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Archives for April 2009

Shooting Daffodils

2009/04/21 By Rob 2 Comments

I like daffodils. I’ve been planting a couple hundred additional bulbs each fall, so that now I have a lovely spring-time display, right around this time.

In past years I would walk through the garden and take a photo here and there, mainly while standing, shooting straight down, not paying particular attention to the lighting or the composition. Flower “mug shots” I’d call them. Then last year, I started doing macro (close-up) photography. Although the results were technically adequate — sharp, detailed closeups — they were…well… rather dull, symmetrical and artless.

This year I’ve decided to try something different. I realized that a flower can be posed like a person. I guess that is obvious in retrospect, but it never occurred to me before that the poses of classical portraiture, like the 2/3 view, over-the-shoulder, profile view, etc., apply to flowers as well as people. And you don’t need to show all of the flower. A close up of part of it can also be interesting.

I’ve also worked to improve my technique, shooting with a tripod and remote trigger, using the McClamp to steady and isolate the blossoms in the field, using small erapertures to get greater depth of field, locking the mirror up before shooting to reduce any residual camera shake, shooting on days and at times where harsh shadows can be avoided, etc.

Here are three examples, intimate portraits, all shot on location in my garden. You can view more on my Flickr page.

Daffodil

Daffodil

Daffodil

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Filed Under: Photography Tagged With: Daffodils, Macro Photopgraphy, Narcissus

A Time for Decision

2009/04/13 By Rob 1 Comment

April 15th is Tax Day in the United States, the day by which we must file our income tax returns for 2008 and pay any balance due.

The day before, April 14th, is also a day of reckoning, with another outstretched hand asking for our money. This is the day which marks the end of “mainstream support” for Microsoft Windows XP and Office 2003. After this date, licensed owners of these products will no longer receive free support and updates.

Depending on how consumers respond, one of three things will result from this end of life.

  1. Users migrate to Vista/Office 2007
  2. Users stay on unsupported Microsoft products for the near term and wait for Windows 7/Office 14 to come out in 2010.
  3. Users take the opportunity to evaluate the available alternatives, including open source.

Since Windows XP is the most widely-deployed version of Windows, and Windows is the most-widely deployed operating system in the world, many licenses will be up for grabs as IT shops decide what to do next. Especially in these tough economic times, upgrading to Vista just to see Vista become obsolete in less than a year doesn’t make sense. But neither does remaining on an unsupported version of Windows.

This is a significant opportunity for alternatives, such as Linux and other open source applications, to increase their representation on the desktop. We should spend the next nine months making it especially easy for Microsoft’s seemingly unwanted and expendable Windows XP and Office 2003 customers to migrate to better alternatives. The Windows/Office release calendar and economic conditions have combined to make this a huge upgrade cycle. In 2010 almost everyone will be looking to upgrade. An opportunity like this does not come every year. Let’s make the most of it!

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Filed Under: Open Source Tagged With: Linux, Windows

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