sanjay nasta

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<p>Donald,<br>

I'm in Austin. If you need help we can do a run. I did a bunch of panos. It might take me a bit of time to re-remember how to find the nodal point but be glad to do it.</p>

<p>I started blogging before it was called that. The first blog www.builtonline.com was to chronicle the building of our house. Since it was early it got a lot of publicity (on TV, national press)...we actually got a lot of stuff for the house. The dot-com boom was an interesting time. Still produced some Google Ad revenue.<br>

www.gadgetguys.com was born a couple of years later because we enjoyed reviewing gadgets. Still do. No strong objective except putting up gadgets we like.<br>

The one with the clearest object is www.elearningcouncil.com We have used it to develop a peer to peer group on my company (www.microassist.com)'s area of expertise (training). It's worked wonderfully well...we sold out the last conference with folks coming from as far away as Kuwait and India. It is truly hard to get people to contribute though. After years of work we are just starting to get guest posts. It is widely ready however. We publicize it at our conference, quarterly webinars, on our twitter account (@learningcouncil is at approximately 500 users). It is not a full time job but sometimes feels like it.</p>

<p>Bruce Schneier's recent Crypto Gram newsletter has an excellent editorial on worst case thinking and the problems associated with it. </p>

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<p>There's a certain blindness that comes from worst-case thinking. An<br />extension of the precautionary principle, it involves imagining the<br />worst possible outcome and then acting as if it were a certainty. It<br />substitutes imagination for thinking, speculation for risk analysis and<br />fear for reason. It fosters powerlessness and vulnerability and<br />magnifies social paralysis. And it makes us more vulnerable to the<br />effects of terrorism.<br /><br />Worst-case thinking means generally bad decision making for several<br />reasons. First, it's only half of the cost-benefit equation. Every<br />decision has costs and benefits, risks and rewards. By speculating about<br />what can possibly go wrong, and then acting as if that is likely to<br />happen, worst-case thinking focuses only on the extreme but improbable<br />risks and does a poor job at assessing outcomes.<br /><br />Second, it's based on flawed logic. It begs the question by assuming<br />that a proponent of an action must prove that the nightmare scenario is<br />impossible.</p>

 

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<p>You can find the complete article at http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/05/worst-case_thin.html</p>

 

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<p>Thank you for the responses. I will share with the restaurant owner. </p>

<p>I need to take some pictures of a casual restaurant for inclusion in a brochure about the restaurant. We'd like to have the restaurant full of happy patrons. It will be difficult to get model releases from each patron that comes in. Is it legal to put a notice up at the front door that we are doing photography for the brochure and that patrons implicitly agree to be photographed and their likeness used? Are there any other suggestions for getting this release and making it legal to include the photograph in a commercial brochure?</p>

<p>Yes. Specifically I've ordered the wireless release and timed release for both Nikon and Canon (for a friend) from a reseller in Hong Kong. They showed up on time, worked perfectly and were a fraction of the cost of the manufacturer's version. One thing, do look around at the various auctions there can be a big difference in price among different auctions even from the same vendor.</p>

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<p>As a followup. Got a call from Daniel at Lifepixel. The normal time for delivery when you order a part is about 7 days. Normal time for response to customer service is 24 hours. Due to some issues they have not been able to respond. </p>

<p>Lex,<br>

I apologize if I wasn't clear. I didn't send a camera to them. I ordered a part from them. A part that I ordered with expedited shipping. I would think that in that time they could have responded to an email, answered a phone call.<br>

Before I posted in a public forum I've sent 2 emails and called twice. So far no live response. </p>

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<p>I ordered an infrared conversion kit from Lifepixel.com on 1/17/09. 10 days later (and they did take my money) I haven't heard a thing from them. I've emailed them, I've called them (and left messages). I get the idea that is likely a small operation but I'm getting a bit worried that my $$$ have disappeared.<br>

I've looked through the forums and other folks seem to have had a good experience with them. Anyone know if something has changed lately (perhaps a post-xmas vacation?)</p>

 

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The Black and White Conversion is awesome. Letting me click on the picture and just drag up and down to change the tone of a particular color. Same thing on Hue and Saturation.

 

Yes Big Bend will satisfy your desire to see some arid rockiness. Our trip to Big Bend was in the fall when it was cool. Spring can be hot so be sure to take lots of water along on the hikes. We ended up staying in a lodge in the park. There's good camp ground that are available if you reserve early. Either way, the nighttime sky in Big Bend is spectacular.

 

One of the coolest things we did on the Big Bend Trip was visited McDonald's observatory. They had a sky party where they set up 8-10 telescopes and let you look at the stars and galaxies. After that (around 11:00 p.m.) we went up and looked at the night sky through the 82" Otto Struve Telescope for over 3 hours.

 

If you get a chance stop in the town of Marfa, Texas. There's surprisingly great food there. Maiya's has great Italian cuisine and Pizza Foundation has some of the best pizza I've had. Might be worth dropping in on the El Paisano hotel the movie Grand was filmed there and it has a cool bar.

 

www.virtualbigbend.com has some cool 360 degree VR pictures that will help plan the trip.

 

Our pictures from the trip are at:

 

<a href="http://www.tejasphotos.com/gallery2/v/bigbend">Our Big Bend Album</a>

Jim,

 

One of the things I like about your portraits is that they convey emotion and energy. They might not fit the classic rules of composition. Sometimes I think that you moved in too close and the portrait looks unbalanced but that is MY opinion.

 

You have to be careful of the opinions you get. Everyone has them and they frequently don't apply. In other parts of life (which unlike photography is easy to test an opinion with facts) I've found that the experts are frequently wrong. Heck pick up a 1 year old business magazine and see how far wrong the expert opinion was.

 

One of the things that has helped my composition is taking pictures and playing with them in Photoshop by cropping them in different ways and figuring out what conveys the emotion or message that I want conveyed.

 

http://www.photo.net/photo/200295

 

In this picture I wanted to convey the tranquility and peace of the scene. I felt the reflection helped that. Someone else didn't. They wanted me to get rid of the reflection. Well...in the end it's my picture and it's how I want to present it to the world.

 

Studying books, other people's photos etc., having other people give you ideas on a particulur photo might give you ideas of how to solve a particular problem but in the end it's your photography and how you want to present a moment to the world. Now, whether the world will agree that's the best way...that's another question.

Anna,

 

I have recovered images even when I've formatted the card and put new images on it--this was mostly a test exercies. There are a bunch of utilities out there--any DOS unerase utility is worth a shot. If you're careful, using an unerase utility doesn't make the situation worse, so keep trying different ones.

Right now the wildflower's are at their peak. Interesting buildings downtown, good street photography on six street, sailboats on Lake Travis, waterfall at Hamilton Pool.

Adobe Photoshop CS primarily builds web based photo albums and not a complete website. Macromedia Dreamweaver MX is my preferred tool because it generates clean codes and has a lot of features but it is a bit expensive. There are cheaper tools out there. NetObjects Fusion is the tool that I used to build my first web site (eons ago) and it came with tons of templates.

I have been looking for a camera that I'm likely to carry all the time. For "serious" photography I have the Nikon D70 (ok for real serious photography I either use the Nikon F100 or a Medium format camera).

 

The Canon SD300 is fun. The pictures are decent although you have some of the problems of a ultracompact (weak flash, redeye, some chromatic aberration). However, it does have a huge advantage over almost any other camera I own...I'm likely to have the thing with me. My full comments are at <a href="http://www.gadgetguys.com">www.gadgetguys.com</a>

Consider going to Cedar Breaks National Monument at 10,000 feet. It was just as spectacular as Bryce and not that far out of the way. In Bryce, sunrise is truly best at Sunrise Point and Sunset at Sunset Point. Definitely hike down into Bryce Canyon we did the Queen's Garden/Navajo Loop into the Canyon.

 

Zion, the hike up to Emerald Pool Trail was easy and beautiful. Hiking the Narrows in Zion is an adventure. You're probably going to be hiking in water so either take water boots or rubber sandles.<div></div>

Just got back from Arches, Bryce, and Zion in UT. Some of the most amazing pictures I saw were in December with snow. Most of the roads are supposed to be open in December.

I called RRS and they basically said they need to get one in hand to see if any existing plates fit (this was last year). Kirk Photo recommended a generic plate that fits fairly well.

Ken,

 

The north end of Austin's pretty sparse right now. The south end of town is supposed to have more wildflower's. Usually Highway 290 (towards Houston, especially around Bastrop State Park) has great wildflower's but haven't checked them out this year. You might also want to drop by Lady Bird Johnson's Wildflower Center (south end of town)