Week #2 of the 2013 Photo Challenge is posted! The new theme is FOOD.
I’m excited to see what I can come up with. Let’s see what you can do!
Week #2, 2013 PhotoChallenge
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged 2013photochallenge, food, photochallenge, photography
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Happy New Year!
Looking back on this past year, I can’t help but focus on one single thing that made 2012 a really great year.
My wife’s support for my newfound love of cycling has truly been the most fantastic blessing! She supports Sunday afternoon mtn bike rides with my buddies. She encourages even odd-timed, last-minute long rides around our local hilly country. She’s even come to rescue me when it’s ended up being too cold and I’m too far from home! She even follows my photographic directions in photographing me in all my kit!
She’s an awesome wife, and been my most vocal supporter! Thanks Deanna! I love you.
Challenge yourself to shoot better!
When I think back to one of the most revolutionary times in my photography journey, the first month I ever challenged myself, with the B&W October Challenge, sounds a very loud gong.
Part of the value stems from that being the beginning of the PhotoChallenge.org idea. However, I really believe that narrowing down my focus to shooting only with black and white in mind as the final shot did a number of things. First, I was forced to conceive how colors would balance in monotone. I also had to “see” how the ultimate overall contrast would balance out. There’s just so much I was forced to do, and I believe that ultimately grew me into a better photographer.
With this year’s upcoming, and relaunching, 2013 PhotoChallenge, I’m considering a personal challenge, on top of the regular themes, of shooting in black and white, all year. There will be times when I cannot stick with it, for personal reasons. However, I think a goal of shooting B&W for all my artistically motivated shooting will result in great growth.
And who doesn’t love growth!? Unless you’re talking about your midsection. 
I’ve lost all self control
I am passionate. I have strong opinions. You already knew this.
Throughout my social media existence, I’ve engaged, at various times in various levels of intensity, in many of those issues I feel strongly about; abortion, gun rights, theology, and many other things.
For those of us used to some kind of western idea of freedom, we’re accustomed to being free to engage in a discussion or debate, with at least a small amount of freedom to speak our minds. It’s codified in one of the most basic documents of our nation. However, if you’re a guest in my home, and you’re rude or I simply don’t want to hear your opinion, I’m free to ask you to leave.
In the socialwebs, that’s most often embodied in the infamous “unfriending”. Some websites allow you to do something in between, like hiding the offending party.
One area that doesn’t seem used that often, is the simple closing of comments. Bloggers and old skool media do this often. They write something they know will be offensive or bother their readers, so they close comments. Google+ allows this. Posting to this blog, allows this. Facebook, however, does not. Coupled with my love-to-hate relationship with Facebook, I wish I could just close it down for good. But there are too many actually-important-to-me family and friends whom I remain in contact with, on Facebook. Some of them live far away, and I just can’t get them to use Google+ for a better experience.
So, for now I’m going to try something new. When I post controversial stuff, just know that I’ll most likely just delete debate-worthy comments. It’s that simple. For those who can’t handle it, they can make it all go away by unfriending me. I’m more than willing, however, to take that conversation to a more private place.
First, I want to reserve my debate energy for actual people in my actual life. I cannot take upon the burden of changing the minds of every person I know, online. (Some of whom are photographically oriented friendships, of tremendous diversity.) So, rather than retort with you all, I’ll wait until we see each other in person.
Second, I will also permit any of those who genuinely want to discuss or even understand my view more, to chat with me on Facebook’s direct message center, or of course email always works.
I’m even considering going back through the past few day’s worth of heated conversations, and trimming out the contentiousness.
What do you think? Am I being unfair? Am I closed minded?
Posted in announcement, current events, Internet, liberalism, news, politics, religion, theology, world-view
3 Comments
Academic pricing
You all know we homeschool. You all know I love photography. You might also know that our daughter, The Princess, is quite creative and has tagged along on many photo-adventures through the years.
Recently she expressed an increased interest in all things creative. She’s wanting to make real efforts at learning a few mediums for her artistic expression. It was a no-brainer for her to ask for more photography opportunities. When it comes to gear, we’re set. I have acquired a decent arsenal of Nikon gear, that she’s mostly free to use and play with.
On the software side, I’m an Apple Aperture user, which simply works the best for me. As she grows, if she chooses a different route, we’ll help her as best we can. I’m not “that” kind of parent. 
Since she’s homeschooled, and she’s planning on pursuing photography for more than just documenting things, I want her to have all the tools necessary to make a nice photograph. This obviously works out well for her, since she’ll get to use all the same tools I have. In spite of this I set out to see if there were any other tools that would help her out. That’s when I stumbled upon Nik Software’s plugin set. I’ve used them in the past, and already knew that they are irreplaceable I love their workflow, especially Silver Efex Pro and Color Efex Pro. Great tools!
Like most software developers, they have academic pricing. Awesome! But as I read closer, it became clear that they don’t seem to offer a method for homeschoolers to get access to that great price. So I did what any geek would do, I found the pertinent email address and asked away.
In response, I got copy and pasted text from their website and…
To qualify for academic pricing please provide the qualifying documents listed above prior to your purchase. You can email the documents to supportus@niksoftware.com or fax it to 619-374-7339. Upon approval you can place your order over the phone.
If you have any further questions, please reply to this email or call our Customer Service Department toll-free at 1-888-284-4085 (+1-619-725-3150 outside of the US). Our office hours are Monday through Friday 8:30 am to 5:00 pm PST.
Best Regards,
Zach
___________________
Zach PetschekNik Software, Inc. | Photography first®
7588 Metropolitan Drive | San Diego, CA 92108
Tel – 619.725.3150 | Fax – 619.725.3151
supportus@niksoftware.com | http://www.niksoftware.com
Bummer, was the first response. Clearly, they don’t do much for homeschoolers, nor do they offer any means by which to have a human decide that homeschoolers are worthy of the awesome discount. So I replied, to clarify…
So, Zach, you’re saying that you don’t provide discounts to homeschooling families? These requirements would disqualify nearly every homeschooling family in the US.
Are there no ways for someone with the necessary authority to consider an alternative for homeschoolers?
My final response from Zach at Nik Software…
Dear Trevor,
Our academic discount does not apply to homeschool students or teachers. I can recommend watching one of our Live Training sessions at http://www.niksoftware.com/learnmore. We offer a couple a day about 5 days a week. I recommend this because at the end of every Live Training session they offer a 15% coupon code that you can apply to your purchase.
If you have any further questions, please reply to this email or call our Customer Service Department toll-free at 1-888-284-4085 (+1-619-725-3150 outside of the US). Our office hours are Monday through Friday 8:30 am to 5:00 pm PST.Best Regards,
Zach
___________________
Zach Petschek
So, homeschoolers, go home. The 15% coupon code he mentions above would allow me to get the $299.95 Complete Collection, Lightroom and Aperture, for $254.96. Better price, yes. But that’s not nearly as nice as the $149.99 they offer the same product to students and teachers, (some students and teachers).
I guess we’ll shop elsewhere. Anyone have any similar plugin suggestions?
—- UPDATED —–
After recommendations from the comments and social media, I took a look at OnOne’s free presets, which lead me to google around for even more Aperture Presets. I found a ton, and am enjoying playing with them.
But the real good news was when I contacted Topaz Plugins for their possible homeschooler discount. Here’s their response:
Hi Trevor,
Yes, absolutely. Eduction is education right!?
You can use this 25% academic discount code at topazlabs.com/store on any and/or multiple products.
Discount code: XXXXXXXXX (redacted for security purposes)
Let me know if you have any other questions.
–
Best Wishes,Stephanie Griffin
Marketing Associate
Topaz Labs LLC
4100 Spring Valley Road, Suite 103
Dallas, TX 75244, U.S.A.
Yeah for companies that get it! Topaz Labs will be getting my business, even if their plugins were 3x the cost. I love to vote with my dollars!
Posted in aperture, art, homeschool, learning, photography
Tagged photography, technology
5 Comments
What kind are you?
**Shhh, it’s kinda quite around here.**
Yes, I know you haven’t heard from me in a while. Get over it. I did. Most of you readers are most likely already friends of mine IRL, or are contacts on one of the social media sites. (G+)
Today I’m posting about something that was sorta important to me last year, and has become more important to me this year; Movember. What is Movember?
“During November each year, Movember is responsible for the sprouting of moustaches on thousands of men’s faces, in the US and around the world. With their Mo’s, these men raise vital awareness and funds for men’s health issues, specifically prostate and testicular cancer initiatives.” from the Movember website.
Last year I joined the Art of Manliness team, and we raised a ton of money. My contribution was small, but worthwhile nonetheless. This year I wanted to launch my own team, but really haven’t had any bites. I launched and posted it a few weeks back, on most my social media places. Oh well, I’m a team of one. If you want to donate to the growth of my Mo, go here.
To get you excited about moustaches, I thought I’d post a sweet chart I found. Which one are you? (Or if you are a woman…) Which one is your man?
Posted in movember
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SLO Photowalk
Hey there photog friends! It’s time for another photowalk on the Central Coast!
I’m proposing a downtown San Luis Obispo photowalk.
Here’s the catch, since many of you might consider this, but then decide against it because of the distance from you in LA or the Bay area, I’m suggesting that you make an overnight trip of it!We have great places to photograph here on the Central Coast. If you come down from the north, you could stop off at Hearst Castle before or after your trip. From the south? No problem, stop off in Santa Barbara as the addendum to your trip!
I could very well plan a SLO photowalk for one day, and an extra photowalk the next day out at Montana de Oro, the largest state park in CA.
What say you? C’mon you old time photowalkers!
I chose 7/22/2012 and we’ll meet at 3pm, on the steps of the old Mission, in downtown San Luis Obispo, CA.
The future is now…er…not yet.
You photographers out there are most likely aware of the alleged shift in product design for dSLR’s. The companies have banned together to deny us the viewfinder…or something like that.
Apparently when the big dogs switched from film to digital, in their SLRs, they kept the mirror. The mirror is basically necessary so we can see what we’re going to photograph. Then when you press the shutter release, the mirror flips up and the actually viewed image can be captured by the sensor, which is behind the mirror when it’s down.
We could loose the mirror, but then we’d either have no viewfinder, or we’d have to have a digital view of what’s being “seen”.
I know that’s a poor description, but it’s the best I could do with my layman’s understanding.
Enter, the mirrorless interchangeable lens camera, MILC. Yeah, I know. There are actually a few different names for these newfangled cameras, but “mirrorless” seems to be sticking.
Trey Ratcliff actually discussed all of this much better than I have even tried, on his blog, Stuck in Customs. Seriously, go read about it all there. Then come back, please.
Now that you know all about these newfangled mirrorless/3rd generation camera systems, I’ll get to my point. I picked up one!
Since I’m a Nikon guy, I looked first at the Nikon 1 series. The upcoming Pentax K-01 caught my attention as well. Honestly, I really liked what I read about both cameras. I believe that the Pentax K-01 is a better camera, and would have served me as well, if not better, than the Nikon 1 series.
However, the lower price of the Nikon J1 is what won me over. (That was a mistake. More on that later.) Plus, Nikon had just announced an adapter that would allow me to use my existing family of F-mount lenses on the new J1.
So I picked up a J1 package, with two lenses; a 10-30mm and a 30-110mm. Both lenses have VR. I got mine at Costco, which threw in a 16gb sdcard and a case. Oh, and I chose the white model! (It comes in red and black as well.)
Right away I tried using it more often than my D7000, and various lenses. It was easy, I will admit. It still is. For most life photography, it’s just real easy to grab and go. Two lenses for everything from 10mm to 110mm. (FYI, with the 2.7 crop factor of this sensor, that means 27 to 297mm, in 35mm terms.) That’s pretty much everything I’d need! Yes the speeds of the lenses are a huge factor, and so are the relatively smaller number of easily reachable features. The lens speeds, I can adjust to working around. I simply bump my ISO when I can’t get a comfortable shutter speed. Also, the VR helps with the lower shutter speeds.
The best feature, to me, is the insanely fast autofocus. It just works. It’s automagical, and it happens even when you’re not pressing the shutter release halfway down. I love it!
The rapid fire is quite cool. I can shoot 10 fps, on the special fast mode, with some limitation. The focus becomes fixed, and is limited to a semi-manually selected focus point. But the regular rapid speed is 5 fps, and that’s with the live focus! I generally use this mode all the time. BTW, they call it continuous mode. I used this mode to help capture this shot of my dad, 4x4ing this past week.
Overall, I like the camera, and am glad I bought it. It will serve me and my family well for quite a while. I hope to be able to use it to instruct my wife in the use of more features, to get better photos. Eventually I hope that she’ll begin using it more and more, freeing me to acquire that Pentax K-01, or whatever fits the role even better.
The single largest problem with the J1 is not any one single feature, it’s a bunch of little frustrations. The smaller sensor, really isn’t a problem. The lack of a viewfinder, I’m getting over it. Even the lack of bracketing I’ve adjusted to using the tripod and exposure compensation.
The problem is that everything I want to do is 7 million clicks deep in a menu setting. The features I want are simply too buried. I thought that the big camera companies were hoping to convince dSLR users that these mirrorless cameras are their future. What I’m feeling is that Nikon doesn’t care about the J1 being useful for me, but for the pocket camera user, as an upgrade.
******
Side note: I wrote this post with MarsEdit. I had great hopes for MarsEdit. It sucks. This would have been 10x easier within the WordPress app.
The Ivory Yeti nears completion
“Wait, I thought it was done? Didn’t you post photos of it and state that you’ve been out riding it?”
I know what you’re thinking. And that’s sorta true. I did get the grip tape installed, and started hitting my street. But that’s about it. My legs were not ready to just get out and ride for great distances. They weren’t even ready to ride short distances! So I’m hitting the street almost every day, even if for just a ride around the block. My front foot needs a bunch of conditioning!
The Kracked Skulls Scimitar arrives as finished wood, but with zero decoration. I’m sure this is exactly the canvas most skaters are yearning to personalize and express themselves; myself included. My grip tape design was only the first step in achieving this personalization. The underbelly of my Scimitar also needed to reflect Trevor.
So, I tapped into my existing artistic expression, and decided to camouflage the whole thing! Longtime readers of my blog may recall that I tested this technique out with great success a few years ago, on my kids’ Nerf guns.
Obviously this will look fantastic on a skateboard! So I dug out those same spray cans of paint and started my plan. I never clear coated those guns, so I right away decided that a trip to Home Depot was necessary. Shopping for clear coat that wasn’t glossy was the first step. Yuck! I didn’t and don’t want glossy! There were several choices of matte and satin finishes in the spray paint section. While reading the labels I realized that something a bit more durable might be a better choice. That meant furniture paint. I found a spray polyurethane by Minwax, that I decided would be perfect for my purposes.
I set up in the garage, and stripped down the Ivory Yeti. With special attention to straight lines, I taped around the whole edge, to keep the camo relegated to the underbelly. I needed a little more tape for the base of the trucks, which I decided to leave installed.
My camo’ing process is simple. The same steps I used for the Nerf guns was applied here. I chose tan as the base color, and built upon that. This time, I went for a tiny addition, my initials. I masked them off by precutting some painter’s tape into very blocky versions of my initials, “TSC”. Rather than simply paint over the mask, I decided to use one of the camo steps. So I used the palm-like branch and the black paint to apply the paint for the initials.
I used the dark brown for the tiger stripes, and then went to work with the green and brown using the palm branch and the smaller pine branches. At this point, you’re done when you decide you’re done. Too little, and there are blank patches. Too much, and the whole thing becomes kinda muddy. It’s very subjective, however.
I gave it about 3 hours after I was done applying the camo paint before I put down the first coast of clear coat. Two more hours of dry time, and I applied the second and final coat. Then I went to bed.
Today, it’s killing me to wait, so ripped off the masking tape, and installed the Randal trucks. That’s not going to hurt anything!
I really should wait the whole 24 hours, meaning 11pm, before I ride it. I’m not sure if I have that self control. You’ll have to watch my Google+ stream, to see if I can make it.
Posted in longboarding
Tagged camo, ivoryyeti, krackedskulls, longboarding, longboards, paint, skateboard
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Ready to shred? No.
Now that The Ivory Yeti is set up and ready to bomb some hills and slide to my heart’s content, am I?
The short answer is, no. But how do I get there?
Well I first had to set down some goals. In doing so, I also had to decide what I don’t want/need to do; like break bones or die. I really did start with all the things I don’t want to be doing, really ever. I don’t want to hit 30 mpg, bombing hills. Ever. I don’t really care to learn how to slide. Ever. I don’t want to be doing tricks that imply a learning curve that includes hitting the ground with various body parts.
Now that that’s covered, what do I want to do? I want to cruise, and increase my ability to ride and carve, for hours at a time. I want to set some longer distanced goals, and then achieve them.
Knowing this, my G+ friend Eric made some recommendations:
Cruising is a ton of fun, but learning how to handle yourself at higher speeds is a must, simply because it might happen.
When cruising, try riding one foot, turning on one foot, etc. Get familiar with it, you don’t need to do it with both, just do it with the foot that isn’t your braking foot. Explore your board, see how riding towards the nose or towards the tail effect the ride. Carve with your feet closer to the edge and see what happens.
This is the most awesome and practical advice! My pal James came over last night and showed me a few things that I expect will be quite helpful, and Eric’s words here fall right in line. You know, one thing that’s great about the skating community, is that there’s always someone better than you, willing to share with you some pointers to help you get to the next level. Love that! Too bad the Church isn’t always like that!
So what are my immediate goals? Well, first off I want to commit to riding every day. I can do it, even on work days! I want to get a simply path in my neighborhood that I can get out, and cruise. The layout of my neighborhood makes it easy to add another street as I get comfortable with an existing path. I plan to follow this method, until I’m ready to kick it up to my next goal; a one mile ride.
