandfather. The sudden and unfair nature of her death, however, leaves me grieving not just for her, but for the combined loss of them both as grandparents. It's not two deaths in three months but, in a way, three.

The two weeks of dawning realization prior to my grandfather's death had a lot to do with being in the proper frame of mind to write what I did on the day that he died. I'm just not there yet with writing about my grandmother. In time...

Whatever my reasons for periods of silence on here, I need to get my ass in gear to post more frequently. Part of why I switched to a blog format from my previous static pages was to overcome the "effort barrier" that often killed spontaneity. I now have little excuse outside of a lack of discipline.

Outside of the personal events mentioned, I've got a somewhat blog-worthy backlog that I'm now setting out to tackle...

January 11, 2007

MWSF: Day Three

Day three started with a fun MacWorld Live event hosted by David Pogue of the New York Times. This is a tradition that started since my last MacWorld ('97 in Boston), so it was a first time thing for me. It's done in a sort of David Letterman-style talk show format with a few guests and ended with Pogue and one of the guests performing two comedic songs he had written. The funnier of the two was mocking the RIAA and was set to the music of the classic "YMCA" song.

I attended my second round of seminars afterward and also spent some more detailed time on the show floor visiting vendors and seeing interesting products.

Unfortunately, though, the thing I wanted to avoid finally happened. Since Monday afternoon, I'd started to feel a scratchy tickle in my throat behind my sinuses.

Continue reading "MWSF: Day Three"

January 10, 2007

MWSF: The Big Day

I'm quite tired at the moment, so this one is going to be brief. Obviously, I'll start with the big one:

The iPhone is positively stunning.

Go see for yourself. Download the keynote. There is nothing I can say here that others have not said (and probably said better).

Oh, and did I mention that it's positively stunning?

Speaking of the keynote... total blast. Yes, we got there at 5:30 AM and the line was already wrapped around the building into the next block. Sometime after 7 AM we were herded into Moscone West. I got split, based on my pass, into the priority seating group and ended up being in about the first 120 attendees into the hall (behind, of course, the VIPs, press and various Apple employees).

I made some great friends in the line this morning. That's one fantastic thing about MacWorld conferences... you just meet the neatest people and almost instantly start talking like you've known one another for years.

Speaking of great people, I got to meet at least three tonight that I have admired for a long time: Alex Lindsay, Merlin Mann and Leo Laporte.

Lots, LOTS more to tell... but I need some sleep. :)

Oh, remind me to tell you later about the Google Sketch-Up socks.