It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!

Saturday we went with friends to visit a pumpkin patch and take pictures of the bebes.




Unfortunately, Will was the only one of the babies really in the mood for it. What can I say, he's a really easy going guy. He was all like, "sit here? sure, no problem. Hold a pumpkin? okay. What do you mean I can't eat the grass? Lay down? Okay. Smile? What do you mean? I'm already smiling! Sit in a wagon? I'd love to!"





He's very photogenic, and good thing because mama and daddy love taking pictures. I need to put these on flickr, I haven't uploaded photos there in quite a while, eek!

(Photos 2 and 3 from the husband)

We also bought a smallish pumpkin for me to make a pumpkin dip in for a picnic we're throwing this coming Saturday. I think I may be going a little over-the-top making things. We're getting fried chicken and I'm making Pioneer Woman mac&cheese, Tyler Florence's "Ultimate" baked beans, vegetable soup, pumpkin dip, and chocolate chip pumpkin brownies. The vegetable soup recipe is my own, I might post it later on.

You should come. No really, if you know where we live.

Insta-ghetto-gram

I don't have an iPhone. I don't even have the iPod touch that has a camera (it was $70 more but now I think it might be worth it), yet I wanted to join the Instagram cult. What's a girl to do?

Ghetto rig it.

Here's what I do:

1. Take picture with terrible phone camera. I have a Palm Pre, I like it but the camera leaves much to be desired. Two words: fixed focus. Ugh. An incredibly cute baby counteracts the terribleness of the camera. If you do not have one, one will be provided for you. Wait, no, that's something else entirely.

2. Email photo to myself from the phone.

3. Check email on iPod touch. This is usually done at home, since that's where I have WiFi.

4. Instagram it up!







If you want to follow me on Instagram, my username is OhBuoyancy.

The pros and cons of DIY family photos

This past weekend we decided to do a little family photo shoot for ourselves.



Doing your own family photos presents some challenges, especially with a baby, but it also has a lot of advantages, like hello, it's free. DIY family photos is not something I recommend for just anyone. You need experience/knowledge, a good quality camera (we used my Canon T1i), a tripod, and some Photoshop skills sure don't hurt. While I wouldn't quite call myself or Shawn a professional photographer, we have both been paid for this hobby that we love and we've been doing it for years. Maybe we're semi-pros. I know my hubby sure is talented with the camera and with Photoshop.

When taking your own family photos you of course have to use a tripod or some other level surface to hold the camera. For families with babies or small children this adds a kink into the normal photo-taking process. Normally when taking photos of a baby there is someone holding the camera and/or someone else near the camera to get the baby to look in the right direction and smile. A tripod placed a few yards away just isn't that interesting to a baby. I thought the beeping from the timer might hold his attention a little bit, but no such luck. So, while attempting to get your baby to look at the camera you may end up with a photo like this:



or this:



On the pro side, it's okay to have photos like this because you have all the time in the world to get the good photo. The only people whose time you're taking up is your own, unlike with a hired photographer who is on a schedule, or may just have some place else to be. Along the same lines, you will never have to forfeit getting a great shot due to weather, lighting, or time. If you don't get that shot today, just go back tomorrow, or next week.

When you're doing your own photos you also have complete control over day, time, and more importantly, location. In fact, you could do as many locations as you want. For example, it was my idea to do some photos in the library like the one at the top of this post and this one:



Not to say that a professional photographer wouldn't let you choose a location, I'm sure most would.

Another thing you won't get when taking your own family photos is professional opinion and instant feedback. We had my camera set on a tripod for most shots (in the last one it was on a stack of books), and used a 10 second timer. Every time a photo was taking one of us had hit the shutter button, hurry to get into position, wait for the shutter, then go back to the camera, review the shot, and set it again if it wasn't good. With a hired photographer you know the shot is being taken at the right moment, when everyone is in their place and looking in the right direction, if the shot wasn't good you'll know without getting up, no running back and forth necessary. Then again, isn't your own opinion of how you look in a photo more important to you than what a photographer thinks?

Oh, probably what some people dislike the most about professional photography is the turnaround time. I've heard of people waiting months for their wedding photos. When you take your own family photos the turnaround time is whatever you make it. We took these photos on a Saturday and, I believe Shawn had them done the following Monday. I think I even had the top photo on facebook Saturday night.

That's pretty much it. If you've done this before, did you have the same challenges? If you haven't and you decide you're not up to the challenge, we're available!

I baked bread

A few months back, I guess, I decided I wanted to bake bread. Not because of practical reasons (though they do still apply) like lower cost, fresh and pronounceable ingredients, and the bragging rights of telling everyone that I baked bread. No, I decided I wanted to bake bread because it would be fun.

So, we went to Bed, Bath & Beyond to find a loaf pan, because we received a gift card from there and I have no idea what we'll use it for. I really wanted something fancy like a Le Creuset stone loaf pan, but the B,B&B failed me. So, off we went to Kohl's to use one of our many other gift cards. The only stone loaf pan they had weighed about 40lbs and had a price tag that sported a similar number simply because it was Food Network brand. Le Creuset I would have paid that much for, Food Network brand? No, who is it even made by?!

Unwilling to leave without a loaf pan, I ended up with a stainless steal, non-stick dealy. Eh, it baked the bread, and was less than $20.

For my first attempt [read: overwhelming success], I used this recipe. It was delicious and looked good too.



I still felt the need for a stone loaf pan, so when Shawn and I went to Jacksonville for a doctor's appointment we stopped by the William Sonoma store. Of course the woman working there thinks that everyone who likes to cook or bake is supposed to be all chitty-chatty (I can't help but disappoint these types) and asks me about what kind of bread I'm going to bake. Then she tells me about how she used to be in a bread baking commune in the '70s. Commune? I'm pretty sure that's what she said, but it sounded like she really meant "group" or "club." They would each bake 6 loaves and trade them with each other, along with the recipes. Sounded neat.

Anyway, they didn't have a Le Creuset pan in an appropriate size so I bought one made by some other fancy French company.

Back to baking. Second round looked just as good, but taste? Not so much. I used a recipe from a Loretta Lynn cookbook I picked up at the Goodwill bookstore and while it was a simpler recipe, it tasted simpler too.

Today I went for an Amish white bread
.


(notice the fancy French pan)

It's still cooling now, but from the little pinches I've tasted every time I walk into the kitchen it seems to taste pretty good. Now I with I had some Amish apple butter to go with it.

The death of the point and shoot

This is something I've thought about before but it came to my mind again the other day and I decided to post about it.

Who uses point and shoot cameras anymore? Okay, besides your parents, who are always behind on technology anyway.



The fact is that the cameras on our phones have advanced so greatly in the last few years that there is no longer a need to carry another gadget. Shawn's HTC Evo has an 8 megapixel camera and can take HD video. That's better than my Canon PowerShot that I've had for a couple years. The screen is also bigger for viewing the photos.

When I first bought my PowerShot, I took it everywhere with me. It was always in my pocket or my purse. That is until I got a BlackBerry. Once I had that phone I used my camera less and less. Now I have a Palm Pre which sadly has a fixed focus camera, but I still don't carry around a point and shoot. Who does anymore? It's so much more common to walk around a see someone taking a picture with their phone than with a pocket-able camera. It makes so much sense now that phone cameras have come so far. My first camera phone didn't even have a flash but now that's pretty much standard as well as a focus light and a light that will illuminate videos recorded in low lighting.

National Geographic even published a book (The Camera Phone Book: How to Shoot Like a Pro, Print, Store, Display, Send Images, Make a Short Film) about taking photos with your phone a few years back. National Geographic! It's probably already useless to today's phones.

The last thing I used my point and shoot for was to take pictures of furniture and their price tags in a store. Since Shawn got his Evo, we've used it for that purpose. We did use the point and shoot a little bit on our honeymoon. We had both agreed to leave our phones off for the week and thought it best not to take his D40 snowboarding.

So, I see the point and shoot slowly fading away, being replaced by phones, until one day mentioning a point a shoot will be like mentioning an 8-track to today's 9th grader. I definitely don't see p&s technology getting the love that film photography or vinyl records have. The everyday snapshot takers will use their phones while those more serious about photography will have SLRs, the in-betweens will disappear.

The above photo was taken with my Palm Pre.

Flickr Feed

If you read this site through an RSS reader you've probably noticed that I've merged the feed from my Flickr account with the site feed. Now up to five of my recent photo uploads will show along with my regular posts. What do you think of this? Good, bad, neutral?

I wish it would show recent uploads as one single post instead of five individual posts. A mosaic of thumbnails of recent uploads would be cool. I know I could do that myself and make a new post with it, which in a way would be better because then I would have the added benefit of the post showing on the actual site, but this is automated and therefore easier.

Thoughts?

Christmas Photo Essays

Check out these Christmas photo essays from TIME.

Crazy Christmas Traditions - Photo Essays - TIME.

It Happened on Christmas Day - Photo Essays - TIME.

Fill 'er up

World of Coke from Reese on Vimeo.

I'm not feeling well, so I haven't made the post I planned on. I did upload some pics of The World of Coke to my flickr though, and a few short videos like this one on Vimeo.

I like how some people add music to their videos. I don't know how to do that, so you get ambient noise and people talking. If anyone knows a video editor to add music good and free let me know!

Multimedia Monday: PSA-Water

I've actually been meaning to write about the water crisis for several months, but have put it off repeatedly. Today I found this video on Virb°, it's a public service announcement from Charity:Water, that puts everyday Americans in the situation (to an extent, that is) that many in Africa face daily; it pushed me to make this Multimedia Monday's post on water. (If you're viewing this post in a feed reader, click over to see the video.)

Other videos, photos, and media on the Charity:Water website are worth your time as well.


One of the things that I wanted to post when I originally decided to post about the water crisis was this photo essay from TIME, which includes photographs from the book Blue Planet Run: The Race to Provide Safe Drinking Water to the World. Right now you can download the book for free, in pdf form, from that Amazon page. Though, if you can afford to, you can purchase the book from Charity:Water and $70 of the purchase goes to the charity.


While Charity:Water is a great organization, I know more, and feel more strongly about giving to Blood:Water Mission (yes, the charity started by members of Jars of Clay). Blood:Water exists to provide sustainable water sources in Africa by building wells with emphasis on reducing the HIV and AIDS epidemic. Check out the site for information on what they've already done, what they're doing now, and how you can help.

That's a negative

It's Official

I am now a college graduate!



Thursday was the last day of classes and I spend Friday cleaning up and getting rid of some papers. I actually keep all of my graded work, because I'm a dork and organize it according to class and semester in my filing cabinet.

Thursday morning was my AMH2020 (US history 2) final. I was actually sort of excited about it because I got to answer an essay question on "The Lost Generation," which includes some of my favorite authors (Hemingway, Fitzgerald). Anyway, I'm sitting in the class room before the test begins, going over my notes, when the girl who sits in front of my comes in. Now I don't think she's said a word to me the whole semester, but today she wants to talk, actually, she wants me to talk. First she says, "what's 'buying on margin'?" So I tell her. Then, "what's the Schiefflin Plan?" and I say, "I don't know," even though I did because I could see where this was going. Then she says, "What about laissez faire economics?" Now I've had it, is she going to ask me about every single term on the study guide? So I say, "You know, I'm trying study for myself here," and give her an 'what are you, an alien?' look.

The nerve of some people!

Now onto University! (hopefully). Still no word from UF, but I did get accepted to USF and it seems more appealing every minute.



In other news, here's a pic of another new (old) toy I got. I had to replace all of the seals in it as well, but now it and the AE-1 are loaded and ready. There seems to be dust or lint trapped under the focus screen though, and I can see it through the viewfinder, really annoying.

As You Can See

the AE-1 has some light leakage. Since the local shop wants $125 to replace the foams, I found a kit and some instructions on ebay and will be re-sealing it myself.

A few of the shots turned out fairly okay though. I was also using expired film, which may account for a little of the color weirdness.

Finals next week!

I Focus Manually!

For a while I've been wanting an older manual focus SLR, a Minolta more specifically. So a couple Saturdays ago my mom and I went downtown to an antique store, I wanted to look for a camera and she had just never been to an antique store before (weird I know).

They actually did have a Minolta SLR, but it wasn't the model I wanted the most and they were asking way too much for it. They also had a Canon SLR, an AE-1, but they wanted $174 for it! Later my mom says, "You know your dad has an old camera like that, a Canon, I think it's in my bedroom." Um, okay.



She gets it out and yeah, it's an AE-1. I actually remember playing with it when I was little, come to think of it. I've been interested in photography for as long as I can remember, I even read books on photography in elementary school (I still am quite strange, thank you).

The best thing though it that the camera still had an old roll of film in it, which I'm going to pick up now.

Video on Flickr? Do you care?

Yes, it's true, the rumors many have attempted to squash have turned out to be fact. But do we care? The masses already use YouTube, but I guess that's a different group the the majority of flickr users. YouTubers probably still use photobucket or something. I'm sure many flickr users will put it to good use, I just won't be one of them.

I don't record many videos anyway, but occasionally I record one via my point and shoot and upload it on Vimeo, which was created for just that. I like vimeo, I like that it's not what everyone is using, that's it's not overridden with commercials and movie clips. I like that it still feels homegrown in many ways that the people that created it really care about it and use it (not to say that those behind flickr don't). Oh and I love that it's not owned by yahoo.

How about you? Do you make videos and put them online?

For more info on Flickr video see their faq.

Serious Competition for Picnik?

The buzz on the web today is all about Photoshop Express, Adobe's new and completely free online version of Photoshop. Don't get too excited, it's far from the real deal, but it does let you crop, sharpen, remove red-eye, and add basic effects to your photos, things the average, everyday digicam user wants yet can't justify paying for Photoshop to have.

I've actually been using the site Picnik, for simple editing and touch-ups like this for some time. I do have Photoshop on my desktop computer, but Picnik is great for simple, quick editing when I don't want to wait for Photoshop to load, and it can be used on any computer with the internet. While there are other sites out there as well, I don't think any has been on the same level as Picnik as of yet. Photoshop Express might be able to beat it, but not as it is now.

Right now, Photoshop Express lacks several things that Picnik has, like the ability to add text or shapes to photos for example, and I'm very surprised that I'm not finding a "resize" function anywhere, that's one of the main things that I use Picnik for. Photoshop Express also lacks Flickr integration, it has Picasa, Facebook, and Photobucket, but no Flickr, supposedly it's coming. Picnik has those plus Flickr, Myspace, and Webshots, it also allows you to get a photo from your webcam directly or from a website. Photoshop Express does however, have some things Picnik does not, like photo storage and galleries. That may make the difference for some users, but not for me, that's what I use Flickr for. Oh and Picnik not only has Flickr integrated, but is integrated into Flickr itself, check out those buttons above your photos.

I'll still check it out, and will continue to do so, as I know it will change a lot from it's current "beta," but Photoshop Express is going to have to kick it up a notch before they can steal me away from Picnik.

Oh and if I see one more post about Muxtape, I'm going to scream! That's right, no link, I will not succumb to it's plea for the attention of the masses, you (and you, and you, and you, and you) have already done that enough for all of us. And it doesn't even work in my browser, just so you know.

Peeps

A photo-comic (of sorts)

Linkage

In lieu of a regular post, seeing as my life is quite hectic right now, I thought I would post a few links to things I have been meaning to post about, some old, some newish.

Caring for Your Introvert: Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I am for the most part what one would call introverted. This is a good piece to read if you know any introverts and still an interesting read if you are one yourself. I don't like the title of it though, I don't think we need to be "cared for;" it would be better titled "Understanding Your Introvert," or "How to Act (and Not to Act) Around Introverts."

What Would Jesus Buy?: Trailer for a Morgan Spurlock (of "Supersize Me") film on consumerism. I have not yet seen it, but looks very um...interesting. Check it out.

Super Mario Galaxy in Amsterdam: This site is not in English, but it's the pictures that are great. It's the celebration of the release of Super Mario Galaxy in Amsterdam. The first pic is awesome.

Bake a Book: Gizmodo post about book technology (yes BOOK technology) with thermo-reactive ink. Basically, the pages are blank until you bake the book in the oven, then words show up.

50 Years of Lego: So I missed posting about the birthday of the Lego brick, but here's the timeline (also Gizmodo).

Polaroid to Nix Polaroids. What?: Yep, no more instant photos (aka Polaroids!) from Polaroid. Next thing we know Aunt Jemima will quit making syrup, rain will stop being wet, and we'll here that the John Montagu (look him up if you must) never ate sandwiches.

Defend Your Coffee Habbit: I must have at least 2 cups of coffee every afternoon, if I do not you do not want to be around me. I've used each of these defenses at least once.

Bradley Hathaway Interview: A wonderful interview with Bradley Hathaway from HM Magazine. The best parts are what he says about love, both God's love and romantic love. If you don't know who Bradley Hathaway is, educate yourself, you won't be disappointed.

And I'll end with a quote:

“American movies have been using satire for years to take the edge off sex and violence. Occasionally, perhaps sex and violence should be treated with the seriousness they deserve.” - Roger Ebert

To Boost the Economy

If/Whenever we really get that $800 $600 President Bush is handing out, what will mine go toward?

I Voted

...for John McCain!

Giuliani, Live

Candidate for the Republican Presidential nomination, Rudy Giuliani spoke on my college's campus today. Notice how I had to preface that with "Candidate for the Republican Presidential nomination," that's because I talked to someone today who didn't know who he was; of all the Republican candidates Giuliani is probably the most widely recognized name, yet people still don't know who he is. Pay attention!



I took advantage of my college newspaper ("Gull's Cry") press pass and skipped the very long line waiting to get in the conference room.

I actually recorded (video) the first 8 minutes of his speech (I need a higher capacity memory card) and I'm waiting for it to upload right now. Uploading to vimeo takes way too long, they need to work on that. Okay the video will be here later, so keep an eye on this post if you're interested.



More pictures on my Flickr page.


I wore my Huckabee sticker, but no one aside from those I was with saw it because I kept my jacket on. Disappointing I know.