Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Just For Fun

One more thing.  My roommate showed me this at work today.  This was a much needed laugh and just thought I would share. 

Enjoy.  :-)

Alien Bees

Forgot to mention Alien Bees strobes in my post last night.  My goal is to one day supplement my income with some photography work and I would need some studio equipment to start off with.  I've read and heard good things about these strobes and once I've purchased enough initial camera gear, I plan to pick up a couple of these.

That's all I have time for now.  I'm in my operations management class right now and should probably be paying attention.  Exam next week.

Cheers.

Monday, January 26, 2009

Recession Dreams

Not gonna lie...times are tight.  Especially now that I face unemployment in two weeks.  We can all dream though can't we?  Once I start replenishing the coffers, these are the choice items that I plan to pick up.  All of these toys can be purchased from B & H Photo.  B & H is a great site with some great prices, and they have pretty much everything you could think of with terrific customer service to boot.
  • Nikon SB-900 Flash Unit
  • Velbon EL Carmagne 640 Tripod
  • Nikon D300 Body (rumors of a 400 are surfacing which might be better)
  • Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 VR
  • Nikon 12-24mm f/4
 Some day...

Anybody out there hiring?

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Wentworth by the Sea

Last night I had the privilege of spending a couple hours at the Wentworth hotel in Newcastle (I believe I posted a link to the place in my last post so check it out if you have the time).  I booked a massage at their spa for my girlfriend as a Christmas present, so while she was being rubbed on I got my drink on in the lounge.  It was quite classy to say the least, but the drink prices were surprisingly cheap.  Only cost me 10 bucks for a couple Bass drafts.

Unfortunately, this picture was the only one of the outside I could take.  The winds were howling and the temperature was already below freezing, so after taking the first shot I quickly had to turn around and catch up with Sara.  The New Hampshire seacoast in late January can be quite chilly.  However, I did have time to take a few shots inside the hotel.  I have yet to pick up my flash so I had to crank the ISO to 800.  Normally this would be fine for a camera like a Nikon D300, but with my D60, noise can be quite apparent.  Once I finish pushing the images through Photoshop with Noise Ninja, I'll post them to my gallery and post the link.  All in all it was a pretty great night though.

In other news, I had an interview with another development team and it went pretty well.  Hopefully I'll get the job.  Oh yeah....did I mention I got laid off two weeks ago?  Yeah...  

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Cool Photoshop Technique

David Ziser had a very cool photoshop tutorial out a while back where he demonstrated a technique for adding a cool "painted" type of effect to a photograph.  The video can be found here.  It's only 10 minutes.

I decided to try it out myself, but I couldn't really find any photos to make it work with.  This picture of me and Sara is probably the closest thing in my library right now that somewhat works with this effect.  Let me know what you think.

Heading to the Wentworth Hotel this weekend so that should be a good opportunity to snag some classy shots while the lady gets a rub down.  Well that's all for me.  Another day at the grind tomorrow.  Night all.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Fiona

Felt like throwing a pic up before bed.  This is a picture of Fiona, my girlfriends cat.  I recently came across a black and white photo of a woman holding some roses and the roses were in color but the rest of the picture was black and white.  I've always liked these kinds of pictures and I thought this photo was a perfect candidate for the same treatment.  I think it came out pretty well.

This was taken at 82mm, f/5.6, 1/15 shutter and ISO 100.  The VR on the lens allowed me to hold it at this speed which was pretty nice.  Comes in really handy in low light situations.  I used the new 18-200mm for this shot.  Takes some pretty nice pictures.

Time for bed. 

Welcome!

First post on the new blog.  How exciting!  Hopefully this is the start of something long lasting.

The main purpose of this blog is to share my photography with anyone who's interested in looking at it, and maybe share some other random tidbits of things going on in my world.  I don't care to use facebook much anymore so I figured this would be a good way to keep in touch with people and still have time to enjoy my recently resurrected love for taking pictures.

I've always been a photography fan but haven't really put the time and money toward it these past 6 years or so.  After graduating college, I've been able to spend some time in the working world and make some money of my own to spend on some cool toys.  I treated myself this holiday / birthday season to a new Nikon D60.  It's taken some great pictures so far and I can't wait to start buying some nice lenses for it.

That's all for this first post.  More to come soon!