Fun ahead

Before I get on with the pictures, I have big news! I am headed to Bogalusa Louisiana to document a youth group as they rebuild houses that were destroyed by Katrina. It is a 9 day trip and i have full access while there. I met with the group leader today. I was shocked that he is only a year older than myself. Plus he is a really nice guy... I am nervous and excited at the same time. This is by far, the biggest story that I have worked on.

This is my desk. This is how I spent lots of last semester. I spend less time in the studio this semester. I am going to miss ths place come April...

Nikki and I were messing around in the studio. I want to practice my lighting with off-camera flashes. Most papers do lots of EVPs so I thought I should get better at it while I am still here.

Belleville Bulls # 33 Kevin Lalande stops the puck in the first period on the Valentines day game in Belleville. The Bulls lost 4-3 to Toronto St. Michael's Majors for their third loss in a row. Despite the recent loosing streak, the Bulls are still ranked #1 in the East division.

Going through change for the bus today I found this. Strange to see a 73 year old coin still in circulation.

Portable Lighting Kit Fun

Hmm lets see... I shot some basketball this weekend. Nothing new there. However I did use a floor plate to get some low angle shots. After a quick trip to Home Depot and $10, I had a nice floor plate. I even found some floral print cupboard liner here to put on it. I now have one of the most girlie floor plates in existence. After shooting that, John, Rob and Dario went to play in the studio. Below are some of what I shot. Basically I wanted to get some practice before my internship. I know that the star Phoenix runs a fair number of EVP's (Environmental Portraits) plus it gave me a chance to play more with my Pocket Wizards...



Who could this be?


Ahh it is our friend Rob the first year!
Here we have Dario pimping the latest in hair coverings, The "Cap."

A night out

So how do a group of photojournalists spend a night away from the battle? They go bowling of course! Do they leave their cameras at home? Heck no! Especially when one of them just acquired a set of 3 pocket wizard remotes...



For those non-photographers that read this blog. Pocket Wizards are radio triggers that I can attach to my camera and flashes. They allow me to either trigger my camera with out cables or trigger my flashes up to 1600 feet away. All with no wires. They have been proving to be quite fun. Best $650 ever!

Can't quit me

Sometimes the way you were brought up is with you forever. I am a problem solver... This will be with me always. I need to tinker.

Enter my newest challenge...

I downloaded the new iTunes. The main reason I switched was because before I came to school I ripped all my CD's so that I would have music while I was here. Well 30 gigs of music is hard to organize. iTunes is a perfect way to keep everything nice and sorted. Problem, I have limited space on my laptop. To fix that I have a 250 gig external drive. Problem, I only have 2 usb ports and they are taken up by my keyboard and mouse. So how can i listen to music and still retain my ease of typing? Simple. I found a device called the Liunksys NSLU2. It is a NAS storage device running Linux that you hook an external drive up to and then you can share the drive over a network.

Perfect! Only the thing costs $135. Enter Ebay. I just picked up a new small form factor computer. It has been hacked to run any flavor of linux and it currently has a version of DSL (Damn Small Linux) installed. The cool thing, it is running off a compact flash card. 50mb total OS install size. Damn nifty!

So long story short, I am going to install mt-daapd and use it as an iTunes server so I can share my music to all the computers on the network in the house.

Also, just to geek out even further, I found a program that allows me to control my laptop with my cell phone via bluetooth. It is basically a remote like the MacBook Pro's have. Wee!!