A second New Life... It's A Blogs Life

If Coke can do it, so can we here. The new Coke was a definite flop in the soft drink industry. So what did they do about it? Back up one step, rebrand what they knew worked and called it Coke Classic. Well this is not that drastic, but it does represent a step in a direction that we ultimately decided was not working as well as what we had previously set up here in Blogger. 

The decision to return to Blogger over our in home site was made for a couple of reasons;

1. Editing the blog is available from where ever I can get online.
2. I can post from my smart phone if necessary.
3. You can comment directly on the blog
4. The Blogger software is web/blog centric while ours was not the primary function of the software.

Ok, so now you know why we have returned. I will be transferring the posts form our other site to blogger as represented by their dates of entry. This should happen over the next couple of weeks.

So let's see where we can go with this.

Take care... Doug

My Personal Mickey

This past week my youngest son was home after graduating college (yes that does sink in!) and Evelyn was showing him my baby book. How and why that got started I do not know but he had never seen it.

The were plenty of wow dad, you where... The he came upon one photo of me that form the previous year looked like I had gone through a complete transformation. It was not good! His comment was “how do you go from that to this in one year?” I my defense I could only shrug my shoulders and admit that I was full fledge into my nerd years.

We were picking through the many articles and clippings my mother had kept over the years and we stumbled onto one that was rather significant.

My dad had some relative somewhat removed that was involved with the Disney organizations legal department and all I knew ids that we went to Disneyland in Anaheim CA more than a couple of times.

I was just a little squirt but remember riding and getting sick on the tea cup ride, doing the Matterhorn and many of the other rides and attractions. Unfortunately I do not remember when this happened but it was obviously on the complex. Roy Disney if you are old enough to remember was the nephew to Walt Disney and took over the Disney Sunday night show and the Disney organization after Walt’s death. The following image is a scan of a piece of paper that was hand drawn by Roy for me.

At this time I can only thank my mother for keeping this object of personal importance and historical relevance.

After scanning the sheet of paper I added Mickey and mat to match his colors. Then it was off to onOne’s Photo Frame and a hue saturation adjustment layer to get a different color than the default tan.

So that is my personal Mickey story.


Take care and I’ll Cya... Doug

Just A Scheduling Note

This is a scheduling note to let you that we have returned or are returning to the Blogger platform. I am actually posting this in late September and back dating it so you will understand the goodbye and hello again. If you would like to read the full explaination click here for the "A Second New Life... It's A Blogs Life."

We will have all the posts from the other site transferred back to Blogger in the near future say stay tuned.

Thanks for you understanding,

Doug Peek

Pic of the Month

I know this was just recently posted but it was a cool shot and I wanted it to be the Picture of the Month for March, you can read the original post titled A Wet Walk. Wow, March already, soon better (read warmer) weather and better shooting conditions, green grass and chirping birds. Ok so we can't capture the chirping birds in stills, I get that!

I'm off to work today so we will see what is out there on the road to capture.

Cya... Doug

New Banner Look

Hey all,

I have been working on a new banner for our web presence. I got my mug and tagline off and replaced it with what you see here. After all what is more appropriate for a photo site than a lens. A nice L series lens at that.

This new banner will be up on the peekfoto site soon and is already up on our SmugMug site. We had the old one up for a little over a year and making thing looking different is always a good thing on the web. One thing that I do not plan on changing is the website layout. It drives me nuts when I go to a site I have been using (bill pay sites) and nothing is in the same place.

So there it is, a new face.

Take care all... Doug

Pic of the Month

Again it is another month and time for a new picture of the month.

This time it is one that was posted not too long ago but has a special story behind it. You can read original post right here. The back story to this image being selected is that it has special meaning to my daughter. When I told her this past weekend I had to select a new picture of the month, she said I should use the orchid picture. So I did!

Cya... Doug

Quickie Web Item

Here is a real quick way to get information up so people can view at their leisure and as often as they like.

My website peekfoto.com is obviously a photography based website. Now my daughter is getting ready to have our first grandson and the baby showers are a must event. Without generating a whole website for the event, I created a simple page on the peekfoto site that is not linked from anywhere in the site. It does however have a live URL. This is what we give people on the invitation. On the web page are links to a Google Maps, and links into the specific registry at the stores so people do not have to go searching around for the right name combinations.

When it is done, I will simply deleter the page and be done with it.

Simple, Quick, and Convenient... I like that!

Cya... Doug

It is Done - President Obama

President Barack Hussein Obama

There, I said it... I am not going to be one of those people that 

continually grouse about "my guy" not getting in.

 Actually "my guy" was not on the ballot. 

While today is a very special day in our nations history, 

we should celebrate the smooth and orderly transition 

in power and not the individual or the party taking power. 

There are many a country that this event would have been 

the culmination of many a bloody fight.

So here is my position; Enjoy the day and the festivities 

then tomorrow pray for our new leader that he would 

do what is right for the United States and not 

follow any particular political ideology. 

That he would be a leader!

Have a great day!

Office Update: Phase II Complete

After thirteen years in primer and florescent lighting, the paint and tungsten lights definitely giver the office a different look. Evelyn says the battleship gray looks better than white primer but it's not for her. Actually it is a neutral gray . I will certainly have to run my Huey to re-calibrate my monitors though.

Here is a shot of the track lighting. It looks like a lot but they are mostly 50 watt halogens it with a few 75 watt fixtures dropped in. All told its about 800 watts of juice to light the office now. Once I get the work space set up I will have to reset some of them. They are all floods except one 75 watt units as that will focus on the keyboard from a distance. The one nice thing about track lighting is that you are not stuck with you have. You can change things up as often as you want.

Thats it for my office project until next week when I hope to get a good handle on Phase III. The building of the work platform. But right now I am spending time in Columbus OH for a week of recurrent training.

Take care all... Doug

Success

I am just certain you all are wondering if I messed something up on the 5D Mk II firmware update last night. Yes and No. I simply forgot to press the SET button to initiate the update (silly me!) and the screen times out just like it was supposed to.

So all is well in Canon land.

Cya later... Doug

So-long Erie. Adios!

Wow, I am finally leaving Erie PA today. We have been sitting here since last Wednesday with an airplane and full crew. The weather has been... Well, pretty sucky to be truthful. Saturday we almost got out of here but the runway could not get clean enough to takeoff safely. 

Not safe... Doug not go is my motto!

Don't know if I will get anything worthwhile posted tonight but I am wrapping up a relighting technique tutorial for tomorrow.

Cya... Doug

Different But Just The Same

Welcome over to the new location. Thanks to google and blogger we were able to get all the information (posts and comments) from the old blog over to this one. Now all three of the sites we use in the business start with "peekfoto". That may reduce some of the confusion between the photo and foto on some of the locations. If you are wondering "peekphoto" is a photographic search site and was unavailable when I started peekfoto.com. 

I present a little Q&A Kelby style here that may answer some question.

Computer: So why do you have three different websites?

Doug: Primarily it is a cost savings measure is starting up the photo business.

Computer: As a photographer don't you have to have a flashy (pardon the pun) site in order to impress prospective clients .

Doug: High end websites look nice and all, but isn't it really about conveying information and answering questions.

Computer: Can you expand on that last answer... What about photo galleries?

Doug: The first part of that is simple. When you do research on a purchase you are looking to make you have some very finite criteria you are looking for. You may not know the extent of that criteria, but you generally want these two basic questions answered. What is it that you can provide me and how much is it going to cost. As far as the second part of that question, galleries are very important to prospective clients. They need to have an example of the work that they can expect. We just don't feel it is as important to have the gallery housed on the same site as it is accessible form one place to the other.

Computer: When you say criteria, other than product and pricing, what do you actually mean.

Doug: Gee... You're not going two get off this are you? Anything that a person accesses on the web, e-mail, phone, or in person the provide them a comfort level to make a decision to employ our photographic services falls in the category of criteria.

Computer: In the previous answer you talk about accessibility from one place to another. How so?

Doug: I am talking about hyper-links to other locations on the web. By using a number of different sites we can leverage the power and functionality of these sites so as to make our front end more specific and keep our costs down.

Computer: How does using more web services get you more cost effective.

Doug: Simple. Here are is our three pronged approach to our web presence:

• The service "Blogger" that we are on right now is run by Google and provides a free blog service to every gmail owner. 
• Our peekfoto.com site is actually a redirect to a MobileMe account we have established with Apple. That account keeps all of our computers synced as well as the iPhone of iPod Touch. As far as the website development, Apples iWeb could not be easier for simple web development. No coding, just drag drop, type and publish! 
• When it comes to photo viewing, we use SmugMug that allows clients to not only view, but purchase individuals prints through the SmugMug front end. This is a feature we do no not always enable as we still like to use a lab that provides us with better quality control over our end products.
  

Computer: Is there anything else you use the peekfoto.com for?

Doug: Sure. There is a hose of information on the site. I should really say is or will be as we continue to populate its pages with information. Clients can research the site for answers to photo questions, clothing, make-up, what to expect at a photo session. There is an area that addresses our policies as a company. We basically want a client to know as much about us before they make that final decision. The more informative we can be with a prospect, we feel they will be more comfortable coming to a decision.

Computer: I would like to thank you for you time in answering these questions.

Doug: No problem.

If you are still with me here, congratulations. You are either a die-hard blog reader or a glutton for punishment. One more possibility, you are a prospective client in search of more answers. If so please give us a call.

Thanks all... Doug

2008 Year in Review

If you are reading this on the 31st, I hope you will have a save and enjoyable new years eve. If it is after the new year I hope you new year plans will be fulfilled. The ball will drop and the fireworks will be shot off but no better time during the year do we have a chance to look back and erealize the blessings we have had in the past twelve months.

I thought I would take a moment to share with you twelve items that have been in our life this past year of 2008. At the end I will reveal my photograph of the year. So let's get going:

January

I decided on Janyary 3 to start this blog. It has been an enjoyable ride that I have been able to share my images, thoughts, and limited knowledge with you all.

February

Was a cold month but it was one where I was able to get some really killer images of Lake Michigan and the frozen ice flow.

March

A busy month it was. My wife Evelyn and I celebrated our thirtieth anniversary in New York with my daughter and husband who was celebrating their 2nd. Had a great time, went an saw Phantom of the Opera, and B&H Photo. Why those two stick out I can not imagine, we really did much more for the three days we were there. I will never forget looking out our 19th floor window overlooking the hole of ground zero though.

April

We got back out on the motorcycle. This is always a great time of year. Not much else gets done during that month. Towards the end we entertained all of Evelyn's sisters and her mother which really was a fun time.

May

Alway a good month when you last child comes home for summer break. Even though he was only home for two weeks before going back as a camp counselor, we enjoyed his time immensely.

June

Was a wonderful month. We trekked back out to Maryland to see our oldest son graduate from the police academy. Something he has wanted for a very long time and it was a proud moment for us to see the chief of police badge Tim on stage.

July

One of the sour notes of our June experience is that I dropped my Camera and it took a nap. The up side is I replaced it with a Canon 40D which I have enjoyed its more robust feel and feature rich options. We had a fun time doing some zoo shooting with my brothers-in-law in Chicago.

August

I had my 200th blog posting witch is more than once per business day, so I was pretty stoked ant my constancy. Also our annual attendance to the U.S. Coast Guard Festival in Grand Haven was not missed either.

September

The big event of the year was out trip out to Portland Oregon with Evelyn's sisters. Three of us guys are photo geeks so we just had a blast shooting up the great northwest.

October

I started to really get into expanding my flash knowledge. Did some really low light flash work in a club atmosphere only it was at church. The Gathering is targeted at the 18 to 35 year old single person in search of wholesome connection with friends. I did a nice montage that is hanging in the church today.

November

I exceeded two thousand hits on the blog and had the most comments in any single month. I have had some people that I was unaware of tell me they liked the blog so that was really exciting to get some positive feedback that I am not just sending ones and zeros out into a cloud. 110001011, 001110011 Sorry, had a binary slip there.

December

What can I say I got a copy of the most talked about, most anticipated camera of 2008, the Canon EOS 5D Mark II. I was able to do some shooting with it just before Christmas and am looking forward to much more of this really incredible technology.

Well that is a quick summary of the year. Much of it was around photography but there were many more events that I have enjoyed this past year. MOst of which have been with my outstanding and precious wife Evelyn. Three cheers! Hip... Hip... Hurray!

* * * P H O T O G R A P H   O F   T H E    Y E A R * * *

And Now without further ado, I will present my photograph of the year. This is the Trillium Lake Oregon panoramic of Mt. Hood early in the morning. Why this photo? The elements are all there. On the left the tree line points to the central focal point of the mountain. The foreground objects give the photo some depth and reference. The fog presents a bit of mystery. This is one of the few times where the rule of thirds and no central horizon can be thrown out the window. What makes this photograph so amazing is there was very little touching done in Photoshop. After the pano assembly, some light color correction and a few distracting items removed and that was about it.

Have a very wonderful New Year and I will continue pressing forward with this blog.

Thanks for URL-ing in... Doug

Tiz-the-Season

Hey all, Just wanted to get a not out to you before the week ended. We have been having a nice time visiting with our children, spouse and friends this week. They had their house all decorated and it looked so inviting. It also gave a perfect opportunity to take a couple of exposures that would then be prime for a composite. So it really is not an HDR but the intent was the same. You could call this an old school HDR.

I am working next week so this is our Christmas, so I will bid you a Merry Christmas with this image above.

Take care... Doug

5D Mark II - Yes Bill it is a Canon

Ok... So there were no angelic hosts singing from on high. And... Well ok... It probably didn't have that misty glow when it was raised up out of the box. But I may have been a little misty eyed myself. MY Canon 5D Mark II is now in my possession. Actually we are so blessed to be able to obtain some fine tools that make our talents useful. So it really is not mine but mine to use, be responsible and productive with and hopefully a blessing to others.

I have seen videos of unboxing ceremonies of peoples gear so I thought I would take an opportunity to bring up some shots I took with my G9 on a tripod. I had a EX 580 II flashing through a Lastolite EzyBox and triggered by the Canon ST-E2 transmitter.

Here is all what was in the box. I just got the body as I already have a good collection of lenses that will fit the 5D's full frame. I only have one EF-S lens that came with a Rebel XTi so that is really not a issue.

The 5D body looks very smart sitting on the back of the EF 70-200 IS f 2.8 L lens. The XTi looked like a toy camera on this lens, the 40D looked much better, but the beefier 5D just gives it that Tim Taylor look. Urrr Urrr Urrr.

I got the battery charged and took some shots just to see hoe the high ISO stuff was going to look. All I can say is WOW!!! It is really incredible. This is going to be way too much fun.

I may get some stuff up the next couple of days but I would not count on it as we will be visiting family for our early Christmas. So take care... Doug

Another Centennial Moment

Here it is... 300 blog postings... That would make it my tricentennial posting. When I first started this blog I was not sure what it would morph into. I did want to keep it along the photographic lines and I think it has done that fairly well. Even when I take it on the road with me and my aviation experiences seep into the blog, I try to include interesting photo's and thoughts.

I would be remiss if I did not recognize some of those that have inspired my blogging. Many of those are listed down the right side of this very page. However I would not have made this process as consistent as it is without the likes of Scott Kelby, and David Ziser to have paved the way. Scott for his free spirited and light hearted style and David for his consistency for detail and education of the photographic community.

A big thank you to all of those that visit this blog as frequently as they do.

Cya... Doug

Time

I was again going to call this an Office Build Update but then I would be telling the truth. The fact is that I have no Tuesday progress in the office. In fact I am getting slightly defeated in the knowledge that my last week off is rapidly coming to a close and I am not even close in the office. Of course there are always circumstances that cause distractions or delays here and there.

Yes I know last week was a wash with the kids in town and it being Thanksgiving and all but that still left two weeks to make some serious progress.

Today... Well, it pretty was spent working with Windows. For the longest time my wife has been waiting for me to get a laptop set up for her sewing machines. I broke out the last remaining windows laptop in the house and set to working on it.

First order of business was to dump as much junk as I possibly could. Not only for disk space but to help the speed of the machine. Off with the Spyware, gone with the anti-virus, and I even sent iTunes to the bit bucket. All music and pictures gone baby gone. Then it was onto the loading process. Right! Can you say 3 1/5 inch floppy disks. Oops, that threw a wrench into the soup. My old Gateway which I had transitioned to the iMac over a year ago had a 3.5" floppy.

After dragging that box out (pictured on table) and transferring a whole bunch of files into their own folder that I would then burn to a CD and put on the laptop. After scouring the two drives for sewing files for two different types of machines I came up with 684 files. The real amazing thing about this is the RAW image above is just slightly smaller that all those files.

Technology is wonderful but I think it has made the tech industry lazy. The amount of programing power/KB just six years ago was so much greater than it is now. Don't get me wrong I totally enjoy and am amazed with what out computers can do for us but good night, the size of these applications is just incredible.

I really hope to have better news about the office tomorrow. But that is it for now.

Cya... Doug

Office Update

This is how it was Tuesday night.

As you can see I have turned the corner on the "out with the old" phase and am ready to start with the "in with the new" phase. First it is to layout the workspace support and lay the top in place. When I get that done I will be onto the paint and cut in the trim, then the ceiling and finally the walls. The last bit of work I will do for this phase is the lighting which will be a double track lighting unit with halogen lamps for illumination. I have found that working in the bright fluorescent lighting my prints are always dark and after profiling my monitor with my Huey, the monitor seems dim. Solution.. Lower ambient light makes the monitor feel brighter. I have an interesting power panel planned so I don't get all those nasty cords laying on the floor. The carpeting is going to wait along with the print drawer unit and mat board storage device I have designed.

Honestly I am not sure I will get this all done before I head back to work but I will be giving it my best shot the week after Thanksgiving.

Speaking of Thanksgiving, I hope you take some time to be thankful for all that we have been blessed with. Not monetarily or with stuff but those invisible assets we have in family, friendships, and values. Take a moment and encourage or do something nice for someone else this week.

As for me I will be off until Monday so have a great Thanksgiving and enjoy the long weekend.

Cya... Doug

Office Update

I am not sure if this was a good idea or not. And what idea is that? No, not reworking my office as it has needed it for way too long. The bad idea was to put my progress up on the blog. However it does give me something to talk about as not much else is going on.

Anyhow, the shot below was my clean up progress as of Saturday night which actually took until Sunday afternoon. 

Monday (below) is when the action really started. The part where the husband says to the wife... "it has to get worse before it can get better." What is missed in any of these pictures are two floor to ceiling bookshelves to the tight that had to be gone through. I am eliminating one set of shelves and used that decision to allow me the freedom to eliminate a number of items that I really have no plans on ever using again. They were just taking up space.

The desk that I have had for twenty two years suffered fatal wounds and is being reincarnated as two roller drawer assemblies. The first problem I ran into was the metal on the bottom of the cabinets was really thin and would not support the wheels by itself. So out to the shop I went and came back with four 3/8" plywood planks to mount the wheels to and subsequently to the metal boxes.

Sounds easy but it took one trip to Harbor Freight (wheels), one trip to the locals hardware store for nuts and bolts, and one trip to Home Depot for more nuts and bolds when I figured the initial plan was not going to work and longer bolts were going to be necessary.

The plan is to have the work platform wall mounted and be able to move the various floor units around for easy cleaning.  Time will tell on that idea!

Tomorrow morning will be used to mount the wheel son the other box and take the dogs to get groomed before our daughter and son-in-law show up for Thanksgiving. That may put a damper on my office progress until Monday when I can spend the las week of my vacation getting as far as I can on the project.

Ok... So why is it a bad idea to put this up on the blog. For some reason there is a certain level of cyber-accountability. There it is! I said it, now I have to do it. The pressure is on. All in all this is phase one of the project as there are some needs to use the shop (it is no full blown winter in MI) tools in a larger way than just trimming.

Let's see what I can get done this week.

Cya... Doug

Building Update

The office is coming along but not nearly as quickly as I had hoped. Yesterday we took the mother of a friend of ours over to U of M Hospital in Ann Arbor to see her family so yesterday was a wash. I am trying to have the office ready to paint by Monday. One thing I have discover is that I have a whole bunch of junk (I think I knew that but was unwilling to admit it).

Back to work now.  Cya... Doug