I made it to Minot the 28th and 29th and was finally able to see some of the flood damage that happened last spring. Almost a year later and there is much work to be done. My lens died on me once I got to Minot, not sure what the odds of that is, but the focusing abilities would not work and you could hear the motor making an abnormal sound. I had a kit lens along with me so I was still able to get some shots in. I’m glad Tamron has a 6 year warranty, so they should be receiving my lens today. They told me it only takes 5 days to repair, so hopefully I get it back shortly. It’s no fun when your equipment is ill and a shoot coming up quickly.
I had fun seeing Darwin and the night life. I want to get over into the Minot area when the weather is actually nice. Windy, cold and snowy this time and last time was cold, windy and rainy. I’ll have to try and get over there in the spring sometime.
Tags: Minot
Posted in General, Photos |
Winter temperatures came in full force this week. It was bound to happen, but I was hoping it wouldn’t. We hit the cold spot in the state with -47 the other morning, hence the sundogs in the picture above. We only have about a month and half left of severe winter so I can’t complain. Normally we have already had a couple months of this weather. We still don’t have a lot of snow and if that holds, spring will be early.
The 365 project is flowing right along and only 115 pictures to go. I love the idea of a daily photo blog. It’s gonna be great to be able to scroll through the entire year of photos. It gives you more of a sense of what was happening in the world. I’ll have to see once I hit the 365 mark, but no plans to stop as of now.
Posted in Photos |
2012 is here and our winter here has just been super mild. I have never seen a winter like this. We just got a couple of inches of snow the other day to turn things white, but the temps are suppose to be record temps today with some areas expecting 50 F degrees. The above picture is the Jan 2nd sunset.
Discussion going on google+ about mirrorless cameras the upcoming next generation of cameras. Do we still continue to spend money on our current DSLRs that are not compatible with the new cameras? One will have to start all over if one makes the switch. I’m in no rush, gonna keep snappin with the canon 60D till she can’t snap no more. By than the market will have more availability of mirrorless equipment. The technology is looking good so far, gonna be interesting.
The 365 project is still rolling along and currently 234 shots in. I’m testing out the Magic Lantern on my camera and liking it. It reported that I had taken just over 9000 pictures on the camera. It’s hard to believe one took that many, but I guess when you are constantly bracketing your shots from three to six pictures with the majority of the pictures, it don’t take long. I’ve kicked the idea around of putting up a steel building for a studio, but I hate debt. I shall keep thinking about it for now. The end of February I have set up a shoot with a gal from Texas that will be up to Drayton, ND for a friend’s wedding. I hope that doesn’t fall through as I am excited for that event. I miss shooting glamour stuff, hard to come by around here.
I worked on the gallery site some, adding in some small changes such as the icons for the offsite stuff like google+, facebook, twitter and blog. Smugmug can be such a roller coaster, things roll along super than you hit a bump, but for the most part, it’s great service and options.
Anyway looking forward to being part of the photography world in 2012.
Tags: 2012, mirrorless
Posted in General, Photos |
Christmas is coming in fast and we hardly have any snow. The ground has a light dusting and that is it. Temps haven’t been too bad up to now, but than this weekend they are talking 30s again. I could get use to winters like this. I think I am pretty much done xmas shopping, kept things simple.
I finally bit the bullet and redid my entertainment center. I went with a new tv and bluray player instead of building a computer to run boxee. I had no idea the tvs and devices could do so much with internet so instead of reinventing the wheel, just bought the ready to go equipment. I’m still learning about all this HD stuff. Picking a tv was just insane of how many tvs exist with so many different options. My biggest concerns was finding equipment to play .mkv files since I am in the process of ripping my DVDs down to a smaller size and than have them available on the local network. Everything has arrived and working as I need them to be. The wireless tv and bluray are a perfect match. Now I need to decide to keep my satellite tv package and do the hulu plus and netflix deals. I’m currently trying out the hulu plus free trial and I’m not impressed with the amount of commercials. The movie selection is very poor. The only benefit I can see is the ease of watching tv episodes. I just wish they didn’t have so many commercials for the paying subscribers. I started watching the Terra Nova series and there is like 6-7 commercial breaks from 30 seconds to a full minute and they are the same commercials over and over. They got old really fast. I googled on hulu plus to see what other’s thought and it seems hulu plus has a negative reaction as other’s complain about the commercials too. Yes, we watch commercials with our regular satellite/cable subscription. Yes, it only costs $8 bucks a month compared to a $60 satellite/cable package. I just hate commercials of any kind. With netflix and hulu plus at $16.00 a month compared to $60+ a month, it’s a great enough savings to make the change. Sounds like a good way to start of f2012, cut back on expenses. The economy isn’t going to get any better and money is only going to get harder to come by.
Now with so many things in the house using internet, I sure could use more bandwidth as streaming and buffering is no fun.
Tags: hdtv, hulu plus, netflix
Posted in General |
Bit of a Rant here about #smugmug censorship
This morning I got a compliment on a photo of mine, the person complimented the entire album. Apparently the pics made popular on #smugmug (http://www.smugmug.com/popular/), and than a few minutes later another person comments as a guest as he doesn’t have enough courage to use his real name on same photo complaining about #smugmug and the photo and than proceeds to report my picture. So #smugmug super hero Sebastian goes into my account and blocks my entire album from the community than emails me my gallery is innappropriate.
So now I am really upset as I than proceed to look at the other popular pictures and find the exact type of pictures, but they are not blocked. I fire an email back at #smugmug telling them I can not believe that they are against my pictures, censoring and provided several links to similar pictures currently in the popular photos. These pictures have been up for almost a year and never had an issue once and even made popular on 500px.
Here is the offending photo that got my entire gallery blocked http://www.photosbykjs.com/FashionGlamour/Jesse/16372451_zpscQF#1233481605_vDypr I deleted the useless twit’s comment that wasn’t brave enough to use his real name. Gallery http://www.photosbykjs.com/FashionGlamour/Jesse/ NSFW
Superhero Zak replies back to my email and over rules Sabastian’s actions and opens the gallery back up, but the photo is still blocked from the smugmug community.
If the pictures were distasteful and non-professional, I would agree, but this is not the case. After a compliment, one person complains, #smugmug goes into your account and makes changes without you knowing it. They proceed to send you an email telling you what they did to your account. All because they don’t have the ability to turn on and off NSFW pictures and some lamer complained.
What is wrong with people? You don’t like the picture, move on, it’s that simple. For the record, in the offending pic, she is wearing a G-string. I don’t shoot nudes.
Tags: censorship, SmugMug
Posted in Photos |
Yesterday I broke the half way point to 365 photos, a photo a day for a year. It’s been fun and highly recommend it to people. It can make for an interesting daily diary but in photos instead. When you start watching all the photos from the beginning in a slideshow, you and others can see what was going on for that day. For people new to photography, it’s a great way to learn your camera as you are using your equipment everyday in various environments and gives you the chance to explore the settings. I believe it also makes one pay more attention to daily life and pick out photographic opportunities. I have heard several times from people, I would of never thought to photograph that. Something we pass by all the time and don’t even realize that it can turn out to be a great photo opportunity. It could be something as simple as the steps/sidewalks you walk everyday.
What am I gonna do once I hit my goal of 365? I will probably continue, but maybe at a lesser pace, such as one a week or something. I will have to see how it goes. I don’t want to stop as it’s too easy to put the camera way and not pick it back up for weeks at a time. I’m famous for carrying my camera with me at all times so I don’t see why not to continue with some goal.
It’s gonna be tough to finish the project out now with winter moving in and the daylight time is so short. Winters in North Dakota are pretty blah and white. Roads get blocked so you can’t travel as well and with any wind, the blowing and drifting snow cuts down on visibility. A ton of places I would love to visit in the winter time, but only access would be cross country on foot. Hockey season is starting up tho, so back to the frustrations of shooting indoors with evil lighting.
Tags: 365, Photography, Winter
Posted in General, Photos |
Well it’s not everyday that my cell phone goes off and people stating your picture is on the news. So I had to check it out and sure enough on the local evening news there was my picture. I originally sent a couple of pictures into the National Weather Service as I wasn’t sure what was going on in the pictures and figured they would maybe be interested in the pictures. They replied back with information and requested permission to use the photos, which I did. I get an email back a bit later about an online article they published with the pictures. I was pretty excited to just see that and than to see it on the news tonight was just an added wow factor.
It’s weird how we can be at the right spot at the right time. The whole event was short lived to start with. I had gotten out of bed and was set to go out for a hike, but soon discovered I was too sore from the previous day’s hike, but went to town anyway to get gas in the vehicle. On the way into town I noticed all the burning going on in the county by all the smoke, but noticed one massive fire producing a lot of smoke. I figured I should head out that way after getting gas in the vehicle, but after handling the gas pump my hands were plagued with stench of gas so it was back to home to wash. I got back in the vehicle and actually headed north away from where the fire was. I slowly began heading west and taking some off roads to check some things out and pretty soon found myself at Dresdan and than I noticed the cloud above the fire was growing and shooting up. I grabbed the camera and snapped away. I decided to start heading in the direction of the fire so heading south I start to notice this tornado looking thing in the smoke. I found an approach and snapped some more pictures. 10 minutes later I arrived at fire, but it had died down quiet a bit and wasn’t producing as much smoke and the tornado looking thing was gone. I than proceeded to head on my way looking for the next thing to photograph.
I had no idea what I was photographing, it just looked cool to me and that is the stuff I photograph. I was curious about it and I knew the NWS were the ones to seek answers. A pyrocumulus cloud with the characteristics of a fire tornado was the answer I got. So I learned something new and thanks to the photos, so did everyone that watched the news or read the article.
So now I have to wonder, how am I gonna top this?
Tags: Fire, news, tornado, wdaz
Posted in General, Photos |
I was finally able to convince my son to come home for pictures as I told him I wanted to do levitation pictures. I knew he would be a perfect subject for it, just getting him to come home was the hard part. It was fun and the pictures were popular and people got a laugh. I read once and I don’t know the origin of it, but a good photograph is one that causes conversation. I believe in that statement. If a photo can grab more than one person and get people talking about it, I would say mission accomplished.
Photography is slowing down as the temps are falling, daylight is getting shorter and old man winter is knocking on the door. The pressure to keep the 365 project a live is gonna get harder and harder. The winters in ND can be brutal for days on end. My motivation level goes way down to venture out of the house besides for work. I’m hoping November will be like the last two years, very nice and above normal temps. That helps shorten the winter months for us. At least I can look back at my summer pics as I’m looking forward to spring arriving.
Posted in General, Photos |
