Living in Paradise Means Lots of Paradisaical Photos

Here are some recent photos I've taken in the Santa Cruz area. Most have been tarted up in Snapseed or by Google's Auto-Awesome.

We had our first really wet weekend of the year with heavy rain most of Saturday morning and then another storm on Sunday morning. It made for good indoor playtime, we played video games, Lego, Minecraft, watched movies and ate party food!

Also, the three SUPers in the harbor? That's my buddy, Sean and his daughter (her first time!) along with Trudi, the lady who owns the SUP Shack.

The boys had almost no complaints about the weekend and I got out yesterday morning to take some photos of the storm and enjoy a little chaos!

Some of the Reasons Why I Love Santa Cruz

All of these are mine except the last one. Its easy to take a gorgeous picture when you have a gorgeous model with some many beautiful angles and poses.

Cowell's and the wharf.

Today in Santa Cruz looking at the wharf from the other side of town.

Found an iOS app that takes photos and planetizes them for you.

This pano makes the river look way bigger than it is.

Not mine but wow-freakin'-wee!

More Linkage

I'm waiting for a server to come back up so I've got a few minutes to post some stuff up here again. I know, twice in a month? What is this? 2003?

First up is this rather amazingly awesome Shipping container orphanage in South Africa. Twenty eight "worthless" shipping containers transformed into a very cool home for orphans!

The photo to the right is from the most recent edition of the Adventure Sports Journal and includes not one but two of my photos from last year's Santa Cruz Mountain Bike Festival! This year's festival is going to be on the 14th and 15th of April and should build on the ever more epic festivals from year's past.





This graphic passed through my G+ stream and blew it up! I reshared it but so did 33 others from the original post.

Look, I don't hate religion but I definitely hate it when people use their religious beliefs to act like assholes towards anyone.

And you think the Pope stepped down for anything other than a massive criminal scandal? Guess what? Pope Palpatine is probably going to get charged with sex crimes. Man of God indeed.

I don't hate religion but I do hate the assholes who lead virtually all religious groups as if they are some pious mouthpieces for God, they are not, they are crooked liars fleecing the gullible and stupid.

On to other news: We are entering the longest day off free zone in the school calendar. We have, as of right now, 29 days of school in a row without a break aside from the weekends. It will be a slog. Oh wait, I'm going to be taking a couple of days off in March so, uhhh, nevermind or something.

I've been adding new words to my Fictionarium if you're so inclined to read them.
And there's usually something going on over on my Walmart is Pure Evil blog too. But maybe don't visit if you're offended by the gratuitous use of the word FUCK in graphics, there's a powerful graphic posted right now that doesn't pull punches about what it means to actually shop at Walmart (hint, it ain't good). And I call Walmart, China Direct in my head now too.
And I still post to my What Not To Do blog as well if you're into reading cautionary tales about the idiotic ways that other people get arrested or killed.

And that ought to do it for now. We'll see what the week brings, it's all raining and cold and nasty today and I'm working a double so there's that. But at least everyone in my house is healthy again, no fun with everyone on antibiotics and feeling like total dookie!

Way Back Then, Then and Now

My, oh my how the time flies. From our first trips to Dennis the Menace Park in Monterey to our most recent. Hope you had a stress reducing holiday break, no matter how your flavor rolls. I'ma go back to complaining about kid toy's that make noise and have no mute or volume control (seriously? this is still overlooked?).


Pretty neat progression if I do say so myself!

Splash

Splash
Originally uploaded by fenriq.

It is exciting to take a photo that you think might be something special. Granted that most of the time there's something the detracts from the awesomeness you think you've just captured. That's what makes capturing awesomeness so awesome.

Part of our day off yesterday was spent out along Seacliff in Aptos. The boys rode their bikes from the now-defunct Cafe Rio all the way to the cement ship, The Palo Alto. We stopped in at the visitor center and found some really quite lovely treasures made by local artists (I have Christmas presents already knocked out for my mom and my wife!).

Twitter: All Photos Are NOT Belong To Us

This is not Twitter's property.

Recently there has been a bit of a furor over a post by one Scott Bourne, a fairly famous (and famously abrasive) photographer, regarding Twitter's Terms of Service in regards to ownership rights, exclusivity and content. Basically, the post said that Twitter's ToS agreement followed Facebook's way, way over reaching power grabs, that any media posted across Twitter's site becomes the property of Twitter to do with what they like including selling them and keeping the profits for themselves.

In the case of a tweet about finding a kitty cat in a box by your front door this is not such a big deal. But in the case of someone making their living (or supplementing it) with digital media such as a photographer, musician or videographer, this could be an absolute game changer. I am merely a semi-pro photographer and there's no way I'm signing over any rights to my photos to anyone without proper compensation.

As usually happens in these cases, the investigative photographer got it wrong. Badly wrong. And I'm reminded of why I stopped following Scott Bourne on Twitter. And why I continue to follow and appreciate posts by Petapixel, who breaks down the post, the ToU and why digital media types need not worry (besides the fact that Twitter isn't anywhere near close to being as evil and douchebaggy as Facebook is).

The crux of the issue regards the definition of content. Bourne presumed content to mean any media crossing Twitter's servers. The reality is that content, according to Twitter, is anything stored on Twitter servers, that is, tweets and possibly digital media at some point in the future (apparently there was a short lived Twitter photo hosting service, yes, Twitter does have rights to anything posted there).

Here, go and read Michael's (that's Petapixel's real name) post: Twitter Photo Rights Controversy is Much Ado About Nothing which was partially compiled from ReadWriteWeb's Twitter Gets to Use Your Photos, for Free? (Updated)

This issue highlights another problem, that is that Scott Bourne refuses to allow any discussion that isn't in complete agreement with him. That is, agree with him or he will block you, probably delete your comments and pretend like he's still right. His perspective is wrong and his attitude is misguided though his intentions are still good (protecting his intellectual property from dilution and royalty free distributions).

In the end, I'll keep posting links to my photos I post (and host) on Flickr or other sites.

This post has been cross-posted to my IP Photography blog as well.

Would Not Fly Now

This would absolutely not fly now. He'd pull this thing out of his gun shaped camera bag, put it to his shoulder and the cops would be there within minutes. Probably isn't helped that he looks like he could possibly possess Muslim sentiments (apparently that's not a good thing for some Americans these days).

The sad thing is that I bet it was a really comfortable and good way to get a good photograph. It would be very interesting to see a retake of this concept with today's digital technology. But I'd be too worried about some over-zealous person shooting me for using it.

Discovered at Modern Mechanix.

Side note, I also came across this rather spectacular example of skinning an iPhone 4. In this case, the artist modified an image of a Leica M9 Rangefinder camera to fit perfectly and integrate the camera and LED flash. Truly an outstanding end result.

I am working on recreating this design myself.

T-Minus Five Days and Counting

I can never remember, when you're counting something down, do you include today and the day of the event? If today is Monday and the event is Saturday then does that make it five days or six? I could make cogent arguments either way but the underlying reality is that come Saturday morning at 9:45 or so, I will be on or near the starting line for the Avia Wildflower Mountain Bike Triathlon.

Which means this is the last week to get some reasonably decent workouts in, add a little extra cardio to the tank, work on transitions and get our gear sorted out and then packed into the truck. We will be camping out at the triathlon along with 20,000 other triathletes and their support teams/families which will also be a new experience as the boys have not really done any camping save for sleeping in the tent in the backyard.

I don't feel completely ready for the race especially since my training has taken a hit in the last week since the Sea Otter Classic where I bonked very hard. My legs have felt quite leaden lately but I'm doing my best to spin the deadness out of them. I've been putting in the time when I can and will race as best I can. I'm going to be approaching the race differently than the mountain bike race last week. I will be pacing myself better, holding energy in reserve, prepping better the day before and starting the race with a clearer race plan.

And my main focus of the entire thing is to have fun, spend some quality time with my family and to not take everything so seriously. I know I'm not going to win so I'm going to try and have a good time.

I still need to put together my checklist of gear, camping and other stuff. This is going to be a busy and fast week and I'm sure there will be much stress in the process too. Hopefully it will all end up in an awesome time for all of us. And maybe I'll get some cool photos as well.

But really, I just want it to be a fun weekend.

Obligatory Gangster Pose

Obligatory Gangster Pose.

No reason to post this aside from the fact that it makes me smile to look at my son goofing around. If the weather cooperates, we might get a little light trail riding in tomorrow, just me and Grady.

The search is on for a bike for Grady to upgrade to. He has clearly out grown the 12 incher here and will be much more capable on a 16 inch or even possibly a 20.

Some Program Notes

For anyone interested, I've started (yet) another new blog. This one is called The Kyani Dream and is focused on our Kyani business, it is not all about selling though there is some encouragement to try out the products. It is more about sharing information, knowledge, health issues, thoughts about network marketing and our growing success which will lead to posts about our free vacations and, eventually, our free Cadillac Escalade Hybrid when we get there.

If you have any interest in learning about network marketing or the opportunities presented by Kyani then I strongly encourage you to check out the new blog and let me know what you think or what kind of posts you'd be most interested in reading.

Also, if you are in need of some miniature awesomeness then you should check out Plastic Life. Very, very well done miniature photography. I'd love to give some of this stuff a shot.

In other news, I took the Learning Styles Inventory Test after seeing at Where's My Plan and found out that I am...

The Great Communicator

75% Visual, 75% Musical, 88% Linguistic, 75% Kinesthetic, 75% Logical, 63% Interpersonal and 67% Intrapersonal!

Want to give the test a try? Take Your personal Learning Styles Inventory Test at HelloQuizzy

And, finally, check out some pretty awesome photos of nature's fury in full force.

That's all for now, I've got some other things I'm working on but they aren't ready for primetime just yet.

Notes from My First Wedding Photography Assignment

Yesterday was a long day and today is already slated to be a longer one although there will not be a UFC event awaiting after the work is done.

Anyway, here are some thoughts as I prepare for today's wedding.

- When things start to happen, they will start to happen very fast and are unstoppable to retake a photo.
- Comfortable shoes are an absolute must.
- Eating or having some kind of snack is essential.
- Cloud cover is your best friend at an outdoor wedding.
- Tall centerpieces can be difficult to work around when taking long distance candids.
- There are some incredibly emotionally charged moments that are classic and timeless and impossible to capture again once they've passed.
- Memory cards are cheap, shoot five or ten times the number of pics you think you'll need.
- Every wedding is unique and wonderful in its own way.
- That memory card with all the day's photos on it is more precious than anything in whole world until its been downloaded and the photos backed up to DVD and an external hard drive.

I've got a couple of hours to get ready for my next wedding today. Time to get some materials printed off, cleaned up and ready to roll out.

Big Day, Big Week

Today is the first day of the biggest week we've had since I was laid off from the school district. In just under ten hours we'll be hosting our first ever Private Business Reception (PBR) for Kyani. With some luck we'll be filling our house with prospective distributors and customers and members of our team. It involves many steps including a clean house, finding a place to temporarily park Nande and our border hound (my wife's brother is visiting from Colorado and his big goofy friendly dog isn't so welcome at grandma and grandpa's house due to aged and inflexible cat already in residence), making sure our kids are occupied or at the neighbors for a little while.

And there's also making calls and trying to pull in folks we've already talked to to try and bring them to the PBR. The exciting thing about tonight is that we'll have one Kyani's executives here. He's one of the top earners in the company and, at the end of this week, will be getting the keys to his Kyani Escalade Hybrid at the national convention. If I were him, I'd be giddy with excitement!

On top of the PBR tonight, there is the aforementioned national convention taking place this next weekend. Almost everyone from our Northern California team will be attending and I would be but my weekend is already very, very stacked full of previously scheduled goodness.

I will be working as a professional photographer for not one but two weddings in two days this coming weekend. And, in between the two weddings, there's also the mma magnificence that is UFC 100.

Each wedding poses some significant challenges but all four of the participants are very easy going, good people and I'm really looking forward to commemorating their special days with my cameras.

Also, we'll be doing our first Skype video conference call a little later this morning with WindBlossom, who has joined us on our Kyani adventure after trying the products out and finding that her knees no longer hurt and her thinking is clearer.

It should be a really good week. And, with some luck, we'll be much further along in our Kyani dream by the end of the week. So much so that my wife may be one of the many that gets to walk the stage to receive her promotion in front of the entire company. That would be awesome! I wish I could be there but am looking forward to my weekend of photographic madness!

What's The Haps

After a day and a half of four kids (my two boys and their two cousins), two big dogs (my Nande and their Murphy) and my wife's brother staying with us, this morning is calm and mostly peaceful. Even with Murphy still staying with us, he's a great big, sweet and goofy black lab/New Foundland mix.

My cold sore is about 75% healed up now, which is good because it was a really bad one while it was settling in. Probably the worst I've had in five years. But, through a combination of yogurt, lysine, Abreva and Kyani Nitro FX, it has eased up considerably and should be completely gone in another day or two at the most.

And that's a good thing because I need to get back to working out and riding my bikes. I can feel some pent up energy that could really use a release.

We took several steps forward with our Kyani business this week. Say hello to our newest distributor, WindBlossom! We also spoke for the first time the other day as I helped walk her through the sign up process. With her joining our Kyani team, we will start to farm and own Canada because there is little to no presence there as of right now. And virgin territory is huge, huge, huge in this early land grab phase of the game.

If you are looking for an amazingly good Plan B that could easily turn into a Plan A then drop me an email, leave a comment or otherwise get in touch. Kyani is our future and our future looks fantastic! There is no obligation whatsoever to check it out and, if you happen to have sick people in your network of friends, you can make a substantial improvement in their lives.

I had to do a little creative organization in my office to get my computer to be Skype-ready so that WindBlossom and I could video conference but its worked out well, I'm ready and my office is even a little bit sleeker than before!

I've been putting in quite a fair amount of work on websites. I've purchased a new domain for my photography business, used iWeb to create the new site, set up an entirely new account with Backprint and done a pretty ridiculous amount of trouble shooting to make Intellectual Poison work properly again as I'd busted one of the pipes in the process. I'm also starting to lay the groundwork for our as yet unlaunched new bicycling website.

And I've also been tending to several auctions on Ebay to help clear out some valuable but unneeded stuff in the office. Nothing like converting goodies into cash even if I seem to be spending too much time at the Post Office lately.

One big event on the near horizon is Graydon's fifth birthday this Friday! It is hard to believe that he's turning five already but he is. I'm excited for him because I know he's going to absolutely love his main present, a limited edition Automoblox race car. Oh yeah! If you've got young kids, especially car crazy boys (or girls) then you should definitely look into these beautiful toys. We've already got a bunch of the mini cars but the big ones are even more awesome.

The other big events on my horizon are two weddings that I'm going to be photographing the weekend after next. I'm excited, busy with preparations and a little bit anxious about not screwing anything up too badly. Once the weddings are behind us, we'll all be able to breathe a little easier, maybe take a camping trip to Big Sur or somewhere else and start to really enjoy the summer awesomeness out here on the coast. But, until then, there's a ton of things to work on and get ready. My tasklist is just as long, if not longer, than it was when I was working as a computer tech for four schools.

And, lastly, I'm saving my pennies to buy myself a long, long, long wanted goodie, the ContourHD high def helmet cam. Just thinking about my video capabilities with this thing makes me giddy!

So, I may not be quite as crazy busy as WindBlossom but yeah, there's alot going on right now.

Some Good Stuff

Have come across some good stuff on the internets lately and wanted to share.

Need some more wild in your life? Check out Nick Brandt to see some spectacular images of Africa. He has a fantastic eye and has captured a whole host of animals, panoramas and the feeling of the wildness of Africa. Truly inspiring photos.

The other is referenced in the post below. Texts from Last Night provided me with more laughs in a few hours yesterday than I can remember in a whole week. I could post a dozen that made e laugh out loud but I'll just post a choice couple.
"(416): I just jerked it to the same porn two nights in a row... and she says I have problems with commitment..."
"(512): i just sat at a stop sign for 10 minutes waiting for it to turn green. i need to STOP SMOKING THIS SHIT."

Via Amy's Reader Feed, Looking Into the Past is a Flickr pool of old pictures held up where they were taken. Trust me, it is very cool.

And, lastly, SuperCook lets you enter in food you have and then kicks out a bunch of recipes you can make. It is pretty awesome.

That's all I've got for now. I've got some calls to make, trails to ride and hearts to break (just kidding on the last one).

Amazing Surf Photography

My mom sent me a bunch of photos by a guy named Clark Little, his photos are nothing short of astonishing, beautiful and awesome.

This is one my favorites from what she sent me.

This is the kind of photography I'd love to be able to do. Unfortunately it requires some rather expensive gear that just isn't in the cards presently. Too many other things taking precedence, like my mortgage and, you know, groceries.

Still, this is fantastic. Check out his site for a whole ton more of them, all for sale.

Initial Impressions from the Canon SX110

I've had my new Canon SX110 for a week or so now and got a chance to use it on Monday as a secondary camera for Stage 2 of the Amgen Tour of California. I didn't really need it as my XTi is a superb, fast and quality camera.

But I wanted to see how it held up with its built-in 10x optical zooming, 9 mp sensor and AA batteries.

Utility - it isn't going to ever give my big camera a run for its money. It isn't fast enough, it isn't powerful enough and it doesn't have the versatility of interchangeable lenses. But it isn't meant to replace, just to supplement.

Size Matters - The SX110 is a good bit larger than the SD1100 IS it is replacing. The SX110 is not pocketable but is also a good bit harder to drop because it isn't as tiny as the SD was.

Zoom - the SX shines here as there really is just no comparison between a 3x optical zoom and a 10x optical zoom (note, digital zooming is a waste of time, it is, essentially, cropping in the camera). When I need to zoom in and it just keeps going and going, I feel vindicated in moving up in size to the SX. The zoom isn't particularly quick though so it is hard to use for action oriented photography with changing focus points.

Screen - Okay, I admit it, the screen is awesome. It is large and easy to see what you've just shot. But the lack of a viewfinder means that you have to use it so there is no easy way to save battery life by turning it off. Also, the dial to navigate image viewing is a nice idea but the implementation is a bit kludgy and I found myself accidentally clicking far too often.

Overall - The increased size of the SX110 combined with its use of disposable batteries is making it harder for me to carry and use without thoughts of having replacement batteries handy. Its larger size means it is not possible to just slip it into a pocket, it has to be carried or attached to a belt (for that awesome super dork look). I don't see any way to use it as a handlebar mounted vid-cam like the SD. It is a good camera to be sure but I don't think it really fits my particular set of needs.

Pros: Nice zoom, big screen.
Cons: Slow, eats batteries, larger profile makes it a drag to carry.
Grade: B-

Luckily, I have the solid warranty from Staples that allows me to return it for pretty much any reason within two years. And, with the SD1100 IS retailing for around $180, the new warranty will be less expensive (sub $200 is a much less expensive warranty) and I'll probably get a chunk of store credit out of the exchange. Unless there's a new model around the corner or maybe I'll consider moving up to the 790 or 700. Actually, in doing a little research, I'm thinking the SD890 IS is going to be the one for me. It uses the same batteries as the SD1100, has a a 5x zoom and is a little curvier so it should slip in and out of pockets more easily.

The Australian Wildfires

As always, The Boston Globe's Big Picture series captures some of the amazing and shocking realities of events around the world. This series is from the Australian Wildfires. Click the link for more images, some are pretty amazing, some are pretty awful (in a sad way). The photos remind me of the seemingly never-ending series of fires in close proximity to our house this last year. Bad enough that our school district shut down early one day as ash drifted down on us all. Here are a few photos from the school that day. Nothing anywhere near as arresting as the first in the series of photos from The Big Picture.

If This Were Any Cooler, It'd Be Frozen (like the Crowd!)

From the site,

I made a panoramic image showing the nearly two million people who watched President Obama’s inaugural address. To do so, I clamped a Gigapan Imager to the railing on the north media platform about six feet from my photo position. The Gigapan is a robotic camera mount that allows me to take multiple images and stitch them together, creating a massive image file.

My final photo is made up of 220 Canon G10 images and the file is 59,783 X 24,658 pixels or 1,474 megapixels. It took more than six and a half hours for the Gigapan software to put together all of the images on my Macbook Pro and the completed TIF file is almost 2 gigabytes.

How I Made a 1,474-Megapixel Photo During President Obama’s Inaugural Address

It is amazing, awesome and fantastic. And huge beyond huge. Its also the biggest Where's Waldo? ever. Via.

The Newest Lame

I just deleted a comment on my most favorited picture, the one here. The reason was because it was a throwaway comment he posted solely so he could post his stupid ass pet collar customization site.

That's right, there are idiots now trolling Flickr and spamming photos there.

Some New Macros

I wasn't able to get too far afield in the last day and a half but I did get out and get a few new macros with my new Canon.

The Image Stabilization really helps to keep the macros crisp and tight and it helps even when the light isn't ideal. Anyway, here are a couple of new macros to enjoy.