Devauld.ca

This weekend was a lot of fun. Friday night started out with The Canucks first and second divisions being pitted against the Saracens. We lost our game, but we played hard. I know because I felt like hell the next morning.

Saturday was very relaxed, and I love the weekends where you don't feel like you have to do anything, or rush anywhere and you get a great deal of stuff accomplished. I managed to get a good deal of things knocked off my ToDo list, and was able to be mellowed out throughout the day. Sunday was a lot like Saturday, with me just puttering until I was finished, and then thinking about what I needed to get done next.

This morning came quick, and I find myself sitting at my desk, wishing again it was Sunday. Pretty much Par for the course. Vu did navigate us out to the sketchy edge of town (read: Forest Lawn) for some of the most excellent Viet food I've ever had. Ordered in the native toungue, the soup definitely made my metabolism go through the roof. Now I'm going to get back to arranging ones and zeros

I took a trip in the way back machine to satisfy this week's PhotoFriday challenge. This is back to my days of film, and was taken when I was out on a day trip put on by the Land Rover people. The Land Rovers were nice, but this bad boy came out with business in mind. All I could think about when I saw it was how fun it would be to bad through the mud.

A while ago, Mike and I were talking about how much cash we've spent on photographic equipment over the past year. The number, of course, was quite staggering. At the time, I was numb to the idea, but later it hit me that I needed a company that I could use to write off photographic expenses that I was already incurring.

Mike and I did a little brainstorming, and from there DR Photography was born. We've been pushing the business up over the last few weeks, which adds to my already hectic schedule, but I believe that our online presence is ready to be seen by the world

The Website was all developed 'in house' (which mean we did it all ourselves), and I'm rather impressed with the final result. The site is so Web 2.0 it hurts. Fading effects, reflective logos, gradients and a surprising lack of words all help make this spot on the web look like it's ready for the future. For those of you plaing buzzword bingo, it's a JavaScript supported front end with Rails, fcgi, MySQL backend. I'm allergic to Flash and all the cross platform, installation headaches it brings, so that's why I didn't use it. Everything on this site is pure, and will run on all browsers with default security settings.

Now that the fun stuff is done, we're looking at a little more procurement of equipment, and scheduling some time every week to practice our craft. We were going to do it anyway, we might as well try to make some money at it.

My days have been filled. I've been working, beyond my hours that TheMan® requires that I work, upon a project that I can't tell you about until my partner in crime agrees upon some choices that I've made.

All is not lost, however; I can provide you with entertainmant that blew me away. The first time I saw David Elsewhere, I wondered if what I saw was real. I've since come to learn that this man really moves like that.

The first Wednesday of every month, I try to hone my photographic craft by attending the meetings of the Calgary Photographic Society. The meeting is usually broken down into two distinct parts: The first is a guest speaker, and the second is the print competition.

The guest speaker has a lot of latitude about what they wish to talk about. Everything from how they got started in the business, through Photoshop techniques to a sampling of slides that were taken over 15 years in the jungle have been shown to the members that attend each month.

This session we were blessed with a lady who loves her temples. After several trips to India photographing everything between the gates, and the large lagoons she pulled together a slide show that was very interesting and at the same time instilled in me a great desire to once again travel the world.

The second half of the montly meetings are always wrought with drama. There is a few members of the society, that I'm sure, hate each other. You can't buy this sort of entertainment, as individuals stand at arms over arguments as trivial as whether or not the colours being reflected by the water are a strong reflection. Attacks are always veiled, and I'm sure most have forgotten their battles by the time they've had their second after the meeting beer. Regardless, it makes for a good time.

As usual the photographs that the members produced were phenomenal, and made me wish I was a better photographer. I submitted the attached photo for the themed competition of: reflections. Some liked the picture, because it draws you towards the reflection before anything else in the photo, whereas others thought the upper left could have been less exposed, and I could have cropped it better (I don't think so, try to crop this tighter, and get something that doesn't make the nose look funny).

In the end, the three judges scored me a 7.6, which ties my personal best within the society. A special thanks to Mark for being my guinea pig helping me out.