Well, Blake’s lovely lady Keni has been giving me trouble about not updating the blog enough, so I figured I’d put something new up just to make her go away! I HATE when beautiful girls are bothering me all the time 
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Soooooo. What’s new? I’ve been staying busy with work and with job hunting for the past few weeks. I have had a few interviews that have gone pretty well, and I really hope to have something firmed up in the next week or two.
My boss asked me into his office this morning for a reprimand. Sometimes sales people live in their own worlds and the only thing they care about is how they look and making sure the impossible promises they make to their customers are fulfilled. A salesperson started to whine in an e-mail trail that she needed a rush order immediately, and wanted to know “what gives” with the order being late. So I wrote back the truth: Our plants were working double overtime to keep up with our huge influx of work over the past 2 months or so, and that those same guys working 70-80 hrs a week were just rewarded with the news that they no longer have jobs. Imagine that, their motivation to work above and beyond disappeared and now everything is late. I wanted to really write back a nasty note telling her silly she is to flip out over a $15 box of business cards being late, because she isn’t smart enough to realize that over 100 people were just laid off, and an entire company shut down. I held back and just wrote down the facts, but they didn’t seem to like that very much. So sales folks didn’t like what I said (even though it’s true) and asked a boss of a boss to ask my boss to talk to me. My boss told me that he was sick of lying, and that everything I said was true and he didnt’ have any problem with it….and “reprimanded me” by giving me two 4th row tickets to an afternoon Texas Rangers game and a full day off to go. He said it was a reward for all of my extra hours and hard work. Man, I need to be reprimanded more often!!!
Last week Blake and I went out to take some pics of his 1965 Fastback Mustang (with the Cobra Engine). We went to one of my favorite spots under the bridge and did some night long exposures. We were just fooling around and trying a lot of different things (flash, no flash, flashlight painting etc.) and ended up with some good pics. We are going to go out again soon when the weather gets better and take some more. We learned a lot and have some ideas about what we want to do.
You can see the rest of the pics from that night in my gallery here:Clicky
Blake’s page about his car
As noted last week, I have in fact been laid off! FedEx Kinkos made the decision to cut loose the division that I am a part of (ImageX). I have a job until the end of May, and hope to find another job inside FedEx Kinkos before then. I’m not too worried, but thought I’d go take a few pics to make fun of my my new found situation. I also wanted to prove to you guys that I don’t only take pics at night.
The pic below was set up for any formal interviews the bum might get.
I’m thinking about sending these to a few of the magagers at Kinkos I might try to get a job with at the home office.
If you happen to follow this blog at all you will probably know that I am a fan of long exposure photography. I wanted to write a little bit about long exposure, and specifically how flash can affect you picture.
Most people will put their cameras on the “Auto” setting and take a picture. If they are inside, or in dark conditions, the camera will probably use the flash. Flash can be great, but also has some drawbacks. If you know a little bit about what flash does, and how you can manipulate it, you can really change your photos.
Most cameras will slow your shutter to 1/60th of a second when a flash is used. This is fast enough that you image shouldn’t blur. When the flash fires, it has a specific range that it can actually illuminate; this combined with the quick 1/60th of a second shutter usually means that everything close to the camera will be lit up with a very white light, and everything else will not appear well in the photo. This is why a lot of pictures with flash have a white/washed out forground full of people, and an almost black background. The image below was taken on the auto setting on my Rebel XT.
Now, if you have a manual camera you can manipulate how dark setting photos are taken. The picture below was taken on the P setting ( on a Canon camera, P is just like the full auto setting, but will not pop the flash up). This picture was about a 3 second exposure with no flash. There are HUGE downsides to doing this, but if you can over come them you can come up with some really cool pictures. First of all, most people cannot hold a camera if the shutter is slower that 1/15 of a second without blurring the image. You have to set the camera down or use a tripod for longer exposures. Also, your subjects have to stay very very still, or they will blurr also. But look at the difference in the photo! What were just a few dots in the background on the first photo prove to be cars, windows and an entire background that was totally invisible in the flash photo. You can see the sky and the entire frame is viewable. It takes the picture from a very shallow and dull picture to something full of depth and color.
This final picture is a long exposure (4 seconds) with a flash (in this case it’s a 2nd Curtin Flash, but 1st would look very similar). Note how the foreground is brighter and more clear, but you also have the field of view.
More about long exposure
This week has not started off to be the best of weeks!!! I’ve been working 14-16 hours per day to make up for a huge work flow increase, and my number one co-worker being out of town for her wedding. Last night I missed the new 24 episode (both of them!). Tonight’s Lost episode is a re-run, AND I’m almost out of Grey Goose.
To top it all off, I’m pretty sure that I’m getting laid off tomorrow. I’ll find out around noon, but it looks like Kinkos will be shutting down the division that I am a part of (ImageX). I’ll post an update in the comments of this blog post as soon as I have more info.
I did get a chance to take a few pics tonight though. Instead of sitting in traffic, I went on top of the parking garage at work and took a few photos. I was hoping for a good sunset, but the clouds came and killed any chance of that.
there are another 10 or so pics in my gallery. long exposure gallery
