Grant's Blog

I’ve posted a number of photos from our group camping trip to Joshua Tree from this past weekend. I’ve started to use Adobe Lightroom to organize and edit my photos, and so far I’m loving it. It also has the option to post both HTML and Flash based pages to a site via FTP, which I’ve used to create a gallery for this trip. As I get better and take more photos I’ll post more of these types of galleries.

I’m quite happy with some of these photos, but of the 257 photos that were taken only 17 were good enough to post online for others to see. Most of my exposures are being done through trial and error, I’m trying to pick the shutter speed and aperture I think is right, take the picture and then adjust as needed. Sometimes I’m way off on my first guess. But all of these photos were taken on a manual setting, so I can at least say I chose the exposure that you end up seeing.

So I’m learning, but slowly. I still need to get a better eye for seeing pictures. Jill took some pictures of the same events I did and hers are much better in composition. As she mentioned to me, I tend to take pictures too close, she gets further back and shows the whole scene.

Generally, I need to start taking technically correct photos that show the scene, then I can start taking artsy pictures.

Yes, yes, I know I haven’t posted a real entry in umpteen billion seconds. Or more precisely, just about 11,000,000 seconds (that’s orders of magnitude more precise, even though it’s still very round.) I haven’t been talking the time out of life to write, as was the intention of this site. It’s one goal of mine that I’m failing at, and I think I just found another that will suffer the same fate.

Not long ago, I made a list of life goals on my online notebook. One of those goals I’ve had for a long time now, it’s one of those goals that can only be accomplished in death. My goal is to only shave half the days of my life.

But now, Esquire makes a compelling argument for Shaving Every Day.

Of my life goals, this seemed to be the most achievable. It’s the only one I had a real plan for. I figure I have 15 years of built up time on the front end, and I’m not wasting shaving days on weekends. Then, once I’m rich and have a fancy car collection, I wanted to grow a beard like Billy Gibbons. That will hopefully build up another 15 or 20 years on the back end. But now I’m thinking of abandoning this goal because of Esquire.

Thankfully, I have a week and a half to think about this before I’m faced with making a decision. This weekend I’m headed out to Joshua Tree, where it is perfectly acceptable to go unshaven and “look tired and sloppy,” as Esquire describes it.