March 2007 – Always Breaking

Broken

So, Wednesday night I was replying to a comment on Zooomr for the Flower Fairy photo and decided to go grab the manual for my camera to check something. I snagged my little toe on the corner of the couch and broke my foot. Damn. I should have taken a picture of my foot with the toe sticking out a sideways. It wasn’t straight out, but definitely not pointing the right direction. I have a few photos I took the day before that I’m going to post, but it may take a couple of more days.

I went to the doc yesterday, but didn’t get the call back until after I left work, so I didn’t get the message until this morning. The really lame thing is that I went the see the Giants last night (they won, Zito was great) and had to walk a long, long way from the car, then back. After the walking I had an idea it was broken, so I wasn’t real surprised by the message.

If I can get the x-ray, maybe I’ll post that.

In the meantime, check out publicenergy. He has some really cool infrared shots.

Have Your Cupcake

Have your cupcake Hosted on Zooomr

One of my good friends, Laurie Lucov, is pastry chef who specializes in wedding cakes. She’s had cakes featured in bridal magazines and makes really, really good cakes. She made these for my daughter’s 8th birthday. I’ve already posted other pictures from that day, and am still slow at taking new pictures so I figured I’d post this one.

Laurie actually liked it and will be using it as part of her portfolio. Her web site is www.laurielucovweddingcakes.com

Rose Highlights

Highlights Hosted on Zooomr

This was taken the same day as my last photo post, I just haven’t had time to do a blog post for it. There really isn’t much to say about it, other than I like the highlights and the color variations caused by the natural light. This shot was taken outside, in full sun. This rose was in a bucket of roses my daughter and her friends were using to make flower arrangements.

My wife is a floral designer and loves flowers, so I end up taking a lot of pictures of flowers. I’ve taken a lot of the pictures on her web site, and will continue to take more at any wedding or event she does.

This shot is on Zooomr, and will be offered as part of their stock photography when Zooomr Mark III is available.

Wikimedia Photo of the Year

Wikimedia is Wikipedia’s somewhat lesser known counterpart for media, including lots of photos. Apparently there was some kind of contest to choose the best photo of 2006. I found out about it today via Digg. The photo that won is really stunning. You can view it at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Picture_of_the_Year/2006. I’ve always wanted to see the Northern Lights, and this just adds to my desire. Maybe someday.

About the photo, the final version was retouched and enhanced. The photographer posted the original to Wikimedia as well. I respect that because I often wonder when I see a stunning photo just how much it was edited. Photoshop is a great tool, but I have to question where the line is between artistic photos and realistic photos. I tend to be more minimalist regarding editing photos, and don’t get into the heavy enhancements or filters, but seeing the difference between the original and finished photo makes me want to learn more about retouching photos. I think the retouching done on this photo added to the visual impact without distorting reality.

Kudos to the photographer Joshua Strang.

Flower Fairy

Flower Fairy Hosted on Zooomr

We have a small magnolia tree in our backyard that’s only about 5 feet tall. It’s been in the ground for a few years, but doesn’t seem to grow. This year it had more flowers than ever before. It just so happened that it was in full bloom on my middle daughter’s birthday, and she is very into flower fairies right now. This particular flower looked like something out the the fairy books she has, and seemed like the kind of place one would expect to find a fairy hiding. My daughter is able to find fairies amongst plants and flowers, but I haven’t spotted any, yet. You can visit the Flower Fairies web site to see some fairies.

I took this during the birthday party while the girls were making flower arrangements. I took a few shots of this particular flower, but this was my favorite. The short depth of field makes the center of the flower really stand out. I also liked the lighting and shadows. View the exif data on zooomr for exposure details.

Zooomr Still Down

I’ve been waiting for Zooomr to come back online after their upgrade to Mark III, but as of right now it is still down. It was supposed to be up yesterday, but they must have run into some problems. I have a couple of photos there that I want to post here, but can’t get to them. Maybe later today or tomorrow.

Some of the new features sound really cool, as you can see from the screen shot. One that I’m anxious to try out is searching by color. From the Zooomr blog:

“Zooomr Mark III Boasts an impressive new search system along side our marketplace Ã¢â‚¬â€� one of the coolest features of marketplace is that we can now search by the overall color of each photograph. This requires intense processing of each photograph, and while we have 5 superfast quad-xeon servers processing multiple batches of photos, it is taking a bit longer than expected.”

Sounds cool, I wonder how it will work. What will a search for teal return? What about searching on hex codes? Anyway, can’t wait for Zooomr to get back up and running.

Octagon

Octagon Hosted on Zooomr

Wow, it has been a while since I posted. I need to change the blog title.

This is a shot of the ceiling in an octagon my father-in-law is building. It’s sort of a hobby for him. There is actually a lot of history behind the building, but that’s completely unrelated to photos. There are more photos of this building on my Picasa site. The ceiling of this building really is cool. I wish I had a really wide angle lens to shoot this with.Ã‚Â All the wood is unfinished, and I didn’t do any color correction to the photo. It’s really cool building, being an octagon instead of rectangle really makes it unique. This photo looks cool, lots of angles and wood. Check out the other photos.
As always, it’s on Zooomr.

Rocks, Fence, Clouds

Rocks, Fence, Clouds Hosted on Zooomr

I took this the same day as the Farm Clouds shot, but since I missed another day I’m posting two today. This was taken very near the Farm Clouds shot. See the geotag at Zooomr.

The fence runs on both sides of the road with a cattle guard across the road. I stopped to take pictures of the fence on the other side of the road, but when I parked I liked this side better. The far off background with clouds was a better backdrop, at least that day. I might go back and take shots again of the other side.

The lighting changed a bit while I was shooting because the clouds kept moving, which actually made things more interesting. and kept me guessing for exposure.

Farm Clouds

Farm Clouds Hosted on Zooomr

This really has been a great week for clouds. Everyday I see some clouds that I’d like to take pictures of, but I’m usually driving or don’t have my camera. I took a drive into the hills east of Petaluma a couple of days ago and shot this. I did take it into Photoshop to adjust the contrast, but not much. I did use my graduated filter so the sky and clouds wouldn’t be overexposed.

View on Zooomr with the geotag. The shot is facing south from the geotag.