Busy, busy time

It's been a while since I last sat down with my laptop and typed up a blog entry and a lot has transpired in that time - some good, some not so good.

I think I'll just dive in and get the not so good out of the way. For some time now my Macbook Pro has been progressively having performance issues and Lightroom had been a major pain in that it would often fail to open and read all my cataloged images. Thinking that the problem was with Lightroom I contacted their tech support for assistance. Hmm, was that a fun time - not that they were not helpful or anything, it was how bad my Mac and Lightroom were behaving. I ended up having two separate support chat calls and both ended the same way with my Mac being so locked up and unresponsive that I had to power it off.

Long story short, it eventually turned out to not be a problem with Lightroom. Instead it was the disk in my Mac that was going bad. Fortunately I had the foresight to insure I had an up to date backup of all my photos onto an external disk, which in the circumstances was more fortunate than I first thought as the entire image folder for 2014 on the internal disk got wiped out! Backups are good!!

Ah, the joys of technology - a necessary thing for any digital photographer as our work depends on it in so many ways. And yes, my Macbook Pro is running (I rebuilt it on a spare disk).

And speaking of photography, I have been making pictures in all this and still experimenting with lighting. A couple of small portable flashes can be very versatile and when needed, can illuminate an entire room.

My first photo sample is natural light on a rainy day. Not sure what it is but I like to look for small details on wet days and this view of my garden is very whimsical -

I know some may not like how it's primarily out of focus over most of the image but it certainly draws you in and that was my intention.

Of course, what would this post be without at least one puppy photo? Well, this one would be 1 short as I'm going to post two - one of Amber and one of Jax. Both of these were taken with a pair of Speedlights on stands and set to 1/2 power, shooting straight up to bounce off the ceiling. Effectively they lit the room and removed any mixed lighting from the ambient and CFL lighting in the room. Also, I felt they looked better cropped 1:1 as I kind of like the square format look - 

My last photo updates are my most recent work and sees me dabbling again in event photography, recording events on campus; as part of my day job at the university. In this case the event was to mark the groundbreaking on a new 4-year medical school initiative between OU-Tulsa and TU. The event included the attendance of the president of OU, David Boren -

And what is a groundbreaking without at least one picture of dirt being dug - 

I'm hoping my technical woes are behind me and that I am now free to get back to making photos as I've missed being creative.