Thank You Steve Jobs

This one is way cool but first a thank you to Steve Jobs for either thinking this one up (doubtful) or at least having the foresight to allow the creativity and vision within a corporation this call Apple.

This little App proved its worth of memory space on my iPad tonight. When I am out of town, I always call my wife at 11:00 at night be for we go to bed. Tonight though when I went for my phone, it was not to be found. Hmm... Yes! use the work Blackberry to call my phone and I will hear it in a pocket or on the floor somewhere. No sound anywhere, Nada!

This i the first time I have ever totally misplaced my phone. Prior to panic setting in, I remember the Find iPhone App on the iPad. I tapped the App and once I logged in to the Apple account a location of the hotel came up on the screen. Well that makes sense as it was locked into the iPad. I clicked on the Doug's iPhone and this is what came up.

For a nanosecond I was confused as I had not been any grassy or wooded area all day. But then I realized that the building and the ramp with aircraft was the NetJets ramp in Columbus, OH. The grassy area is where the new building is located. It was there that I spend the day in a cubical working on a project. I had left the phone on the desk for sure.

I grabbed my I.D., wallet, and keys and headed out the door in my work-out shorts and tee shirt. Sure enough it was sitting right there on the desk.

So once again, thank you Steve Jobs!

Cya... Doug

Very Cute If You Like Dogs

This is just too qute not to share wth the rest of my blogosphere. I know I have been a little sporatic for the last couple of weeks but it has been somewhat hectiv as I am sur it willl be through the end of the year. So enjoy the little vidio and I will see you later.

Bye... Doug

Who Would Have Thought

There could have been a bunch of things I could talk about today but I really do not feel like thinking that hard. My sinuses are still driving me a little buggy and I am looking forward to the possibility of having tomorrow to let things settle down. Anyhow, today is going to be short.

This came to me in an e-mail and I thought I would pass it on to all of you for a chuckle.

Here is the set-up....


Why did the dinosaurs become extinct?
Scroll down for the answer.




















Keep Going

Hey, I thought it was funny!


Take care... Doug

Funny Friday

I had planned on doing something much different on todays post but I have seen a couple of Geico commercials the last couple of days that are just too funny that I thought I would turn this into a Funny Friday.

Enjoy... Doug


Hope you enjoyed those two.


Take care all... Doug

Just for Fun

Every once in a while you just have to have some fun with digital manipulation. Today it is turned towards aviation. All the terrorist threats and the reactions (sometimes knee-jerk) the government makes to make us feel safe have caused a catastrophe in the aviation industry. The airlines are just squeaking buy and many operating in and out of bankruptcy. Most people would rather drive five hundred miles rather than fly, not because they don't feel safe but because how they are treated. It starts when they get to the airport, charging for baggage, the intrusion of our privacy by the TSA and their rules (3-1-1). But enough of that!

One area of aviation that was not effected so much by the terrorist actions of 9-11-01 was business aviation. Yes it is those "Fat Cats" the President and the Press has called on the carpet recently. So who is feeling sorry for them? I am really trying not to get political here so I will continue. When Bernie Madoff brought the investment industry to its knees (in association with the banking failures) many of those they called Fat Cats went to liquify any asset they had, often an airplane.

So why is this post titled Just for Fun? From the image below you can see the front end of a large corporate jet on the ramp in West Palm Beach FL. The fun part was working in Photoshop installing the "For Sale" signs in various places.

From the original image, there were a total of twelve layers to create this effect before I flattened it for the blog. The window with the sign in it required to be disassembled so I could place the sign behind the glass, The Sign on the ground is completely created from within PS as is the sticker on the side of the aircraft. The warp option under transform was used to make the sticker look like it fits the curvature of the aircraft. Using a selected black to transparent gradient on the sticker allowed me to match the shadow of the fuselage. The opacity of that layer was reduced to match the shadow.

That will do t for me today so take care. 

Cya... Doug

Christmas Week

I am not going to be serious this week as it is a very special time in the Christian faith. That of the birth of the saviour Jesus Christ. So it will be a light hearted week gifts, thoughts and some funny stuff.

To kick off the week I was told about a fun little iPhone/Touch application called FlexPhotoLab. It is actually a product of Ford advertising their new Flex SUV. There are some photo editing tools in the "Darkroom" but the best is the Kaleidoscope effect. Don't worry, it is a free app and you don't have look at any advertisement from Ford. Here are some before and after images.

BEFORE

AFTER

BEFORE

AFT... You get the idea!

Kind of fun and mesmerizing when you are working with it. Have a good day.


Cya... Doug

Pilgrimage to Mecca

Ok… So maybe not “the” Mecca in the middle-east but certainly a central point of importance to most photographers and certainly to Photoshop Junkies. I did a checkride today from Greensboro NC to Brooksville FL. When I got to Brooksville, I had to get a car and drive to Tampa and get to the hotel which is the bonus post today.

Anyhow with a car and nothing really to do, I headed off to visit the Kelby Training Group. Better known as the home of the national Association of Photoshop Professionals or NAPP for short. It is about a twenty minute drive from the Tampa airport.

As I pulled into KTG’s parking lot I spied a spot by the building to park. As I turned into the spot the sign below presented itself.

I thought better of it and parked across the way in a Visitor spot.

I stepped in the building and was greeted by a nice gal by the name of Debbie. We talked a little and she offered a tour of the facility and I gladly accepted. There are three facilities in the local and I was at the main Administrative building which housed both the creative and editorial groups. I felt as though I was in the center of the CS brain trust.

Well it was fun to even stop by and say hi. Not that it was on my bucket list or anything like that.

Take care… Doug


P.S. I don't know what I was thinking as I did not bring my G9 with me to the NAPP headquarters so I was stuck with my piece of junk camera on my Blackberry. That is a yuck and Im sorry for the poor quality.

Way Too Funny!

I have been sitting here in my hotel room in Dallas today wondering what I was going to blog on. Often is the case where I rely on spontaneity to generate a point of interest to blog about. Be it a training item, an image I have captured, a thought I felt like sharing, or like today, something so funny I have to bring it up.

Working on our website, I had the TV on and the program TZM was on. It is one of those low life Hollywood "news" programs that try and find any tid-bit of information on celebrity life that for some reason this country craves. No I did not turn to it either. 

Anyhow, this picture of P Diddy came up and I just had to laugh out loud. The look of surprise, shock, or even disdane about finding a single dollar bill in the wad of hundreds in his hand. The look on his face says it all. DUDE, WHAT IS THIS DOING IN MY WAD!

Then I got to thinking about the current vilifying of excess by individuals in our government over the past couple of weeks. How dare we travel on corporate jets, own two homes, four cars, horses, or more than two children. I say if Sean Combs can walk around with over 2K worth of bills, good for him. The economy is stimulated when the people start spending money, not when the government takes money form the very people they are trying to stimulate.

Hey if I keep on going I will get depressed so you all have a great weekend and I'll be back on Monday.

Cya... Doug

Way Too Funny

I was going to post a different subject here today but after viewing the following video and laughing soooo hard, I had to drop it in here.

I actually had to put this up for my brother-in-law Bill. It stems from the Nikon - Canon war amongst photographers. Back in September when we were shooting at Trillium Lake in Oregon at 6:00 in the morning, there were two other photogs there doing the same thing. The one dude was touting about his Nikon gear and when it was all said and done, his buddy made the simple statement "It's still a Nikon."

Bill and I have had many laughs over this after this video that will no doubt continue for some time.

Take care... Doug

Now That's A Bug

If this little critter had a nose the shadow would be cast in a nice loupe lighting. This was shot with an off camera flash the cave this lovely subject a nice catch light in its large eyes. Maybe this is why the term is called bug-eyed.

Actually this started this morning while I was packing for my trip this week when my wife had the dogs outside and called me down to take a picture of "a big bug". So Ok... I am thinking it would be some creepy crawlly pestilence. I did not expect a Praying Mantis. This was truly a worthy photographic subject.

At first I grabbed my EF70-200 f2.8L IS lens on the Canon 40D and stood back a little to get a good zoom on the little bugger (sorry). Realizing he (now I don't really know if it was a he) was not moving at all I thought I might have a little luck in the macro world. I don't have a macro lens but figuring my 50 f/1.4 prime with a 12 mm extension tube on it might do the trick. Lighting was going to be another thing. I popped the on camera flash and guess what. On camera flash of a bug sucks as much as it does when shooting people.

The above image was from the EF 70-200 at 173 mm, f/2.8 and 1/80th second and ISO of 100. Kind of a plain Jane photo that definitely needed some juice. Ergo the image below shot with the 50 mm 1.4 prime at f/2.8, 1/250th second and an ISO again of 100. The flash was hand held off camera with a Stofen diffuser attached.

The nice thing about shooting RAW and having huge files is the ability too crop in post. The top image is simply a crop of the bottom image. He started to get a little antsy but was still determined not to leave his perch. My wife made the initial request as she had come across the Mantis as she was going for the hose to water the flowers. So really we are at square one. Move the bug so she can get to the hose.

With a stick in hand I made a feeble attempt at getting him to move. His first jump was onto my arm which he had no intention of staying and the next was his main escape. That of flight. I now know why the Praying Mantis remains attached to something that doesn't move for most of their life. As this little Mantodea's wings beat the air into submission it was obvious there was no way he could sustain flight in any kind of breeze.

That sums up my excitement for today. Cya... Doug

Digital Art

Yesterday afternoon Evelyn and I took a ride on the Harley and ended up in South Haven MI. We had been there before but I never had taken my camera (or at least one that is capable of spectacular shots) before. we walked around for a while and finally stopped at a little place tucked by the docks called York's  Landing. Had a great burger and fry's and it was time to head back home. Got a number of snaps. Sorry you read enough U.K. photo magazines and it becomes part of your lexicon. The one that stood out though was this one form the entrance to York's Landing. It looks like a street but in reality there is no traffic there and is lighted so as to be one big dance floor at night.

The shot was take with a EF 16-35 f2.8L USM lens mounted to the 40D. ISO was at 100 with exposure at 1/200th second at f/10.0. The lens was all the way in at 16 MM. I focused on the wine sales sign then framed and exposed for the sky knowing I could recover some of the shadow in Photoshop. You do what you cotta do when you forget to put the circular polarizer on the lens. Oh well!

When I got the images into Lightroom and started looking at them, this one clearly had the most potential for digital play land. I started playing around with some of the sliders and remembered a piece that Matt Kloskowski did on one of his Lightroom Killer Tips blog a while back that was very unique. What I came up with pretty much using the sliders as shown below (you can do the same thing in Adobe Camera Raw) is the image below.

[Lightroom Product]

Lightroom is such a cool program because you can literally get most of your work done there and print or send off to the lab/blog or what ever. Anyhow I thought this might look good as an oil so I made a virtual copy and went to PS. I have Alien Skin Snap Art that has some really cool filters. One of which is oil painting. Playing around with that filter did not give me the love I was hoping for as it blurred out the image too much. Ok... taking it back to PS just changes the layer. I took the original layer, placed it on top and dropped the opacity to 23% which stepped up the edges some what.

Alien Skin Snap Art also has this crinkled paper look so I thought I would try it. It was really sweet because it gave an interesting edge effect. The final result is the image below.

Later this morning our Tom is coming home from summer work in TN so the old blog may be sporadic again this week but I will see what I can get up.

That's it for now, take care... Doug

Just for the fun of it.

This has been a bit of a wacky day (not too unusual for day one of work) in that I was to hook up with a crew at Midway to do a checkride. That rapidly changed to airlining to Salt Lake City. The flight must have been full as I was on a first class ticket through Minneapolis. That was going to be way cool until we landed in MSP. With a quick update on my Blackberry it was clear it was not going to be SLC but rather Las Vegas, my favorite airline destination, NOT! I had never been on Sun Country Airlines before and It was not as bad as I thought it might have been sans the first class seating. Oh well. With all the changes and time spend waiting, it took me 13 plus hours to get from Grand Rapids to Las Vegas. Man, do I ever love flying the airlines!

Anyhow while I was waiting on the connection in MSP I was able to put together the following picture. A while back our oldest son Tim e-mailed me a few pictures he took on his Macbook when he was on a break at work. I simply made a levels adjustment and assembled them into one picture.

For a guy who comes off all serious he does have quite the sense of humor. Using the iSight and the options in Photo Booth on the Mac the Win folks are missing out. This little jewel at the top of the Mac is too much fun.

Photo Booth has a bunch of different options to "enhance" your image. It doesn't have to be one from the iSight either. Some of the options are kind of artsy and others are totally abstract. Andy Warhol would be proud. One of the ones I like are the roller coaster. This is where you let the iSight make an image of the background and then when you come back into the frame it looks like you are on a roller coaster (in motion). It's pretty cool.

That's about it for my brian tonight.

Take care... Doug

Rainy Days Traveler

Well, we are here in Maryland finally. from the image below you can imagine how our Thursday went. Rain, rain, and more rain. It rained form Ft. Wayne to just north of Nashville. And the traffic was unreal. I thought it was spring break on I-75 or something... Not a normal Thursday business travel.

We arrives in Chattanooga around 7:50 PM and it was good to see our son Tom. We had planned on just picking him up and heading to the hotel but he wanted to spend some final hours with his buds before leaving. So Evelyn and I headed off to the hotel and just kicked back and relaxed after a day on the road.

Friday we were back on the road again heading up to Maryland to visit with the rest of the family for the weekend. The weather was much improved but the traffic again was another thing. It is no wonder the oil companies are making a killing with all the cars on the road.

Here is one just for the fun of it:

Last tour I we had a couple of hours in Austin TX so we headed out to lunch. Other than the fact that we never had lunch out, we did run across a Wienermobile. It has been some time since I have seen one of these contraptions but there were a number of people along the street with their camera phone and point-and-shoots getting snaps of this unique vehicle. I snapped this with my Blackberry Pearl with a 3 MP sensor. Not too bad for a teeny-tiny sensor.

Have a great weekend and we will be back on Monday.

Doug

Something Fun and Cool to Watch

I was sitting in my room here at the LAX Hilton surfing some of my favorite Photog sites when I stumbled onto these two drawing videos on YouTube. There are others but I thought I would provide links to both sides of the gender isle. The first one is for the women and is of Jack Sparrow... Err, excuse me... Captain Jack Sparrow while the second is of Jessica Biel and is for the men. It's kind of like Dancing With the Stars... Something for everyone.

Take care and enjoy the rest of the weekend.

Doug