Wednesday, April 6, 2011

More photos and general update

Woah, hey, it's been a while. Surprise! OK, not really. As is so often the case, a lot has changed. And as is also often the case, I come with promises to finish all the previous multi-part blog posts on here, soon I swear. At least the backup one, because I'm finally getting my whole data scene together. More on that soon.

On the subject of life in general, many things have changed in the past 3, 4, 5 months. Katy and I broke up (a mutual thing, but still sad and difficult), consequently I moved to a new place in the Mission (loving it!), and I finally (re)left my Bauman College job (eek, I have to set my own schedule now). Life is a bit unclear for me right now, but also full of possibility, so that's a good thing. I'm working on setting a comfortable schedule for myself, balancing work and play, getting things done for Planetside while also enjoying my new neighborhood, doing more hiking than ever (took a great one to Mt. Tam recently), and trying to meet new people. Things are good, but not quite settled yet...

Before I go, I want to mention that I'm still slowly going through the road trip photos. It's funny to me now to think that I expected to be able to edit and post these as we were on the road. Even if I'd had a working computer and Internet connection, I doubt I would have had the time or patience. Granted I'm learning a new tool (Lightroom), but I've also realized I can be super indecisive when picking between several similar photos. So culling down several hundred (or a thousand) to less 50-70 (a comfortable amount for a single gallery) can be tough. At any rate I'm doing it now, and it's enjoyable to look back at these places and remember the experiences, already starting to fade only 6 months past.

I've posted a gallery for the next stop we made after Bryce Canyon which is the Grand Tetons in Wyoming. We had some rather poor weather while we were there (it rained most days), so I really want to go back and get more hiking and exploring in. But we still saw and did some great stuff. Here's the gallery link, and the description I wrote for it:

https://picasaweb.google.com/oshyan/GrandTetons#

We spent several cloudy, often rainy days at the Grand Tetons in Wyoming. Lots of challenges in exposing sky vs. ground, water, etc. Some HDR experimentation, and liberal use of Lightroom's sweet-ass graduated filter. Speaking of which, this is the first full album I developed and culled entirely using Lightroom. So far I'm liking it, but I'm really just getting used to its workflow. Once I'm "in the groove" with it I think it'll be a much better experience overall than Picasa. But I will miss the face recognition!

Writing that made me realize I ought to blog more about these experiences. My explorations may be of interest and/or use to others, especially those looking to transition from an amateur to pro tool (Picasa to Lightroom). I used to write about my techniques a bit on my photoblog (and I hope to one day again), but now that I'm not really using it, I realize I've stopped giving as much info. I'm not sure anyone was ever really super interested in the details, but hopefully they're worthwhile.

Thanks for looking and reading! More to come...