Bake me a cake
Posted by Dominic Thu, 31 Jan 2008 21:12:00 GMT
My friend Kim describes in intricate detail what it’s like to bake a “cake” in today’s corporate world.
It is well worth the read here.
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I am a computer geek and part time photographer hoping to make it in the cruel world out there....
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Mom's Hamburger Stroganoff
Posted by Dominic Fri, 25 Jan 2008 17:45:00 GMT
(This is the recipe that uses ground beef with a cream of chicken soup-based sauce. There is also a strips-of-beef-with-brown-sauce recipe that I don’t have)
1 lbs ground beef 1 medium onion, chopped 2 tbsp olive oil 2 tbsp flour 1 tsp salt 1 clove garlic 1/4 tsp pepper 4 oz mushrooms, canned or fresh 1 can condensed cream of chicken soup 1 cup sour cream or unflavored yoghurt 2-3 cups noodles or rice
Brown ground beef in pan w/onions until light brown. Stir in flour, salt, garlic, pepper and mushrooms. Reduce until it thickens. Stir in condensed soup, heat ‘till boiling then reduce heat. Stir in sour cream, eat through.
Serve over rice or hot noodles.
Decorate with parsley if desired.
Fledgeling Photographer: f o t o t i c k r
Posted by Dominic Fri, 25 Jan 2008 03:03:00 GMT
Gary Cohen sat down and spent some time creating this bad-ass new Flickr viewing application.
The images sort of float up the screen, you can mouse over them and click through to pop them up on Flickr.
Check it out with my photostream here.
(Via Thomas Hawk)
Mental health Monday
Posted by Dominic Thu, 24 Jan 2008 14:26:00 GMT
As some of you may know, the last few months have been rather busy here in Dominic-land. Between work (blech) and some bad time planning, I’ve felt like it’s all GO GO GO with very little downtime.
This last weekend was no exception - after a full week of work, I spent all day Saturday and Sunday in a photography workshop. 20 pages of notes and a thoroughly overloaded brain later, I was ready for some R&R.
Rick had sent out an email earlier in the week, wondering if anyone wanted to go spend some quality time at Enchanted Rock State Park on the following monday, it being MLK day and all.
So I concocted a notice to my boss, mentioning something about mental health or whatnot… and took the day off.
David, Rick, Rebecca and I got a late start Monday morning, which wasn’t too bad - by the time we arrived in the park, there was almost nobody else there - for a while, I swear we had the park to outselves. It was a bit overcast, and the occational drizzling rain, but that’s not going to stop someone with the mission of “Just wanting to spend the day not in Austin.”
And that we did. We hiked around parts of the park I’d never been to - in the past when I’ve gone out to Enchanted Rock, it’s been solely to climb - so you generally stick to the same parts of the park. This time we headed out on the long loop trail, did some bushwhacking, some shortcuts, some mudding… it was fun.
The drive home was relatively uneventful - we were all stiff and sore from hiking all day, and sitting in Rebecca’s CRV for the drive home didn’t help much….
But all in all, it was a great day to spend a Monday.
Why?
Posted by Dominic Thu, 17 Jan 2008 02:24:00 GMT
Why do I sit here and feel like I’m an outsider?
Why am I standing on the outside, looking in?
I hear your words, but do not understand.
I see your mouth moving, but I can not hear.
Attempted burglary
Posted by Dominic Mon, 14 Jan 2008 16:14:00 GMT
Saturday, while I was in the Barton Creek greenbelt in Austin, someone attempted to burgle my truck. Fortunately a fellow rock climber witnessed the act and scared the perpetrator away - unfortunately he did not get the perpetrator’s buddy’s truck license plate.
This all happened about 5 minutes before I showed up. Bummer. Had I not tried to go after that one geocache, I might have seen them in the process of jacking my truck. That would’ve been interesting.
I wonder how I’d react when confronted with someone breaking into my vehicle.
They didn’t get in to the truck, but they did do some body damage to the truck door. I don’t have comprehensive insurance coverage, so I’ll be footing the bill on the repairs myself. Hope it won’t be too expensive.
Fledgeling Photographer: Portraiture
Posted by Dominic Fri, 11 Jan 2008 06:58:00 GMT
Last weekend, I spent a few hours with Holley, a friend of mine, and her boyfriend Chris.
It actually started with Holley and myself looking for a publically-accessible cemetary for some photographs, and afterwards we went back and picked up Chris, before they headed out on their 1-year dating anniversary date.
If you wish to see more of the pictures we shot, you can find them here.
Icelandic images
Posted by Dominic Tue, 08 Jan 2008 16:13:00 GMT
One of my favorite photographers (and rather infamous for her rise to fame through flickr) is Rebekka Guðleifsdóttir. Her story is one of hard work, cold Icelandic nights and finally, fame.
Probably what she is most famous for, are her “clone” shots, and the Toyota Prius advertising campaign that she was awarded due to her shots.
She was recently interviewed by officialproductions.tv - but they appear to have taken down the video of her interview.
What’s up, guys?
Fledgeling Photographer: High Dynamic Range Photography
Posted by Dominic Sun, 06 Jan 2008 21:35:00 GMT
This last week, while visiting Rebecca’s relatives in Georgia, I experimented with a photographic concept called HDR photography
Simply put, cameras don’t have quite the color/luminance range that our eyes have. So when you’re photographing a scene which goes from intense brightness to intense darkness all in the same scene - you either have to sacrifice the dark in order to see the light part correctly - or sacrifice the light part in order to see the dark part correctly.
HDR photography attempts to deal with this issue bracketing several exposures +- some amount of F-stop, and then blending the three-or-more images together to create the finished product.
The downside to this technique is that there is a fair amount of post-processing required. This makes HDR photography ill suited for photojournalism, etc - places where the desired outcome includes no post-processing.
It was suggested during my HDR research that HDR photography was more like capturing a memory, since it closer approximates how we remember a scene, and after some playing around, I am tempted to agree with this - there are certainly ways to get a good shot in-camera without all the fancy tricks, but then again - sometimes you want to capture a mood that is hard/impossible to light.
The boring side of photography
Posted by Dominic Fri, 04 Jan 2008 06:00:00 GMT
Let’s talk about post-processing.
This is the part of shooting that I find rather dull. I know it has to be done, but I don’t enjoy it nearly as much as the actual shoot.
Sure, when you’re done you have an awesome product in your hands. A tangible result of the blood sweat and tears that you put into the shoot.
As I am perfecting my workflow, it is getting a little easier to stomach. The hardest is working on panorama shots and HDR shots. Yes - when the result is done, they sure do look nice (if you have good source shots). So maybe it’s a workflow issue. :)
Anyway, I’m almost done processing a friend of mine’s photographs. Some of the panoramas turned out absolutely gorgeous, and some of the HDR’s didn’t.
That is the luck of the draw, though - it seems.