Your Day?

So what is your day?  I was pondering this during lunch today.  I know that a lot of people have difficult or bad days and some people have good maybe even the odd great day.  But what is your day?  I got this email today about a person that was apparently already arrived.  That is to say they knew what they had and it was what they had wanted or desired but they had the ability to realize it.  That is the key here to know that where you is ok and it is not necessary to go chasing after something else just have and to try to get back to the place you started.  This is maybe getting a little deep for Tuesday.  But what I am asking is what is your day?  Is it long and boring filled with unhappy things or is it warm and full of wonderful things.  I think a lot of people that make it successfully and by that I am saying know they have what they desire can make their days seem effortless.  This takes me into another bigger item which knowing where you are going, I have been focusing on getting our somewhat idealistic thought of retirement closer to a reality.  I can't think too hard on retirement as it seems a long way off but I guess knowing that you want to retire and that you want to enjoy life is great thing helps you focus.

So my day is this, wake up usually after the better half is up and roaming around.  Shower and shave, brush the teeth.  try to get out the door by 6:40ish.  Now in bike season this is not the case.  I am up and rolling on the pathway by 6am so keep that in mind as there is really two different events that may happen in my day.  Work, I am in the office and looking for issues what worked what did not and then fix it.  Then it is broader, get looking at things like projects and deadlines, server builds and storage systems.  Meetings, never ending meetings some days.  Then there is management documentation as managers need you to tell them what you are doing so they can tell other management how much you are doing so they can tell other people who knows what.  Then lunch.  Love lunch.  Next we move onto the better part of the day, the issues are ironed out or hopefully in a good position and then you can focus on what needs to be addressed pushing for feedback from other coworkers on project items getting data together to defend our need for a piece of infrastructure.  Home time.  C-train, sometimes fun sometimes not so fun.  In bike season it is on the pedals and loving it all the way home.  Home, dinner, relax or not, walk the dog, in the winter ride the bike in the basement, yoga, maybe some weights.  Summer it is walk the dog rehydrate for the next day.  Now things vary but sometimes it is watch a bunch of videos or edit photos or simply just relax.  But maybe it is renovations or go shopping for something.  Then snack maybe, read, lights out, next day.

Now this does not cover the weekends but hey they are a little more personal and nobody likes to here that I might be sleeping in or something boring.

Anyway, look around you may already be where you need to be.  Your day may not be that exciting sometimes but maybe that is ok.....

cheers

What is new!?

So spent a bunch of time in the holidays working on things specifically my negative to positive conversions.  Found that taking pics of negatives is really time consuming but it is quite nice to see the old pictures, gives me a chance to go through them again and relive the moment so to speak.  I have since been out to elbow falls and start to experiment more with the exposure techniques I learned over the holidays.  This concept of exposing for high lights.  Seems a bit odd at first but I have programmed the camera now and it works pretty easy.  Can't say I am disappointed in the images but there is really a bit of art that you need to learn here. It has also changed the post processing a bit for me which is the hard part as it gets too easy to blow up the pictures with contrast and such.  Beyond that I finally had a chance to use my ND filter.  It is an ND 400 so it is about 8 stops of light I think.  I have considered an ND 1000 which is 10 but I figured lets try the 400 first.  So I did a bunch of longer exposure, 6 seconds or so.  Wow I loved it.  I enjoyed the energy it created for me the anticipation as the time went and the challenge of shooting and shooting again with a few adjustments to get it right or maybe a bit wrong.  So with that there is this thing when I was shooting these shots.  It felt so awesome.  I really feel like it is what I love of my photos.  It is the process the opportunity to create.  The chance to get it wrong or right but to try and do something creative.

So this is the one image that I fell in love with.  it is a crop of the bigger shot and it is obviously black and white.  But I keep looking at it and going, I created this, never thought I would make something I enjoyed like this.  Now it is not the best photo ever taken but it is in my books awesome.  That to me is the reason I love my creative side it is the expression, I love it when I create something I like/love.

Here are a couple more example from the shoot, these are exposed for the highlights and then processed based on a method I am trying to follow.

So again it is not really the best shot or the most interesting shot but I am just trying things out and in the end that is the best part of Photography in my opinion.  I really think that maybe a couple of these will make the wall in the frame but you never know. It is challenging to put pictures into print it seems.  We decided that we are going to do a photo book this year for 2014 as it is great way to get the pictures out and in the place where you can enjoy them.

Now that we have the pictures out of the way and creative stuff I am thinking a lot about cameras and lenses again.  Seems never ending.  I think I mentioned an old macro lens there are a couple out there the old vivitar 1 series look for those Kiron made vivitar lenses they are really good stuff.  I have seen one that my father in law shoots with and they are very sharp lenses fully manual but great images coming out them.

I am however concerned about my camera as it is a d600 which for those that know the history on this model it suffers from an issue with oil getting on the sensor.  Nikon did a warranty replacement on the shutter causing the issue which I can attest to seeing in some of my images from back in spring 2014.  I know it was there and I did send the camera in and get it repaired but I am seeing some spots on the images again so I will be trying out some tests to determine where are they coming from hopefully it is not on the sensor if it is then I know what is happening to the camera it will go up on the block and I will find a new one.  Some may say that is bit harsh but I am not interested in suffering from issues and having spots on images that mean a lot to me.

Anyway that is about it for now enjoy the pictures please.  I enjoyed creating them and had fun playing with them in photoshop.  They are not 100% done yet on the editing side I usually take a break and come back to them after a few days just to get a fresh look and make minor adjustments.  But hey there are always photos to take..... :)

Sitting in a meeting

So sitting here a I think the day is dragging on but hoping to get home soon

I am back!

Yep back to work, back to not photoshopping all day, not photo taking, just back.  I am sure you all feel this sense of loss.  The vacation is over and we are all through the holiday period and what do you look forward to now?  Spring break on the beach?  No me.  I am actually fascinated with taking photos right now.  As much as I can't fit it in to my day I am constantly looking for opportunities.  Just ask Traci, driving home I spend most of the time looking at the sunlight and clouds trying to figure out if I have time to get home and get a few shots.  But most of the days not.  So I let it go and hope to find some time to work on my pictures.  At this point I feel like work has taken over my life and it is funny how you get home and there is not enough time to get things together that you want.  But I am going to make time.  This weekend is a photography opportunity and I plan to take it.

So moving on in the photo line, I am back to working on negatives.  The conversion is slow and the process is slow.  But I think that this will be one of those processes that I will keep working on when I can't get out and shoot photos.  I can definitely get some time taking pictures from negative to digital.  What I am really hoping for is the old negatives.  My dad told me he has some really old stuff that he is going to give me.  I am so excited about these.  It is all I can think of right now.  How to deal with them it is like how do you give your heritage a boost into the modern day.  Well I am going to try.  I am also hoping to try and do some colouring of the photos.  That is again a very long process.  I am no master painter but I will try.  In the long run it is one of those things I am extremely excited about trying this process on those old negatives.

That said I am hanging out on eBay looking at other old lenses.  I am not sure I will buy any but I am thinking an old lens for using on the macros.  i want a little longer focal length.  Something in the 200 range.  I found these old vivitar lenses that are a 70-210 mm with macro.  Search them up you can pic them up reasonable about 90 bucks off eBay with an f mount for the nikon.  I am looking at the 67mm front lens diameter (this gets confusing) if they are not 67 they are 62 but look for the f3.5 model.  so if you find a vivitar 1 70-210 macro on eBay with f3.5 and look for the front lens diameter of 67mm or check for kiron in the name as these I think are really great macro lenses or lens period.  But look at the price 90 bucks or so and bam you have an awesome lens that should keep you away from subject should be a critter that may fly away.  Anyhow, have a look and see.  I will keep you posted on the negative conversion stuff.  I am very excited about that.

cheers!

Start Me Up!

Welcome back.  Seems like last year.  Yeah the jokes do not improve as we go so get used to it.  I am back at work and happy to say have made it to the halfway point of another week.  Yeah!  I had a great break, two weeks to enjoy myself and do whatever I wanted for the most part.  I must say despite the sinus cold I managed to get things moving in lot of areas.  I had a really great time with my better half, we sat around talked, she read and really just flat out decompressed and relaxed.  I managed a few slurpee's on the holidays as a treat.  I love them so much and it was sort my reward for getting to the break.  Have a slurpee in the middle of the week.

So what did I manage to get done or do?  I spent a lot of time looking into converting negatives into digital images.  I am quite happy at this point with the first results.  I think there is still a little fine tuning to get things where I want them.  I have learned a few tricks and such to get the colours looking good.  See my earlier posts if you are interested in the setup of the camera and such.  I also took a bunch of photos of the kids.  Very happy with what I got out of the photos.  There are some really great pics and have begun doing some editing on them to create a few different photos for the frame.  The kids are so good about it.  I would have been a real pain if it was me.  Probably why my parents refrained from taking my picture a lot.

I expanded some areas that I was working on in photoshop.  I spent a lot time learning composition techniques and also post production.  Predominately I ended up with some great actions from Phlearn.  If you are interested check them out, they have the phlearn method actions which I find to be a great help.  I also started to watch some videos by Serge Ramelli a french photographer, he gets to photograph the types of stuff I enjoy.  I have since gone back and started to edit some of my NYC photos using his processes.  Let me say I am amazed at the finishes I get despite not really photographing the images quite in the right way.   I have learned about exposing for the highlights and have since made a minor change to setup on my camera.  I think it has made a big change in the images I take and how I post process.  Finally I have also started looking at luminosity masks and frequency separation these are much more challenging for me to work through but I will probably put them into use a little more as I work through my photos.  I think luminosity masks may come in handy as I try and convert negatives into digital.

That is about it a great time had by all at Christmas and I learned a bunch did a bunch with my camera.  Oh speaking of that, I almost went and got a new camera.  I think I posted about it the other week, but later decided to wait a little longer and save up a few more pennies.  We have some other stuff to look after first around the house and I think we should keep that going in the right direction.

So as a bit of a treat the photo I took out the front door on New Years Eve, if you saw the original it was very bland but using some of the things I learned on my vacation you get the image below!