Happy New Year! (that's all)

Wishing you the best of 2009 and a glass of something luscious...

Oh the excitement, watched the New Year arrive on the east coast (yeah for satellite TV broadcasts -- Times Square looked very cold and windy).

With the new addition to the family, this is all the celebrating I'll be doing. :)

Happy New Year!

rootie

Photo: Crystal slippers

A couple small plastic candy dishes from a baby shower begged to be immortalized. I spent about an hour mucking about with them in the kitchen, trying different things, fixing lighting problems, creating lighting problems, and blinding anyone who walked into the room without a pair of Ray Bans.

There are some photos that it doesn't matter what camera you use. This photo I couldn't have done with my old equipment. This is two flash units off-camera, with one of the flashes pushed +3 and bounced off a shiny pink gift bag to create the extra color on the left.

Compare that to the simple photo with ambient light and no special equipment requirements.

The only thing I did in photoshop was crop the image, and resize for the web. Everything else was straight from the camera. This just goes to show that if you try 75 different ways of doing something, chances are you'll find a better way than your first attempt. :)

(yes, I did add more candy partway through. yes, I did eat candy partway through, and before starting, and after finishing, yes, I did take something on the order of 75 different photos of this)

rootie

ps. (T-3 weeks and counting down)

Life's little lessons #5001 - 5005

I bought a new camera the other day. Oh the excitement of a new toy. Just think of the wonderful pictures I'll be able to take! (and share with all my friends)

What an education!

5001. There is a phenomenon I am sure the mechanics among you will recognize. If you have an old car with many years and miles on it, replacing one part will often mean you must replace other parts. What starts out small can grow beyond your expectations.

5002. 2 memory cards @ 8GB each. 2GB free hard drive space for picture downloads. (something's gotta grow all right :O )

5003. I can shoot RAW images at incredible speed. I'll just pull them into the software I already have...uh...hmmm...Nikon changed their RAW file format so none of my current (preferred) software will read the raw format images. I guess I need another upgrade.

5004. Shopping for personal items (ahem, I mean a camera bag, which is definitely personal preference) can take longer than expected and shouldn't be done while accompanied by a preschooler. I figured 10, maybe 15 minutes tops -- about an hour later we were back on the road.

5005. 20x spotting scopes at convenient eye level make great entertainment for a 4 year old...though I bet the camera store clerk gained a few gray hairs. It's one of those little things: "daddy daddy, come look, there's a video in this! it's a video daddy, come look! it's a video!"

It has been a busy autumn with so many lessons to learn.

May your fallen leaves be crunchy, colorful and deep!

rootie