-=jowie=-

Click here to see them. Updated almost daily.

Jenn and I have been back for about 2 weeks now, and I am just now getting around to putting the photos online. My procrastination has mainly been due to the fact that I have been looking for a nice and simple photo gallery application that I could host on my own server. Tonight I finally found one:

http://www.codeplex.com/PhotoHandler

Just drop the app into a directory, add some folders with photos via FTP or however you want, and that's pretty much all there is to it. I have blogengine.net running as the root of my site as you can see, and had some problems getting PhotoHandler running in a virtual directory in the root of my blog, so I just put it in its own website in IIS and did the whole host header thing and added a CNAME record for my domain to point to the new app at:

Vegas Trip '08 

So far just have the photos from the Vegas trip up, but I have some others I will get up there soon.

I was messing around with my 50mm f1.4 prime lens and took a bunch of shallow depth of field pics, here are my top picks:

ISO100 f3.5 1/1600 sec

Some pics of Kilala:

ISO100 f1.4 1/640 sec

ISO100 f1.4 1/160 sec

ISO100 f1.4 1/800 sec

And Luna:

ISO100 f1.4 1/50 sec

ISO100 f1.4 1/50 sec

All taken with my Canon Digital Rebel XTi and a Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM lens.

I'll add more to this post later, but I have posted a few pics from the trip to NYC Jenn and I went on. You can see them here. Camera equipment as follows:

Canon Digital Rebel XTi
Canon EF-S 10-22mm lens

I would consider myself an amateur photographer, and by the looks of my photographs, VERY amateur. But I do a lot of reading on the subject online and everywhere I read about bokeh. But what makes good bokeh, some people say its subjective, others don't. I tend to fall into the latter group. I just came across a really good article about the subject, and you can read it here.

I have always had a fascination with photography ever since I was little. I don't think its something I will ever grow out of. I think it first started on a trip my parents and I went on in Korea out to an island called Jeju(Cheju). I remember one of my moms co-workers had a really nice SLR camera and I was simply fascinated by it. I now own a Canon Digital Rebel XTi(400D), and have been recently looking at expanding my lens selection. I stumbled onto this forum post. Immensely helpful to see just what all the different lenses available can do in capable hands. I really should take a photography course, I think it would be loads of fun.

I was just reading through the forums over at Doom9, and came across someone's Flickr gallery. What stood out was something I had never seen before. HDR photography. See samples here. The best HDR gallery I have seen so far is by Ryan McGinnis.

Over at his blog, he gives a complete howto on HDR photography in Photoshop. Wonder if I can duplicate the process in a free image editor like GIMP...

So yesterday I went out with Amber and her mom to Pikes place market and took some photos with my new cell phones camera. The resolution and stuff isn't too great but here they are if you would like to see them. Over all a nice time getting out to the city...

I actually had vivid dreams last night that I still remember, which is odd. I never remember my dreams, if I dream at all.

I dreamt that for some reason or another I had moved out to the midwest, and met a girl. She was petite with dark brown hair. She wasn't petite as in skinny petite, she was very voluptuous. Anyways, as me being a guy, you probably know where that part of the dream went, heh. Perhaps this is an omen that I should get up and move and start over. Completely change my personality, become more outgoing and actually go after a girl. Bah, yea right. Like that will ever happen...

The next part of the dream I have absolutely no explanation for. For some reason, there were all these people whom I have never met, almost is if I were watching them on TV, but it wasn't on TV. I was just a third party watching these events unfold. They were having some kind of weird contest, in which I have no idea what the contest was, but they were all having fun. And this is where it gets weird. They were all wearing fuzzy animal outfits, but without the head piece. Your guess is as good as mine. Then I started fixating on this couple that had also had their motor home all furried out, kinda like on Dumb and Dumber, but without the floppy ears and all. They way they made it look fuzzy was a bit odd as well. They glued pipe cleaners all over it. Yea, you think that?s odd, but here is where it gets even weirder. They were just joy riding in it, out in the wide open spaces that is the midwest, when all of a sudden when they got back home, a few miles down the road, a MASSIVE tornado appeared and moved back in the direction in which they came. Since it wasn't moving toward them, they got very excited and watched it till it disappeared beyond the horizon. Later on they decided to go on another joy ride in the fuzzified motor home, and yet again, another tornado appeared and followed their path, but again moving away from them. I came to the conclusion that it was the pipe cleaners on the motor home causing some odd atmospheric condition that in turn created these huge tornados. This is when they decided to go on a rampage across the country, leaving these tornados in their wake carving up the countryside.

Then I woke up. I can't piece together any of it. Anyone got an opinion of what it all could mean, if anything?

Nikon has released their firmware update that they promised would be out this spring. Included is RAW format support:

Dear Nikon Coolpix 5400 owner:

We are pleased to announce new firmware, Version 1.4, for the Nikon Coolpix 5400 digital camera. This new firmware allows the Coolpix 5400 to support Nikon's NEF/RAW file format. This will allow you to capture a RAW file and give you the ability to change image settings without affecting the original file captured by the camera. The possibilities are endless.

To download the firmware please click below or copy the address into your browser:

Windows:
http://support.nikontech.com/cgi-bin/nikonusa.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=10119

Macintosh:
http://support.nikontech.com/cgi-bin/nikonusa.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=10120

In order to take advantage of the Nikon NEF format files your Coolpix 5400 will produce you need to download the following Nikon software program:

NikonView 6.2.2

And optionally download Nikon Capture 4.1 trial version

To download the software please click below or copy the address into your browser:

http://support.nikontech.com/cgi-bin/nikonusa.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?&p_faqid=61
Nikon Capture can be purchased for $99 at your local dealer or by calling 1-800-Nikon UX.

Thank you,

Nikon Inc.

I was just going through some old video of mine and this is one that I have been meaning to digitize and put online for quite sometime. Way back in 2000, I went out and video taped the Kingdome implosion. Click the link above to stream it. You will need Windows Media Player 9, click the button at the bottom of this page to get it.