echodrift

Dear Blog

I’ve missed you. At least, I think I have. I haven’t quite figured it out yet but it makes me sad to think about how long it’s been. So long that I feel like I can’t just jump right back in, not that I had any particular rhythm going on before I stopped writing. I honestly don’t know why I did. There’s a lot of excuses I could come up with but they are pretty flimsy. I think of myself as a boring person and really, what do I have to write about? That’s been eating at me for a while. I think I’ve decided that it doesn’t really matter that I don’t have a niche (catchphrase!) or some other ulterior motive for having a blog.

What I do have is an enormous back log of photos that I’ve never done, well, anything with. So far 2012 has been rather photo barren, which is another thing that bugs me. So a (largely) unused blog, photos that need something doing with, and lacking motivation to take photos? (Though I can guarantee that the Wisconsin winter is at least partially to blame for few photos this year.) It all fits! The site is a bit of a shambles but I make no promises as to when everything will be fixed because the truth is it probably won’t ever be finished. That’s what happens when you have a lazy perfectionist. If such a thing exists, I am it. I’m going to stop apologizing for not writing, stop making promises that I know won’t be kept.

As everyone knows, the best use of a DSLR is to take photos of one’s cat(s). Can I just stop to say that I googled whether or not “one’s” should have an apostrophe in it? Because I did. Why? It just has to be right. I’m not lazy all the time! Ahem. Anyway, I have more than a few but not a ridiculous amount of cat photos. Here are some that are recent. All shot with my Nikon D90 and 50mm f/1.8.

Continue reading…

Poe’s box

Both of the cats have loved the boxes that are sitting around waiting for magic elves to start packing things. Who knows how they’ll react as more and more start piling up. Hopefully, those boxes will be full and the cats will be content to sit on top of the boxes rather than in them. I have a feeling our moving date is going to be here before I can turn around twice.

In which I geek out

So for those who don’t follow twitter, I got a new camera! The Nikon Rumors guy posted a tweet last Thursday that contained a promo code for Newegg. It was good for that day only for 10% of DSLR cameras (except for Sony). Out of curiosity I checked it out; when I saw what the final price would be on the Nikon D90 I felt like it was too good to pass up. I pondered for a bit, talked to my husband, and decided to buy it. I did hit a bit of a snag during checkout when it decided that the promo code was no good. A quick chat with their customer support cleared that up and the camera was mine! Well, it was this past Tuesday.

And what a camera it is. I have not had a whole lot of time to use it yet but so far I LOVE it. It feels right at home in my hands. There is a whole slew of features that are steps up from my previous camera. (I think the D60 may have found a home… with my husband. We still haven’t decided for sure.) The controls are much more easily accessed, making it so instead of having to dive into a couple of menus to change the shooting settings I can instead hold this button and turn that wheel the intended direction. Biggest feature for me (right now)? The focus motor. I know I have whined and whined (or at least brought it up many times) that I was very disappointed by the lack of a focusing motor in the D60. Basically, unless lenses were of a very specific type, the only option available was to manual focus and sometimes that just doesn’t work well for me. Now? I have it. I can use the 50mm that I bought a year and a half ago much more regularly.

There’s so much more that I could talk about and so much that I don’t know about it yet. But I am extremely excited and pleased with the little I have used it since I got it. One thing that is really bumming me out is the time change and ever shortening days. Even though I typically get home by 5:15 the sun is mostly gone. The local hills and mountains do not help with that. If it weren’t for one hill in particular I’m sure we’d have a little more daylight each day but my house is sort of in a little bit of a dip. As soon as I got home today I ran into the house to grab my camera and a telephoto lens that my sister is letting me borrow. It also requires a motor built in the camera to use auto focus so I wanted to see how well it works. I got the first shot in this post with it and this next one:

But it didn’t take long for the sun to go completely behind that pesky hill and I was left with little light. This is a different tree, if you were wondering. It’s one of the maples in front of our house that had some gorgeous yellow leaves but they are mostly gone now. (I’m pretty sure they’re maples.)

It was also getting cooler so after trying to take a few shots of the moon (will try that again later with a tripod) it was back inside.

One thing that I still feel like I’m missing with regard to photography is a good image editor. My trials of Lightroom, Elements, and Photoshop have all expired. While I know that there are, um, alternate sources to obtain these programs I am not going to do that. I want to have valid licenses and full rights to everything. Yesterday I downloaded GIMP to try out again. I have heard so many people say “It’s just like Photoshop!” that I thought maybe my first experience with it was just not long enough. However, I quickly found out that GIMP doesn’t have adjustment layers in the same way that Photoshop does. I am going to show my geek here again. I think typically there are two categories of editing: destructive and nondestructive. Destructive means manipulating the actual pixels of an image. If you need to undo a manipulation you have to undo all of the steps you have done since. Nondestructive editing allows you to change the image by using layers and other means, ones that don’t have to physically change the image. With layers you can hide them or unhide them to see the changes, go back and edit that one specific effect, use them at different strengths, and so forth. I have become very accustomed to being able to use adjustment layers for editing and I’m really not keen on learning new ways of doing that. I know the difference is GIMP = $0 while Photoshop = $600+ but I think it’s a big difference. Photoshop is the standard for a reason.

Until I can purchase Photoshop (or Lightroom; I can’t decide which one takes priority) I will stick with View NX and GIMP. I am also going to explore the custom picture controls that are available on the D90 itself. The quick glance I had at the retouching menu also looked pretty good. Again, I’m sad that daylight is practically gone by the time I have free time but I hope to make the most of my weekends and practice practice practice. I want to whip up a new design (which is sorely overdue) and possibly include a daily (or almost daily) photo page and use that to encourage me to get out and take photos.

However, until the sun stops setting at 5PM I think I’ll be moping like Mr. Poe here:

Photo Information; Camera: Nikon D90; Images #1-3 shot with the Nikkor 70-300mm G (non VR) @ 155mm and 105mm; Image #4 shot with Nikkor 50mm 1.8D)

Fur babies

I haven’t posted anything about my fur babies lately, have I. Except they aren’t really babies anymore. Poe especially is getting quite big. They decided to have some fun as I was making up the bed yesterday so I took some time out to play with them. I ended up with one good one of Midna, which is one more than I usually get, and several good ones of Poe.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I do not like WordPress’s image upload features. I’d rather do it manually, but then I miss out on the auto thumbnails and whatnot.

Little Poe-Poe

The other day I was playing with a theme and arranged my tags by size. It hit me that I’ve posted more about Midna than about Poe. So for today I have some Poe pictures!

Poe is definitely the larger of our two cats. He’s not exactly fat though we have switched them off of kitty formula food. Whenever he runs up and down the hall (which he does for absolutely no reason) you can hear THUMP THA THUMP THA THUMP as he goes by. He also likes to lie on his back with limbs sprawled in all direction. In fact, that’s probably what he was doing when I tried to take his picture. Cats have a habit of not doing what you want, though.

Both of them like to sit by the window. At our old apartment all of the windows were higher up where they couldn’t see out. This place, though, has larger windows that are only about 2 feet above the floor. We usually raise the blinds for them so they can, such as in the background of this picture. If we don’t, they usually nose their way behind the blinds and try to sit in the narrow sills. Poe had been looking out the window here but he either heard my camera or saw the strap dangling and came to investigate. If he wasn’t so curious I could get more pictures of them but they usually want to find out what it is I’m doing.

Oh yeah, that expression on his face? That’s what he looks like most of the time: o__o. It’s as if he’s constantly startled by everything.

Michael likes to say that Poe is more dog-like than cat-like. He farts, he likes to get into the trash, he likes to have is belly rubbed, and he chases his tail. I think that he doesn’t realize that his tail is actually attached to his body. It’s like he just sees if flipping around and decides that it’s something he needs to chase. And it’s not just his own tail. If Midna happens to be walking by he’ll attack her tail sometimes too.

As for the title… Poe is a really short name. It’s much easier to call him using two syllables instead of one so I usually call him Poe-Poe. Of course, he’s not so little now but that’s why it’s funny.