Devauld.ca

Photography, like all great hobbies, isn't something of which you can master every aspect. Back when I used to have more free time, I would peruse other people's photography seeing what I liked and what I didn't in order to improve my craft. It has been a long time since I took the time to check out all the submissions on PhotoFriday that were submitted before mine, so today I decided to examine each of the one hundred and fifty one entries before my own.

I'll open up with my top 5:

• This picture is an excellent portrait. Catch lights in the eye and nothing distracting in the background make this a great example of a portrait.
• This picture I picked out for my favorites more because of the subject and tone than the technical aspects. I would have liked to see a little more of the shadowed side of the face, but the child's expression and the fact that she's wearing a life preserver make it stand out from the rest.
• This picture is obviously a studio shot. The muslin background, and the costume (I can't see her wearing that day-to-day) make for a very professional look.
• This picture is amazing. The lighting is excellent as is the tone of the picture. The subject/model looks to be in deep thought, and the picture speaks volumes. The only thing I would change is the music that plays on the site!
• This picture is a very human shot. I can't help but get drawn into the guy's expression wondering what was going on at that moment. The composition and large white space also make it stand out from the crowd.

I also have to mention this picture, because it too is an excellent photograph. It doesn't exactly look like a portrait per se, but more of an artistic peice. Perhaps I'm getting a little too anal.

With each week's challenges, you always find a couple of pictures that completely missed that mark. Let me help

por·trait (pôr'trĭt, -trāt', pōr'-) n.
  1. A likeness of a person, especially one showing the face, that is created by a painter or photographer, for example.

No mention of cotton or out of focus billboards anywhere. I always found this trend troubling, wondering if the internet was breeding a new type of ignorance, but as it turns out it may be manufactured to drive up traffic. Well, I guess I fell for it.

I was pleased to find out that this week's PhotoFriday challenge was Portrait. I had just spent some time messing about with bounce flash, and since I can very rarely find a willing subject I used myself.

It's really hard to judge or rate a picture of yourself. Unless you are massively narcissistic, most people judge their own likeness in pictures rather hard. I've been told one reason is that we aren't used to seeing ourselves this way, as it is an exact representation of how the world sees us, and not a mirror reflection. Things being backwards must mess with the mind.

Out of the masive pile of pictures I now have of myself, I convinced my inner voice that this one was the best of the crop. The shadowing adds a lot of depth to my face. Given the chance to do it again, I would put a reflector on the shadowed side to reduce the contrast of the shadow against the lit side of my face. I also monotoned the picture, and added a little grain trying to make the picture look a little more antique.

It had finally reached a point that I could no longer take the abuse it was giving me. My computer, with a mind of its own, would occasionally pop up a virus notification within Microsoft's Internet Explorer. I was alarmed by these particular events, because within whatever means I have, I will avoid IE like the plague.

I knew I had a bug, and it was entrenched deep. For a few weeks I entertained the idea that the Trojan upon my machine was benign, and the worst it could do was annoy me with it's frequent advertisements. It wasn't until after I had decided to remove the bug that I found how deeply it was rooted.

I'd like to think that I'm somewhat of a knowledgeable user, and I can remove the occasional occurance of malicious software from my machine. In this case, I was wrong.

A fortnight of safe mode checks, and registry edits and I could not find why IE was telling me that I needed friends, pills to make my cock bigger, a larger line of credit and a new anti-virus software. My normal routine of checking my e-mail was not yet disturbed, so thus far this wasn't a problem. That was, until the parasite on my machine placed a monitoring device on my system, and was installing other trojans and spyware from a remote server.

The rest of my evening progressed like this

• 8:15 - Finish all important backups, boot with Windows XP CD
• 8:35 - I'm allowed to pick a partition, and set the clock and timezone
• 8:45 - Windows stops copying systems files long enough to ask me what my Workgroup is going to be.
• 8:55 - I'm given 15 seconds to watch a countdown, or I can just reboot my computer right now
• 8:59 - The last romp through networking configuration wasn't enough, now XP wants to know if I'm using DHCP or not...
• 9:27 - Windows crunches for quite some time, then tells me that I need to reboot, or I won't be able to use my networking
• 9:30 - Windows has restarted, and I still don't have networking. I plug in my little USB key, and start installing my SATA drivers
• 9:34 - After watching the damn machine unpack a file for about five minutes, It tells me that this particular driver isn't certified by M$FT, "Would you like to continue?"
• 9:37 - I can access my second hard disk, and start to install Norton. You can't be too careful on the internet these days.
• 9:56 - Norton has decided my machine is clean, I grab the network drivers off the USB key
• 10:02 - It's the millionth time I've rebooted this peice. Now I can get on the internet
• 10:04 - Immediately grab FireFox

In the end, a clean installation of Windows is like sliding into a clean pair of underwear. It's good to know that you've hit a level of freshness. Although, this particular freshness can only be obtained through a painful voyage through the ghost in the shell.

Standing on the OS soapbox, I wondered aloud why it has to be this complicated. It took me, a person who knows his way around a keyboard, almost two hours to install enough software so my machine can get on the internet without contracting a virus. How in the world is the average computer user supposed to be able to pull this off effectively. I could have just made some sort of LiveCD, but I'm hoping to use this rig for some games in the future.

The average user is not only unaware that they need to re-install windows on a semi-annual basis, but furthermore, most wouldn't even know where to start. Are we not the most intelligent beings on the planet? Why do we subject ourselves to suffering from a device of our own creation?

I'm starting to get a flavour for wanderlust, to see if some sort of alternative to this pain can be found.

This past weekend, was an excellent example of why we shouldn't have to work.

Jesse was celebrating his 24th trip around the Sun, so it was decided that we would go out to the Indian Graves campsite, set up camp, and have ourselves some fun. Five o'clock on Friday could not come fast enough.

I was packed the night before, as were the rest of the hooligans, and we made it out of Calgary reasonably on time, considering the size of the group. It's a pretty good trek out to the campsite, and we made it in decent time. It wasn't long and I had stamped the grass down for my tent, and filled it with the comforts I would require for the weekend. As soon as the necessities were taken care of, we started in on the fun. Some food, some drink, and music were in order for the first night.

I've never been camping with a more musical group. Of our party four people brought and played guitars, and one hand drum circled around the campfire. It was an excellent way to spend the evening, and there was a special charm in the air, because Jesse's birthday present was a beautiful acoustic guitar.

Saturday, most of the day was spend sitting in the creek running along side the campsite, and staying in the shade under the tarp playing some cribbage. Twasn't long, and we were up to our eyeballs in poker, as well as excurisions into the forest for more wood.

Before I knew it the weekend was almost over, my belly distended from eating too much, and I was tearing down my tent to return to the concrete jungle.

I was surprised for find out that today, July 20th, is National Lollipop Day. I was a little skeptical at first, so I did a little looking, and sure enough the American National Confectioners Association has a pile of holidays lined up throughout the year for our favorite treats. It a good thing I found out, because we're only a week away from Milk Chocolate day, and I would have hated to miss it.

I started thinking that it would be nice if everyday is a holiday. Letting my fingers do the walking, I found at every day is a holiday. Being very pleased that there are two Video Game days a year, and that whole weeks are dedicated to laughter and lasagna I felt good knowing that I'll have a reason to smile just about every day.