mamaLove

Graphics Tablet

I broke down and bought a Wacom Tablet. I can’t wait to start playing with it and see what I can do in Photoshop with it. Especially with my wallpapers. I can also use it in my photos to clean them up, if needed. I don’t usually do too much editing to my photos. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, though. I guess it’s really just a user preference.

I have a thing about posting pictures of people. Well, let’s go even further…I have a thing about taking photos of people. I see all these other photoblogs that have great photos of people and I think man, it would be great to take pictures like that. But I feel awkward taking photos of people. I guess I feel like they are going to be upset if they see the camera pointed their way. All you photographers out there…what’s your experience with photographing people. And I mean like in a public setting, not necessarily in portrait, but just candid shots when your out and about.

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Dual Monitors

I’m pissed off right now. I so badly wanted to set up dual monitors at work, but I don’t have a video card that will work. My husband let me have his other card. But it won’t work with my computers. It just makes me so mad! I know I’ve been working without it for a long time, but it would have been so nice to have two running. Some days I have 6 or 7 applications running at the same time while I’m doing my programming that I get confused about where things are.

Sometimes, I think about going back to a desktop because I can do things like dual monitor and it would be great with Photoshop…I could move all those little windows out of the way and have my workspace clutter free. I could work with TopStyle and FTP Voyager and Photoshop and Firefox and be able to see more of what I’m doing. I’d have more disk space on the desktop and it would always be there ready for me to work, rather than having to open up my laptop and wait for it to come out of hibernation. (Yes, I’m impatient.) I’d also have the CD burner for backing up photos. I don’t have any burner on my laptop, which sort of sucks, cause I have to move everthing to the desktop before burning it. It’s a pain.

But then I think about the times like last night, that I didn’t feel like taking my laptop out and turning it on, so I just didn’t get on the computer. And the past few weeks where I’ve been stuck on the machine, but I was still able to sit next to my husband while he watched tv, instead of being stuck away in a room at the back of the house by myself. And I like being able to take my laptop to work with me and upload my photos while I do my real work. That’s when I love having a laptop.

Yet, I miss being able to sit at a desk to work on my site. I sit on the couch with a meal tray in front of me as a desk. (pretty pathetic, huh?) We don’t have a desk set up in case we want to sit at it with the laptop, aside from the desk that the desktop is currently on. And of course there isn’t any room for another computer on that desk, it’s so cluttered.

Oh why can’t I just get dual display at work?

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Learning About Photography

I’ve been looking into new cameras this weekend and I found one I really like. It’s a reasonable price, but I think I will wait a few weeks and play with my husband’s camera first.

I currently have a Nikon Coolpix 775. It was fine when I got it, but I can’t do too much with it and I’d like to learn more about photography. My husband’s Coolpix 880 died a few months ago and he replaced it with a Coolpix 5400. It has some excellent features that I’ve been playing with. I’ve always loved taking macro shots and his camera does such a better job at it than mine. Macro focusing is so much better and his camera does black and white.

I know many people are against taking digital photos in black and white, because they can always convert later, but if they change their mind, they already have it in color. This arguement makes sense, but it’s nice to have that feature available. I took some fabulous macro shots with the 5400 in B/W this weekend.

The camera I’m looking at is the Canon Powershot A80. It has just enough to get me on my way to learning the ins and outs of digital photography, but I can still set it to auto and click away. I think it is the next step camera for me, but even though it’s a reasonable $269, I think I’m going to wait a little while and spend some time learning on my husband’s 5400.

I also picked up a digital photography book this weekend. It explains what all the settings mean (ISO, shutter speed, aperture, white balance, exposure, etc.) and what they do for your photo. This is my self-study. I’m reading the book in hopes of understanding what all the manual features mean and what they can do for me when it comes to taking better photos. Once I’ve read it and played with the hubby’s camera, I might be ready to upgrade my camera to something a little more advanced.

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Bald Sadie

We had our dog shaved today. She looks so cute with no hair. It’s almost like she’s another dog. I’ve added a “before/after” photo just to show you how much hair she had before and how different she looks now.

Edit: Will re-add the photo at some point. Don’t have it with me right now.

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Digital Photo Management

I’ve just spent some time re-organizing my digital photos on my computer. I’ve got them in dated folders and some have titles for specific events. Everything is great. I redid my catalog in Photoshop Album (PA) and I’ve set it to show me the pictures in folder view.

But for some reason, when I imported some of the photos, I realized that there were multiple copies of the file. PA made duplicates. I have no idea why, so I had to delete a bunch of duplicates. It also creates a duplicate if you edit a file, so that the original is not altered. That is fine, but when I imported them back, it imported the original and the duplicate. So I have to go back and remove the originals from the catalog.

Another thing I’m noticing is that I can’t rearrange them. I had to create a whole new catalog and reimport the files. It was easier than tryig to reconnect the links to the actual images. And I’d like to batch rename files also, but I can’t. I could open Photoshop CS and use the batch options in it to rename the files, but I should be able to do that from inside PA.

I just installed Paint Shop Album. I want to test it out and see how it compares to Photoshop. It has some features I think I’d like.

What do you all use to manage your photos? Just plain windows, or a specific program?

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The Gym

I’ve been going to the gym for almost 3 whole weeks now. So far I haven’t noticed any change. But I’m going 3 times a week. Well, ok. Last week, I only went twice, but that was after the dreadful canoe trip where I cut and bruised my foot. I still can only wear certain shoes. My favorites are out for now.

My exercise consists of 3-5 min warmup on the bike. Then I’m off to do some weights. I do arm and thigh conditioning. I generally tend to do one set of 12-15 reps. Sometimes, depending on how much it’s burning, I’ll try to do another set on the machine. The weights vary by machine, so I can’t really say. Then I go do a cardio workout on the treadmill. I started out doing 10 minutes then bumped it up to 20. Now I’m trying for 2 miles…which ends up being about 30-45 minutes depending on how fast I’m walking. Once my legs have turned to jelly, I go do a gazillion crunches. Technically it’s 5 different positions on the ab bench, doing 15 reps. But again, depending on how much it burns, I try to do more…that’s the part that I’m trying to work on the most. That and my thighs, so I do a lot of reps on the thigh machine also. There’s 2 other ab machines that I also do 1-2 sets of 12-15 reps. Then…I may do some more reps on the weight machines, or I’ll jump back on the bike for another 5 minutes, or I’ll just go chill out in the sauna for about 20 minutes.

It’s very interesting…that you burn 300 calories just sitting in the sauna for 20 minutes. So I spend about 1 to 1 1/2 hours in the gym. I’m doing great and I enjoy doing it. I just hope to see some progress soon. After 30 days, I will get measured again. Then we’ll see if I’ve made any progress.

When they measured me the first day, I was in average for percentage of body fat…so that’s pretty good. But I’d actually like to see some slimming down on my upper arms, my thighs and my stomach. Those are my main focus areas. And I’m definitely working them. I make sure to do as many reps and I can handle. But I’m not going nuts about it. I know I can’t be superwoman, so I’m actually being reasonable and not pushing myself too much. I understand that it will take time.

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