Had a great birthday adventure with my Fiancee!

We got Blue Bottle Coffee in Oakland, then took Highway 17 to Summit where we turned off and headed out through the woods to Big Basin. We drove the loop back into boulder creek, stopping at the Falls. We got lunch in Felton, and then headed to the coast. We walked around the boardwalk and rode the tram. Headed over to Natural Bridges for sunset and then went out to the pier for dinner. It was my kind of birthday!!!

This is just beautiful!

D7000 + Tokina 50-135mm f/2.8 + Bower 2x Tele-Converter + Additional Cropping = Crisp Moon

Photography isn’t about the gear… Why did I take this picture?

I saw that big ol’ beautiful moon tonight while I was driving around with my windows down in the middle of FEBRUARY and couldn’t help but challenge myself to take a stunning picture of it. The air was crisp and clean, there was no breeze. It was sooooo nice out.

Sure, The gear helped… but knowledge matters just as much if not more. You should see what a camera will do in AUTO in that situation. Bleh. From previous experiences shooting the moon, I knew I needed a pretty fast shutter speed and a decent aperture, so my trade-off was choosing 400iso. Having just obtained a doubler, I knew I wanted to take that for a spin to see how sharp it was. I’m freakin impressed with how I used my gear. And I’ve got a BEAUTIFUL shot of the moon to enjoy now too.

Lafayette is beautiful in the fall!

Joshua Tree!

The delta has always intrigued me. It’s a different lifestyle up there. I headed out Highway 12 with an end-goal of Collinsville. (You’re probably thinking, where the heck is Collinsville?!?!) It got so rainy and gross out that I finally turned around and came home.

Such interesting history and so close to home. I’ll save the drive out to the remains of Collinsville for another day!

I’m serious about not losing my data and have been looking for a better way to backup my phone’s content than just plugging it in and manually copying files when I happen to think about it. Enter the app, FolderSync.

Right now I have FolderSync linked to my Dropbox account and via samba to my NAS at home. FolderSync monitors the following folders and backs them up for me.

-SMSBackandRestore: An easy to use txt msg backup app that backs up my txts nightly. FolderSync grabs the nightly backup and puts it in my DropBox.
-Photos: Grabs my photos and puts them on my NAS at home.
-Tasker: Tasker is my favorite app of all time. It allows full automation, and I have it highly customized. FolderSync grabs the backup file and saves it to DropBox.
-Titanium Backup: TB backsup my apps and their data, FolderSync backs this up to DropBox so I can restore my apps and data onto a new phone if I ever lose mine.
-Music: Backs up to my NAS. I tend to buy music from the amazon music store, but I like to know I have a backup somewhere.
-FolderSync: When I make changes to FolderSync, I make a new backup of the FolderSync database. FolderSync then copies it to my DropBox.

I find ways to break things, no matter what. I’m super gentle on my gear, yet somehow things break. I’ve learned this about myself, and therefore my handy skills always come into play. It’s an adventure to take a “Non-Steve Approved” item and make it better. I love the process actually, as frustrating as it sounds. If I could weld, it would make lots of things easier/cheaper in life

Recently I bought an Alien Bees flash and a Mini Lithium inverter/battery. The lightstand mount worried me from day one. The included clamp didn’t tighten up at all. I used a superclamp like many other folks, and one day I opened my trunk at a wedding venue and the photo below is what I saw. The built-in 1/4-20 nut had removed itself from the case, and took some plastic with it. I ended up throwing the battery in a reuasable safeway bag and hanging it from the stand for a couple weddings before I just HAD to make a new mount. My custom mount is so much more stable! WOOOOOOT!

The problem:

My solution:

All images are unedited (SOOC – straight out of camera) and most images were shot with my primes: 35mm, 50mm, and 85mm f/1.8

When my batteries are in the charger, they all face the same way. When I pull used batteries out of a flash, they face opposite directions. This is how I organize them in my cases so I know which are charged and which are in need of some time on the charger.

Example:

(Left are used, right are fresh)

There ya go!