Amateur Photography of Ericson Smith

This is why:

http://www.twitlonger.com/show/bt2p2o

Reminds me how 6 years ago yahoo closed my account, and seized a domain I purchased through them. I *know* the same panicky feeling that this guy had.

I’ve also been using Paypal for around 8 years and my account was just closed without ANY explanation.

Rules to live by:

1 . Don’t keep anything important in free online services. I see some people put their whole photo experience in Facebook. What morons, the day Facebook closes your account you’ve lost everything.

2. Don’t buy domains from google, yahoo, or MSN. More than likely you’ll LOSE those domains too.

3. Get a personal domain name, and use that for all your email (use hover.com, godaddy.com or whoever you prefer). You can even use gmail for domains to host the email and if google screws you, you can always switch to a different email host.

4. Get your own fucking personal blog and stop posting everything on Facebook or google+ or twitter. Because if your account gets cancelled, you’ll lose everything overnight. And don’t use the services on Google, Yahoo, Facebook or MSN either, because you’ll lose those blogs.

5. Good services to use are: wordpress, flickr, squarespace, and any service that is independent and gives a flying fuck about customer service.

In the end, all these major online companies are doing this for a profit, and don’t care a crap about you. You think it might be the “cool” hip thing to have Imahipster@gmail.com, but in the end, they’re just like all the other online services, and they’ll stick it in where it hurts, open the door, and kick you to the curb while the car is still moving.

Heck, if I were google, i’d probably do the same thing to this guy too.

After all, its just business.

(Hat tip to Donna)

I promised a few photos with the ring flash attachment. And these are definitely much softer and much more pleasing than with the flash direct.

It does definitely ramp down the amount of light that can be gotten by flash alone though.

I’m an amateur, and bouncing the light off the ceiling works for most cases, but sometimes when you need something special, break out the ring.

What made this shoot fun were the constrasts. Sky. Kettle Bells, Grass. 

f13, 100iso, 1/125 shutter speed.

Athletic shots are always the most challenging for me. Because you generally get one chance to get it right.

Playing around in Aperture. It was fun shooting the root.

f2.8, 1/2000, 100 ISO

Still one of my favorite photos.

My ring flash adapter arrived last night, and I was able to try a couple of test shots.

I love long exposure night photography, but in some cases, all you have is 1/60th of a second. And as you all know, if you don’t have a good bounce target, then all you’re left with, is pretty hash lighting conditions and deep shadows around the edges.

This particular ring flash fits over the 580EX and tunnels the light into the ring. 

You’d think that it would not give out too much light, but from what I’ve tested in my 2 test shots, this thing is blindingly bright. 

Bright enough that you can comfortably put your subject 8 feet away and get pretty good lighting.

I have a model shoot that starts next week, and I can’t wait to get this baby going.

In the meanwhile, I’ll post some test shots over the next couple of days as I get it through its paces.

- UPDATE - 

The Coco Ring Flash Adapter is no long available at Amazon (did I buy the last one???).

Instead you can get the Ray Flash which is really the same thing, but around $150 more than the Coco unit. the Ray Flash is supposedly a bit more robust too.

Looking back at almost any software that has radically changed. There’s been quite similar outburst when the change happened.

Because of the unique needs of the pro video editing community, Apple could have made a smoother transition with more education resources to address the new paradigm of Final Cut X.

Apple writes the future.

However, they need to let people know what that future is, in the case of Final Cut X.

Still, editors will learn non linear editing. 

They’ll learn the new way of editing. They’ll get it. 

This whole kerfuffle to me, is the biggest example of my favorite dictum “The only thing thats constant is change”.

Slightly underexposed, but one of my favorite photos.

My composition here could have been a little better.

Difficult shooting on the beach in harsh light, but hey, you gotta try, right?

Sort of at that golden hour. It was still light outside, overcast, and the store just turned on their lights - Key West