Jason Hight

Well, bad news.

A week or two ago, I picked up a used SB-24 for $40. Seeing that my camera doesn't have a port to connect an external flash, I set out to make my own, following some plans I found online. My basic intent was to completely block off the in-camera flash and use an optical slave system to fire the external. Well, the other day I was trying to get it working properly...it kept firing on the first flash from the camera instead of the second (darn preflash).

Was doing some tweaking, and all of a sudden it worked! So I figured I'd try again to make sure. Then when I looked at my camera's LCD I noticed something strange. The last picture taken was all black, with just a bright green streak on the right side. I flip to recording mode, and all I get is black with a little magenta in there.

Bummer.

No amount of changing settings, removing the batteries, etc. has brought it back to life.

No money for a new camera right now, so I guess I'll have to live without. Maybe that means I need to go buy some 120 film and bust out the 1950's Brownie Hawkeye.

Oh well.

Yep, that's right, creepy old abandoned buildings.

Sunday was a nice photo-day. The wife and I headed out to two abandoned mills in the area - Longmont Mill (I think it's called), which was closed in 1978, and Golden West Mill, which was closed in 1979. First stop was Longmont Mill in the morning (a little late in the morning for the best light, but oh well):

We had driven by the building late the night before. At that time, the place had a very eerie vibe to it. Upon returning in the morning, it was quite different. I should note that since there were fences around the entire place and plenty of "No Tresspassing" signs, we did not enter the building or go past the fences. Walking around the perimeter, the building had a fairly calm feeling, with an old musty smell in the air. The various articles strewn about the area definitely gave an impression of time having passed by.




This was a pretty good photo shoot. I personally would have liked to have gotten closer to the buildings or gone inside, but I'm new at this and didn't want to press my luck.

OK, so I've come to the realization that my post layouts are pretty lacking...bare with me, I'm working on it

Next up was the old Golden West Mill in downtown Longmont. To avoid the high-noon sun, we came back later in the afternoon. Could have made it even later, but again, oh well. This building had a very different feeling from the last. Something felt just...wrong...about this place. The building reminds me of something out of a '70s psycho-thrasher flick, so I think my image processing reflects that Right off the bat, I could tell that nothing good has come of this place in a long, long time. I could almost feel the very negative energy from past events here. As we got closer to the building and made our way in between the main building and a side building, some strange feeling started developing in the pit of my stomach. Something wasn't right. It almost felt as if someone - or something was watching us, and was not happy about us being there. We were quite startled when a door - door number 2 - actually opened. I don't know if it was just our imagination, someone/something trying to scare us away, or just the wind. But that was enough for us. [note: I don't remember if the door was just marked with "2" or if there was other number there. All I know is the photo only shows a 2, so that's how I'll refer to it.]

I doubt I'll be returning here any time soon. Once is enough for me. This place didn't have the musty, old smell of the Longmont Mill - the stench of death suffocated the entire area. I honestly would not be surprised if there is a dead body somewhere in that building...but that's not something I'll be investigating personally.

This post is being backdated a bit since I didn't get around to it right away...

So the Longmont Art Walk was on Friday May 16th. My wife and I went and checked it out, and had a good time. Plenty of opportunities for good photos, but unfortunately for the first half of the walk I missed out on some great photos. This was because I am a firm believer in using the lowest ISO setting your camera will support - ISO64 in my case. Unfortunately this also means longer shutter speeds, which can ruin long-zoom shots as the sun is setting. I eventually boosted my ISO up to 400, and the rest of the evening was much better.

The person that caught most of my attention was this guy. I call him "Bronze Man." This guy painted himself with a gold/bronze/copper color and then stood on the street perfectly still, like a statue. I've heard of people in Portland and the likes doing this, but never in Longmont. This was a pretty impressive sight. Him being still was also nice in that I could move around and take a bunch of pictures. The one thing I didn't like about him - the people that were passing by. Seriously. Every time I heard a comment like "Hey, I'll give you 5 bucks to go kiss him," or "dare you to kick him in the shin and run away," or "Yeah he's real, go ahead and poke him," I just cringed. Why are people so rude?

I've just got to say one thing. Hey, Bronze Man, you rock. Hope you make it to the next Art-Walk


I don't think I've seen someone make so many people smile in a long time. I could hear this guy from a mile away, and every time I heard him say Hi to someone, I just smiled and chuckled.


I do believe I promised a kitty. Well here she is. This is one of my cats, Keira. I was experimenting with using some off-camera light sources in various positions, and came up with this one. I've recently been reading Strobist and have been getting interested in using more off-camera lighting. I'm really yearning for some off-camera flash action, but my camera doesn't have a hot-shoe or PC port. I've found some plans for a DIY slave flash trigger that I'm interested in putting together, and I have some cool designs in my head for how to make some cool gear for us hot-shoe challenged people. More on that later.

As always, there are more photos in the gallery. Currently the photos from the Art Walk are uploaded in the "misc" album, but I might move them around and rearrange the gallery eventually.

Until next time...

Creating and Automating a Custom Watermark in Adobe Photoshop

You might be thinking, “Do I really need to go through all this trouble to watermark my images?” You don't need to, but I would strongly advise it. It serves a few purposes:

• It gets your name out there. Someone might see one of your photos searching through Google Images, wouldn't you like them to know that you own the photo and who you are?

• Just like the “Club” on a car, it's a simple method to help curb the stealing of images that runs rampant these days.

• If someone does end up stealing an image of yours and removes the watermark, you have a much better case in court for copyright infringement, and you have the opportunity to make a lot more money in a settlement of the case.

For more on why you should do this, please check out http://www.danheller.com/money-from-stolen-images.html

So here it is: how to create and automate a custom watermark for your images in Photoshop. I'm using CS3, but these steps are standard in most any version of Photoshop. Not sure about Elements though; last time I checked it out (when the very first version was released) it didn't have the ability to use actions – this could have changed recently though. If newer versions have this support, drop me a line and I'll make note of it.

A brief outline of the basic process:

• First, we'll make our custom watermark shape. Use the text tool and convert to shape and we can add it as a custom shape to our collection

• Next we'll set up an action and start recording.

• Then, use the custom shape to draw your watermark, and adjust it's size.

• Move the shape, turn it into a selection, copy/paste that data from the background, and invert.

• Apply some layer styles, merge down, and get rid of some extra layers.

• Last step (optional) is saving the image to have your JPG properties in the action. This is needed if you want to batch process many files instead of doing them by hand.

Let's get started, shall we?

Continue reading "Creating and Automating a ... »

Well, the photo gallery is up and running, with some of my favorite photos. Some new, some old, all good (in my opinion anyway - hopefully others think the same).

The whole gallery can be accessed via the link to your left.

Some examples of what's there (go ahead, click the thumbs):

Welcome to the site. I'm just getting started here.

I set up this site to show my progression in the photography realm, and also to show others any tips, hints, tricks or tutorials I might come up with or run across.

All feedback is welcome, feel free to comment on the posts or contact me.

Also, feel free to take a minute and check out the Photo Gallery.

Thanks,
Jason Hight