MikeBrum.com

I’m going to crash soon. 12:30-1:00 has been my typical bedtime these days. Not bad, but it keeps me a bit sleepy.

I’m fixing a friend’s computer. I installed XP for the first time in probably over a year. It was kinda odd. I only use Windows these days for Adobe software and don’t do much of anything with it beyond that, so it was a “fun distraction” to play with it for a while. I’m now doing the million hours of updates and configuration. Meh.

This weekend should be fun. We’re going “fake skydiving” on Saturday. Despite having gone real sky diving, I think it should be fun regardless. Then on Sunday, we’re diving… which should be fun as well. Busy, but good weekend.

I’ve been busy lately – trying to gear up with more photography stuff, juggle work and still find time to juggle some of my other hobbies. I still don’t know where the summer went. Sad. I want to be somewhere warm.

Oh well… maybe some day. I hope.

This week is an upgrade week – which means I’m up late and tailing logs. Nothing really exciting. It’s even less exciting in that I’m training up my n00b and he’s doing all the work while I give him tips and answer questions. As boring as this turns out, it’s nice in that once he’s up-to-speed, the upgrade and oncall rotations will be that much larger. We have two other n00bs that are also being trained up – so that’s something we’re all looking forward to.

I haven’t touched my camera since last weekend – mostly due to the upgrade situation above. I did, however, get a lighting book which yesterday which I’m going to start reading in a little bit.

Last weekend’s diving was a bust. The seas were in no good shape due to the hurricane storm backwash that we got up here. Sunday ended up being a nice day, but just because the sky is blue doesn’t mean that the seas were calm or that the vis was good.

This upcoming weekend is supposed to be King Richard’s Faire. Hopefully the weather holds out and we can go on Sunday. This will be the third year in a row that we’ve gone. We don’t dress up – I’m nerdy enough without getting dressed up in ren faire garb – but it’s a lot of fun and superb people watching as well.

I appreciate everyone that’s been commenting on my photography and visiting my new photoblog. I don’t have any comments or ratings yet there, but at least there’s new traffic. If the weather holds, hopefully I’ll have some fun actiony shots from this weekend. Stay posted.

I’ve officially launched my new photoblog at Submagination.com.

I got 112 images uploaded, tagged and indexed. For those frequent visitors, you’ll see a lot of familiar content, but I wanted to backfill the site with a bunch of images instead of just having a mostly bare site out the gate.

If you’re a fan of my photography, by all means feel free to check it out, comment, rate the photos, etc. It has an RSS feed that you can subscribe to for those into those fancy web 2.0 tools.

Laterz.

I spent a little while this afternoon shooting. With the weather as shitty as it’s going to be, diving is out for the weekend. I figured I’d put my new toys to good use.

Here’s a few from earlier – the usual applies:

This is my first real go at jewelry. I like the way a lot of the facets worked out on the necklace, but I should have paid a bit more attention to the setting and the chain. Ah well, live and learn.

I spent some time this afternoon playing with my new lighting gear. I’ve been rather pleased thus far. Here’s a handful of images from my fumbling.

The usual applies – typical gear, no cropping, etc.

Here’s a few things that I’ve figured out:

• The top highlights in the pill are unpleasing to me. I think I need to get a diffuser to put between the softbox and the subjects that I’m shooting. That should make the highlights nicer.
• Shooting against black acrylic is awesome. I love the reflections. Keeping it clean is going to be a PITA. After just a few minutes, I could already see tiny pieces of lint accumulating.
• I need to find nicer ways of propping things up. Maybe modeling clay. I’m not sure. With the coin, I bent a paperclip and taped it down to keep it from sliding around. I could have cloned a lot of that out, but I’d rather not waste my time and I need to find a permanent solution.
• I really enjoy this sort of “product” photography – it’s a lot of fun. I can’t wait to try my hand at jewelry.
• This set of photos clearly shows that I’m a nerd – dice, D&D miniatures, fossils… oh yeah.

This is Gretta. She’s an English Mastiff. A 145lb English Mastiff. She’s not mine. She belongs to a friend that we visited this evening. I had fun shooting her while we could keep her running around. It doesn’t take much to tire out a dog this big.

Such a cutie!

Today’s seal dive was a bust. The seas were too rough heading north out of Gloucester. It would have taken way too long and have been way too horrible of a ride. We went south instead and had two mediocre dives. Vis kinda sucked and there was a decent amount of surge… which is never fun.

Later, we went over to Sue’s and played with her giant puppy. A quick stop for some ice cream on the way home rounded out the evening.

Corinne needs to work tomorrow, so I’ll probably do some photo stuff. Should be a nice relaxing day off.

As planned, I hit up the butterfly house at Franklin Park Zoo again today. I spent probably about 2 hours shooting total and walked away with what I think are some of my best shots yet. I’m very pleased with the progress that I’ve made this summer shooting macro. Given where I was at towards the end of last summer, I don’t think I have anything to feel bad about. I think next spring I’ll be picking up the Canon MP-E 65mm macro lens. It’s very specialized and really requires you to know how to shoot high-magnification macro, so that’s what I’ve been trying to practice this summer.

I uploaded 28 new photos to my site. I’ve only included 12 here – so if you like what you’re seeing, then definitely head over to my image gallery and check out the whole lot.

For those interested, these are shot on a 30D with the Canon 100mm f2.8 macro (probably my favorite lens) with a 36mm extension tube. For a flash, I’m using the MT-24EX. You might notice that the backgrounds are mostly dark. This is due to a particularly small aperture for this set. This is due to the tightrope that needs to be walked in macro – a small aperture gives you more depth of field, but you expose less of the background. If you use a larger aperture for more ambient exposure, you get much shallower depth of field. With the super tiny depth of field that you get with macro, this decision can be really important. It’s a big exercise in compromise.

Enjoy the images and don’t hesitate to check out the rest.

Tomorrow is the seal dive!!!

I totally saw someone clip a curb (a center island just after an intersection) right next to me as I was waiting for the light to turn green. Their car had a tiny “hop”, but nothing too extreme. The best part was that I saw the quick burst of air and heard the tire deflating as it drove by.

Important safety tip: Don’t hit raised curbs with your cars… dumbass.

One more day of work and then a nice three day weekend awaits.

The plan is simple:

SaturdayWeather permitting, go to the zoo while Corinne’s getting a massage to shoot some more butterflies before the cold kills them all. Might catch a movie in the late afternoon. We’ll see.

Sunday

We’re heading to the Isle of Shoals to go diving with seals. Seriously. How. Fucking. Cool. Is. That?

The answer… very.

Monday

If the construction doesn’t deter the UPS guy (sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t), I should be getting some fun photo gear tomorrow. Monday will be the “play with the new toys” day.

And that’ll bring us back to work for Tuesday. Boo @ work!