Love from Texas!

Givin' Up

2010-03-06T14:13:00.001-06:00

On that green. (Yeah, this one.)

These are the last pictures I will take of that scarf, at least when trying to get the color correct:

I think the first one is better. I think. But neither of them are correct, and the real color is kind of between the two. I feel a little bit better, though, 'cause the color on the website (scroll down to Aztec Turquoise) isn't right either.

So I wash my hands of this green!

But not without some fun tags on Flickr. My personal favorite is "stop overloading my green sensor you evil color".

A Step in the Right Direction

2010-01-09T15:15:00.000-06:00

The color on that turquoise yarn is still vexing me. But I think I've figured out the first step in fixing it, which is correcting the saturation. I was reading about photographing intense reds (related to red yarn, of course, because that's apparently all I take pictures of anymore...) and they mentioned that since the camera has red, green, and blue color channels, if you overwhelm one of them, you can get less-than-ideal results. I think that's part of what's happening with this turquoise.

Here's an SOOC shot of the scarf-in-progress:

Ack! Color overload!

Here's a desaturated version of the same image:

Much better. The color tone is a lot truer, although it's still not completely accurate, and the brightness of the yarn is gone. I think my next try will be to take pictures of the scarf with a lot of other colors in the frame, to hopefully even things out. Cross your fingers!

Composition

2009-12-23T15:30:00.002-06:00

I'm not very good at composition, so I often read lists of tips and tricks to try to improve. Most of 'em (like this one, for example) recommend having a non-distracting background, so I try to clear out background objects when possible, especially when taking yarn pictures. But sometimes I think I like 'em better with the background distractions. Case in point:

That's the non-distracting one. Here's the shot I took first, before clearing out the background:

I don't know...I think I like it better with the hose in the background. I think it has kind of a "leading lines" effect. What do you think?

Lens Love

2009-12-11T17:53:00.002-06:00

Last weekend, when mom and I went down to see PW, we also stopped by Houston Camera Exchange. I was hoping they'd have a C-Lux 3 in store for her to play around with, but they didn't. She ended up getting a Nikon Coolpix, her very first digital camera! While she was looking at those, I asked the Nikon rep if I could play with some of the lenses that were out on display. She put the 50mm f/1.4 AF-S lens on my D40 and I just about died. I was wearing a scarf/shawl I'd just finished, so I put it on the counter to play around:

Look at that depth of field! Wowza! Do want, very badly.

Also, just for kicks, I did the auto-lighten in Picasa on that pic:

I think it blows out the colors a bit, but shows off the texture more nicely. What do you think?

PW in Houston!

2009-12-05T22:18:00.002-06:00

Last year I got to meet Stephanie Pearl-McPhee (The Yarn Harlot). Today I got to meet Ree Drummond (The Pioneer Woman). I can now die and go to Bloggy Heaven! Those are the first two blogs I ever read, back before blogs were something everyone had, back before I'd discovered Google Reader, and so I actually checked each site every day. (Crazy, I know!)

Ree's talk was at Georgia's Market in Houston, a cute place that focuses on locally-sourced food from small farms in addition to carrying more standard organic fare. Ree did a little talk/Q&A and then started signing books. She's so sweet and funny, and very gracious, chatting for a bit with everyone who was in line. I can't even imagine how long it took to get through the line...there were a lot of us! Luckily, mom had pre-ordered our cookbooks from Blue Willow (the bookstore that sponsored the event) early enough that we were in the first signing group, so we didn't have to wait very long at all.

Pictures! (There were lots of Nikon DSLRs in the audience...coincidence? I think not, haha.)

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

A Conundrum

2009-11-16T17:31:00.003-06:00

I'm back! (Three months after I said I might be blogging more...nice...) And I have a conundrum, a quandry, a puzzle. I got some yarn in the mail this afternoon. It's cloudy and dark outside (I miss Daylight Savings!) so I thought, it's okay, I can take pictures inside. They won't be great, but they'll be okay. The problem is, two cameras and few different WB settings later, I can't for the life of me get the colors to work.

Look at all these pictures of this lovely yarn:

The problem is, the yarn is not that color. It is sitting on a white background, which appears to be fairly white (on my computer and camera monitors), but the yarn is much greener than it appears to be in the pics. The closest I can get to the true color of the yarn is this:

(I know, it burns my eyes, too!)

That is obviously awful, and still not that close to the color of the yarn.

What gives? Does anyone have any ideas? I know it'll be best to wait for a sunny morning, but I've gotten decent results inside before. Why not this time?

Regardless of the pictures, the yarn really is a gorgeous color. I won it in a contest over at Threadpanda's blog, and I love it. I can't wait to start a Parallel Lines Scarf with it. If nothing else, I'll get good color pictures then! =)

Home Sweet Home

2009-08-10T15:24:00.003-05:00

After three months of almost non-stop travel, for both business and pleasure, it's good to be home for awhile. My office may not be fancy, but it works for me, and it's good to be back!

ETA: Interesting...I blogged this from my iPhone, and it kept one of the paragraphs of the email, but not the other. Maybe if I can get mobile blogging figured out well, I can post more often!

Exposed.

2009-06-28T11:48:00.004-05:00

Before I get to spot metering (don't worry, Melissa, I haven't forgotten!), a little bit on exposure. Not for any particular reason, even though spot metering has to do with exposure, this isn't necessary info, it's just that I haven't taken any spot metering pics yet, and have taken these. ;)

The other day, I was photographing a bunch of finished knitting projects for my knitblog and to update my Ravelry projects page. Normally, I keep my D40 set on +0 EV, which means that it doesn't over- or under-expose the images. It just does its best to properly expose them. Usually, this works really well. However, that day it was being cranky. Here's the +0 EV picture, taken in A mode, so I picked the aperture, and the camera picked a shutter speed to match:

Um...not fabulous. It looks a little dark, even though it's supposed to be properly exposed. The exposure histogram (from Picasa) confirms this:

Since the peaks of each curve are near the middle of the histogram, it's pretty well exposed, although there is a little bit of underexposure in the red channel, as evidenced by the small red peak on the left side. (Do I sound like I know what I'm talking about? Because I don't. But this is what I've read...so yeah, one day I'll actually understand these histograms. Just not today.)

Here we see the beauty of digital cameras - I could see immediately on the view screen that the picture looked dark (cranky camera!), so I bumped the exposure to +1/3 EV, which means that the camera automatically overexposes the picture by 1/3 of a step. (I don't know what this translates to technically...and the internet doesn't seem to be much help...so if you do know, please share in the comments!) Here's the slightly overexposed image:

Much better! Now, just for kicks, let's bump it up another 1/3 of a step and see what we get:

Yep, at +2/3 EV, it's definitely more overexposed-looking, as anticipated.

I ended up using the +1/3 EV image for the project page, because it looked the best to me.

Changing this setting, called exposure bias or exposure compensation, can be useful in other situations, too. Here's a good article from Digital Photography School: Using Exposure Bias to Improve Picture Detail. I've used it before in similar situations, when the camera was, e.g., exposing for the bright part of an image, but I really wanted to see details on the dark part. I'd set the camera to overexpose, so the dark part would be more visible.

Uh...so, actually, I was wrong, way up there in the beginning...this does tie in to spot metering. Now that I know how to spot meter, I would probably spot meter in a situation like that. Hmm...the question then becomes, when should you spot meter, and when should you use exposure bias...I think it would depend on the subject and composition of your photo...I'll have to investigate further!

In the meantime, while I think and research, go play with the exposure bias on your camera! Even most point-and-shoots have an option for this, in my experience. That's when it can really come in handy, because on an SLR, you can always just go to full manual mode and expose how you want by controlling the aperture and shutter speed. You rarely can do that on a compact camera, but you can change the exposure bias - giving you more control over the picture, which is a good thing. If you try this, let me know how it works out for you! And if you have any questions, ask away. =)

Some pictures!

2009-06-14T16:24:00.003-05:00

So...I have literally taken multiple thousands of pictures in the past few weeks...at some point, I'll get them edited and posted...maybe...but in the meantime, here are some of the first. Mostly because they didn't need editing, and are ok SOOC. ;)

From a visit to Kansas, gorgeous flowers from the Saturday morning farmer's market:

(Purple and gold, natch!)

And a supercute Honey Bee (or something like that) latte:

I learned a new trick - spot metering! But the only good demonstrative pics I have are of my bro, and he's not too keen on being on the blog, so one of these days, I'll take some different ones and show it off. It's really pretty easy, and you probably already know how to do it, but I was very excited. To be continued... =)

Hi Mom!

2009-04-19T23:12:00.002-05:00

My Mom told me the other day that she was tired of looking at my dirty dishes on this blog. ;) So here's a quick new post!

My "little" brother with his birthday cake. As I say on the Flickr page, "There's a good story behind it...hopefully one day I'll tell it, illustrated, on the blog."

About two more weeks of classes to go...

It's 3am...

2009-03-13T03:11:00.002-05:00

...I must have a midterm tomorrow! (Well, later today...)

For Melissa, who requested more of these.

I love Italian coffee. I don't love midterms.

And no those are not dirty dishes in the background. And they are definitely not leftover from breakfast. No way.

Back to studying!

Drive-By Blogging

2009-03-10T22:48:00.001-05:00

I have no business blogging this week. But I'm really good at avoidance and denial, and I promised Melissa (who is suddenly blogless? what???), so here goes:

I got a new toy today!

After longing for one since Nin posted about it, then getting to play with my uncle's, I finally gave in and dropped a chunk of my savings from summers at camp on a D-Lux 4. Love. The very first picture:

I could be ~~lamer~~ cooler, but it would be hard. I got up early, booked it to UPS, and drove straight to the office, where I charged the battery then took a pic as soon as I could!

More fun shots from today:

Waiting for seminar to start. (Hi Zach!)

My prof, making faces at my friend who was taking the pictures.

Shan and I went for a little walk around campus (sometimes you just need to get out of the building!) and I made her model for me.

This picture sums up one of the biggest reasons I bought the camera: in a dimly-lit restaurant (yeah Knit Night!), after the sun had set, I got a great picture without using the flash. Love.

Now, back to work! =)

Happy Mardi Gras!

2009-02-27T13:40:00.003-06:00

Spanish Town 2009 was a giant success. We caught tons of beads, cups, coins, and, in Jen's case, bunny ears!

The pics are up in a Flickr set, so go check 'em out. I will warn you, though, that the theme was "Bayeaux Bailout" and so some of the floats were a bit, uh, racy...a relatively clean example:

So, if that doesn't offend you, check out the pics! If it does, well, then you're better off not clicking over to the set. It's actually a family-friendly parade (none of the "traditional" bead acquisition techniques, that's part of why I love it so much) but this year the floats were somewhat scandalous. ;)

Many, many thanks to the lovely Carly for hosting us all at her house! Isn't she fab?

It's 3am I must be lonely...

2009-02-20T03:28:00.002-06:00

What was an annoying little cough this afternoon and evening has reared its ugly head as Tuberculosis Junior (TJ) tonight. TJ is simultaneously keeping me from sleeping and from calculating the potentials of confocal spheroids. (Homework. Due tomorrow. Nowhere near finished. Hurts brain. Requires focus. Can't focus and cough at the same time.) So instead I'm sitting here drinking tea, trying not to cough up anything really gross, and catching up on some blogs. They've been woefully ignored lately. I blame the Ravelry Twilight groups. I used to attack my Google Reader at mealtimes, now I chat with the ladies over there. They are more fun. Oh well, whatev. Anyways. Blogs. I thought I'd share some recent favorites with you.

Of Course, I Didn't Have a Camera. by the amazing Dez at Mambocat's Knitting Asylum. I go to that market every week I'm in town. It's amazing. She describes it well, and shares her refreshing outlook. She also makes beautiful yarn. I spend a lot of money at her booth, and in her newly-opened store.

I Want Gum! by Kim at Mommy Knows. I cried I was laughing so hard at this. NSFW. (Not safe for work.) I'm so grateful that digital cameras and blogs didn't exist when I was growing up.

I'm loving the new-ish blog academichic. Basically, it's a blog by three Ph.D. students about what to wear as a female Ph.D. student. They even have Fashion 101 modules/challenges and calls for papers!

Eye-tracking studies: more than meets the eye from the Official Google Blog. I think this is fascinating. I wish I could track what I look at like they do in the video example.

And that's it for now. Still with the coughing, though the Vicks is starting to help a little bit. But TJ has made my tummy hurt, too. (Whine whine whine.) So I'm going to curl up in bed and pretend to sleep so I can get up early and tackle the homework...ciao ciao.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

2009-02-18T13:04:00.005-06:00

That's right, it's Mardi Gras! We've been parading in BR for a few weeks now, though I haven't been to any of them yet - I'm saving my time & energy for the big ones this weekend! But look what I discovered on campus Monday morning on the way to my office:

Beads in trees! There are a few trees like this right near the Design building, and the beads have been cut and hung nicely, so I like to think it's some type of installation art. Whatever it is, it makes me happy and even more excited for this weekend! =)

A Quick Story

2009-02-01T09:08:00.004-06:00

So, most of y'all, my dear readers, are bloggers, and most are also avid picture takers. You know how much room pictures take up, and how important it is to backup, and thus how wonderful external hard drives are. Well, I was near a Circuit City yesterday and thought, "Ooh, they are going out of business, I wonder if they have good deals on HDs..." I walked in and couldn't find them right away, so I found the one person actually working there and the following conversation ensued:

Me: Where are your external hard drives?
Employee: Oh, they are over here. *points, as I start to walk that way* Do you know what you are looking for? There are...*starts to explain*
Me: No, I'm just looking to see if there are any good deals.
Employee: *walks over to HDs* Well, there are two basic kinds...
Me: *cuts him off, smiling* Yeah, I know.
Employee: See, there are smaller, more portable ones...
Me: *cuts him off again* Or the bigger ones you can plug in. I know. I have three at home.
Employee: *realizes I might not actually be a dumb girl* Oh, ok.
Me: Thank you. =)

It sounds a lot ruder in writing, haha, it really wasn't, I promise! He just kept trying to explain hard drives to me, and I kept trying to politely insinuate that I had a clue, and he just didn't quite get it. "I just want to look for cheap storage, sir, because I'm a technology addict!" It was kind of surprising that he was so helpful, because he really was the only employee in the store (that I could see) and so I'm sure he spends all day answering questions...so props to the nameless Circuit City employees who are helpful even though they know they'll be out of a job soon. Just please don't bother me too much when I'm trying to bargain shop. ;) Oh, and on that note, drives were only 20% off, making them still more expensive than just waiting for a sale at Staples, which happens about every other week. So I didn't buy any, but maybe I'll check back in a few weeks to see if the prices go down any more. I was with a friend who's a new grad student, and I think she was surprised when I said I didn't want to buy one that was less than 500 gigs. Um, yeah, I already have 750 gigs at home, and about 500 gigs of that full. So, yeah...

And so this is not a picture-free post, I present me testing the range on my new toy, a remote for my camera:

We were doing a knitting photoshoot on campus (yep we got some strange looks) and wanted to take a group picture at the end. There were very few places to set the camera - this is the first one we tried (it was on a trash can about 30 feet away, haha), and it worked pretty well. The next one was awesome, and a tribute to the Gorillapod...hopefully A will send me the pictures of that soon and then I'll share. =)

Randomness

2009-01-22T22:11:00.002-06:00

You've probably seen it already on other blogs, but if not, go check out Wordle.net. You input some text, a blog/RSS feed, or your del.icio.us address, and it spits out a cool word map, for which you can change the font, color, orienation of the words, etc. The more frequently the word appears in the text, the larger it is on the map. Some examples!

This blog:

My del.icio.us tags:

And that, my friends, sums up a large reason why I haven't been blogging much lately. Astronomy. Research. Software. Technology. It's an exciting life I live!

In other news, my Granddad turned 91 (!!!) last weekend. Besides getting to see him and the rest of my Mom's side of the family, the most exciting part was playing with my Uncle T's new camera:

Oh that's right, it's a Leica D-Lux 4. And yes, it's even cooler than it sounds. Shout-out to Nin who posted about it when it was announced, so I knew exactly how amazing (and expensive, ouch) it was and could take advantage of a lot of the fun features. =)

Let it Sneaux!

2008-12-11T15:27:00.002-06:00

(Get it? Like Geaux? As in Geaux Tigers? Tehe!)

Dear Finals,

You are boring. The weather is not!

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Sincerely,
ashpags

It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like...

2008-12-09T09:28:00.004-06:00

...Finals! I have three take-home finals this semester, and while I prefer take-homes because they are less stressful, they take a lot of time! Basically, I get up each morning, work at home, eat lunch, go work at the office, come home and eat dinner, and then work until I'm too tired to work anymore. I stumble to bed, wake up, and start all over. Occasionally I start with something like this:

Want a better look?

Oh yeah. "They propose using the 4r vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv..." Nope, it doesn't make any sense to me either. No more falling asleep at the keyboard! (Also, please don't make fun of my writing! I'm a scientist, not a novelist. And it's a first draft!)

And on that note, I should get back to it. I just thought y'all would enjoy. =) Good luck to everyone with finals and holiday shopping! =)

Just popping in...

2008-10-17T21:02:00.001-05:00

...to say hi! Hi blog! You may have guessed I've been a bit busy lately, and that would be a correct guess! But I have done a few things:

Went to College Station for my brother's Aggie Ring Day. Congratulations brother!!!

Went to see my cousin play soccer in Lafayette. Apparently, Louisiana Hot Sauce was a tournament sponsor!

After the tournament, my aunt and I went to the Festivals Acadiens et Creole, where they had many delicious food booths, including this one. Jambalaya, Poboys, Frog Legs, and Pork Rinds. So awesomely Louisiana.

And at least one booth with beignets, aka the most delicious food evah!

Good times, friends, good times! And now, back to work! Ciao ciao! Hope y'all have a wonderful weekend. =)

If you're not tired of it yet...

2008-09-12T16:30:00.004-05:00

...here are some more pics from around town!

A mess of tangled wires and trees:

Utilities workers from all over the country have been brought in to help with power restoration efforts:

It's fun to play the license plate game! These are from Indiana and Mississippi.

There are also debris removal trucks from all over:

The boxes on the back are bigger than standard 18-wheeler boxes. (There is a better word than "boxes" but I can't think of it right now.)

There are a lot of uprooted trees like this:

It's incredible to see in person.

Here's an idea of the scale of that tree - see my lens cap sitting on the side?

(If not, click the pic to go to Flickr where there's a note pointing to the lens cap.)

Funny Sign #1

Funny Sign #2

The current state of my awning:

It's blowing all around, scratching up my door, and occasionally hitting my doorbell. It's quite funny, actually.

And lastly, yesterday there was a beautiful rainbow that crossed right near the moon:

I took the shot from my car so it's crummy, but trust me that it was really beautiful!

Good luck Texas! Stay strong!

I DON'T like Ike.

2008-09-12T08:03:00.003-05:00

(Image from Weather Underground)

Get ready, Tejas. Based on the outermost bands that we started getting last night, this storm sucks. A lot. Good luck to everyone in the path - stay calm but alert, don't be stupid, evac if you're told to, and be excellent to your neighbors when the power goes out.

(We're certainly taking a harder hit because we are still in a damaged state, but we've got street flooding and have lost a lot of the power that the energy companies had worked so hard to restore. And remember my awning, that Gustav blew over on itself? Now it's dangling by a screw and a half, right in front of my door, banging my door every time the wind blows. I'd get it down myself but I don't have a ladder, so hopefully my complex will come get it today!)

Good luck! Sending good thoughts and prayers for calm winds and not much rain!!!

Gustav. Gross.

2008-09-08T22:04:00.002-05:00

I've put up some more Gustav pics in my Flickr set - mostly just photos of the destruction around town, taken while I was driving (so forgive the less-than-stellar composition and exposure, por favor). Here are a few highlights:

Power lines. Power lines power lines power lines. Down. Everywhere.

There are parts of the parish (what we call a county in LA, don't ask) that will be without power for three weeks. Three weeks.

So many people have trees on/in their houses. Suck.

But, there is some good news!

Blue tarps!!!!! The blue tarps have arrived, my friends, and they are popping up all over town!

Now, we're just hoping and praying and crossing fingers, legs, and toes that Ike doesn't hit us too badly!

Choice Quotes

2008-09-03T23:47:00.004-05:00

I did a bit of radio listening during the storm, as it was the only way to keep up with what was happening while the power was out. Here are some of the best quotes I heard:

"X number of customers are without power. You can check entergy.com for more information and maps of where the outtages are."

[That's really easy to do when you don't have power. Really.]

"Temperatures today? It hardly matters. Rain and wind, on the other hand, ..."

[During a mid-storm weather report.]

Guy #1: "FEMA is now telling us that they don't have the blue tarps. They don't know where they are, but they will try to find out. Does that sound familiar?"

Guy #2: "Hey now, no editorializing..."

[They still don't have blue tarps. Apparently there is a massive blue tarp shortage. Same as there was three years ago. Also, blue is apparently the only acceptable tarp color. I guess the other colors don't keep out rain.]

[On people being stuck at home, it being a holiday, and most people not having work the next day]

"There tends to be a little drinking going on. You've got a lot of people with a lot of booze."

[Really? In Louisiana? No way!]

It is never boring living in this state! =)

Gustav

2008-09-02T18:09:00.004-05:00

Whew, that was a doozie. Gustav brought some serious destruction to Baton Rouge and many of the surrounding parishes. According to the radio, we got winds gusting to 92 mph (148 km/h), which is the highest it's ever been recorded in BR. Thankfully, there was no major loss of life (at least, as of yet) because of the many precautions that were taken (2 million people evacuated), and the fact that there were only minor levee breaches. There is a lot of flooding, a lot of downed trees and power lines. Most of my friends still don't have power. I think I am lucky, because I live near a substation, so mine was restored after only ~27 hours. It will take a long time to recover from this, but we will, thanks to many hard-working folks. There are three more tropical disturbancess in the Atlantic right now, "queued up" as they said on the radio, one of which is already doing damage in Haiti. Here's hoping they don't make their way here!

In the meantime, here are some pics:

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

ETA: You can click over to Flickr to read captions on the photos!

Ready...

2008-09-01T08:06:00.002-05:00

Gustav is hitting us, just rain and wind so far. 100,000 people in the state are already without power; mine'll probably go soon, so I won't be around much. I've eaten as many perishables as I possibly can, have pulled things out of the fridge so I won't have to open it, and filled up plenty of water:

Or as my Mom likes to say, Service for 20 in Nalgene. (Hi Mom!)

Y'all take care. Catch you on the flipside! =)

The WB.

2008-08-28T19:34:00.004-05:00

No, not the network. ;) WB = White Balance. I've talked about it before, and I play around with it a lot. I don't know why, but I find it really interesting. Here's a series of pics I took the other day for my knitblog. I took them in what I now know is called open shade (thanks Miz Boo!) in the morning, when it was good and bright outside. I used three different WB settings: Shade, Sun, and Auto. In that order, here they are:

Shade

Sun

Auto

The Shade is awful. Sun and Auto are much better, and pretty similar. Sun is actually probably closer to real life, on my monitor at least, but I prefer the slightly cooler colors of Auto. (This is probably because I have an affinity for cooler colors in general.) I ended up using a different pic, but still with the Auto WB setting. I've noticed before that Shade (and Cloud) generally give worse results than Auto, and even Sun. I kind of wrote that off to the fact that, on the scale of DSLRs, my camera (the D40) is the cheapest. But now I read Miz Boo's excellent post over at Ree's, and she says:

Personally, on my camera I do not care for the shade and cloudy options. I think their effects are too strong on my D80. So I almost always shoot on “A” for Automatic white balance. (Except when I’m inside, and then the incandescent and florescent options work wonders.)

Exactly! I would write the exact same thing! And she has a way fancier camera. I wonder if the same holds true for the super-duper fancy cameras like Ree's D200, or even the D300. Is it a Nikon thing? Canon users, what's your experience?

Sidenote: When I was at the airshow, I saw a woman using a D300 to take nothing but snapshots of her kids. My assumption is that she's a professional photographer, so she's got the nice equipment, and is most comfortable with it, so prefers it for snapshots, too. Because I cannot fathom spending $2000 on a camera for snapshots! That would be nice!

And on that note, I'm out. Work to do, dinner to eat, etc. (Hurricane already prepared for - check!) Ciao! =)

Two Things

2008-08-26T00:05:00.003-05:00

One: The other night, I had a dream that a crazy stalker had trapped me and my kids (?!?) inside my house. (It was a really nice house, with tons of natural light. I hope to actually live there IRL someday!) Anyways, what makes it blog-worthy is that all the while I could see him through the windows (which were everywhere) and I had my camera, and I kept trying and trying to take pictures (you know, so after he killed us, the CSIs would come in, find the SD card, and be able to track down the killer, duh) and though my camera would focus, it wouldn't take a single picture. The little focus box would light up red, it would beep (even though I turned that setting off the day I got it, so annoying!), and I would continue pushing the button and nothing. I'm not sure if I was more freaked about the crazy stalker, or the fact that my camera wouldn't work. Please don't judge, lol.

Two: Today marks the end of the Daily Photo, though I'd like to continue taking random pictures of things that happen to me. In fact, I actually took a picture outside the grocery store today, but it's on my phone and I don't know how to get it on my computer. But with school and research/work, I don't have much spare time, and certainly not during the day when there is good light. The whole "having passed the qualifier" thing is supposed to equal more free time, so hopefully I can do some more "real" blogging. I actually have pics taken for another post on white balance (why am I so fascinated by that topic?), but I need to write up the post. Maybe soon! Here's the last daily photo, from yesterday, intended for the knitblog, but I'll share it here, too:

My Ravelympics socks, finished with 11 hours to spare. I waited 'til morning to take pictures, so I could have some sun, and then we up and got hit by Tropical Storm Fay, which dumped scads of rain on us. So I figured what the heck, the rain could be in the pic, too. =)

And on that note, it's bedtime. 'Night y'all! =)

Football season!

2008-08-21T23:55:00.004-05:00

I love college football! And this is a great town for it. Almost everywhere you go, there are count-downs, as we wait to see if the Tigers can pull off another season like the last one. This is my favorite, because it's close to campus so I see it often:

They've been counting down for most of the summer, lol, and we're finally into single-digit days! Yay!!! =)

It Figures.

2008-08-19T23:13:00.002-05:00

Went to the podiatrist for (just) a consultation today, or so I thought. Turns out, I ended up with minor surgery:

Since I did not anticipate any cutting, I did not wear appropriate shoes. Normally I wouldn't mind hobbling barefoot out to my car, except that it was raining and the parking lot was full of puddles. Hence the ubersexy plastic bag over my foot. I'll spare you the bag-less photo, 'cause there's iodine and blood all over the neighboring toes, and plaster left from the molds they cast for my new footbeds.

I could possibly be cooler, but it would be hard. ;)

Girls' Night!

2008-08-17T23:48:00.002-05:00

There aren't many ladies in our department, but there are a few of us, and we stick together. And sometimes we branch out and make friends with other scientists, and occasionally (gasp!) even humanities majors! ;) We had Girls' Night tonight at my place, and it involved some lounging in the pool, a walk around the corner for the yummiest sandwiches in town, pink beverages, the Olympics on TV (go Shawn and Nastia!), and Catchphrase. And of course we talked about boys. ;) Signs of success:

And everyone home to go to bed by midnight, because, after all, we are still nerds who have to work in the morning. ;) Buona notte!

Airshow!

2008-08-17T12:18:00.002-05:00

Yesterday was the "Air It Up" airshow at the Baton Rouge airport, celebrating the 60th anniversary of the airport. We went out for the morning and early afternoon and had a great time, checking out vintage aircraft, goofing around, taking pictures, and waiting for the big flyover. Unfortunately, the big flyover didn't happen, but we still had a ton of fun. It was hard to pick one photo to count as my Daily Photo, but I ended up going with this one:

As we walked in, they were handing out commemorative paper airplanes, and this is Shannon and Mark trying to put theirs together. Mark, being cool, put the extra paper on his head while he assembled the actual plane parts. Then he stuck out his tongue. Love it. =)

You can see the rest of the pics on Flickr, or in the slideshow:

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Enjoy! =)

Panic.

2008-08-15T23:19:00.004-05:00

The closest I have ever come to a panic attack has been when I'm shopping for a planner. I'm talking shaky hands, nearly crying in the store, frantic phone calls to my parents, etc. It's happened more than once. I'm incredibly attached to my planners because they keep me on track - if I had to keep all that info in my head, I would explode. I thought I had everything ready for this upcoming semester (classes scheduled, books ordered, binders and paper procured, etc.), when I realized that I didn't yet have a new planner. Crap. I nearly had another panic attack when I got to my local big-box office supply store and saw this:

Ugh. Nothing there even remotely close to what I wanted. I am very, very particular. So I'm thinking about making the investment and getting a Franklin Covey planner. Anyone have any experience with them? Advice? They have a store in BR, so I'll be going there in the next day or two, and hope to find something fab!

The Value of a Daily Photo Project

2008-08-15T00:28:00.002-05:00

For the past few days, this guy has been working on the inside scoreboard of Tiger Stadium:

I finally snapped a pic today, and it's a good thing I did, because this was the scene when I was walking back to my car this evening:

The crane up and disappeared! =)

Surprises!

2008-08-14T01:01:00.003-05:00

I took my little point-and-shoot camera to school today to take a daily photo, and I did actually take a few, but they're not super exciting. (I was taking pics in a sculpture garden near my building, and I think I can do a lot better with my 'real' camera...I didn't like how the lighting was coming out...) What was super exciting was going to load them on my computer and finding a few leftover Germany pics on the memory card - yay! Here are my two favorites:

I forgot to charge my iPod in the hotel before I left, so I looked high and low for an outlet in the Frankfurt airport. The only one I found was in, you guessed it, the bathroom! It took some jury-rigging to get my (really really heavy) converter and the iPod charger to stay plugged in, but it totally worked. So I hung out in the bathroom knitting while it charged. And yes, it was worth it, because the sound on my entire side of the plane didn't work (boo American Airlines), so the iPod was the only way to block out the noise!

Before deciding that yes I really was going to hang out in the bathroom for awhile, I did some knitting out in the lounge area. This is my very first heel from memory, done in a mildly stressful (not letting my luggage out of my sight) situation - woo! I'm quite proud. Probably should go on the knitting blog, but it's late, and I'm tired. ;)

So hopefully, there will be nicer sculpture pictures to come later. =)

New Office!

2008-08-12T00:16:00.003-05:00

Since I passed my qualifying exam, I got to move into a "real" grad student office, which I did last week. I finally got around to hanging some pics today:

Can you tell I'm a scientist and not an artist? It was very important that they be lined up straight and in some type of order, with colors balanced. But I like how it turned out. =)

I <3 the Farmers Market

2008-08-10T00:04:00.002-05:00

Almost every Saturday morning, I visit the Red Stick Farmers Market in Downtown BR to stock up on fruit, veggies, milk, etc. One thing they have a lot of is plants and flowers. Herbs, ornamental plants, fresh-cut blooms, annuals, perennials, etc. I've never purchased any, but I've always wanted to. Here are some that I lusted after today:

I love the colors. I just need to figure out how to get my patio in shape to grow plants like these, herbs, and flowers. One of these days! =)

Good Golly Miss Molly!

2008-08-08T19:09:00.002-05:00

Molly belongs to my friends Shannon (of the flowers) & Mark, but they had to go out of town at the last minute and couldn't take her along, so she's staying with me for a few days - yay! Unfortunately, I've got a lot of work to do, so I'm spending most of my time working on the computer, and she misses Mommy & Daddy, which means she's sitting next to me looking bummed:

Aww, poor girl! Mommy & Daddy will be back, soon!

Why not?

2008-08-06T19:07:00.004-05:00

Why not try to do a 365-type picture-a-day? I already try to keep a one-sentence journal, so adding in one picture should be fun! I make no promises of being super-reliable, but it's good to try, yeah? We had an awesome sun-storm today:

It was raining pretty hard, so I didn't leave my (covered) front steps, but I did get some shots. It reminded me of the MCP post about seeing the light, the way it was so bright. I love when it's sunny and raining at the same time. =)

PS - This is 4. You can see 3 over here! =)

Dear Edouard,

2008-08-04T23:25:00.002-05:00

Please feel free to dissipate before you hit my parents. Or veer off and hit some place where no one lives. Ok Edouard?

Thanks,
ashpags

(Could this be 2? How long can I go?)

My Exciting Life

2008-08-04T00:06:00.003-05:00

Marathon Post Office Trip:

It took me more time than I'd like to admit to assemble and mail all these packages and letters, but I think it was worth it! I sure live an exciting life, don't I? (Please don't answer that, haha.) If I were Nin, I'd have figured out a clever way to get myself into this shot to make it a 365 pic. ;)

And now, to bed. My prof's been out of town for a few weeks, which meant that I could pretty much work whenever and wherever I wanted, so long as everything got done. But he's coming back in a few days, so I've got to get back on the typical "work in my office during the day" routine (as opposed to the "work in my sweats at home" routine), which means early-ish bedtime. Night night blogosphere! =)

Sonneberg Photos

2008-07-24T10:57:00.003-05:00

After we finished up in Boston, my group flew to Germany where we spent two weeks working at the plate archive housed at the Sternwarte Sonneberg (Sonneberg Observatory), which is a wonderful observatory in the small town of Sonneberg. As usual, I took zillions of pictures and have finally gotten around to selecting and uploading some of the better ones. Instead of photo overload like the last post, I present this fancy slideshow! (Thanks to Photojojo for the link to FlickrSlidr, which automatically creates the embed-able slideshow from Flickr...so easy!) Click on any of the pics for more info, and the option to go to the Flickr page. Or, you can just go straight to the set.

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Nearly Wordless Wednesday

2008-07-16T16:48:00.003-05:00

My group spent a week in Boston working at the Harvard College Observatory, and we happened to be there the week when all the flowers were blooming. Perfect!

I like to think that these are Purple & Gold for LSU:

Many of the flowers were in here, a lovely treat I got to walk by daily:

If you know what kind of flowers these last two are, I'd love if you would share. Thanks!

Ciao!

2008-07-09T19:09:00.002-05:00

Welp, I'm back from my trip(s) and so glad to be home! (My Louisiana home, not my Texas, New Mexico, or Italy home, haha.) I have thousands (literally) of pictures, the best of which I'll edit and post, hopefully sometime soon, once I get caught up on work and get over the sore throat/cold I picked up a few days ago. Some of my favorite pics have gone up on Flickr already, so you can check 'em out if you want. But, the strangest thing just happened, so I thought I'd share. I walked through my complex to get my mail, and what did I see but this:

Huh?!? My first thought was "Well, I've never lived anywhere with a pool, so maybe this happens all the time?" And then my second thought was "Um, there are a lot of hunters in Louisiana..." Lo and behold:

Dang. I was hoping it was real!

In other news, I took a Photoshop class today (how I love LSU and their free computer classes), so I can finally do basic things like, oh, load a picture, make a layer, apply a filter, etc., that I could never figure out on my own, and am hoping to play around with some of PW's tutorials in the future (on the school computers, which have CS3 - woo!). I'm also hoping I can figure out how to download her actions to a jump drive and play with those, as well. Anyone done that? Run actions off a jump drive? I'll keep y'all updated if it works! =)

One of these days...

2008-05-30T18:42:00.003-05:00

...I'm going to learn how to properly slow down and relax. But not now! I finished the semester (all A's and I passed my Ph.D. qualifying exam!!!) and now I'm getting ready to head out on a trip with my research group. (Thanks in advance to Shannon, Mark, Mom, and Dad for babysitting my apartment while I'm gone!) I had grand plans to do a post on natural framing before I left, but that's just not going to happen. Too much to do before we leave, and long informational posts, unfortunately, do not help get my affairs in order or my clothes in my suitcase. ;) But I will leave you with one of the photos I was going to use as an example:

Gardenias are by far my favorite-smelling flower. They smell sweet and heady, especially in the still (aka hot and humid) night air of the Gulf Coast. They're not the prettiest, but oh goodness do they make up for it with their scent. And, if you catch 'em properly framed by their leaves, they're not too dreadful to look at, either.

And on that note, I'm audi. Don't know what the interwebs situation will be, but I'll definitely be taking pictures and hopefully be posting them sporadically! Ciao! =)

A Poll

2008-05-25T03:47:00.002-05:00

Which do you like best?

Sun?

Or Shadow?

The pics are of two different sides of the old Arsenal at the Louisiana State Capitol Building (the New State Capitol, if you know the difference), which I visited with my parents when they came to visit over Spring Break. (Some more pics here.) I was really struck by the texture on the walls, so I took a bunch of pics, and these two were my favorite, but I can't decide if I like the more even lighting of the Sun one, or the more detailed texture of the Shadow one. What do you think? =)

Flowers!

2008-05-21T22:16:00.003-05:00

Hi friends - I'm back! For a little bit at least...I may have to disappear again soon, but for now, I have a few days of relative freedom! Woohoo! So here are some pics that I took a while ago, to celebrate! Even when I'm super-swamped, like I have been for the past few weeks, I try to take a few pictures every week. It clears my mind and puts me in a good mood.

A few weeks ago, I went back to Texas for the weekend, and my dear friend Shannon kept an eye on my apartment while I was gone. When I got home Sunday night, I found these:

You may or may not have noticed, but I kind of have a thing for flowers. Kind of. So I was pretty psyched to come home to such bright, pretty, happy ones! A few days later, I was up early and the light was nice, so I brought the flowers out to the back patio and took some pics. I liked this one a lot:

Bright, colorful, in your face flowers. Love it! Then, in my current state of relative freedom, I figured I could have some fun with them. (Ok, ok, if you follow my Flickr, you know that I played around a little bit before the relative freedom hit, but I was desperately in need of a study break, haha. Most of the editing was done post-test, don't worry parents.) Anyways, I popped over to Picnik and went to town:

The "1960s" Effect

The "Orton-ish" Effect (To actually do an Orton photo takes a lot of steps. In Picnik, it's one click. Love.)

The "Posterize" Effect

The "Cross-Process" Effect (Real cross-processing info)

Fun, eh? =)

Only in Louisiana

2008-04-24T09:03:00.002-05:00

Last night, I was thinking about how buried I am in schoolwork, and suddenly I had a brilliant post idea. I think of it as Louisiana + LOLGradStudent:

Luckily I live in a place where I happen to have quite a few swamp photos on my computer, and the ability to walk around the corner and get more if I really want. ;)

Happy Thursday! It's almost the weekend! =)

Aperture Study

2008-04-15T08:21:00.007-05:00

I've been trying to sneak in a post for awhile, and Donna's comment encouraged me to up and write it already! (Go check her out; not only does she have her own wonderful site, but she's contributing to the new PW Photography. Sweet!) A while ago, Jessica asked about the blurry background in some of the flower pics I took on campus. She was absolutely correct that it was caused by the aperture settings on my camera. (Does anyone else always want to spell it aperature? I guess I just pronounce it ~~incorrectly~~ with a bit of a Southern flair and put that extra syllable in there.)

The aperture is basically the hole in the lens that lets light in. Normally it's closed, but it opens to a predetermined size when you take a picture. When you're using a dSLR you can control the aperture size in the Manual and Aperture-priority settings. The wider the aperture (which corresponds to a smaller f/ number), the shallower the depth of field. A shallower/smaller depth of field corresponds to a smaller in-focus area in the image. Here is a series of images I took at Avery Island to illustrate the effect a change in aperture can have:

f/25.0, the smallest aperture setting here, the largest depth of field

f/13.0

f/7.1, see how the background is getting blurry?

f/6.3

f/5.6, the largest aperture here, and thus the most shallow depth of field

In PW form, here are the first and last next to each other for comparison:

See the difference in the background, and even the leaves in the foreground?

A couple random things about aperture. As you might expect (or already know), the wider the aperture, the more light is let in. You can then use a faster shutter speed, letting you take crisper, clearer photos (although, blur can be good). Also, if you are using a zoom lens, your maximum aperture will change in relation to the focal length you're using. On my kit lens, the range of maximums is from f/5.6 when it's at 55mm to f/3.5 when it's at 18mm. The f/3.5 setting lets in more light, so it's useful in low-light situations. If you can't get the exact composition you want, you can always creatively crop. (Photo editing is your friend!)

Someday, I hope to get a macro lens and then really rock out the fun with depth of field, in photos like this:

Image by Flickr user ecstaticist, used under terms of CC License.

And with that, fun time is up. Time to get back to work! Hope y'all have a great week! =)

Hi friends!

2008-03-20T15:26:00.003-05:00

So, I'm still around, and still taking pictures, but not having a whole lot of time to edit and post and blog about them...silly school... One thing I've been having fun with lately is focus, and taking the same picture with different focus points:

vs.

I like the second better, I think. Here's another fun comparison:

vs.

These ones, I can't decide. I lean towards the first one, but in the second, I love the in-focus Tobasco logo.

Speaking of Tobasco, all of these were taken at Avery Island, LA, the home of the world-famous Tobasco Pepper Sauce! We spent a day there a few weeks ago for my friend's birthday, and had a blast. Anyone visiting this state should definitely swing by Avery Island. In addition to the Tobasco Factory, there is a 250-acre Jungle Gardens and Bird City, which is beautiful. I took tons of pictures, some of which you can see here.

I probably won't be around much for the next few months. If I don't comment much, it's not because I don't love reading your blogs (I do!), I just love doing well in my classes and not losing my fellowship more. I know you understand, haha. Hope you have a great day! =)

Happy Mardi Gras!

2008-02-05T09:16:00.000-06:00

I hit up my first Louisiana Mardi Gras parade last Saturday - the Spanish Town Parade in downtown Baton Rouge. Unfortunately, most of my pics of the floats were not very good because of where we were standing (it was great for catching beads, though!), but I did wander around afterward taking pictures. You can see the good ones here. After the parade, there were thousands of beads still on the street:

It's sort of like Mardi Gras threw up, yeah? We found lots of good strands on the ground though, and added them to our already ridiculous collection. =)

Here's to a happy & safe Fat Tuesday, a contemplative Ash Wednesday, a fulfilling Lent, and the promise of a glorious Easter! =)

Itching for a change?

2008-02-01T22:34:00.000-06:00

Does anyone else out there have Desktop Wallpaper ADD? As in, no matter how much you love the picture on your desktop, you get bored of it quickly and crave a new one? What's that? I'm the only one? Crud.

Well, check out my new one anyways:

Every year, the Division of Research and Graduate Studies at Texas A&M (whoop!!!) publishes an annual report titled Profile. This year, they took some of the images from the report and created a calendar, and then turned them into ready-for-download desktop images. Cool, eh? So if you've run through all 3,115 of those LoC images (which I haven't, but you know, it's feasible...), you can head over and get one of the Profile 2007 ones.

I picked Thin Section, which comes with this description:

A sample of hardrock attached to a glass slide, polished to a thickness of several microns and viewed with cross polarized light. Colors are determined by the minerals that are present. This is a research sample from Texas A&M's Integrated Ocean Drilling Program.

I love the colors, and the way the crystals slant. It was hard to choose though; next up I might pick the mouse neurons (so stinkin' cool), or the 3-D stereo-optic spiral (because I totally know what stereo-optic means, don't you?), or the transgenic cotton plant (again with the big words!), or, well, any of them! (Click on the main page to see the descriptions.)

Hope you enjoy, and Happy Mardi Gras!!! =)

Spontaneous Combustion

2008-01-21T23:13:00.000-06:00

So my friend* OMSH has been posting Daily Moment photos on her blog because she's ~~crazy~~ participating in Blog 365 and the Daily Moments Flickr group. Inspired by her, here's one of my Daily Moments:

I see this warning every time I do laundry, and every time I'm drawn to the same bit of text:

Is it just me, or would a spontaneously combusting washing machine be the coolest thing ever?

*Anyone else refer to their blogosphere buddies as friends? It makes me sound cool: I have friends in Canada, the UK, New Zealand, etc. ;)

LOC on Flickr!!!

2008-01-17T23:23:00.000-06:00

Looking for something to keep you busy during my extended blogging absences, which will only become longer and longer this semester? Check out the Flickr Photostream of the US Library of Congress! No, really! There are over 3000 old photos and slides from the LOC's archives, and they're incredible. I've only looked at the first few pages, but they're just stunning. Another cool thing is that, at least for the ones I've looked at so far, they have no copyright restrictions, so you can download them and use them for whatever you want. Here's my favorite of the ones I've seen:

She's checking electrical assemblies at the Vega Aircraft Corporation, in Burbank, CA, in June of 1942. In a beautiful blouse and full makeup. I love it! Hopefully one of these days I'll get to look at all of them, and hopefully you will too! =)

Props to WWdN: In Exile for the heads up. Yes I read Wil Wheaton's blog. Yes I was in love with Wesley Crusher. Wanna make something of it? ;)

New Years in New Mexico

2008-01-08T09:24:00.001-06:00

I left Houston really early so that I could drive straight through to Philmont and get there before the roads got icy. So early that, a few hours after I'd been on the road, I saw this:

In case you're wondering, it's really quite difficult to take an in-focus picture of the sunrise in your side mirror while still driving, haha. It's also difficult to stay focused on a 15-hour drive all by yourself. I listened to a lot of knitting podcasts, and took lots of pictures of the scenery. West Texas and Eastern New Mexico are pretty boring, but occasionally there are some neat things to look at, like this lonesome tree:

(If you remove the tree, that's what most of the drive looks like! I told you it was boring!)

Or all the old-fashioned windmills that run well pumps to provide water for livestock:

(See that snow on the side of the road?!? Snow!!!)

Or the way that the colors of the landscape change when the sun starts to set:

(Please forgive the dust/dead bugs on my windshield, which are also illuminated by the setting sun...)

But the best thing to see is this sign, signaling my entrance into Colfax County:

Shortly after that sign, and conveniently right as I was waiting to turn onto a different road (so I could actually stop and take some better pics), the sun dipped behind the mountains:

Gorgeous!

See the plane streak up in the top left? I thought about editing it out, but decided to leave it. I think it gives the photo character. What do you think?

I finally made it to Philmont, stayed a few days, rang in the New Year at the good ol' St. James, and took about a zillion pictures of the mountains. Don't worry, you don't have to see all of them. ;) Here's Tooth Ridge:

(I know Montana likes to claim they are Big Sky Country, but I really think New Mexico could give them a run for their money!)

Last but not least, my heart belongs to tall, steep, cold, rocky, dear, sweet Baldy Mountain:

(Hi Mountain! I miss you!)

Happy 2008 y'all! I hope it is a wonderful new year! =)

I Heart NM

2008-01-03T22:42:00.000-06:00

Another successful Philmont New Years! I'll post more pics soon, but in the meantime, you can read about last year here, if you're interested. This year's visit was a lot less stressful! =)

More Wedding Pics

2007-12-31T12:47:00.000-06:00

I've decided that a dSLR is the perfect wedding date. People think that it looks "professional" (Ha! If only they knew!) so they'll let you sneak in front of them to get good shots, and don't bother you when you're taking pictures. (A great excuse not to talk to people that you don't want to...I mean...not that I would ever do that...) Also, since the shutter delay is practically non-existent, you can get great candid shots. Some of my favorite pictures are of people who are not looking at the camera and don't yet realize they're being photographed. Like the one above of Heather, and this one of Sean and Heather watching their video slide show:

Also, a dSLR doesn't whine about the food or the lines or the long drive. ;)

Here's a pic of the happy couple on their way out the door:

And most importantly, Sean had the coolest groom's cake ever:

WHOOP! =)

Congratulations Sean & Heather!

2007-12-29T22:56:00.001-06:00

More photos to come...soon, hopefully! =)

Merry Christmas!

2007-12-25T02:09:00.000-06:00

I hope you and yours have a safe and happy holiday!

I must share a Christmas Eve story. I went to Walmart today to pick up some last minute things as a favor to my mom. I had 24 items, four too many to go in the express lane, so I headed to the regular lanes and started waiting. It took 35 minutes to get through the line. But I didn't much care, because I was so sad for the people in front of me. They were trying to get some groceries with their WIC voucher. Well, the store was out of the "correct" size cereal boxes, so they had two boxes of cereal in a smaller size. But since it wasn't "correct", they couldn't get it. The manager had to go exchange it for a different cereal in the "correct" size. Now certainly they were grateful for what they got, but sheesh, don't you think they could get what they want in a smaller size and it wouldn't be a problem? They also couldn't get the milk they wanted because it was the wrong size. Same thing with sliced cheese. You might think "Oh, why didn't they get the proper size?" As a fellow shopper, I can vouch for the fact that the store was barren. Empty shelves all over the place. Undoubtedly, they just didn't have the "correct" sizes in the items they were trying to get. I offered to buy the milk and cheese for them, but they politely declined. Maybe that wasn't the right thing for me to do, but I felt so bad that they couldn't get their food. If you're the praying type, please say a prayer for that family and their kiddos, that they may have a blessed and bountiful Christmas!

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep
"God is not dead, nor doth he sleep,
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail,
With peace on earth, good will to men!"

Peace to all, and Merry Christmas!!!

It's a...

2007-12-16T14:06:00.000-06:00

...beautiful day!

Look how blue the sky is:

Seriously. I didn't do any color correction. It really is that gorgeous today.

The flowers are even glowing:

I think the weather is celebrating the fact that finals are over. ;)

Tree Lighting!

2007-12-04T22:43:00.000-06:00

Today was the annual lighting of the LSU Christmas Tree:

Before:

Snacks:

Army of Chocolate Santas:

And the Snowmen to back them up:

Bet you've never seen Purple & Gold Christmas decorations:

Nutcracker Preview:

(Sorry she's blurry!)

Lens Envy:

Memorial Tower:

Chancellor O'Keefe, about to push the button:

After!:

Closeup:

Bokeh!:

Now back to work!

(I figured that since I finally gave in and got Flickr Pro, I'd give them a try for hosting blog photos, especially since Picasa/Blogger's been a bit wonky lately. Any thoughts?)

(ETA: I had to widen the field of the posts to fit the pictures at this size, but I don't know how to widen the background image - I'm CSS-impaired, despite my attempts to learn - so please bear with me until Christmas break when I can learn CSS and fix it! Gracias!)

Picnik

2007-11-30T17:21:00.000-06:00

I found a fun new website today! It's called Picnik, and it's an online photo editing site. You can do normal photo editing stuff (color correction, cropping, etc.), but the coolest part is that you can add stickers/shapes, thought bubbles, text, etc. Hopefully I'll have some time to play around on it a bunch over Christmas Break, but for now here's a fun one:

And another:

Hehe. Too fun!

Meme'd

2007-11-21T09:18:00.000-06:00

I got tagged for a meme by Nin the other day, and I'm really excited - my first meme! One problem, though. I have to say eight things that are weird about me. There are so many weird things about me that lately this has been my motto:

Hide the crazy, Ashley!

So I'm working hard on the meme, trying to come up with eight sufficiently weird things (hopefully with photos to match) that don't scare y'all into never reading again and blocking me from commenting. Stay tuned. ;)

My first published photo!

2007-11-07T21:35:00.000-06:00

Ok, well sort of published, but still. =) The past five summers, I've worked at Philmont Scout Ranch, in Cimarron, NM. It's one of my absolute favorite places on Earth, and the source of many of my favorite photos. There is an organization called the Philmont Staff Association comprised of current and former staff members that exists to support the Ranch and the current staff, and to keep former staff in contact. They maintain a website that has a photo masthead that changes with the season. The webmaster was looking for photos to use for this winter, so I submitted a few, and one got picked!

Here's the original:

(as always, click to embiggen!)

And the screenshot of the page:

Woohoo! I am so excited! I took the photo, along with many others, when I visited the Ranch for New Years Eve 2006/2007. A huge snowstorm had shut down the state (literally) and so my travel plans were...well...slightly different than planned. Flights canceled, roads closed, hotels overbooked, etc. Luckily, when I finally made it, I was rewarded with some awesome scenery. It pays to persevere. =)

Cool dSLR Feature #98393878

2007-11-06T22:59:00.000-06:00

Burst mode! Burst is a setting on dSLRs where you can hold down the button and the camera continually shoots photos until (a) you stop pushing the button, (b) the buffer fills, or (c) your memory card fills. I just experimented to see how many shots before I got to (b) or (c). I got bored sometime after 80 and quit, haha. (It did slow down for a bit around 45, but then picked back up...it was probably emptying the buffer...) It's tons of fun to shoot on burst; in fact, I almost never turn it off. I feel like the paparazzi...clickclickclickclickclick...

My camera can take about 2.5 pictures per second; fancier cameras shoot more quickly. My point-n-shoot even has a psuedo-burst setting: it will take 3 frames in a row, giving you a bit of help in the constant battle with shutter delay.

I love playing around with this feature at sporting events. Here are some images from tonight's LSU Men's Basketball game:

Neat, eh? Interested in more info? I have to bow out for now (big quantum test Friday...), but click here for lots of details! =)

e.t.a. - Apparently the pics weren't working...but they should be there now...

White Balance

2007-10-28T13:29:00.000-05:00

I realized the other day that I've mentioned white balance (also known as color balance) a couple of times, but never explained it. Getting a proper white balance basically means balancing out the colors so that they are true to life, instead of distorted by the lighting conditions. You know how regular indoor light bulbs often give everything a yellowish tint, and fluorescent lights tend to give a bluish tint, but your eyes/brain adjust so you know what the colors really are? When you have proper white balance in a photo, you compensate for this tint. Your whites look white and all your other colors look accurate. What got me thinking about this? I was photographing a sweater I'm working on, and the first photo came out looking like this:

Ick. (This is one reason I love digital photography - when something is wrong in your photo, you know right away.) The problem was that my camera was still set to white balance for Shade conditions, from some pictures I'd been taking previously. In the D40, there are eight different white balance settings. Six of them correspond to the type of light you're shooting in:

Incandescent (most regular indoor bulbs)
Fluorescent
Sun
Flash
Clouds
Shade

The other two are Auto and Pre. Auto is what it sounds like it should be (automatically adjusts based on what it thinks the light source is), and Pre is used when you want to get a really accurate reading. Basically, you take a preliminary picture of a colored (often grey) card (like this one, for example) and the camera uses that data to get an accurate color balance in the following pictures. (I've never actually done this...never really needed to for the photos I take...)

You can certainly just leave your camera on Auto and forget about it. The software seems to be sophisticated enough that most images will turn out okay. Here's the Auto version of the purple sweater:

It's much better than the Cloud-balanced shot, but still not quite accurate. I was taking these pictures inside near a window (generally the best indoor place to take pictures of knitting, assuming it's sunny outside), and from previous attempts I knew that setting the camera to balance for Sun would probably work best:

Yep. It captures the color of the purple very well, and the white collar looks white, not blueish or cream. Just for kicks, here's what it looks like when set on Cloud:

Close, but not quite. Both on the camera's LCD screen and on my computer, the Sun-balanced shot looks the best.

The Auto is good enough on my camera that I usually leave it on Auto for snapshots, or when I'm going to be in multiple different light conditions in a short time period. However, if I know my lighting will be consistent for awhile, like when taking knitting photos or taking pictures at an indoor sporting event, I'll set the white balance to match the lighting. It only takes a few clicks, and it's usually worth it. My old point-and-shoot has white balance settings as well, although by the time I learned what it was, I already had my dSLR, so I haven't played around with it much. Point is, if you have a digital, you can probably adjust the white balance. Try it out. Let me know how it goes. =)

To learn more about white balance, you can check out:
Ken Rockwell
Cambridge in Colour
Wikipedia

A related topic is monitor calibration. I know pretty much nothing about this, as I cannot afford a monitor calibration system. Based on the tests at that site, I think mine's okay, and I'm not too concerned since I just take pictures for fun. =)

Shutter Speed, and Bubbles!

2007-10-20T00:44:00.000-05:00

Note: I've created a photography glossary in the sidebar with links to definitions of terms I use often, like exposure, depth of field, aperture, etc. I feel silly linking to the same things over and over again, so if you see a term you're unfamiliar with that isn't linked, check out the sidebar! =)

So, a few posts ago I talked about aperture and how it affects depth of field in addition to exposure. (In my mind, the exposure effect is intuitive; the depth of field one is not.) Today, a similar discussion on shutter speed...

Again, in my mind the effect of shutter speed on exposure is intuitive: the faster the shutter speed, the less time there is for light to enter the lens, the darker the picture. A slower shutter speed would then lead to brighter, more exposed pictures. The non-intuitive effect of the shutter speed is its effect on capturing motion.

This is more intuitive than depth of field...follow along with me...warning: science and math!

A basic formula of the physics of moving things (aka kinematics) is that:

speed = distance / time

We can rewrite this as:

distance = time * speed

For the purpose of most of the things we take pictures of, the speed is relatively constant, so we don't have to worry too much about that term. What we can control is time, via shutter speed. A faster shutter speed corresponds to a shorter amount of time. This corresponds to a smaller term on the right-hand-side of the second equation, and thus, since the right- and left-hand-sides must be equal, the left-hand-side must be correspondingly smaller. But the left-hand-side is distance, and so in our shorter time span, our moving object moves a shorter distance. So we have

fast shutter speed -> shorter time -> less distance

The same reasoning works for slow shutter speeds:

slow shutter speed -> longer time -> more disance

The distance the object moves is the effect we see in photos. Fast shutter speeds "freeze" moving objects, while slow shutter speeds lead to blurrier motion. Either of these effects can be exploited to get the photo you want, using the shutter-priority or full manual modes.

I was taking some photos tonight for my knitting blog (for a post on blocking and its magical effects) and decided to play around with my shutter speed as I was taking pictures of the "fill the sink with water" step. Check this out:

Bubbles!!! (Reminds me of this guy!) The shutter speed is 1/320, with my maximum aperture of f/3.5. (For an explanation of the numbers of shutter speed, click here.) I had to turn a flash on (it's dark outside and I was too impatient to wait until daytime to take pictures...). Since I was shooting in full manual, I could adjust the flash level, a dSLR feature that I love. Normally I adjust it down, but for some reason I decided to play with adjusting it up. (This picture was shot with the flash at +1.0.) Since I had the flash on and up, I could use a pretty fast shutter speed, and still get a bright image. Want a closer look?

Here's another fun one, same camera settings as above:

I like how the motion of the water is frozen into the wave forms. (I'm taking grad quantum 1 right now...I can't get away from wave forms...)

As a counterexample, here's a photo taken with a much slower shutter speed (more time!):

See how the water is just a blurry stream? Unfortunately, I can't tell you the exposure for that one, although it was around 1/50. (In addition to playing with flash levels, I was playing with shooting in RAW. Well, it turns out that Picasa, my editing program, can't pick up the EXIF data for RAW files, so I lost the record of all the settings. I've never had any problems with JPEGs, so I will just return to that and keep my data.)

More experienced photographers than myself can do even cooler things with shutter speeds:

Slow shutter speed:

(Image used under terms of CC License. Photo by Flickr user www.ericcastro.biz)

Fast shutter speed:

(Image used under terms of CC License. Photo by Flickr user chomp_on_that)

Neat, eh? =)

Monkshood...

2007-10-16T22:34:00.000-05:00

...is another interesting flower. They line the stream beds in the French Henry area and bloom during the second half of the summer. I like the shape of the bloom, and how it's separated from the leaves; I think it lends a dramatic flair to the flower. Does the shape of the bloom remind you of something? Like a monk, wearing his hood? (Also, they're poisonous, so don't eat them, mkay?)

As for photography, do you notice how the flower is normally lit/colored, but the background is very dark? You can see the same thing in this shot, of Mountain Bluebells:

Obviously y'all are smart enough to know that the reason for the lighting differences is flash. It illuminated the flowers, but not the relatively empty background. Now, some people are very anti-flash. I don't love it, but I don't hate it either. I generally try to shoot without it, but will turn it on when necessary. I actually really like the effect in the first photo, because I think it draws attention to the flower. I don't like it as much in the second photo, but it was too dark to get a clear shot without a flash. (Obviously I just need a better lens with a wider aperture, so I don't have to use a flash if I don't want to...or a tripod...or both...)

So yeah...flowers are pretty, and flash isn't evil. =)

(Please forgive the lack of real content in this post, and the sporadic updates lately. Midterms stole all my time...)

Eye-Candy Friday

2007-10-05T17:05:00.000-05:00

This was taken one afternoon during Camp Director training this past summer. We'd had an afternoon thunderstorm, and the clouds started to clear away as the sun was just beginning to set. The effect on Tooth Ridge was awesome - it was literally glowing!

Philfolk - Don't you just love the first sentence of that Wikipedia entry? Do you think Ranger Bus Tour is an appropriate citation? =) Bonus points to whoever can name the CD in the foreground...

Random Wednesday!

2007-10-03T09:15:00.000-05:00

(Click for bigger. You can see some cool depth-of-field effects in the big one!)

This is a Sego Lily - isn't it interesting? It's one of the many flower pictures from this summer that I alluded to earlier. =) According to my Philmont Fieldguide:

Early Mormon settlers ate the bulbs of the Sego Lily when other food sources were scarce. Today the Sego Lily is the state flower of Utah. The bulbs have long been a source of food for the Navajo and Hopi Indians as well. The genus name, Calochortus, is Greek for beautiful herb.

Neat, eh?

I'd love to link you to the Fieldguide so you can purchase your very own, but it's currently not for sale, as it is being re-written (which it desperately needs!). The writers and photographer came through camp one day on a flower hunt. We'd just had a hailstorm that destroyed a lot of our flowers (including this rose!) and so I showed them the pics I had on my D40. They really liked them and asked me to submit them, for possible inclusion in the guide! Cool! Maybe they were just pretending to be interested, to humor me, but I still thought it was neat. The new guide probably won't be out for a few years, by which time I'll probably have forgotten all about it. Hopefully they'll let me know if they do decide to use anything!

Happy Wednesday! =)

Architecture Photos

2007-09-30T22:50:00.000-05:00

One thing I wish I could do is take really stunning photos of architecture. Here's one of the better ones I've taken recently:

It's an SOOC shot from my visit to LSU in May 2007 for my cousin Cat's graduation. Ironically, her degree is in Architecture, and this photo was taken inside the Design building. I liked how the light was streaming in from the skylight and making the shadows on the wall, with the ceiling reflected in the second story window, too. It's not a wonderful pic, but as I said in my last post, I don't have a great eye for composition. (Yet.) I've been trying to read up on it (here and here, among others), and pay attention to good examples (like here and here). If you have any suggestions, or other great photo-blogs to look at (in all my spare time - ha!), please let me know!

(I did manage to get some good architecture shots when I was in Italy - it's hard to take bad pictures in such an amazing place. I'll try to dig those up sometime!)

I heart computers. (Most of the time.)

2007-09-26T01:33:00.002-05:00

One day, I'll graduate to Photoshop. For now, I can rock Picasa and Paint. Yes, Paint. No laughing. =)

One morning this summer, I was up at the mine, waiting, hoping, and praying that campers would show up for a tour. I know it was morning because I was bored enough to take this picture of myself:

Sometimes I like to pretend to be serious. =) It's an ok SOOC pic, but I see (at least) five problems:

(As always, click for bigger. The numbers show up better in the big one.)

(1) Big zit on chin. We didn't have running water. Cut me some slack.
(2) Greasy hair. See (1).
(3) Fly on hat. Again, no water = no shower. And the flies were bad no matter how delightful you smelled!
(4) Distracting ore bucket and rocks in the background.
(5) My arm.

Thanks to the computer, I can knock out all of those problems! First thing's first: crop! I love cropping, because I'm still not very good at composing pictures on the spot. I do much better looking at an image on a screen, and then figuring out where I want my focal point to be. I like the rule of thirds a lot. That probably is because I like fractions a lot. Sue me. So anyways, in this pic, I cropped out (3) the fly, (4) the distracting bits, and (5) most of my arm. I also got my eyes close to one of the rule of thirds lines.

Ok, so now we're left with (1) zit and (2) greasy hair. Hair is easily taken care of by ditching the color. I think lack of color also works well since I was portraying a miner in 1922, and we like to think that "the olden days" were black & white or sepia, since those are the only pictures we see from then. (I wonder what people from back then would think of that. Obviously they lived their lives in full color. Would they think it's strange that we think of them as black & white?) Anyways, back to the photo. Here's the b&w:

It's alright, but sort of ick. I don't like b&w pics of me. I think it has something to do with my skin tone. Here's the sepia:

I sort of hate sepia because it looks washed out and faded. I have enough problems looking washed out and faded because of my pale skin. I don't need the computer to help me out on that one! So instead, I "warmify" the b&w. Warmify is a command in Picasa that I love. It helps rescue color pictures where the white balance is off, and can be layered on top of the b&w to give this:

I suspect it has an equivalent in Photoshop, because Ree does a similar thing to her pictures. So that hides (2) the greasy hair, and I like the tone. Last but not least, (1) the zit. Open that baby in Paint, magnify, and pencil over it, sampling colors from all around to get a good blend. If you look closely, you can see it's still a bit smudged there, but I'm ok with that. If you didn't know what you were looking for, you'd never see it. I also added some glow in Picasa. (I like to think of it as a combo of two of Ree's favorite Photoshop tricks: Portraiture and Slight Mug Shot Pop.) Et voila!

My new Facebook photo. =)

Eye-Candy Friday!

2007-09-21T04:45:00.000-05:00

I miss these trees. I'm 99% sure I took this pic on the way from French to Pueblano one afternoon. It's pretty much my favorite hike on the Ranch, in part because of trees like this. Other highlights of the trail include: following the mighty South Ponil Creek the whole way, the change in the landscape as you drop in altitude, the fact that it's mostly downhill, the cool mining remnants you pass, and the fact that there are always loggers at the other end! Have a great weekend y'all! =)

Wild Roses, and Depth of Field

2007-09-16T12:01:00.000-05:00

I took a ton of flower pictures this summer, because I love flowers, and because there were so many. Northeast New Mexico has been in a drought for a long time, at least as long as I can remember. This past year, however, was really wet, and some of the old-timers think this is going to keep up for at least the next few years. *crosses fingers* That would be excellent, if true. Enough water means so many good things for the region, including great flowers! We had more wildflowers this summer than I've seen in ten years of going to Philmont, and luckily I had my sweet new camera to capture them.

Over the course of this blog, you'll probably see most of the good ones (or you can go check them out on Flickr...see the sidebar badge), but for now, here are two pictures of the same flower, a wild rose, and a mini-photography lesson.

Disclaimer: I know very very little about photography. But I am capable of reading (thank goodness) and am teaching myself, little by little. To learn more, click here and here.

Ok. Back to the photos:

Do you see the difference? In the top photo, the petals are in focus. In the bottom one, the stamens are. I like the bottom one better, because...well, I don't really know why, I just do. This is one of the things I really like about my D40, is that I have control over where to focus. I also have control over depth of field.

Now, up until about three days ago, I didn't really understand depth of field or aperture settings or how they are connected. I always got shutter speed, because that makes sense to me. (The faster the speed, the less light comes in, the darker the pictures. And vice versa.) I shot on S a lot, and let the camera control aperture. I had a vague idea that aperture had to do with how wide the lens opened to let in light, but didn't really understand how that made a difference. I decided that I should probably learn. I found these two great articles (one and two) and they made a ton of sense. I also liked the Wikipedia article on aperture because it explains the math. (Yay math!)

Which got me thinking about the flower pics. I reckoned that the aperture must have been set very wide (which corresponds to a low number...) to get such a shallow depth of field that I could have either the petals or the stamens in focus, but not both. So I zipped over to Flickr and checked out the Exif data (for some reason I prefer to look at it on Flickr instead of on my computer...don't ask me why...), and sure enough, the aperture for both was f/5.3, which is close to the max for my lens at that zoom level. This means the lens opened really wide to let in a lot of light, and, as I suspected, made the depth of field very shallow. Cool!

I hope you enjoyed this mini-lesson, and that it made sense. Please feel free to comment and let me know other cool things about aperture, depth of field, wild roses, etc. (Also, please let me know (kindly!) if I have said anything incorrect.) Ooh, and if you know how to blog multiple Flickr photos into one post (I can only figure out how to get one photo in the post using 'blog this'), please please let me know!

Thanks y'all! Have a great week! =)

Eye-Candy Friday!

2007-09-07T17:14:00.000-05:00

A few of the blogs I read do "Eye-Candy Friday" features, posting pretty pics on Fridays. Here's one for you...with the focus on the "Eye" part of "Eye-Candy".

I took this at the beginning of the summer, when I spent a morning over at Cattle Headquarters watching and photographing the ordeal that is shoeing all the horses after the winter. Horses are pretty dumb, but beautiful anyways. =) You can see some other great horse photos here. Have a great weekend!

This blog is feeling neglected...

2007-09-07T02:05:00.000-05:00

...so here are some pictures taken in my family's backyard back in May. Enjoy! =)

I think this one's especially striking in B&W.

2007-05-09T01:12:00.000-05:00

My new camera!

My church, at night

So I want to be a photographer...

2007-04-24T22:41:00.000-05:00

Here are some of my favorite pictures from my Spring Break trip to San Francisco. They were all taken with my Fujifilm FinePix A345 (4.1 mp). All but the turtle are completely unedited. (I darkened the shadows in the turtle pic a bit in Picasa, because there was a lot of glare on the water.) I don't know a whole lot about photography, basically just enough to get frustrated with a point-n-shoot. Stay tuned...

The composition of the jellyfish is dreadful, but I just thought they were so cool! :)

Love from Texas!

2007-03-26T00:57:00.000-05:00

This is how I sign off many of my emails, messages, comments, etc., so I thought it would make a good blog. I don't know what I'll post here yet, but maybe some experiments in photography.