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Veerle’s blog | Creating grunge brushes
Sep 21, ’06
12:30 PM
How to make your own grungy brush in photoshop.
Doing the South(east) Asia thing
Aug 15, ’06
6:55 AM
No, not me, but lots of my friends this summer.
Daniel went to Nepal, Diana went to the Phillipines, Kent went all over the place, and Tom is back in Laos, after rambles all over Thailand and Myanmar and those sorts of places.
All of them are photographers or writers or both, and not just in a “travel” sort of way — one has published a book, two are photojournalism students at SJSU, and another one is a real live movie cameraman and lighting guy who is working on a book of his own.
That would be Tom.
Tom’s been looking for some journalistic credentials to give himself a little credibility as he strolls around a tightly-controlled society trying to get people to talk about the not-so-pleasant past, so if you’re looking for a stringer who can shoot, drop a comment on Tom’s blog or check his profile for his email address, and hook him up with a gig. I’m sure he could turn out a great photo page without thinking about it too hard.
Photo by Tom Guiney, copyright 2006
Late breaking update: It looks like Tom has attached himself to an Unexploded Ordinance (UXO) clearing NGO, and is preparing to head off to the country somewhere to trail a crew while they train the locals. Sounds like fun, eh?
Give him some interviewing tips. He’s used to having a film/video camera and a sound man around to document everything, so he needs all the help he can get.
Adapt. Improvise. Overcome.
Jul 5, ’06
8:11 PM
Daniel got roped into a bullshit internship program in Nepal, but instead of turning back, he just ditched said bullshitters and improvised himself some work.
In Kathmandu.
It does not appear to have been an easy or pleasant experience, but now he’s shooting for an NGO and making the best of his time there.
Word.
New little camera is impressive
Jun 7, ’06
8:47 PM
New camera = Canon Powershot A530. It’s a humble little point & shoot, but it kicks the crap out of our old one.
Then = slow shutter, barely in focus shots, low resolution, nothing sharp, lots of time in between frames.
Now…
…that’s what I’m talkin’ about. Canon A530. Under $200. Google it, shop around, and then remember that NewEgg exists, and buy it there. It’s the second or third time we’ve made a smooth purchase at NewEgg – quick shipping, low price, high quality. We even returned something there once, just because we decided that trying to install an upgrade of Windows XP on a brand new hard drive was, um, apparently not possible. NewEgg was cool, walked us through the process, gave us the dough back, no worries.
To be fair, some of the fast-advancing and transferring goodness is thanks to the speedy Sandisk Ultra II 1.0GB SD card we picked up.
Whatever’s doing it, I’m enjoying it. And it’s only been, like an hour.
I’ll play with it for a few days, and maybe I’ll decide I don’t need to lug my SLR across Italy.
The Mystery Spot and other poorly-kept secrets
Jun 4, ’06
11:17 AM
It took me almost three months to finish this roll of black & white film, (That’s the old stuff with the sprocket holes, kids.) but I like what I’ve got, despite having to run everything through a little extra photoshopping to get rid of some weird scanner gridlines that were overlaid on top of everything.
The Mystery Spot, hero of bumper stickers across this great nation, is neither a mystery, nor a spot. Discuss.
We didn’t really come out of the short tour feeling any more mystified, although nausea and dizziness did play a role in the experience.
If you go, I recommend not eating lunch before the trip.
Also pictured in some of the photos are my wife, her youngest brother, our cat, and our feline houseguest, who seems to think that our bed belongs to him. We had a hard time talking him out of that one last night.
“I live here, cat,” I said.
“Roooowwwwwwwrrrrrrllllllrrrrrr,” he replied.
Meanwhile, back at our second annual attempt to get outdoors more often in the summertime, we inaugurated our hiking season on Memorial Day with a trip to Big Basin.
Lucky for us, I made a wrong turn at the first fork in the trail, and we ended up headed for the set of waterfalls which I thought we had seen before.
I was wrong.
Sure, you can take the trail that just goes straight to Berry Creek Falls, hang out at the viewing platform, and turn around, but you’ll be missing the set of Indiana-Jones-jungle falls just up the creek.
I was expecting the familiar redwood-shaded falls these hills often yield, but instead it felt like we were in some sort of Central American jungle, with ferns and golden rock everywhere, smooth flat stone at the base of the falls where the creekbed should have been.
Toss in the steps carved into the trail, and the whole scene felt totally foreign – more Old California than NorCal.
I was shooting 400 ASA Tri-X, pushed one stop, with a yellow filter of some sort on my 28-200 zoom lens.
I like the contrast I get out of that configuration, and sometimes I throw on a red filter if there’s a big sky involved in the day.
My photog friends know that I’m trying to figure out what I need as far as a digital camera goes. Our point & shoot hasn’t been the same since that rainy night when a tree fell on our car. (The car was fine; the camera got pretty wet while I took flicks in case the insurance folks needed them.)
But I can’t really rationalize spending the cash for a dSLR right now, at least not until I either have a regularly-paying job, or a job that justifies buying the Big New Camera.
So we’re leaning toward a new digital point & shoot, keeping the budget low-but-functional. I’ll post something as soon as I’ve got the new machinery in hand, and I’ll throw in a review if I have the time. (Hint: I probably won’t.)
For more about hiking in the general area of San Jose and Santa Cruz, check out Tom Mangan’s Busy Being Born blog.
Mercury News Photo becomes a blog. Cool.
May 18, ’06
8:23 PM
MercuryNewsPhoto.com redesigned while I wasn’t looking, and what popped out is a nice modern WordPress blog. Cool.
What that means, first things first, is that I (and you) can now subscribe to an RSS feed from the site. Cool.
Second things second, you can leave comments on all the slideshows, video essays, and Flash presentations on the site. Cool.
Here’s a tip, guys: The default WordPress footer has that weird link to the RSS feeds that starts with “feed://” — if you click on it from Firefox, it tries to load whatever feedreader it can find on your hard drive, which can and will confuse people. (Hey Matt, what’s the deal with that, anyway? Lorelle points out in comments that it’s the individual theme developers who choose how to display the feed URL.) Anyway, I’d love to see a link to the RSS feed in the sidebar.
Looks great guys – keep it up!
Header graphic nostalgia
May 5, ’06
5:14 PM
New header graphic and a couple other visual tweaks here today.
The image is Somewhere East of Albuquerque, and I took it while driving a U-Haul truck full of all my worldly things, probably on September 3rd or 4th, 2001. It was a little less than five years ago that I met the woman who would become my wife. I’ve been thinking about that summer a lot lately, listening to the music we listened to then, daydreaming about a vacation back to New Mexico.
And so, there it is at the top of the screen. U-Haul with yellow flowers.