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More Fall Leaves
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I forced myself to update again, as I mentioned in the previous post that I might be able to do so.

I have actually been rather busy since my last post. I have begun to work more hours at Ritz than I have in the summer, ramping up to the upcoming Santa arrival. This year the Christmas craze begins on November 17, forcing me to park out in a different area on weekends and either wait for a bus to drive me across the street, or deal with crossing the busy multi-lane split road without the aid of crossing signals (they rarely register my presence). The additional workload of Santa photos will be certain to keep the lab busy, but I fear the sales staff may have less to do than we’re all dreading. Sales have been really bad.

I also have been able to do some additional upgrades to my computer, adding a hard drive and more memory. I purchased two more sticks of RAM, giving myself 4GB total memory. Unfortunately, 32-bit systems don’t support 4GB of memory, which I didn’t know about until I had placed the order. While having 3GB of memory is great, I can’t say I really notice much of a difference. I guess it’s a good thing the memory was on sale, not including the rebate offered (which I have to remember to fill out!)

I also purchased a new hard drive, on which I have placed all my videos and music, instead of leaving those files to clog up my main drive. I now have three hard drives:

1. C: (Main) - 108GB/298GB used
2. I: (Art) [Partition of J:] - 63GB/127GB used
3. J: (Games) - 31GB/104GB used
4. K: (Media) - 224GB/298GB used

After moving all the files to my new hard drive (after getting the thing to finally read - but that’s another story), I was mildly horrified to discover how much space it was taking up on the drive, leading me to fear I might have to purchase another drive within a year, or begin to really cut into my library to remove unused media (which I don’t think would help much).

But who cares? Why did I even bother typing that out?

Back in late October, my coworker rehired me to take pictures of a high school color guard team she coordinates. I took photos of this team in the previous year, and saw some familiar faces amongst the larger ranks of guard members. Due to various factors, including the horrible weather, I wasn’t able to get as satisfying photographs of the competition as I had the year previous, but I feel that my work was superior in the practices during the day. Upon request, I got much closer to the guard members and took close-up, individual shots, instead of attempting to get multiple members in the photo, as I originally thought was wanted. The change was a good thing: I feel the photos are much more personal and convey some of the stress the team was under to perform in heavy wind and rain. Unfortunately for you, you won’t see most of the photos, as the team wasn’t wearing masks this time through, and covering up the faces in photos that consist primarily of faces makes for some uninteresting images.

Finally, yesterday we went to a local historical landmark, the Meadow Brook Hall [oakland.edu], and took our family photos, one of which we will be using for our annual family photo 4×8 card (I like those things, and I get a discount on printing). I haven’t posted the card today, as we haven’t sent them out yet: however, I do plan on presenting it soon after mailing the cards out (I’ll be printing them tomorrow). I personally think this version is one of the better ones I’ve made so far. Some of the previous cards I’ve made, upon inspection a year or more later, look rather embarrassing (last year’s included). My knowledge of my camera, its features, and the programs used to edit the photos, has increased even over the past six months, and I feel much more comfortable taking photos than I did before.

I’m still kicking myself for not visiting the Hall earlier! I’ve known of its existence for many years now, but was under the impression that photography wasn’t allowed on the property, due to a sign that still doesn’t seem entirely clear. However, while we were at the Hall, we received no requests to stop taking photos, and I’ll take that as evidence that I read the sign incorrectly back a year ago when I stopped by to take photos of the area. The place is quite impressive, and I’m excited to go back.

There are a few other projects I’m working on, including making a new theme for Carmella’s website [carmshangout.com] (there, I said it, now I have to finish it), as well as making an entirely new design for my father’s website [worthwhilemusic.com], to match the release of his new CD. I hope to get these finished by the end of the year, considering I have to fit them around my ever-growing hours at work, and sleep required to recuperate from dealing with winter-season retail. I’m frustrated that it’s taken me so long to get Carmella’s website up (sorry), so I’m determined to get it done very soon.

Below are the photos I mentioned in the paragraphs above. Note that the color guard and family photos are not Creative Commons Licensed, as I don’t wish the work to be distributed in derivative form (not that anyone would likely want to do so, but still).

This entry was posted on Monday, November 12th, 2007 at 8:40 pm and is filed under Life, Work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.