I finally got a decent camera! It was a hard choice between a Nikon D90 or D5000 and the Canon t1i.. In the end the t1i won out for 2 reasons: the first is the price – t1i seems to offer a great price\performance ratio and the other reason was the strong endorsement canon products get from the professional photographers I know. Of course, their cameras are much fancier than mine, but I am happy to be able to document my work and life with reasonable quality.

After getting used to the camera I have immediately become interested in multiple exposure HDR(high dynamic range) photography. To capture these images I am using ‘SLR Remote Pro’ software for tethered control. These images are captured in AEB(auto exposure bracketing) at -2/0/+2 exposure and then processed with HDRsoft Photomatix with final stuff done in Photoshop. With no formal photo background, learning all about apertures, f-stops, ISO, and the other mainstays of photography has been very interesting.

Here are a few of the first few images I have captured this way. Enjoy!

The building across the street

My pal Jeff

Recently I have spent a lot of time researching business card design and printing while preparing materials for friends and clients who all seem to need or want new business cards. One trend of sorts that is immediately apparent is cards that are not all the same on at least one side are popular.  LinkedIn is one example of a company that has used this technique to good effect.

I recently happened across the company, Moo,  which printed the LinkedIn cards while reading a great blog belonging to UK designer Chris Spooner. The thing that immediately struck me about Moo was their unique and attractive product offering. Moo specializes in printing short runs of cards  of various types, from business cards to postcards and greeting cards. Unlike most print services where you are limited to uploading a single design per print job (and for good reason), at Moo you are able to upload a unique image on one side for every single print. So, if you are getting 50 cards printed, you can upload 50 unique images for one side of the job! This is a great thing for certain types of people looking for business cards. Photographers seem to get the most immediately satisfying use out of this, but there are other great examples on their website.

I am about to order their 10 business card “free sample” . While they call them free, they put their logo and a black band on one side,  so it isnt really free, but you do get to upload 10 unique images for one side of each card!  I will definitely write a review when I receive my order.

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It is not something I completely expected to be doing: twitter! I read a article not so long ago the premise of which ‘young people are not on twitter because their parents are on twitter’. Thankfully, my parents are not on twitter!

You can find my twitter updates various places on this website, or at my twitter page.

After 5 years of static html, then 4 years of Joomla CMS, I have moved to Wordpress. The reasons are many, but the main one is that I have done a ton of work with Wordpress over the last year and I have to conclude that Wordpress is more popular with the type of clients I find myself working for. Commercial reasons aside I am really excited about the change and have incorporated features into my new site which I have not had before. The big ones are an (ok, not quite ready) on-line invoicing system and a real blog section (which you are now reading.

I am looking forward to expanding my online presence: I have gotten weary of posting thousands of messages helping people on forums, and this blog will eventually have lots of tutorials, examples, and other inspiration for people trying to do the sorts of things I do.

Thank you for reading!

Robert