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.

This cat. This cat. He is huge. He snores, unfortunately not loud enough for my phone to record it very well but it’s hilarious. Sometimes I can hear him over the TV. I think he loves nothing more than to hear the crinkle of paper (usually fast food wrappings) and play fetch with them. Yes, he will wait for us to throw it, go play with it a bit, drop it at our feet, then look at us and let out a hoarse “meow” and wait for us to throw it again. I love him.

Now that I have distracted you with cute cat photos, about that unintended 7 month (ish) break. I’m really not sure what to say. Not much happened. The things that did happen I’m not even sure how to categorize so I’ll just list them in chronological order. More or less. I’ve dyed my hair red and not taken any photos of it. My husband spent 5 weeks working out of town and got shorted on his compensation. One of two expected babies arrived in October, the second is due in March. (I’m still not sure how much to talk about family because I’m not sure how they or I feel about it. This is not me saying that I’m expecting this March.) I worked for exactly 90 days as a freelance newborn photographer. It didn’t work out, and not because of the newborns themselves. I’m currently not working and I’m not sure how I feel about that, either. I still dislike our apartment but we haven’t made any decisions about what we’ll do come May 31. There’s a lot that could happen between now and then. Yes, I’m being vague. I’ve played a lot of too much Skyrim. I’ve read… some but not as much as I’d like. I have an issue with picking up books and not putting them down until they’re finished.

Those last two items show me that I definitely have issues with managing my productivity. As in I’m not very productive. I didn’t make any actual resolutions this year but if I needed to pick on one thing to work on, productivity seems to be the thing to choose.

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.

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)

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.

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.

First the cats encountered the dogs— through the glass door. My mom has two dogs that run loose most of the time. The cats had already had a tiny run in with them when we carried them inside the night before. What this picture doesn’t show is how much Midna arched her back and bushed her tail out after seeing the dog. Since they were running around the back of the house we decided to take the cats out to the front. What we didn’t count on was my mom’s dogs running to the front of the house as quick as they did.

As you can see, Poe was not amused. We hadn’t brought Midna out yet so he was the only one that got to experience the dogs up close. (That is, until one of them got inside the house the next day. That made both of the cats run downstairs and stay there for a good while.) See, not only is Poe not amused about the dogs he really didn’t like the whole outside experience. At. All. He wasn’t quite as bad as Minda who wanted to bury herself in our laps or run under the steps but he didn’t seem to enjoy it at all.

On Monday my mom suggested that we go hiking at a nearby park. I’ve been to this park several times but never on the trail she wanted to go on. So off we went to climb this ridge. And a climb it was. They’ve made it fairly accessible but there were some pretty steep parts. I took several photos that I’ll be posting on 365 this week so look out for those.

This is what we were treated with at the end (rather, the midpoint) of our hike. Sadly it was a rather hazy day so the mountains didn’t show up all that well. I think if I were ever to move farther away from this area the mountains are one of the things I’d miss the most.

After a short break we headed back down. The trip down was considerably shorter than the trip up. Maybe because my mom and I stopped less to take pictures but maybe because of two incidents we had. The first happened when we stopped for a minute to rest. My mom thought she felt something crawling on her neck but then realized that there was a HUGE hornet on her leg. Maybe it wasn’t a hornet but it was large and definitely looked like it could sting. That certainly shortened our break and off we went again. It wasn’t long, though, before she started yelling and pushing me off the side of the trail. At first I couldn’t figure out what was going on until I saw this:

Believe me, when I saw that I started screaming as well. My mom thought it was a copperhead but when we showed the pictures to some family they said it was a rattlesnake. Whichever the case it’s still a snake and likely poisonous. Michael had walked right by it on the other side of the path but it was between us and our way forward. My mom and I walked very slowly off to the side and managed to get around it. Her pictures were probably better since she had her telephoto lens; you can bet I wasn’t going to try to get closer for a better picture! Once we were past it we definitely walked a bit faster and kept a sharper eye out for any more snakes.

Midna still does not like baths. At. All. True, she likes to hop in the shower when the door is open and play in the tub when no water is running but as soon as Michael put her in the water she ran to the back and started meowing like crazy. I had to leave the room because her meowing was so pitiful I couldn’t stop laughing. I also couldn’t help laughing when Michael handed her to me to be dried. When he saw this picture he said that she has a look that says “Just wait until you sleep. Then you die.”

Poe takes his baths a little more stoically. He’s more used to them though as we’ve had to give his feet quite a few washings. However, it seems that he’s learning to not step in his poo so he’s been getting fewer of those. Instead of clawing and running around like Midna does he just kinda sits there and meows occasionally. His fur is also different from Midna’s so he doesn’t look quite as pitiful as she does. This picture, though, is just too funny. I think he looks a little traumatized.

They seem to be doing very well. Midna still likes going everywhere. As soon as a door is opened within her hearing she comes running to see what’s going on. I think she’s also picking up on the sound of car keys. We’ll need to be careful with that one. They’re both doing well with using the litter box though Poe can’t seem to keep his feet clean. Poor guy has had a bath a day or more, even. Hopefully it’s just because he’s young. I hope to get them to the vet soon to arrange for them to be spayed and neutered when the time comes. I certainly don’t want to be giving away any kittens!