wedding week
It's been a busy week for me. My brother's wedding is this weekend, which means lots of errands. I'm responsible for some of the photos, so aside from getting a suit and haircut I've also had to get extra batteries and memory cards for my camera. Oh yeah, I also went shopping for wedding gifts last night. That was quite the ordeal.
It's so hard to shop when restricted to a registry. I had one of the girls at Crate and Barrel walk around with me and help me shop. She was really cute and funny. I caught myself pretending that she was my girlfriend for a few seconds. Is that creepy?
On the photography tip: I'm a little stressed about taking photos at the wedding. I've never had to perform under pressure. To better equip myself I decided to return the used 20mm lens in favor of the Canon 16-35mm f/2.8 lens I've been wanting. It was a lot more money, but it will allow for a bit more flexibility and I think I'll be happier in the long run. I've done some shooting with it around my apartment and it is simply amazing.
This leads to my next concern: this site. I feel it's time for a change. A redesign is long overdue and I'd also like to shift the focus a bit to feature my photos. I want to start posting a photo every day or so, instead of waiting for a group of shots that is ready for my photo gallery page.
Listening to: The Get Up Kids, Dave Douglas
Watching: Lost in Translation, American Splendor
Reading: OWASP Top Ten for 2004
Learning: Final Cut Express, Faux Columns
wedding report
Okay, I'm back in action. The wedding went well, my brother and sister-in-law are in Paris and my suit is tucked away in the closet. Perpare for the grusome details about the past week that I know you're dying for.
The Wedding Weekend:
The weekend started on Thursday night with dinner at McCormick & Schmick's was great.
Friday was more of the same at the Cheesecake Factory. I loved it, but was way too full to get dessert. I really wanted to order Craig's Crazy Carrot Cake Cheesecake.
Friday night was a sleepless one. I was pretty nervous about the pictures I was expected to take at the wedding. Luckily, several shots were good. Many more were not. Overall, I was pretty happy and learned a lot. I was really wishing that I had a flash to mount on my camera. I now own a Canon 420EX that will stay in my bag of tricks.
The wedding on Saturday was perfect. The bride and groom were happy and lookin' good, the families all got along and there were lots of lovely ladies to mingle with. Later that night all of the "young" people went out to hang. Good times.
Geek News:
Sunday I woke up to see that my databases were spitting out errors. Not happy. I later found out that database permissions had changed, no longer allowing the temp tables I was using to generate comment counts.
So, between Sunday and Monday night I created a new table and rewrote all of my SQL queries and admin pages. It's something that I've wanted to do anyway, so I wasn't that freaked out. Everything is a bit more efficient and I feel like I can notice a speed difference.
On Tuesday I was looking through my server logs and noticed that someone was hot linking some of my wallpapers to use as their background images. The person in question did ask permission to use the files, I just didn't know that my bandwidth was going to be hijacked as part of the agreement. I quickly put a stop to that with a little mod_rewrite in my htaccess files.
Photography News:
Along with the new flash mentionted above, I bought a 9' x 50' roll of white paper from the photo store so that I could set up a simple photo studio in my apartment. The next step is to get some cheap but decent lighting.
I also bought a book that I'm excited to study.
Now I'm looking forward to going to bed and getting ready for my three day weekend, which includes the Dave Douglas concert on Sunday night at the Dakota.
family in hiding
Last night I received a couple requests to see the wedding photos I took. For now, I'm not going to post them publicly. My family likes to read my site, but doesn't like to be featured on it. I have to respect that.
The Grey Album
What do you get when you mix Jay-Z's The Black Album with The Beatles' White Album?
The Grey Album is a creative mix of Jay-Z's lyrics to music from the White Album. DJ Danger Mouse released only about 3,000 copies of The Grey Album before being shut down by EMI. Original copies of this cd are now going for around a hundred bucks on eBay. Today, it can be yours for free ninety nine.
IllegalArt.org is offering The Grey Album free. I suggest you download it now if you are at all interested. Their site has some other interesting downloads that are worth checking out too.
grey day
It's officially Grey Tuesday. The Grey Album has been in my rotation pretty heavily for the last week. I've said it before and I'll say it again, download it while you can.
Sorry for the lack of posts last week. I've been busy setting up and experimenting with my home photo studio, spending too much time and money at Organized Living and cleaning out my closets.
make time
I've been putting together a home photo studio this week, focusing on setting up for product shots. I'm taking some new pictures for my brother's business, so that's where the inspiration to do this came from.
I started by getting a large roll of white paper and some masking tape from a photo store. I've taped this up high on my wall and draped it across a table.
Next, I needed lighting. I went to Home Depot and got some halogen work lights with clamps that I can mount on some spare cymbal stands I have lying around. I also picked up a couple of Lowel umbrellas to diffuse the light.
This worked pretty well, but the setup was a little ghetto and messy, so I picked up a Norman Allure C1000 constant tungsten light and a proper stand. It's a great light that runs at 350W, 650W or 1000W. I still use one of my work lights to fill in shadows, but may get a second C1000.
I'll start posting some photos in the next couple of weeks. My pal Brian just redesigned his site (again) and reminded me that I need to get moving on my own redesign. I've been waiting to find the time to build a dynamic upload and management system. I've realized that I will not find time, but need to make time for it.
