Capture One 5 Workshop

Since taking the Advanced Digital Workflow Class at Cypress College, I have been introduced to many new and fun programs. One of them being Capture One 4. It is a great raw processing engine for photos and with the pro version shooting tethered to a computer is a breeze. While surfing the net and Calumet’s website, I just happened to notice that they were have workshops on the new Capture One 5 software. The closest one to me is the Calumet Los Angles workshop on Feb. 1, 2010. After seeing the deal that everyone who takes the course gets a free copy of Capture One 5, I was hooked. The normal cost of the program is $129.99. Registration for the workshop is $49.99, so you get the software and two and a half hours of training on the software. If anyone from the Digital Workflow Class is going to be going let me now. Right now Grace and myself have signed up for the Capture One 5 Workshop.

Flickr War

Well, another month down in Grace and my Flickr war. Only three more to go.

Grace's Flickr

My Flickr

Racket Ball Challenge

Clifford Lester has been playing racket ball for a while now. He has gotten really good at the sport. So when Luis Munoz challenged him to a match, it sounded like it was going to be a good competition. Luis had been playing up the challenge all day trying to psych Cliff out. He new that Cliff played a lot, but Cliff didn’t know that Luis had never played before. It wound up being less of a match and more of a practice for Cliff. At the end you could see who won by who was sweating less. During an intermission for Luis, Grace went in and gave it a try. Wearing completely the wrong cloths and having no shoes did not help her game either.

Most of the time while Luis was playing Grace was shooting video with the Canon 5D Mark II. She is trying to get a feel for it so she will be able to show students how to work it. I on the other hand decided to shoot with the Nikon D700. After a few minutes of getting use to Nikon’s ergonomics, it was a good and responsive camera. The autofocus was very quick and the aperture priority seemed to give pretty good exposures. It was fun to use something other than my regular old Canon 5D. If I hadn’t already invested so much money into Canon I might have gone over to Nikon. But at the time I went with Canon they were to only ones with a full frame digital sensor. Now that times are changing it seems that both camera systems are equally as good now. It is now at the point were Canon and Nikon are just playing leap frog with each other. Canon had full frame sensors then Nikon made one. Nikon had amazingly high ISO’s and now Canon does also. My best advice in getting a camera is to get whatever feels good to you.

Flickr War - October

Well another month down in Grace and my Flickr war. Now there is only 5 more months to go before our year long battle is over. Since we started I have been in the lead and she keeps talking about when she is going to pass me up. Hopefully she will start that soon. It isn't really fealing like a challange anymore. Come on Grace you can start anytime now.

Grace's Flickr

My Flickr

Camera Obscura

This semester I am taking a Photo History class at Cypress College with Jonathan Fletcher. One of our first home work assignment was to make a camera obscura and then photograph the results. My place had a horrible view of walls and more walls were I live, so I asked Krista if I could use her place. Setting up the camera obscura in her room was fairly easy. We just had to take down one set of curtains and cover two window with black plastic. It was great fun up until it started to heat up the room. During my first test shot I turned off the light at the wall even though Krista told me if I turned it off at the ceiling fan I could still have some air circulation. That was a long five minutes baking in that heat. After checking my test and I looked good I decided to reposition the camera and take a couple more shots. This time I was smart enough to leave the fan on, but it was still way to hot. Grace also joined me for the last couple of shots. During one of them, she tried to take a picture of me taking a picture of the camera obscura. I don’t think it worked out the way she was hoping.

A Video on Social Media

I ran across a video today on Geekbrief, a shinny, happy tech news blog, that made me think of Grace. She is always going on and on about how people need to use social media outlets like: Twitter, Facebook, Google wave. It is a useful an powerful tool to market one’s self these days. While I don’t really take full advantage of these tools yet, I do agree with Grace. So getting back to the video I saw, it was a presentation by Giovanni Gallucci, a social media expert during WordCamp Dallas 2009, on how to promote yourself effectively. There are some good tip on using the systems that are in place without getting yourself band. Hopefully some of you will find this useful and informative, namely Grace.

End of the month Flickr War

Well it is another month down in Grace and my Flickr war. She is actually starting to get a little closer now that she has been posting her images to groups. I will still win this war though. As for having my Flickr account I have actually seen one of my images wind up being selected as a finalist to go into a brochure. The company Schmap selected one of my images that I took of downtown San Diego. I would not be getting paid for the usage, just photo credit, but if anyone cares to look at the photo credit I might get a few more hit on my Flickr.

The Flickr War

Well it has been a couple of months into Grace and my Flickr war. Since I got her a Flickr, we have been in a little completion to see how could get more view by the time of her next birthday. So far things have been going in my favor, but Grace is starting to make a comeback by posting to Flickr groups like I have been doing for a while. Here is my monthly tally and Grace should be posting hers to her blog later tonight. If you haven’t taken a look at our accounts now would be a good time.

John’s Flickr

Grace’s Flickr