Heather is working on a catch up post to fill in the October gap. I could lay blame on Heather as she has read EVERY SINGLE book in the Harry Potter series during the month of October… but I can’t do that without also laying the blame on myself. Sickness, school, and work have kept me busy. I’ll also admit that I’ve been a little preoccupied due to the release of Forza Motorsport 3.

Other items of note in the month of October. My youngest sister turned 18 and my mother celebrated the 24th anniversary of her 29th birthday. After we catch up we still have a lot of things to cover, like:

• Writing letters to Santa
• A visit from the Browns
• Our usable garage
• Why I’m so awesome at driving cars in a videogame
• The marshmellow test, and many other things

I’d just like to say that I don’t mind the loss of my hat collection, 3 playstation controllers, 3 pairs of shoes, 2 copies of Gran Turismo 2, belt, and 2 ties. In the end it was worth it.

We don’t have a July 4th tradition. We do whatever we feel like doing any given year. Last year we visited family in Bryan Texas, and I managed to get some good shots of the fireworks (see above). This year they were otherwise occupied (Samuelson family reunion).

One of our neighbors had approached us with an idea. Block party. Sounds fun. It would only take a few grills, some shade, and some neighborly spirit to throw one together. He talked to enough people however that it quickly became a rather large party. They closed down our street, put up some bounce houses, water slides, and our neighbor labored for days building a large misting gazebo of sorts.

The kids had a blast and it was nice to get to know our neighbors better. At the same time the day was very very hot. I admittedly spent at least half the time indoors. I also didn’t share my grilling skills with the neighbors. My grill was too busy cooking 4 racks of spare ribs and 5 racks of baby back ribs.

Because of the days activities the kids were way too tired to go see fireworks. They went to bed early. Phoebe laid down on the floor in the living room and promptly fell asleep. She has never done this before. She was obviously exhausted.

I’m going to have to group them since I can’t really compare something from Meshuggah to Andrew Bird. They’ll be in playable flash format for your perusal. I’ll also link to the bands last.fm pages. This will probably be an ongoing thing throughout the year.

Right now I should be at church with the family, but due to the lingering pain I’m sitting at home typing out how much I appreciate my wife. I slept until 1:30 PM when I should have been up at 7:00 AM. Heather doesn’t work well with little sleep. With at least 8 hours of sleep I’m pretty sure she can handle anything the world throws at her but if you edge her closer to 7 hours she becomes volatile. Last night probably wasn’t her best night of sleep but she got the kids ready herself and packed them off to church because her wuss of a husband couldn’t handle his little headache.

Thank you.

I had forgotten how terrible migraines were. It’s like someone is yanking on your optical nerve as hard as they can. Any sort of light or noise makes the nasty little optic nerve yankers pull harder. I can pretty easily spot the difference between your average headache and a migraine due to the fact that real migraines hurt so much they make me throw up. Sadly it also seems to be the only way for me to get rid of one. Vomit -> Sleep = cured headache.

I poured over my last.fm rss feed to locate what new material had crept in in 2008. I’ve found 50-60 new releases to evaluate for the best songs. This is going to take a little while.

Here’s the artist breakdown.

Agalloch, Amon Amarth, Amon Tobin, Andrew Bird, Animal Collective, Autechre, Azam Ali, Behold… The Arctopus, Between the Buried and Me, Blockhead, Buckehead, Candiria, Conor Oberst, Cunninlynguists, Deerhoof, Devildriver, DJ Zinc, Dream Theater (Greatest Hits), Estradasphere, Faun Fables, Final Fantasy, The Flaming Lips, Fleet Foxes, Fleur, Gnarls Barkley, God of Shamisen, Gojira, In Flames, Isis, Kamelot, Kronos Quartet, Laura Marling, Loreena McKennit, Lustmord, Meshuggah, Minus the Bear, Mr. Lif (Collaborations), Nine Inch Nails, Niyaz, Okkervil River, Opeth, Orishas, Ozomatli, Portishead, Psycroptic, Puscifer (Remixes), Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band, Roots Manuva, Secret Chiefs 3, Sera Cahoone, Sigur Ros, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum (2007 ahem), Soilwork, Solefald, Sonata Arctica, Strapping Young Lad (Greatest Hits), Textures, Tin Hat Trio, Toadies, Tom Morello, Venetian Snares.

Right now my iPod is loaded with the new albums from the above artists. I’m listening linearly instead of using shuffle and rating them as I go. Once I’ve got a song from each of the above albums I’ll make a new playlist and rate them based on my favorites. I’ll be truthful to my tastes. Normally I try and limit exposure to my musical tastes, but limiting the list based on how palatable the music is to anyone else wouldn’t create a list that’s mine.

This year he couldn’t control the venue, and at 29 years old my preferences for gifts are either too expensive, or so specific as to be almost impossible to locate without 2 overseas contacts and a divining rod (“Yes, I would like you to get me the German HDMI stripper sold through a grey market front on ebay.” “I’ve always wanted magnetic throwing stars.”)

I ask for cash. Cash is boring. People think cash is so boring that they’re more likely to give you a gift card that you’ll never use. Cash feels impersonal and lazy. Popi, made it not lazy. I unwrapped my present only to find a Godiva chocolate box. In my family, it is well known that boxes are often reused. Instead of keeping any individual item in it’s original box, we’ve found it far more fun to change the box, so items are harder to guess. While we’re in the box we’re also likely to throw other random goods to provide either insulation from shaking, or something jingly so that shaking the box is the most innacurate way of figuring out what you’ve gotten. So I open the Godiva Chocolate box and am greeted by a $50 bill on a stack of other bills. “AHA. You think you’ve tricked me old man, I’ll not be fooled by a $50 on a stack of $1 bills.” I looked closer. Wrapped around the $50 and the other bills is what appears to be a small paper tie that reads, “$5000, Viewpoint bank.”

Wat?

I closed the Godiva box in a moment of thought, realizing that even this was fake. I also realized that is was a very good fake. Upon closer inspection it was in fact a $50 on a stack of $1 bills. The fake paper tie took Popi over an hour to make. Through trial and error and by using the paper tie on the stack of $1 bills, he had mimicked to the best of his ability what a $5000 paper tie might look like.

Good job. You got me.

My first day back in the actual office after recovering from pneumonia over the past few weeks, was spent in a large informal meeting with the head of our group in corporate. The members of management who were the stars of this meeting probably oversee thousands.

Since it was an informal meeting, we were discussing basically anything. In this case the meeting started out discussing the economy. I won’t go into too much detail but suffice it to say I had to say something. After being on an antibiotic strong enough to make me dizzy for the past 10-12 days, I probably shouldn’t have started a rant, much less in front of people who are 4 or more degrees separated from me in management.

I started out by explaining the nature of regulation and the constant abiilty of investment bankers to find new ways to make money. Primarily the CDS and CDO in this case. Then I started talking about improving the situation by changing the nature of the Fed by trying to control inflation rather than spurring economic booms. Mind you It took me about 3 minutes or more to do all of this. I lost most people after about 30 seconds. I wanted to just trail off at that point when I realized I had just started talking about policy in a big informal gathering and get to know you style sit down. Rather than trail off I had to finish, the problem was finishing my statement would be anything but coherent because I had already lost all of my audience.

Umm, so now I’m famous for my filibuster on economic policy. My friends at work now call me Cliff (You know, from cheers). Remind me to keep my mouth shut next time, or if I can’t make a point within 15 seconds to not say anything.

That might not be what he said, but it’s how this is gonna play out while I rest and sleep as much as possible.

Here’s my xray.

There were over 1700 pictures taken, and we’re currently doing the first run through. I’m doing initial processing while culling the bad shots out. After finishing the first run through I’ll pick the best of each pose/framing and separate into groups: Portraits, Ceremony, Snapshots, Inanimate, Reception. I don’t expect to be done for at least another week. Once that’s done I’ll have to find the highlights and give them an extra touch.

Most of the server from the Dark Age of Camelot days actually banded back together to play. The game is really fun and far less time consuming and difficult to just jump in and play as DAoC or even WoW. You can level exclusively through PVP, and it actually works and is probably the fastest way to level.

Anyway, due to the fact that I can have a better experience playing for 15 minutes in Warhammer than playing for 2 hours in DAoC, I went ahead and picked up the game, on the pretense that I would temper my obsession to a reasonable degree.

If you want to try it out, I’m on the Iron Rock Server – Destruction side. My character’s name is Yoritomo.

I already won one Nikon sb28 off an ebay auction, now I just need to win one more.

Now they want us, and I mean Heather and I, to shoot their wedding. Not to air the personal dealings amongst family here on the website, but I have to share my own personal thoughts. People shouldn’t photograph weddings for their family. I’ll list a reason. If you shoot for other people you get to shoot, post process, deliver and pick out some of the best ones for your portfolio. In a normal situation you don’t have to analyze those pics again after they’ve been shot and delivered to the client. If you shoot for family, the wedding album they make out of your photos and the digital prints you deliver them will be there every time you visit. I’ll be a better photographer in 2 years than I am now. Knowing those limitation I have about a month to prepare and work harder in a single day than I will work in any other time in my life… because it’s family.

Because of this I have to go all out. There’s equipment I need to get shots to create those moments in time that will be remembered by Cindy, Blake, their children, their grandchildren, and since she’s family, probably my children, grandchildren, etc…

To put this in perspective, just my post processing style has changed at least 5 times since I bought that little camera 5 months ago. I’ve only recently begun to start framing shots outside of the subject-center snapshot style that everyone who pics up a camera does.

So here’s what’s happening. I’m going to document what I’m doing to prepare for the most important shoot I’ll probably ever do.

Immediately after I agreed to shoot their wedding I ordered another ebay trigger and receiver, along with 3 more receivers. This gives me 2 transmitters and 5 receivers. Yes that gives me an extra transmitter and 2 receivers but with those little eBay pieces of comparative junk you can’t be too secure in your need to have backups. I had to order them now because the shipping from hong kong will probably take about 3 weeks. The alternative costs 180 bucks a pop. I’m not there yet.

I e-mailed Shig immediately to see what equipment I could borrow from him. He’s got at least a lens that will really help, and if he’s not shooting that weekend he’ll be able to spare a few more items: Wide angle zoom, flash, and the 50mm 1.4 prime. Awesome.

Today I reserved rental equipment. The 60 mm 2.8 af-s Micro, Sigma 10-20 HSM wide angle zoom, and an extra battery for the d50 which I’ll be borrowing from my father in order to have a second camera and backup at the Wedding.

After our credit card payment goes through I’ll be sending another one in, cause BH is getting a decent sized order. 2 impact stands, 2 more umbrellas, 2 sunpak 383s, and a Tamron 28-75 2.8.

Finally comes study time. I need to learn from people who do this for a living. Not just wedding photographers, but wedding photographers who capture the feelings and emotion in such an event. Heather will be my idea person and shoot director during the wedding, so together we’ll be taking long hard looks at two photographers I think are really amazing.

Ed Pingol

JWLphotography

Both photographers capture the fun that a wedding day should be, but also seem to exhibit a calm harmony in one of the greatest days in peoples lives.

I got a flash for my camera and have some lighting equipment coming in this week. I’ll get to try it all out at Jo Ellen’s reception.