Photography

Photography

50000 images a year and all I have to tell about it are these few posts?!?

Yeah, sorry about that. This'll have to do.

On vacation

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Oct 6 0
  • Life
  • Photography

It is common today to locate one’s “true self” in one’s leisure choices.  Accordingly, good work is taken to be work that maximizes one’s means for pursuing these other activities, where life becomes meaningful.  The mortgage broker works hard all year, then he goes and climbs Mount Everest.  The exaggerated psychic content of his summer vacation sustains him through the fall, winter, and spring.  The Sherpas seem to understand their role in this drama as they discreetly facilitate his need for an unencumbered, solo confrontation with unyielding Reality.  There is a disconnect between his work life and his leisure life; in the one he accumulates money and in the other he accumulates psychic nourishment.

…

On the other hand, there are vocations that seem to offer a tighter connection between life and livelihood.  Can such coherence be traced to the nature of the work itself? …

“Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work – by Matthew B. Crawford

I’m off!

As I seem to only update this blog on vacations, I wanted to recap/foreshadow my experiences.

I just got back from officiating my cousin’s wedding in Sundance, Utah.  Not only was it scenic, but the couple (Jenny + Jake) are themselves exemplars of beauty.

Heidi and I are mid-trip for a fun week with friends in Portland, Maine. This is the second year in a row that we’ve taken this trip and it’s GREAT. While the “reds” in the tree leafs aren’t as vibrant as in the past, the friends and food are even better than we remembered (both here and on the way here …).

Here’re shots from the train:

Snowpocalypse

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Feb 8 0
  • Photography
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A week ago the world did not end.  Chicago was dumped on – but other than that, we’re doing OK.

Here’re some of the photos I took of the after effects:

Rainbows

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Nov 20 0
  • Photography
IMG_3374

The call came right before dusk. “Adam, where are you? Wait, it doesn’t matter. There’s a rainbow outside. See if you can get it!” Rebecca Woods, news editor of DisciplesWorld called me on the first night of my hobby. That week, I was photographing the General Assembly for the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Had I been two minutes earlier — or two minutes later — I wouldn’t have captured the rainbow.

And even then, I thought it was the best rainbow I’d ever capture.

I don’t think I have a drop of Irish blood in me, but a phone call was the forebearer of the perfect rainbow in my most recent trip to DFW.

After a great 24 hours of planning with the DYMN planning team I waited for Heidi and my in-laws (Larry and Wenche) to arrive at Dallas’ Love Airport.  The cell phone lot can be a great place to weather a storm.  The rain came in in waves.  And in my little rental car I kept going on my cell-phone conversation.  And then, once it finished, I looked to my left and saw a full rainbow.

There’s something about the Metroplex — and maybe something about Texas — that brings out such beauty.  :)

PicasaWeb to Flickr

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Nov 1 0
  • Photography
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It’s been a hard decision, but I’m abandoning a Google service.

Back when it was just Picasa, I would export galleries to HTML and put them into my website. It was great. Picasa did the resizing, the flowing div tag creation — it was just great.

Then it became even better. In summer 2005, Google came out with a cloud-hosted service: PicasaWebAlbums. This was the way to go. Google was integrating Blogger, PicasaWebAlbums, and even Gmail. I was going “all in” with Google and its services. Within a year I’d maxed out the space for hosting, so I powered up and paid for more space for hosting albums. Because of the ongoing growth of space, I haven’t had to power up again. I’m not shooting and exporting photos as fast as Google’s space grows.

So why now am I switching?

Social functionality. Flickr is what photographers (or at least aspiring, amateur/semi-pro photographers) use. Entire communities are built out of it. To get feedback, to learn from others, to organize and college — Flickr seems like it’s best fit.

To be fair, I should admit that Picasa has made huge strides in making albums collaborative and sharable, but their organization tools are definitely lacking. I shoot for lots of different audiences — most of whom don’t want to have to sort through albums from each of the other types. (Ironically, church members often don’t care about looking through some of my classmates’ ordination photos). While I could have created separate Google accounts for each of the areas, that’s definitely overkill.

Also overkill is how many pictures I put up in the galleries. While 300 individual snapshots might be good for those wanting “the whole event” — I’d rather burn them a DVD and just pick my favorite 15.

The transition isn’t quite complete (I haven’t taken down all of the Picasa albums yet), but I expect it to be by year’s end.

And who knows — if it becomes too cumbersome to use Flickr I may switch yet again. Competition in innovation is an amazing thing!

PS – This was a personal decision. I still recommend to all congregations that they use PicasaWebAlbums. Not only are they more collaborative, but they’re also more friendly for non-techie parishioners to use.