burnaby t wallace

A night at Coronado

spencer — Fri, 09 May 2008 08:46:04 +0000

Yankees, a700, and the 24-70 f2.8

spencer — Mon, 05 May 2008 14:58:47 +0000

So last week, I went to New York–this time, with the wife. We saw a Yankees game during the last season at the historic Yankees stadium, saw Rent before it’s way out of Broadway. We also had more yummy cheesecake (carrot cake cheesecake at Junior’s, if you’re interested), and finally went to both MoMA and the Guggenheim. I also got glowing reviews of my nerdy communication and computer training.

But that wasn’t the highlight of the trip. No, sir.

Stepping into B&H Photo for the first time…WOW. It was like Santa’s workshop, with little elves waiting to help you (except they were Jewish, which explains why the entire store was closed for a week for Passover). Overhead are conveyor belt things that send things you’ve selected to purchase around the entire store to meet you on the way out. What an awesome experience.

Just like previous visits to New York, I got caught up and bought something (the iPhone and the iPod touch comes to mind). This time, it was a sweet and fast 24-70 f2.8 constant lens. That mates with the new Sony DSLR-a700 I purchased the weekend before leaving for New York (leaving it in San Diego, unopened, waiting for me to return). The a700 joins the a350 I purchased the month before.

So what a great last week. The weather was freezing, but the city was awesome. Not to mention the yummy Oreo cookie brownie at Bruce’s. Ah, New York, I miss you already.

Now to tend to the extreme Red Bull Air Race sunburn covering half my body.

What’s been going down?

spencer — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 20:30:56 +0000

Man, I can’t remember the last time I actually downloaded some blog worthy words from my mind to this blog.

Things have been so insane lately. We got this task of taking pictures of an entire gymnastics team–that took us to getting up before 5 in the morning to do our day jobs to get out and take pictures until about 8 at night, which of course was about an hour from our house, and then going through the pictures to make sure they were all sharp. That was tough. Not to mention that two weeks before, I was sweating in nasty New Orleans.

I also got a new digital camera body, and two new lenses (the same one–18-50 f/2.8, because the original broke…then suddenly the second one broke). And now I have to wait for B&H Photo to reopen (they’ve been closed for the past week for holiday) to return the lens…which is weird because I am heading back to New York next week–so I should just drop it off. Eh, I don’t know. This lens is making me lose faith in Sigma, though I am in love with their 10-20mm.

So pretty much, for the past couple months, I’ve been all about taking pictures. I got to experience a ton of new things, like professionally taking pictures, to coming up with a mobile studio, to a crash course on lighting. Not to mention the ongoing addiction to Flickr.

This won’t let up, either. I mean, next week, I’m back in New York. Then soon after, it’s a photo excursion to Page, Arizona for some Antelope Canyon loving. Then quite literally afterwards, I am going to San Antonio for some food and photography. Plus, I have to sprinkle in a return trip to New Orleans and Denver somewhere in there.

So there you have it. I spend as much time on the shutter as I do clicking the left mouse button.

Funny man Cheney

spencer — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 16:42:07 +0000

I want you to know that I am doing my part to meet the crisis by reducing my carbon footprint, big time.
Everytime I am rushed to the hospital, I insist on a hybrid ambulance.

Dick Cheney (at Annual Radio & TV Correspondents Dinner)

Rockr Wife

spencer — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 13:42:18 +0000

Adobe Lightroom 2

spencer — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 05:55:20 +0000

Frik.

I like it.

And that sucks, as I don’t really want to spend $300 just to process my RAW images–something I could already do in Camera Raw CS3.

But sheesh–Ligthtroom does it a little better.

Frik.

Oh my goodness.

spencer — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 03:42:04 +0000

The New Kids on the Block are getting back together.

Yeah.

You can say whatever you want, but I know deep down inside…

LAN Party LOLcat

spencer — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 18:37:31 +0000

Eye-fi: May make PC tethering less relevant

spencer — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 18:20:54 +0000

This is radical. I heard about this last year, but I never really thought about how useful it is until now.

This thing will allow me (with a compactflash adapter) to take pictures from my camera and it will automatically save it to a folder on my laptop. Excellent! It only works with JPEGs, but that’s OK. It’ll keep the RAW on the card for when its time to do some processing. At least the clients can view the images right off the bat.

Beagles

spencer — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 09:54:59 +0000

If you like Beagles, come check out my set of doggy pictures.

Coronado Photo Excursion

spencer — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 09:51:20 +0000

Went and tried out our new cameras. I just put the pictures up on Flickr.

LOLcat

spencer — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 20:30:17 +0000

The only cats I like are LOLcats.

Was nVidia to blame for public perception on Vista?

spencer — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 18:55:30 +0000

There’s a side-story brewing in the “Vista Capable” lawsuit against Microsoft, with NVIDIA playing a supporting role. Judge Martha Pechman ordered a 158-page bundle of internal Microsoft emails unsealed, and in them, Microsoft documentation appears to suggest validity to complaints of early NVIDIA driver issues with Vista. NVIDIA’s G80 architecture endured a delayed driver rollout, and according to Microsoft’s data, the drivers were the cause of over 479,000 crashes, or 29 percent of all crashes Microsoft logged. Arstechnica wonders if that could have played a role in public perception painting Vista as a buggy and unstable OS, but admits there’s a lack of information to say conclusively.

So you know…Apple class action lawsuit.

spencer — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 16:11:43 +0000

So there’s this idea that is going around that any system that Apple can put together is all a photographer needs for flow and processing. Why? I can’t figure that out, but at any rate…it’s not true. Apparently you don’t get all your colors.

Apple settles “millions of colors” class-action lawsuit

By Slash Lane

Published: 09:00 AM EST

Apple has settled with two professional photographers who had charged the company with falsely advertising the quality and capabilities of its MacBook and MacBook Pro notebook displays.
The out-of-court settlement, for which terms were not disclosed, brings to a close a 10-month old class-action lawsuit filed by San Diego, Calif. residents Fred Greaves and Dave Gatley.
In the suit, first reported by AppleInsider last May, the pair cried foul on the part of Apple’s marketing lingo, which advertised that both the MacBook and MacBook Pro included displays capable of supporting “millions of colors” and offering views “simply unavailable on other portables.”
Instead, they charge that the Intel-based notebooks were only suited to display the “illusion of millions of colors through the use of a software technique referred to as ‘dithering,’ which causes nearby pixels on the display to use slightly varying shades of colors that trick the human eye into perceiving the desired color even though it is not truly that color.”
Greaves and Gatley, both professional photographers, argued that the misrepresentation was critical given that members of their profession rely on the accuracy of the displays for properly editing imagery. They asserted that, even at their highest resolutions, the notebook displays are unreliable for post-production purposes.
In addition to false advertising and misrepresentation, the photographers also charged Apple with violating the Unfair Competition Law and the Consumer Legal Remedies Act for its failure to properly address and rectify the situation.
There’s no word yet on the steps necessary for other proposed class members to take advantage of the settlement.

VirtualBox

spencer — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 21:38:54 +0000

Sun Microsystems picked up Innotek not too long ago. Now the virtual environment that has allowed me to run Linux within a window on a Vista machine–now allows running Vista and Linux within the MacOS (beta).

And it’s free.

Interesting License Plates

spencer — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 16:10:22 +0000

From Mental Floss

Everything else is just hot air.

spencer — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 21:56:59 +0000

Hehe.

Why Monster Cables cost so much

spencer — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 16:55:49 +0000

Why rap is stupid

spencer — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 15:21:58 +0000

Nevermind the nonsense noise and barrage of high hats and beats, many of the representatives of the industry just, well, I’ll just let you read this little interview (warning: bad language) by XXL Magazine of DMX (cleaned up, of course, for your reading pleasure).

Are you following the presidential race?
Not at all.
You’re not? You know there’s a Black guy running, Barack Obama and then there’s Hillary Clinton.
His name is Barack?!

Barack Obama, yeah.
Barack?!
Barack.
What the f**k is a Barack?! Barack Obama. Where he from, Africa?
Yeah, his dad is from Kenya.
Barack Obama?
Yeah.
What the f**k?! That ain’t no f**kin’ name, yo. That ain’t that n**ga’s name. You can’t be serious. Barack Obama. Get the f**k outta here.
You’re telling me you haven’t heard about him before.
I ain’t really paying much attention.
I mean, it’s pretty big if a Black…
Wow, Barack! The n**ga’s name is Barack. Barack? N**ga named Barack Obama. What the f**k, man?! Is he serious? That ain’t his f**kin’ name. Ima tell this n**ga when I see him, “Stop that bul****t. Stop that bul****t” [laughs] “That ain’t your f**kin’ name.” Your momma ain’t name you no damn Barack.
So you’re not following the race. You can’t vote right?
Nope.
Is that why you’re not following it?
No, because it’s just—it doesn’t matter. They’re gonna do what they’re gonna do. It doesn’t really make a difference. These are the last years.
But it would be pretty big if we had a first Black president. That would be huge.
I mean, I guess…. What, they gon’ give a dog a bone? There you go. Ooh, we have a Black president now. They should’ve done that s**t a long time ago, we wouldn’t be in the f**kin’ position we in now. With world war coming up right now. They done f**ked this s**t up then give it to the Black people, “Here you take it. Take my mess.”
Right, exactly.
It’s all a f**kin’ setup. It’s all a setup. All f**kin’ bul****t. All bul****t. I don’t give a f**k about none of that.
We could have a female president also, Hillary Clinton.
I mean, either way it doesn’t matter. I don’t care. No one person is directly affected by which president, you know, so what does it matter.
Yeah, but the country is.
I guess. The president is a puppet anyway. The president don’t make no damn decisions.
The president…they don’t have that much authority basically?
Nah, never.

Where I barely was while doing work in Florida.

spencer — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 16:51:36 +0000

The posh Conrad Hotel. In sticky way-too trendy Miami.