Doing what you love

Posted by Paul on September 25, 2011
Posted in: Personal. Tagged: .

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I must say that I am very fortunate to have picked a career, software development, that I really love. It’s made for a very cool 27 years of work experience. Of course, if I were to pick something else to do, it would probably be photography.

I met the gentleman pictured here at the Farmer’s Market, yesterday. He’s not a farmer, that I know of, he’s a craftsman. I only spent a few moments with him as I saw him doing work on this etching for one of his customers.
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When I walked over, I focused on him and he stood up and smiled. I asked him to continue his work, as I wanted to get a photo of him doing what he likes to do. That led to a short conversation about work. He said that he was a Certified Public Accountant for 20 or so years, but he felt ‘trapped’. He decided to quite, change his lifestyle, and carve wood for living, which is what he does now. I love those kinds of stories.

He asked me: Do you love photography? I said: Yes, sir! He said: Do you think about it all of the time. I said: From the time I get up until the time that I go to sleep! He said: I’ll bet you’re really good at it, too. I said: I suppose I am, thank you. :)

I asked him how long he’d been working with wood: “Since I was a boy. My dad was a carpenter and I’ve always liked to work with wood!”. So, there you have it, a lifelong dream fulfilled.

Although I spent only a few moments with him, I was glad to have met him. I think that I’ll see him again when I make back to the market. Perhaps I’ll even find a piece of his work that I’d like to own.

I love it when it happens!

Posted by Paul on September 24, 2011
Posted in: Personal, Photography. Tagged: , .

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Fresh and yummy!
I’ve lived in Charlotte since June of 2004. I heard about the Farmer’s Market when I first got here and made myself a promise that ‘one day’ I would go to the market and pick up some things. Well, time has a way of marching on and when I woke up this morning, Saturday, September 24th, I decided that today is the day that I go to the market!

I looked outside and it was dreary and rainy. I decided that that wouldn’t stop me today. I was going! I got dressed, grabbed my camera, and headed out the door. I found the market easily. It’s about 20 minutes from my home. When I pulled in I noticed the four large areas housing various vendors. As I parked my car, the devil began beating his wife. That is from a saying that when it raining and the sun shining, it means that the devil is beating his wife. :) I wonder what she did to make him mad. LOL.

Anyway, on with the story. I headed into the nearest area where I saw all kinds of fruits, vegetables, herbs, spices, etc. You name it. They had it. I took a few pictures, bought some apples and some kale, took a few more pictures, and walked around a bit. I was conflicted. Take pictures or shop? Kind of hard to do both. I was about to take the little stuff that I had to the car and stopped at Bill’s stall. I found out his name a bit later. I’ll tell you how. Bill had a nice watermelon cut open with a knife sticking in it. I thought that that would make a nice ‘Farmer’s Market’ photo, personifying the market. You know fresh produce and all that. The nice thing here is that most everything is available to sample! I tasked some good apples, today.

As I took the photo of the watermelon and the knife, I hear someone from my right say:

Well, now that you took the picture you have to buy some!
~Marsha

I turned around this lady, who introduced herself as Marsha let me know that Bill, the owner of this stall, had the best peaches, tomatoes, onions, and watermelon of anyone out here and that she should know because she’s been coming out here for 20 years or so, every Saturday! :)
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I introduced myself and asked her where I could find some ginger. She said: I’ll show you where to get ginger from if you promise to buy something from Bill. I told her that I had already planned to. She led me to the ginger. I got some fresh ginger for $5.00 for the bunch. Lots of ginger complete with stalks and leaves. The lady who sold it even told me how to prepare it, store it, and make tea with it. Nice! I then made good on my promise to purchase something from Bill: Peaches, tomatoes, and onions. I had to make a trip to the car to store my bounty.

When I came back, Marsha was waiting for me. She took me around to all of her favorite vendors, from those selling herbs all the way to those selling organic mushrooms and grass-fed beef, neither of which I purchased … today. I saw a good looking brisket that I think that I may have to purchase next time around.

I even stopped by her son’s booth to purchase some fresh cilantro. Next, we headed into the arts and crafts barn where I got to see some impressive hand-made crafts. I even bought a couple of baskets to store my onions and potatoes. Now they won’t look so out of place hanging out on the counter.

As I type this I am brewing some ginger leaf tea and am quite satisfied with the rye bread, goat cheese, and tomato sandwich that I had, all made with stuff that I bought from the market. The home baked rye bread is delicious as are the tomatoes and the fresh goat cheese with four kinds of peppercorns! Yumm!

Well, Harris Teeter, sorry to have to let you go, but from now on, I’ll be buying my fruits and veggies from the Farmer’s Market. The prices are better, the people are cool, I can get stuff that’s in-season and not trucked across the country, and there are many photographic opportunities to be had.

As for what it is that I love … I love to meet friendly new people who just love to have a conversation with a complete stranger. I would imagine that if I go to the market every week to get my stuff that I’ll be running into Marsha again. That was cool! I think that, even though it took me a long time to get there, I picked just the right day to go!

A bit of sunshine is what I needed, I guess

Posted by Paul on September 21, 2011
Posted in: Photography. Tagged: , .

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A bit of sunshine

I looked at my blog and saw that the last time that I posted was about a week ago, on the 15th. It happens every once in a while. I just don’t have anything to say. This also coincided, almost to the day, the last time that I had taken any photos. That is unusual. I usually take at least a picture or two.

The last 10 days, it seems, have been unseasonably cool, and, for this area, atypically cloudy. I’m used to abundant sunshine and at most, partly cloudy skies. This morning was no different. It was cloudy, slightly warm, and rainy. The balance of the day held the same. However, sometime around 6:20 PM, the sun decided to make a cameo appearance, just for a few moments. Fortunately, at the time I was taking Hobbs out for his ‘break’. I noticed this little bit of landscaping, felt that it fit the mood, and took a photo.

The sun did a quick dart behind the clouds again played hide and seek, mostly hide, for the next hour or so until sunset. That was it.

Oh well, at least I got a peak. Tomorrow’s forecast? Cloudy and rainy. :)

Photowalk 2011

Posted by Paul on September 15, 2011
Posted in: Photography. Tagged: .

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I attended my first Worldwide Photowalk in July of 2009, in Charleston, SC. I didn’t attend the one in Charlotte last year; however, I do intend to walk this year on October 1st.

The only question that I have this year, is which one to attend. Within a ‘reasonable’ driving distance, of say about 2 hours, I have my choice of Charlotte, Greenville, SC, Asheborro, NC (NC Zoo walk), Asheville, NC, or Spartanburg, SC. So many choices.
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I think though, that this year, I’ll skip Charlotte and head over to Greenville, SC. Quite frankly, I love that downtown area. It’s build for meeting, greeting, and mingling. It’s a beautiful town.

I first went to Greenville on January 6, 2008, with my friend Stephen, who introduced me to the place. Since then, I’ve been back several times, taken different friends, and love to photograph the place. Both of the photos in this post are from that inaugural visit.

Even though the walk starts at 8:00 AM, I think that I’ll be in attendance, which means that I will need to leave home at about 6:00 AM to get there on time.

Anyone else planning on doing any of the photo walks?

Only one cat behind!

Posted by Paul on September 14, 2011
Posted in: Techy Stuff. Tagged: .


Crossing to a new OS

Generally, I’m not one to upgrade just to upgrade; however, on occasion, I’ll make an exception so as not to get too far behind the curve. I noticed that Apple had an upgrade to the operating system. They are going from Snow Leopard to Lion. Well, I’m still on Leopard. :)

A couple of weeks ago, I ordered Snow Leopard, which was released on August 28, 2009, and it finally came in the mail on Monday, taking nearly a full two weeks to get here. So, this weekend, I’ll do a backup of my system, a little cleaning, and then install Snow Leopard. “Everyone” says that I should do a clean install, though the update works just fine.

I remember doing Windoze upgrades of the operating system and found that they never worked and I mean NEVER, for me. I always ended up doing a clean install and then reinstalling all of my programs, only to find out that some of them didn’t work with the new OS.

Early reports of Snow Leopard, when it came out, had some compatibility issues, but those applications have since upgraded, so it should be fine. It has been out there for a while.

I’ve been reading reviews about Lion, but think that I’ll hold off on that one until perhaps the next cat makes an appearance. :) For now, I guess I’ll remain one cat behind.

Anyone upgrade to Snow Leopard or Lion?

King Camera

Posted by Paul on September 13, 2011
Posted in: Photography. Tagged: .

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Edited in King Camera

As you know, I’ve become quite enamored with the capabilities of the iPhone 4′s camera. I think, though, more than that, I’ve become impressed with the application offerings and their low cost. At between $0.99 and $4.99 it makes them well within reach of most anyone, certainly more in reach than $299, or even $69.95 for that matter; however, that is not comparing, as they say, apples to apples.

In my trials of various applications, I have come across two of them that I really like:

1. Hipstamatic – which I mentioned here.
2. King Camera

I’ve been using King Camera for a few months, now and have come to really like it for ‘straight’ shots. That is, shots not like Hipstamatic where the camera adds all kinds of cool retro effects, but more for the straight shot.
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King Camera has a number of features that I like, most of them having noting to do at all with the camera, but having to do with post processing right in the camera. The camera itself, though, does have a nice 9 section grid, allowing you to get some good composition and alignment. This is especially helpful when shooting buildings, trees, or horizons where alignment might be important.

Photodesk
Photodesk is the image editing portion of the application. From here, you can see all of the photos that you’ve taken with KC. Simply tapping on a photo will bring up 3 options around the image, denoted by a “Q”, a “P”, and an “i”.
Q
The Q takes you into QuickMatik mode, where you can apply a number of preset adjustments to your photo for color, monochrome, grunge, and various themes.
P
The “P” takes you to ProMatik mode which allows you to make individual adjustments for white balance, exposure, saturation, vignetting, soft focus, cropping, and borders. Mix and match to your heart’s content!
i
The “i” gives you information about what changes you made to the photo as well as EXIF data and GPS information about where the photo was taken.

Any modified photo will remain in KC’s library, unless you export it to your normal camera roll. There is a sharing feature that allows you to share your photos directly to: Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Dropbox, or e-mail, or any combination of them at the same time!

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The image at the top of this post was modified using ProMatik, or “P”. I made changes in contrast, slight exposure changes, and a small amount of cropping.

In general, this is my go-to camera when using the iPhone! If you haven’t tried it, you might want to invest the $1.99!

Time between flights

Posted by Paul on September 11, 2011
Posted in: Personal. Tagged: .

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I was sitting in the Atlanta airport on Thursday morning waiting for my connection to Akron. I was dressed appropriately for Charlotte weather. I had on shorts, a t-shirt, and sandals. It was quite comfortable. When I sat down in the terminal in Atlanta, I noticed that it was very cold in the terminal. So, I sought out a place to get warm. Fortunately, there are lots of windows in the Atlanta airport, some of them facing east.

I moved to a seat next to the the window where I could feel the heat from the sun radiate through that same window, watch the planes come and go, and get a bit warmer. After I had sat at the window for a short while a couple came up and sat in the seats opposite me, for the same reason. They commented that they were from Oregon and had been in Atlanta for about a week and it just so happened that this week had been a bit chilly, about the same as what they would get in Oregon, save for one really hot day in the 90′s and another moderate day in the upper 70′s.

We sat and talked about the differences between Atlanta, GA and Portland, OR, both of them saying that they wouldn’t mind living in Georgia. We also talked about NASCAR, as I noticed that her husband had on a NASCAR had emblazoned with the number “3″, Dale Earnhardt, his favorite driver.

It was fun to watch the conversation between this couple. They seem like they had been married for quite a while and it was easy to see who was in charge. She, at one point, chided him for his selection of clothes, saying that he had to have the most flamboyant and mismatched clothes in the airport. He had on a NASCAR had, a college football t-shirt, and his carry-on bag had a baseball theme. Truly a man ready for most any sport. Also, the colors didn’t match. :) He simply, smiled, shrugged his shoulders, and said: Big deal. We’re traveling home. We’re not going out to a fancy restaurant! I liked his style! LOL I was able to share pictures from my NASCAR experience with them. We all got a laugh out of that. They loved the photo of the ‘lady’ flipping the bird to one of the drivers.

Eventually, she told him to go find a restroom and use it because it was almost time to board the plane. He did as he was told. Further, she added: If you find one of those smoking rooms, make sure you make it back, or I’ll leave you here smoking yourself to death and I’ll head on home!!! After he left, she said: He knows that I don’t approve of smoking, but he does it anyway. He won’t quit!

Well, he made it back in time for the flight. They left. I continued to enjoy my place in the sun, sitting atop my ‘rock’ and sunning. I did notice how the loud that airport was with the constant recorded security announcements every minute, gate announcements, carts buzzing and beeping here and there, people talking, incessant chatter of the television stuck on CNN, and general din of the terminal, but I still enjoyed that time between flights chatting it up with someone that I’d never met before and probably will not see again.

On the way back, today, it was great seeing that they airport was stuffed with passengers even though it was the 10th anniversary of 9/11. Great that people didn’t get scared and stay at home!