Photography

Photoshop World Las Vegas

Doc and I spent a couple of days last week in Las Vegas for the Photoshop World conference. The conference was really good and I learned a lot about a lot of things, and came home with “The Phone Book,” the name everyone was calling the 2-1/2-inch-thick conference workbook. That thing is amazing; it’s got all the instructors’ notes and presentations from all the sessions, so if you weren’t able to attend a class you still have the materials from it. Despite both of us being sick in various ways (see last post), we still managed to have fun. Neither of us really wanted to “Vegas it up” this time, so we didn’t feel pressured to go to expensive shows or drink or gamble. We did a lot of walking around, taking photos. On our last day, I gave Doc $3 to put into a slot machine and 2 minutes later he cashed out with $43. Not bad! We bought a nice lunch. A few interesting observations: In Las Vegas, it’s sometimes hard to tell the real whores from the regular tourists that are just dressed that way. Everything in Las Vegas is about double the cost that it would be almost anywhere else. “But it’s a dry heat” is bullshit. Adequately padded shoes may not look fashionable, but they’re crucial. I estimate that I may have walked close to 5 miles each day of the conference (in flat sandals…. owwwww my feet). I think it was about 1/2 mile between our hotel room and the convention center, and this was in the same freaking hotel. All the restaurants except for one in the Land of Foodcourtia in the convention center were closed. The one that was open had only greasy fried food, hot dogs, and $9.50 hamburgers. We ate […]

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Recent photos

Today after lunch I saw a car with a banana peel draped over its door handle: I’ve been playing around with the nightshot mode on Doc’s camera. I like the effect I get when there’s still a little ambient light. My garden is growing! Some of it, anyway. I may not have any tomatoes or morning glories, but by god I’m going to have lots and lots of zucchini this summer.

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Photo Walk

Doc and I like to take photo walks when the weather is nice. Usually we just start from our house and head off in a random direction and see what we can find that is interesting. Today we ended up at the YMCA pool in a park a mile or so from our house. As I circled the pool looking for interesting things to photograph, I kept getting whiffs of strong pot smoke from a couple of guys sitting on a picnic bench near the treeline, smoking. Doc wondered aloud what kind of people come to a public park to smoke out. I said, “People who don’t want their parents to smell the smoke coming from their rooms.”

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Piglet

PigletThis awesome little SmartCar parks in my parking lot at work sometimes after hours. The license plate says “PIGLET.” (I’ll wait for your cute fit to die down before continuing…) They’re gas-powered, get incredible mileage (probably similar or better than my hybrid Prius), and cost about $25,000 US. Yes, you read that right, 25 grand for this car. I really truly wish that people in this country would get on the ball and buy smaller cars like this one (check out the monstrosity parked next to it) but for that kind of money, I’m not sure it’s going to happen for the SmartCar. Squishy Little WorldI’m not certain what this is, exactly, but I stepped on it. It made for a cool photo. Kind of like a little planet, sitting there on the concrete.

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