I guess I should just start a photography section on this site. :-) At any rate, I was looking over some pictures of the last year, and figured I’d share some. I feel like I’ve come a long way, but still have some big strides I need to make. This last year has been great for my photography. I’m still using my 50mm f/1.8… I just can’t decide what lens to get, or if I should invest my dollars in lighting, a better tripod, or something else. So, I’ll keep on trudging along until I figure it out. :-) What I have figured out is:

• I love taking photos of kids. When you catch them engrossed in something, they have such an intense look of wonder. And when they’re cranky, it shows too. :-)

• I really want to do more with lighting. In particular, I really like cinematic lighting… but I have no idea where to start.

• I need to find a better way to organize my photos. My current way is haphazard at best (at least they’re all in Lightroom though!).

• I need to either get on the DNG bandwagon or get off. I’m currently bringing in photos as DNG, and up until recently, was also embedding the RAW file in there too. It’s way too much room. I’m currently running around 140GB for about 11,000 pictures.

With that, here are some of my favorite photos over the last several months:

I’m late in the game on announcing this, but Subversion is moving to the ASF!. I think it’s awesome that Collab.net has put in the work necessary to grow such a thriving open source project. I, personally, think this move makes a lot of sense. The ASF has a long standing history in terms of protecting open source, already hosts a number of large projects that many companies are involved in, and I believe it will open the door for more committers to be involved.

Congratulations to Subversion and thanks to all the folks who are helping to make this move possible! Now to get my ICLA in…

Nearly a year ago, I read an article by Ben Collins-Sussman called A Mercurial “super client”. About a month or so prior to that, I had started playing with Bazaar and, in particular, bzr-svn. Since then, I have really wanted to write a similar article for Bazaar, but haven’t found the time. I’m happy to say, that both Bazaar and bzr-svn have come to a head, with Bazaar releasing 2.0 and bzr-svn releasing 1.0. So, it seems like the right time to get this done!

Continue reading Bazaar as a Subversion “super client”

Saw this over on the Unified Python Planet: http://plope.com/smartest_guy_in_the_room

Great rant.

So, I learned a few things this weekend when trying to get some pictures of a sunrise, that I thought I’d share.

Get up early

I knew this, but didn’t realize quite how early. The paper called for sunrise at 6:53, so I figured 6:15 would be fine. Wrong. Make sure you’re out at the location an hour before that. I missed some great, vibrant pictures by not being there earlier. Moreover, I really wanted to get that early sunrise shot with a long shutter speed… it didn’t happen. :-(

The sun moves fast

It really does move quickly, so you’ll need to be quick on your feet in moving around trying to get the shot that you want.

Scope out the area ahead of time

This is tough to do with two young kids who really want you to play… but if you have the chance, get out to the location and scout around a little. I was near a pier and I ended up taking some shots that I wouldn’t have wasted my time on, if I had scouted ahead of time. The flip side is that I probably missed a few good shots, because I wasted my time on the bad ones. :-(

Learn to use manual mode

I’m still an amateur, so these things aren’t hitting quite as quickly as I like, but looking back I should have switched the camera to manual mode. That would have given me more consistent exposures, and more control over just how much I wanted to blow the highlights to get the detail.

Bring all pieces to your tripod

In particular, the piece that mounts to the bottom of the camera. :-) I usually keep mine attached to the tripod, but didn’t this time and ended up leaving it at home.

Keep trying

Despite the hiccups, I kept shooting, trying different angles, playing with the exposure, and tone. I learned a lot about how much I do and don’t know. And it was good to get out and just shoot without any other interruptions. With that said, here are a couple pics that made the final cut:

I’ve been following isayx3 on Flickr for a while now, and every once in a while, he throws up an image like this:

It’s absolutely stunning. It looks like something out of a food magazine. So I decided to try it for myself. Let me tell ya: it’s much harder than it looks. There are so many factors at play: color, lighting, the relationship of the pictures, the direction of the subject, etc. So I took a number of photos over the weekend, trying to catch the boys at play, and contemplating their surroundings, etc. I’m pretty happy with what came out:

Thanks to isayx3 for all the inspiration. He’s an awesome photographer.

My friend—Tim—and I gave a presentation at PyOhio on unit testing frameworks for Python. I’ve had the the slides and source on my Presentations page since we gave the talk, but now the talk is available online too! It’s always amusing to see yourself talk. :-)

Check out other PyOhio 2009 talks as well!