Gas Price Fraud Exposed

I'm following this story closely.. I've known about this for a long time, but the Main stream media keeps avoiding it... too much money being made from oil co advertisers, I guess
http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/feds-charge-five-oil-speculators-mani

Fun Sculpture in Sebastopol, by artist Patrick Amiot:

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=5142768&l=e548ccc738&id=668098694

Taken with my Nikon D70, using a Tiffen Polarizing filter to increase color saturation.

Shallow Focus Works When Appropriate

I have seen way too many photos using a Photoshop plugin to create the illusion of a shallow depth of field. Especially overused in food photography, this trendy apparition calls attention to itself and distracts from the picture's content, in my opinion.
Some times it is really necessary, even essential, when stressing a certain portion of an object. I recently did this to accentuate the face of a thermometer which is rather small. I didn't need to use a filter or digital FX, just plain ol good technique made it possible. I used my Nikon D70, the usual 80-200 lens greatly zoomed in, a Bogen tripod and, the real secret, a fast shutter speed and a wide open aperture, which gives you the shallow depth. Mere physics!!
Here's the result:

Size Does Matter... in Photography!

In response to recent questions, I'd like to demonstrate why shooting stills at your camera's highest quality settings (and not necessarily raw) enables you to do very useful things.
In this example, a friend used her Canon Rebel EOS on an outing we made to Matanzas Creek winery to enjoy the lavender before it was all harvested. A passing stranger was willing to shoot a foursome of us, so we got this badly composed but very large image: 8.9mbs. So, I liked the way Kay and I looked, cropped it radically to make a photo appropriate for a mailing label, but even so, the finished image was nearly 400 kbs, a very usable size. Here are the images so you can see for yourself.

Original










Cropped:

Nikon D70 in the Garden

Here's a photo taken yesterday with my D70. Some tweaking on the highlights in iPhoto but the camera did most of the work. I am considering getting a D40 to use cause of its smaller size. The D70 is rather large. And I do miss a swing out LCD screen.

You can see the image on my Facebook page here:
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=4015356&l=fae925d85b&id=668098694


Adding a photo to one's website helps with Google crawlers too! So, enjoy the photo and consider getting out and shooting some roses of your own!!

This is NOT an Abandoned Blog!!

Despite several snarky comments (you know who you are) this site is alive and well.
Occasionally I have to earn a living, usually by producing new media for web distribution. Such has been the case recently. I can now say that my client, AAA of Northern CA, Nevada and Utah is happy with the final product, the video clips are running on their internal communication system and the DVD I made will be soon entertaining new employees. Now, time to sit back, have a brew or three and wait for the invoices to produce their desired results, which will allow me to do my small part for economic recovery.

In the spirit of the season, here's a sunflower to grace your comuter screens: