Practice, Practice

Last weekend I participated in a gathering of photographers, models, and make up artists (MUA's) all in the name of learning, networking, and building each others' portfolio.  Such a great concept and this was my first one.  I had a slight advantage because I knew another photographer, Lou, that has done several of these and has much more experience than I.  We've shot together a few times and I can't tell you how important it is to have someone take you under their wing.

The meetup location was near the meat packing district which is pretty trendy, despite its name.  It was supposed to start at 11 but I quickly found out that these things never start on time.  Oh well, we had really nice weather so we explored the area a bit and waited for things to get started.

Overall, I had a great time, learned a lot, and made some new connections.  Here are a few from the shoot (look for those shot on 26-APR).  More to come...

Is it habit?

I've been saying to myself all week, "gotta post", "it's time to post", "what am I waiting for?", etc.  I guess its a good thing that I feel compelled to share more often.  I hope to keep it up - for the 2 or 3 readers I have :-)

Emersyn's (my daughter) 2nd birthday party was last weekend.  We had been hoping all week leading up to the event that we'd have nice weather and fortunately we did.  75 degrees, mostly sunny, winds out of the west, northwest at 5 mph (okay, I'm not sure of the winds or dew point).  It was nice out.

We kept it small scale again this year; just grandparents and one set of friends.  The night before, Hope made the Elmo themed cake and set some decorations on top, covered it up and when we went into the kitchen the next day, we discovered it has collapsed.  Uh oh.  Being the planners that we are, we had backup materials enough to whip up another cake after considering a trip to the bakery (my vote) to get another one.  Within 30 minutes, the "v2" of the cake was in the oven.  It all turned out fine and tasted great.

Later in the day after people arrived, we started up the grill and quickly realized that we had no propane. This is the 3rd time this has happened to me that we have several people over and we're ready to start dinner and can't do it.  I've tried to install a meter but there's no room on my grill to do it.  Frustrating but you gotta deal!  I made an emergency trip to Home Depot and we're back in business.  Its always nice having my father there because I can give the grilling duties over to him and he's a master griller so things always turn out great.  Besides, I want to spend some time with the birthday girl and get some pictures (of course).

Emersyn and all the guests seemed to have a great time.  We had great food, weather, and company.  All in all a really nice day.  I managed to get a few images captured that I was happy with that I've included below.  As was true with any party, there's a fair amount that goes into it.  Lots of consideration was taken to plan for the dress she'd wear, food we'd eat, and I also put together a 2nd birthday photo book to give to everyone at the party as a keepsake.

NY Auto Show

Every year I try to make it out to the NY Auto show. I realize, of course, that I'm spending time taking photos of cars I will likely never own but its fun to dream. This year there was a continued theme of hybrid and energy efficiency. Don't get me wrong however, there was plenty of excess on display as well. Here are a few of the photos I captured.

For a more complete look at some of the cars, check out this "Best of Show" article.

I didn't personally see this but there was also an interesting article in the NY Times about people coming out to heckle the presenters. Sounds kind of pointless since most of the presenters are part-time employees for marketing firms, not employees of the car companies. Oh well, people have to vent I guess.

Listening to the street

Have you ever listened to the little bits of conversation you get as you pass people on the street? I took a walk to pick up some glasses. This is what I heard (each comma represents a new person).

"Mike Mike, did you see that guy?, doesn't make any sense, I told him to rush, right back to the gym, how about getting to 5100?, there's number 400, frequent, Molly I told you, its a power supply issue, what's in the box?, its expensive, I didn't worry when he, I'm gonna get that bitch, el segundo aqui, $30 was no problem, I was like - I just got, doing really well, see you tomorrow same place"

I hear you just fine

I've known for quite some time that I have what some have called "dog hearing". I know, people make these crazy claims about themselves all the time. Let me give an example.

About 10 years ago, I was in my house talking to someone and stopped them mid conversation because there was this odd pinging noise that I heard. Once it was quiet, I could hear it more clearly. I started following the sound. I stopped in the bathroom near (one room away) the tub. The tub was against an outside wall. I stood there for a few minutes and what it sounded like were bees hitting against the pipe inside the tub. Odd. But that's what it sounded like. We went outside to see what we could see. We saw bees. Lots of them. They were swarming around the back of the house and must have broken in near the foundation. We called to have them removed.

This is one of many examples I could give. I had a hearing test yesterday that confirmed that my hearing is still pretty sharp. Good thing. I don't want to miss that phone call when my phone is vibrating on the other side of the house :-)

One day I'll end up in Queens

I take a train to work each day. Actually two trains but the first one is a regular commuter train from NJ into NYC. Lately, I've been so tired that I regularly spend the majority of my trip (~45 minutes) sleeping on the train.

Once the train arrives at Penn Station, it then sometimes goes to Queens to sit during off-peak hours. Today, someone had to wake me up once we were at Penn because I was dead to the world. Without that tap on the shoulder, I could have ended up in Queens.

My favorite part of the day

We're creatures of habit. Each night, once we're finished with dinner, my daughter gets down from her chair and runs over to me (literally), jumps in my arms, and we sit down and take her shoes off so she can get ready for a bath and I can start to do one of my least favorite things (dishes).

Its such a simple thing but I really look forward to this each night.

What's that hat called?

Since I've lived in NY, I've been opened up to a whole lot more diversity than I even experienced in Phoenix. My wife is Jewish and was raised in Brooklyn so that in itself has provided for a lot of learning opportunities over the past few years.

Recently, we found ourselves in Brooklyn at Maimonides hospital to visit Phil (mother-in-law's boyfriend of many years). He's doing fine but that's not the point of this story. Just before we got the hospital, we saw some interesting (to me, anyway) attire. There were these great hats and other clothing that I hadn't seen before. Had to take a picture.

After some research, I found out the hats are called, "Kolpik". Learn something new everyday!

P.S. Doesn't it look like the guy on the left is thinking something like, "I really like that hat on you."?

Backup, Backup, Backup

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I've been trying to figure out what the deal is with a problem I'm having capturing video. It gets to about 5 minutes then hangs. Part of troubleshooting this process has been to do a complete reinstall of Final Cut Express (didn't work), then to do a complete reinstall of the OS (didn't work). When I did the erase and reinstall of OSX, I backed up my data in a couple places, just in case.

Over the past week or so, I've been reinstalling software and also working to recover all the data. A couple nights ago, I went looking to recover my photos and wasn't able to find it in my latest backup. It was late, I was depressed so I walked away from it and figured I would look at it the next day. As it turns out, the latest backup I had cancelled midway through for reasons I can't recall and all my data was there in a previous day's backup set. Whew! Scary. Here's a great motivator to make sure I have a thorough backup plan in place that I follow regularly.