Steve Canyon Rides Again!

For all you Steve Canyon fans out there, there's a new article about it up on the internet at this address, and it's a great review. There's even a photo of the cover I did.

And the second volume is in progress. I am downloading files for the cover as we speak. I have a fast internet connection (at least for the moment), and the first file says it will take four hours to download. Of course, it said that about a half an hour ago, too. Then there are two more files to download after that.

But the covers are going to be wonderful!

It's gone up to four hours and ten minutes for the download.

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John is going to be going to Dayton, Ohio to The National Aviation Hall of Fame for an event to honor Milton Caniff (among others), and they'll be showing a Steve Canyon episode. There's lots more info if you follow the link.

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I was talking to Holly just a little while ago. Her car still isn't fixed, and at this point, she's hoping that it won't be fixed before Wednesday. She lives close enough to the inauguration that her car was towed the last time around. They have told her and people on her street that they will not be towing cars this time, but that's what they said the last time and they towed anyway.

All the bridges between Northern Virginia and DC are being closed down, and most of the major highways are also being closed in this area. 295/395, and a list of others. You can only reach DC from Maryland now (or soon). 

Hotel rooms and other accommodations sold out long ago. People in Holly's area are selling crash space (enough space on a floor to lie down) at $100 each, and some people are putting up tents and selling space outside. With the high for today at 23 F, that sounds dangerous to me. I'm hearing rumors that some accommodations are going for as high as $400, and we're not even talking hotel room, here. 

Restaurants in DC are allowed to be open 24 hours for the duration, and bars are allowed to close at 4:30 am. Most of the bar operators really want to close earlier than usual, though, due to the situation. And restaurants probably won't be staying open for the whole time they're allowed to, so food and drink may be in short supply, too.

Holly works almost across the street from the White House, and they will be closed down all day on Monday and Tuesday. She has no fonder wish than to just stay at home until Wednesday, although she may have to go out to Safeway for supplies.

She was hoping to go out with me and get some yarn for a knitting project last weekend, and that never happened, so she won't be knitting on that project. But, she's got her new, wall-sized TV and new BluRay player with some new discs to play on it, and games to play on the computer and TV, so I don't think it will be too much of a strain for her. She plans to watch the inauguration on TV in the comfort of her own living room. I'll probably be watching it on my dinky little 19 inch TV, too. And we'll have a better view than the crazies that will be out there freezing.

I have 7 pizzas in the freezer (sale), ramen noodles, and lots of Chicken and Stars soup, so I'm dealing with the cold, too.

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I've been steadily working my way through the irreplaceable stuff on my DVR, copying to DVD the stuff that I would like to buy, but that isn't for sale anywhere.

ABC Family is giving out no information on The Middleman. They haven't said that they're either picking it up for next season or not, and nobody has mentioned Middleman and DVD in the same sentence until I did it just now. So, I want to copy the few episodes of it that Comcast didn't manage to mess up so badly that they're unwatchable. If it ever becomes available on DVD, I promise I'll buy it. The same thing goes for some things that I'd dearly love to buy, but that aren't available.

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I've also been working my way through the Christmas stockings I'm doing on commission. I'm about halfway through the third one (time-wise), so I'm about half done. I'm almost at the bottom of the leg on the third one.

The leg part is very time consuming. There's lots of combination intarsia and fair isle in color. So, it's not just knitting. It's stopping and winding bobbins with new colors, untangling the mess of yarn ends and bobbins frequently, darning in the ends of colors/strands I've finished with so they'll stop tangling with the ones I'm currently working on, and stops several times in each row to see how many stitches I have to knit in the current color before I change to a new one. Once I finish the leg, it's just a standard sock, with about the same number of stitches as a standard sock, so, no big deal. Then there's sewing up the back-of-the-leg seam, blocking and adding the pom poms and hanging loop. I'm finding it easier to do some preliminary blocking on the leg before starting the heel and foot. But there's still blocking to do on the finished stocking.

Pictures soon. I know I keep saying that, but it's been so dark and cold all day, I can't get good pictures in this light. And the flash makes it possible, but not flattering. At some point in time soon, I want to get a slave flash or two.

Here's a rerun of a photo from the second one, in case you want to get an idea of what the stockings look like.

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Have a great weekend and enjoy the inauguration!

Photography for the Internet

I'm getting no feedback here about what kinds of things you might want to photograph, so here's a (comparatively) cheap and simple way to go.

First of all, a Canon Powershot A620 camera. I recommend this for several reasons. 

You can set it to "auto" and it will handle most situations with out a lot of thought or effort on your part. It still has settings for close-ups of small objects. Point-and-shoot, but with the ability to do more complicated things without a lot of work on your part.

This has the vari-angle LCD viewfinder so that you can take a photo of yourself wearing a hat/poncho/sweater  you want to sell and see if you're really in the frame. If you want to do this, you'll need a tripod, or other means of holding the camera in place. Actually, a small tripod would be a help for close-up photography of small objects, too.

You may also want a slave flash for more complicate lighting set-ups. Don't worry about a lot of technical stuff. You can add a slave almost anywhere if you have it pointed at your subject and improve the lighting of your photo. You may have to set the camera to underexpose slightly to get a good exposure. Experimentation with your particular camera will work best.

And, if you want to take your camera with you to just take photos for you, you'll need a bag to carry it in. I found a nice, small, light one in tan, and also in navy. I was also lucky enough to find the ultimate bag for the knitter. It's a backpack with easily accessible space in the bottom for your camera gear, and a large open space for your current knitting project, a book to read, etc. And, as if that weren't enough, it has a special compartment for a laptop computer. Check my store for more bags.

If you plan to take photos of very small things at home, you could use two small, gooseneck lamps for lighting, positioned on either side of the object. A nice, unobtrusive background would be good, too. Check out your local thrift store or Chez Tarjay for a plain dish towel or other small piece of fabric in some nice colors for backgrounds.

And don't forget, you can leave a comment with a question on all this, and I'll do what I can to help. But you may not have any problems. This equipment will make your photographing life SOOOO much easier. 

Dynamite Photography

I woke up today, and the phone rang.

It was Holly, letting me know a few things: She had just arrived at the airport in Detroit safely (she's staying with Malaia and John this weekend for John's going-away party). And that she had found the camera that she'd lost.

Robin gave her a tiny, but  wonderful camera for Christmas. I love that camera. It's easy to use, and had a great zoom mechanism, and tiny, so you can carry it around with you all the time. 

But she lost it (she thought).

So, she went out and bought another similar one and discovered that Robin, being the fabulous photographer and wonderful boyfriend he is, had chosen an excellent camera, and that she didn't like the new one she'd bought to replace it anywhere near as well. 

So, she finally broke down and bought a duplicate of the one Robin bought her and had it shipped to Malaia so that she could use it while there. She planned to sell the replacement camera to her sister, Heather, who liked it.

So, now she's got two identical cameras, except one has never been used and is new in the box.

I thought about buying it from her when the IRS ever gets it together and gives me the money they said I should get. I like it a lot better than my tiny, carry-everywhere camera.

So, it got me thinking about camera gear as soon as I woke up.

If you hate photography, you can stop reading here.

I love photography, and would love to have a good camera again just for my own enjoyment. But aside from that, I plan to make and sell some things over the internet and you need good photos for that. Not high resolution, but taken with a camera that has the extra abilities of a more expensive camera. I'm also collecting knitting patterns which I plan to publish in a book, and for that I do need good, high quality, high resolution photos.

But while I was mulling all this over, I thought I'd put all my photo gear selections together in one section of my Amazon store for others who are wondering what gear to buy.

Good gear can make it so easy to take stunning photos, and the wrong gear can make it almost impossible to produce anything but junk.

I have three cameras listed. They're very similar. All have long lenses. That means that you can get a close-up without actually having to walk up closer.

I read an article by a camera expert with advice on how to take good photos for people who know nothing about cameras. He gave two rules: Walk up close. Walk up even closer. I couldn't agree more. If you watch most amateurs take a photo, they'll look through the viewfinder, and then turn around and walk further back and then take the picture. Exactly the reverse of what they should be doing. Having a long lens makes it easy to "walk up close" without having to move. You can take a portrait without having to get up in the person's face. You can take a good photo at the jousting matches at the Renaissance festival or football game.  With a long enough lens and a tripod, you can take photos of the moon that actually show the moon! 

To use the lens at it's longest length, you'll have to practice holding it steady, but the stability built into these cameras will make it much easier.

And the control for the zoom is the best I've ever used. I usually hate the zoom controls and would rather have a manual control. But Canon has made it easy to zoom quickly to almost where you want to be, and then slow down for precise framing. It's great!

These cameras all have swing-out LCD finders, too. That means if you want to take photos of a parade, but you're stuck in the back of the crowd, you can swing out the finder, swivel it a bit, and hold your camera over the heads of the people in front, and still be able to see what you're taking a picture of. You can also position it so that you can take a photo of yourself and see how you're framed in the photo while you're doing it.

The next important thing you'll need is the adapters so that you can put filters on your camera, plus the filters.

You'll do more to improve your photos with filters than anything else. Much more bang for the buck than any other photography gear you can buy.

I've chosen a selection of filters that create effects that can easily be seen through the lenses of the cameras I'm recommending so you'll be able to get just the shot you want the first time. 

First of all, they're all Cokin filters. Cokin has  a special filter system that has many advantages. The Cokin adapter holds square, flat filters that can be slid into place much more quickly and easily than screwing in conventional filters (and easier on the wrists). You can slide the filters to one side, and move a center spot filter (for example) off center to get the best picture composition. And if you buy a different camera that needs different size lenses, you just buy a new adapter rather than have to buy all the filters over again. They also have some of the most fabulous filters. Ones that are almost impossible to find elsewhere.

I've chosen several varieties of center spot filters. Pick your favorites from the selection. There are also fog filters to blur part of your photo. And star filters. Don't forget the star filters. They make photos with point light sources in them into magical vistas. I plan to add more, too. They'll all be the easy, spectacular filters.

And then, there are the flashes. Two of the cameras don't have hot shoes, so you can't use a traditional flash with them. I have two good traditional flashes for the S5, but they won't work on the S2 or S3. Don't forget diffusers! But even if you get an S5, you'll probably want a slave flash.

A slave is a flash that goes off as soon as there is a bright flash of light. That means you can use your on-camera flash to trigger a remotely-placed slave without having to connect them with cables and other cumbersome stuff. For instance, at a party, leave a slave somewhere pointing at the ceiling. Then when you take a photo, the slave will provide ambient lighting for the background of your photos while the on-camera flash will light the subject.

Feel free to ask questions about this in the comments.

Maybe I should write a book about this.

Don't forget: tomorrow is SciFi day! The Doctor Who episode, Blink at 5 am, Firefly during the day (including Jaynestown, Trash and The Messenger), the premier of Charlie Jade in early evening, followed by the all-new Doctor Who episode, The Doctor's Daughter. 

Check your local listings and set your DVRs!

Have a day packed with great science fiction TV tomorrow!