Zippy Hendirez 3.0

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

 

Have You Seen Me Lately?

Geez, I really should keep up better than this.

Let's see what's happened since Jan. 8...um...work, obviously.

We all got sick, not quite at the same time, not quite with the same ailments. We blame Xander, of course.

Sold off my beloved Toughbook and replaced it with a Gateway that has a few features that the Toughbook lacked. The new (used) laptop will better gel with my current photography "business", as it were.

But I'll miss my ol' Toughbook. Maybe some day, I'll actually have the cash to buy a new one.

Went to see "Cloverfield", which I'd been waiting for since I saw the trailer before "Transformers". It was quite good. Exactly what I imagined it would be, played out the way I thought, and was very well done. The unanswered questions about the monster, etc, still bug me, but if you go see it, watch the last Coney Island scene veeeery closely.

Also, if "Blair Witch" was hard to watch because of the shaky camera, bring Bonine or Dramamine to "Cloverfield". It gets better as time goes on, but that first 40 minutes or so, woo.

If I can catch a matinee, I may go see "There Will Be Blood" on Friday.

Xander's approaching 3, and already acting it. A growing percentage of things you ask him to do are automatically answered with "No", but it's not too bad, once you subtract getting him dressed and changing his diaper.

I'm still waiting to see about the possible new job. They've not interviewed me officially, and, if they can't get the pay up, the ND might just not interview me because he knows it's currently a good bit less than I make now. But I'd still like to be considered. We'll see.

Otherwise, I'm off this week to make up for not being able to take all my vacation last year, so I'm hoping to vege a bit the next two days (Due to forgetting/leaving things at work, I've been at the station at some point each of the previous three days)

Meanwhile, the darn furnace is still a pain in my side. See, the electrical inspector found a problem, so the installers had to come back. Meanwhile, the city has been asking me to schedule a final inspection, but I can't do that until I get the electrical inspector.

But, finally, the electrical guy is coming Thursday, and the city guy's coming Friday, and so help me, that better be the end of the whole thing.

Hmmmm...I think that updates my life pretty well at this point. With any luck, it won't be two weeks before my next post for the four of you who read this. :)

Zippy 3:37 PM

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Tuesday, January 08, 2008

 

Tempted By The Lens Of Another

Playing cameras professionally can be a dangerous game. While there's always a chance of violence when you go out into the world, the more dangerous target is closer to home.

Your bank account.

Especially if you're someone like me, who can be, how shall I say, a bit flighty on camera technology.

I was checking out a Flickr page shot by someone with the new Nikon D3 (unaffordable), and got to thinking about Nikons in general. Then I read something else about the Nikon D300, which gets such rave reviews you'd think it was turned up to 11.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, I wanted one. Now.

Fortunately for everyone who has access to our money (Squeaky and I), I didn't have $1,700 to plunk down right now, or I'da bought one before a cooler head prevailed.

After a bit of poking around, I remembered the lesson that ol' Prof. Gordon used to bash into our heads in Introduction to Photojournalism back in college.

It's not the equipment, it's the eye behind it.

Simply put, I'm not going to be a better photographer with a Nikon D300 than I am with a Canon 20D.

So instead, I took the 20D to the park with Xander and shot a few frames in black and white, just like the old days when I was push processing Tri-X to 3200 ISO so I could barely get enough light to shoot on my Nikon FM-2 inside Anderson Arena.

It was nice. It felt natural. And even with Xander's rather constant barks of "Don't picture me!", it felt good.

I need to do that more often.

Zippy 9:18 PM

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