A Battle Scarred Camera

The verdict is in for my camera. It will not be getting fixed. Of course the one or two of you reading have noticed that I haven't been posting around here. When I get my camera back the posts should pick up a little bit. Oh yeah, my camera won't be getting fixed, but I will get it back. I just won't be able to use it for night work. So that's the news. See you future posts.

Kid Picks

This guy takes photographing kids to a whole new level. Before any one asks, of course there is some photoshop work going on here, but man, who cares? These are great!

Tripods

I had a nice post about tripods planned for quite a while, even hinted about it in other articles. But I ran into the slight problem that at some point, explaining everything really just turns into condescension and insulting a reader's intelligence. So here I present the shorter, sweeter version of what I had planned.

Whenever a person starts trying to learn more about photography and tries to stretch their limits, they will eventually run into the need to take pictures in low light conditions. If a person's skills are going to progress they simply must be able to take pictures in the early morning, late in the evening, or even during the night. Despite the leaps and bounds made in low light photography in recent years, the fact of the matter is that these conditions still absolutely require a tripod. There's just no way around it.

Now I understand where most people are coming from when they think about buying a tripod. You're thinking to yourself "This hobby is already expensive enough, what else do I need to buy?" Well here's my take on it.

Before you buy that next camera, before you buy the next great lens you have you're eye on or anything like that, get yourself a decent tripod. I don't know any other investment that will give you the bang for your buck that a tripod can. It doesn't have to be a six or eight hundred dollar carbon fiber tripod signed by some famous photographer either. Just some thing with a detachable mount plate, and a smoothly movable head. In the world of tripods, like many others, you do get what you pay for, but most of us really can get by very well with a mid to low range tripod. Just don't go too low, you'll only end up frustrated.

If any one has any questions about this feature or that feature by all means, drop me an email using the link to the right, but other than that there's really not much to it. Get one, enjoy the photographs.

National Geographic Winners

National Geographic Traveler had a photo contest recently. They got some really great submissions. Here are the winners.

Amazing

Absolutely the most retarded picture comparison I have ever seen. Congratulations guys, you did it.

Polaroid

Polaroid stopped production of its instant film in June of 2008. Now it seems that a Dutch company, Impossible b.v., has purchased the factory and the rights to continue production.

Their plan is not to produce the same old film cartridges that go in your clunky Polaroid hidden in a closet some where. They want to gather all the experts and designers to create a new, better, more streamlined product.

I don't think this is going to replace any one's professional equipment. It was never intended to do that, nor should it be. But, aimed at the proper consumer market, they may have some modest sales ahead of them, provided the price is right. Of course by right I mean low!

Get Well Soon Steve

Some of you may or may not know, that I am a Mac user. My family got its first computer (as people think of them now, the actual first was a Commodore-64) in 1994, and from then until 2006 I was a PC user. Recently though I switched.

Many people switched because of Vista, some switched because of Mac OSX, others for the superior industrial design. Those were all part of the reason I switched of course, but I had some thing else in mind as well. Over the past couple years I have really come to admire the corporate culture at Apple, and I wanted to share with you a quote that I remembered and looked up today. You can find it at Fortune Magazines Web Site.

Asked what drives employees at Apple Steve Jobs said this:

"We don't get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life. Life is brief, and then you die, you know? So this is what we've chosen to do with our life. We could be sitting in a monastery somewhere in Japan. We could be out sailing. Some of the [executive team] could be playing golf. They could be running other companies. And we've all chosen to do this with our lives. So it better be damn good. It better be worth it. And we think it is."

Steve announced a couple days ago that he would be taking a leave of absence from his work for medical issues.

Get well soon Steve, we can't wait to have you back.