Christopher Schmidt

Borrowing some gear from a coworker for the rest of the week -- including a 100mm macro lens, which I'm having fun playing with. (Most of my pictures from yesterday were taken with that one.)

I've also got a Speedlite 550ex which I'm going to try and do some playing with -- I don't think I'm at the point yet where flash is what I want most, but it's something.

With that in mind, yesterday's photo ended up being a macro shot of the back of the flash that I took while I was playing around with stuff... This could become a dangerous hobby if I end up keeping it up...

9 days until I leave for Japan.

(Also, since I missed it: Monday's image, which I wasn't as happy with, but is not that bad.)

Ali is sick. She brought it home from school, and definitely gave it to Jess, and possibly gave it to Lynne as well (since she was over on Monday). Other than that, life on the home front is much the same... Though I do need to let my parents know I'm going to Japan... oops... (You'd think I'd have learned after my last mistake.)

Got started on a new/interesting Python/JS project with a friend in my copious spare time. It's nice to have a project which isn't 90% done: the limitations that places on you are so annoying. Doing the last 20% always sucks. I'm much better (and way more efficient) at the first 80%. Wish that I could actually find a job that was about the first 80% -- OCTO was supposed to be that way, but it never really did work out like that.

What should I be writing about here? You all think I'm dull as rocks, I think. Anyone got an interest in helping me improve that?

In order to improve my photo skills, I'm currently working on taking part in a 'one photo a day' project.

The concept behind these projects is pretty simple: Taking a single photo a day lets you improve your photography. By continuing to take photos -- even when you can't see anything that seems to fit as a 'photo' you want to take -- you're pushing your boundaries, encouraging yourself to find new and interesting things to turn into a photo. Project 365 is one of these: I'm not participating directly in any project 365 stuff because I don't know how long it will go on for, but the concept is the same regardless.

Rather than one photo a day, I'm actually pushing myself to take one *great* photo a day -- which means that at the moment, I'm taking more like 30. I'm not looking forward to when winter comes along and takes away all my great material that I have at the moment :)

I'm maintaining the photos that I'm taking in a separate set on Flickr (The "One a Day" set) as well as posting them to the One A Day group.

So far, I've been relatively pleased with the results: as I found during the conference, taking lots of pictures is the fastest way to improve your photography. Currently, I'm shooting almost everything with my 50mm prime lens. The only exception is the leaf that I took yesterday: that one was done with the zoom, because there was no way to focus close enough with the 50mm.

One A Day http://www.flickr.com/photos/crschmidt/sets/72157608074529910/ Trying to take one good picture a day for as long as I can, to keep my photo chops up and improve them.

I'm having fun exploring things other than portrait photography: I feel like I actually got pretty good at that during FOSS4G.

Anyway, if you want to follow along, there's an RSS feed of my One a Day set, and I'd love to have comments/suggestions as to what it would be nice to have photos of. I expect to try to vary my photos as much as I can: mixing in portraits and other stuff like that as I get time with people who don't mind having their pictures taken. :) Right now, the season is making photos of fall an ideal thing to work with -- I'm also keeping a Fall 2008 set with the photos from that.

Regardless of what anyone else thinks, I'm enjoying this project so far, and looking forward to keeping it up -- and would love to be encouraged to do so. I hope to start including these 'one a day' shots with my LJ entries as I post them -- and maybe it will even encourage me to post more, so that people can see my pictures. :)

(If my photography stuff is boring you, or the inclusion of photos is straining your connection or causing problems for your friends page, feel free to let me know, and I can consider making a filter for it.)

Haven't been posting -- have been turned into a twitter addict instead. Will try to think in sentences more than 140 characters long.

I've been working with my camera again. It's been a long time since I was regularly using it. I'm also going to start working on tools to make posting pictures easier, so I spend more time taking pictures and less time adding metadata to them after the fact. It's ridiculous that even with all the technology I carry, uploading and tagging photos is still such a pain in the ass.

I think we may finally be rid of our wedding guests. Roy has had a hell of a time getting out of here:

• Tried to fly out Monday night. Storms in Connecticut blocked his flight until he would have missed his last connection.
• Tried to fly out Tuesday night. Storms over Charlotte were blocking flights until they couldn't fly back due to noise curfews in Charlotte (or something like that.)
• Got rescheduled to what they said was a 5pm flight... that he discovered at 10am was actually a 5 *am* flight.
• Finally left this morning, and may actually get out today.

Schuyler actually got a LiveJournal account, which amuses me. (sderle)

My status at $work may be changing at some point in the future. Had a conversation with $boss yesterday. We'll see what happens soon.

There. That was more than 140 characters.