Hardly Harley

My last photo from the archive, and probably last post of the week. This shot isn't so much about how it looks but more about achieving a "look". One of the neat things about having a camera that allows you to change settings like aperture and shutter speed is you're able to do things that you just can't do when you leave the camera on Auto. I remember having read an article online about getting a light streak effect in photos, which was great because I had always wondered how to capture that. So, one night while up in San Francisco's Union Square area I found a not so busy corner, a steady wall to put the camera on, and shot. In looking at the 20 or so other shots that came before and after this one, it was interesting to see what worked (wide angle, 3-5 second shutter speed) and what didn't (zoomed, and anything longer than 6 seconds). According to the time stamps I was at that corner for 30 minutes just experimenting with different settings, and apparen

I like panoramic shots in theory. Not having a super wide angle lens (or tasked with capturing a large scene) a panormic shot can be one way to capture it. If you're not familiar, a panoramic shot is combining 2 or more shots in a set order to make 1 large photo. For my camera I have a setting to help with making sure I'm not missing anything. I start from the left take a shot, rotate to the right and match up the details from the last shot on the right edge with the left edge of the new shot I'm composing. Then I feed the shots to a software application which stitches the shots together. It's really a pretty siimple process, but one I constantly forget to employ while out shooting.

A couple things before I get to the photo. I recently ordered glasses online. I was really uncertain about buying glasses online, which is odd because I can't think of anything off the top of my head that I wouldn't buy online, but if you are considering it I say go for it. I used www.goggles4u.com and got a great pair that I use primarily at home as a way to take break from my contacts. I will say that I didn't feel comfortable buying the $8.99 frame and lens, so I did opt for a name brand frame, but I've been very happy with the results. For $50 I got a name brand frame and lens with a case and lens cloth. Makes me wonder why you would buy from your optician.

Continuing from yesterday's post, I've come across some photos that I hadn't seen in a while. That's my one complaint about digital photography. Sure, we can shoot more, but how do we show them? I'm not interested in printing up a bunch of photos and displaying them somehow. Books are even worse, though I'm thinking a year end book of favorites could be nice. I don't understood why digital frames haven't really caught on. I keep waiting for them to get bigger with better resolutions. One thing I have found useful is setting my desktop wallpapers to different albums/projects and having them change periodically. That's actually how I ran across these.

I'm going through my photo library to try and clean it up. I'm a bit of a pack rat when it comes to photos, since they don't really take up space. Anyway, I've come across some older shots that I'm liking and thought I'd post some up. I'm also trying to figure out some better ways to work with photos in this blog. Unfortunately Drupal Gardens won't allow me to do what I really want to do which is use a Lightbox viewer, which would darken the screen and bring up a larger version of the photo. So for now clicking on a photo will show the original sized photo stored on the site. It's not nearly as slick as the Lightbox way, but if you're wanting to view a photo larger it'll work for you.

I'm hoping to take, and show, more photos this year. I'm not quite ready to commit to a picture a day type thing, but maybe a picture a week. That's a maybe, no guarantees.

A couple things. First, turkeys with the pop-up timers are the way to go. For Thanksgiving we had a turkey with a pop-up timer; when it popped up it was done. No questioning. No doubting. We just carved, served, and ate. It was delicious. For Christmas, for some reason or another, we got a turkey without this piece of magic. Sure, we had a meat thermometer, but does anyone really know how to use them? Where, exactly, are we supposed to put it? How deep? How long? We were never able to get a reading that was supposed to say it was done, but it had already been in for longer than recommended. Keeping it in any longer, it was agreed, would dry this thing out. So, with a lot of hesitation, the turkey was carved. We all looked at each other, daring someone to be the first to shove a forkful of turkey in their mouth, and when finally someone did (me) all eyes were on me trying to ascertain if the turkey was really done. Honestly, I felt like some food tester who would eat the f