Has the bar for Palin been set so low that not screwing up is now equated with doing well? There was this sort of collective stunned silence at the end of this debate (figuratively, not literally) as everyone realizes that Palin didn’t make any major gaffes. Is mediocrity the underlying theme of this ticket: McCain/Palin - we won’t screw up as bad!

Look at her answers closely: she rarely left her very narrow comfort zone; she dodged question after question; her speech was filled with repetitive phrases obviously drilled into her by the McCain camp. America has to wake up and realize that this isn’t an episode of America’s Top Model or Dancing with the Stars; this is our countries future. We’ve had 8 years of “Maverick” policies, and I’m scared that McCain is triumphant in the fact that he’s fought both Democrats and his own party. “Not a Team Player”, anyone? Doing your own damn thing and not working with anyone is in no way bipartisan….it’s….like, unpartisan, or something.

I’m very very scared.

And Serendipity. We’re moving, as you are all aware of by now, and so selling the house has been a big worry for the both of us. Especially me. I’ve put a lot of work into that house, but being an amateur and perfectionist at the same time, I see all the mistakes I’ve made (which are glaringly obvious to me) and it turns my stomach just thinking about people walking through the house, seeing all my mistakes and just leaving in disgust. Well, I was loading up one of the PODS yesterday when a lady came walking down the street, she noticed the PODS (how could you not, the things are monstrosities). She approached me and asked if I was selling the house, to which I answered affirmatively. She then told me that she lived just down the road and about her mother who is looking to move to Bartlesville to be closer to her grandchildren. I told her the price we were asking which ended up being within her mothers’ price range. A beaming smile on my face at this point, I invited her inside for a tour. She was impressed. And I could not have been happier. So her mother is coming next Friday to look at the house herself, so me and Carleen are making a mad dash effort to get the house prettified before she shows up.

I could not have received better news. I haven’t slept well in a week thinking about selling this house. I got a terrific nights sleep last night.

I’m getting some nice tonal range here but now my only beef is my clarity, these shots are all just a bit blurry - even though I was shooting at a fairly high shutter speed. I’m shooting for either a 50mm (cheap) or 85mm (bit more expensive). My other complaint with my current lens is the lowest f/stop is 4.5 - I’m missing about 3 stops or range and it’s killing me. Both the 50mm and 85mm go down to about 1.8 which would be great - I’m finding myself wanting to stop down more and more to blur the background to separate my subject, but I’m very limited in that regard. Tack that onto my current shopping list of equipment.

I was pointed to a great website: Strobist by my friend Josh recently, as such, I’m looking to pick up a decent flash unit and and try some studio work. I’m looking at a Vivitar 285HV. It’s a workhorse, a powerful flash, and almost totally manual, which is all that I’ll need once I can get the flash off the camera (tripods, cords/Pocket Wizards, umbrellas - $$). Anyway, hopefully within a few months you’ll be seeing some studio style shots from me - I’m looking forward to it!

I can’t remember what I was trying to show in the above shot - but I got this from a long series of pre-flashes as the camera tried to get focus and evaluate the scene. Flash in your face + night time = seriously burned retinas.

You can tell I had fun, and that was the point.

Note: the next Photo of the Week will probably be coming to you from my parents computer in NY, as we’re going up for a visit at the end of this week. It’ll be nice to get a change of scenery.

I love “old stuff” like this. I really like old barns filled with lots of rusty farm machinery. I should be able to find one of those around here if I try.

I’ve noticed all my photos are pretty weak on contrast, I can get my shadows where I like them, but my highlights are either washed out or muddy any photoshop tips/hints in that direction? It could be a setting on my camera as well, I’ll have to check that out. Anyway, here they are:

This is a hat that’s been sitting in a chair in our sunroom for weeks. Yup. It’s a hat.

This is the base of a lamp post in downtown near the Philips Petroleum building. It’s a nice area that I had never really walked through, I’d like to revisit it at night sometime (once I get a tripod).

I love chipping paint photos, but again, I wish the white could have been a bit whiter.

This weeks batch was actually very difficult. First I had to weed out all the Liam pics, which proved to be my best stuff of that batch. Then I had to filter out three from the rest. I was really digging a lot of the ones I took this week, making it difficult to choose three.

This one was tough, since Liam was right there with me, so I was trying to spin the (what do you call those things?) thing around without whacking him in the face. I would have liked to have gotten another shot at this pic, but it was a no go.

Edward Weston in the house! This one is very evocative of the work of Edward Weston - my all-time favorite photographer. Of course, he was using a Large Format camera (Quick Aside: the Large Format class I took in school ruined photography for me. I LOVED L/F so much that once out of that class, I really couldn’t go back to 35mm. The amount of control and clarity you get with L/F is astounding.) so he really has the advantage on me.

Why is this interesting to me? I don’t know. Some workers are gutting the elementary school’s heating and a/c units and this was a shot of some kind of….part.

Well what do you think?

This was a tough choice, but I really did like this one the best out of the ones I shot today (more below, for comparison) I’m experimenting with some built in filters in my camera - one that tints the B/W to be a slight blue color, and another that adjusts the contrast. I really like the look of the blue and I’ll probably experiment a bit with that. Here’s some other favorites: