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.

Dig a little deeper and I find BJ Atchley of Connecticut who plays the Alto Saxophone. Too bad I haven’t picked mine up in 5 years or so.

So my apologies go out to BJ Atchley of CT from whom I will likely steal the first page of google for some time to come.

Some of the following pictures are HDR pics, but I’ve tried to be a little more subtle about them than others you might find on the web.

Also, the hotel was supposed to be haunted, so I took some long exposures to see if I could catch anything. You’ll have to look close and probably turn up your brightness a bit, but I think I see something by the window…

I made a weird decision recently that it was highly unlikely, unless planned well in advance that Heather an I can have a date. Admittedly we have an easier time than most with out wide open baby-sitting options, but it’s still difficult to have time to ourselves and go share an activity together that might not interest the kids. I have found that once the kids are in bed, as a grown up with a license, I can go to a movie. Heck, I can even go grab some sushi. Add that to the fact that we’ve done a robust budget and assigned ourselves an allowance of discretionary no questions asked spending for Heather and I separately, and you have a lone wolf ready to watch stupid movies on a whim, eat seafood/sushi (Heather is not a fan of any incarnation of fish), or save my allowance for camera gear.

This is a huge life changing deal here people. It was like the day I found out I could cook bacon anytime I wanted. Here’s the XKCD comic showing a heinous correlation of the above fact.

By about 3:30 my flight had been delayed until 5:11, which was fine. However the gate changed from gate b70 to b65 which was in another hub. So I walked there. Once I had arrived I noticed that the gate had then changed to b81, which was in another hub. I walked to b81 to find that the flight had been delayed until 8:20… OK. I waited in line and spoke to a service rep ho gave me a standby pass for the 6:30 flight (which was previously the 5:30 flight). It was in b84f, which was an extension hub of another hub on the opposite side of the terminal. I walked down there. b84f. After walking down there and going to the bathroom I thought I would go have some dinner. Schlotzsky’s. It was good for airport food. I then walked out to double check which flight was doing better. My first flight or the flight that I was on standby for. The standby flight had been moved to b63 or something so I walked there. After reading for a bit I looked up and the gate no longer had info on it for dallas-love. I walked and checked the monitor… it had been cancelled, but my original flight had been moved up to take it’s place at 6:30. It was in another hub.

I walked there. At this point everything becomes fuzzy. I think I remember having to swap to another hub only to find out that it was still going to be taking off from b81a. I had a nice relaxing sit in the b81a hub area. To my consternation my flight was now listed on the monitors as departing from terminal b-… yup b-, no number. I asked the service rep what was going on. He said the dallas flight was still taking off from there but the terminals were now overbooked so it was left without a number. I sat and read. After sitting waiting at b81a for flight 2155 to Dallas-Love it turns out that that it is to take off from b83… but it was only a few feet from my current sitting position. The plane took off at about 7:20, and I made it home safely.

You might be wondering what the title of the blog post has to do with anything. I always keep a magazine or two with me on these business trips. In situations like this I can’t read a novel as easily, and magazines are perfect since I can devour an article in a few minutes. “The Economist” got a good read from cover to cover and “The Atlantic” was about 3/4 finished when I landed in Dallas. If you have never read the economist, let me describe it to you. It’s dry. There is no fluff. Imagine a magazine full of editorials on politics, business, trade, and world news. No celebrities, no movies, no entertainment, no fluff pieces, or even embedded reports (there may be embedded reports but the they avoid personalizing any articles). It consists of stats, projections, opinion, and politics. I love it. It’s concise and it’s now my first line of world news. This last issue was the energy issue. There was a proud number cruncher feeding the writing staff, and the writing staff ate it up. Their consistency has thoroughly convinced me that a $30 tax or offset per metric ton of carbon equivalent emissions would represent a proper counter to the negative externality of climate change on the energy market. They mentioned it about a dozen times.

I agree. Seriously. After Bailey argued for it, I’m for it too. Except that I’m not. I can’t figure out how the poor would cope, with such a substantial increase in their already high energy prices.

Here’s the cheap list on what will be upgraded and in what order. I say cheap because the sigmas and tamrons are third party lenses that cost about 1/3rd as much as their Nikon counterparts.

• Nikon sb-600 Speedlight
• tripod
• lightstand (tripod for the light)
• clamps
• radio trigger
• Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 XR Di-II LD
  . (they just updated it so it’ll autofocus with the d40)
• Sigma 10-20mm
• Nikon 70-300mm f/4-5.6G AF-S VR
• Body Upgrade… probably to the successor to the Nikon d80
• Another flash and lightstand
• Nikon 50 1.8
• A macro tube
• Probably a Sigma or Nikon 70-200 2.8
• Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8 (this would make a decent portrait lens so I’ve heard)
• Some teleconverters for the 70-200

My thought process ends here… but 5 years from now when I get here I’m sure the list will grow even more. What a terrible thing to pick up as a hobby.

Good I say, that means there’s a lot to catch everyone up on.

Here’s a picture to help pass the time.