new stuff up on the new site/blog

Greetings dudes and dudettes, if by some chance anyone still checks this blog or subscribes to it on their rss or something I would appreciate it if you would swing on by the new site at www.danhandphoto.com and followed my blog there or just read it or updated your rss if it's not a huge inconvenience.  Thanks friends.

new site

Well after toying with a wordpress.com site I liked some of the features but disliked some of the limitations.  I decided to go ahead and register a domain and start out a wordpress.org based site.  It's still a work in progress as I am a total newbie when it comes to coding and stuff but it's a start.  I have been working for UPS for this busy season so I haven't had a ton of time to toy with it yet but I am slowly getting the hang out it.  Maybe some day I will be able to upgrade to one of those nice templates like intothedarkroom offers but for right now I am having a little fun learning the ropes.
 
http://danhandphoto.com/

The only thing I don't really like so far is how slow the main gallery seams to be and how small the images are, especially ones that aren't landscape oriented.  Hopefully this weekend i can tweak some things around and get it running smoother.

trying out wordpress

So I have decided to start building a wordpress site. I have no problems at all with blogger, in fact I really like it, however I am intrigued by the ability to build an entire site with galleries and everything on the wordpress platform. I am totally new to CSS so i decided to start on their wordpress.com host and if I like the way it turns out possibly try building one from scratch or template on a private host.

EDIT- This is what I have come up with so far. I suppose I like it, although there are definitely a bit of limitations on what you can do without using paid upgrades. All in all I think it's a nice start considering it's free, once I finally settle on a layout that I am satisfied with i will work on updating content and maybe a custom domain.

http://danhand.wordpress.com/

It was the heat of the moment

Yesterday the GF and I were making some stuffed Jalapenos to take to her sisters birthday party. I was cutting them up and scooping the seeds out with a spoon. I was being pretty careful not to touch anything knowing my hands would more or less melt anything they touched. With only a few peppers to go, somehow the spoon caused one to go airborne and land directly in my eye, like right on the tear duct, it couldn't have been a worse spot. I wasn't about to make it worse by trying to dig it out myself so i had the GF get it out. About a minute after this happened i felt it start to burn, another minute after that i couldn't open my eye. I jumped in the shower while she got me some milk and after about 15 minutes of torture i could finally open my eye again. On a better note the peppers turned out great. I wish I would have had her snap a picture of how bad my eye looked, but in the heat of the moment it wasn't really a priority.

Denver is great, but i need to find some work

Like so many other people out there i am in need of a job. I had a couple interviews with apple that i thought went well but apparently didn't pan out. Sadly it appears if i want to make some kind of income with a camera i will have to try and get a job at Olan Mills or Lifetouch or some other super high volume studio. There is a studio a couple blocks away that claims to be so awesome and distinguished and when i look at their work the first thing i see is an ugly portrait of a couple with the most absurdly fake looking white vignette on it. It's not subtle, it doesn't look natural, it looks cheesy. I somehow think i wouldn't be learning a whole lot by working at some place like this.

Sadly since it's starting to get winter-y outside i probably missed the boat on second shooting weddings, and since i am new to the area i don't even know where to begin when it comes to trying to assist a pro. It looks like for now i will need to find some job to pay the bills and hope to build up some contacts in the mean time.

Took a day tripe to Breckenridge

Last Thursday my girlfriend and I took a day trip over to Breckenridge. Neither of us really knew where we were going once we got there so it was actually pretty uneventful. We walked around the town a little bit, had a pretty underwhelming lunch at a diving themed dive bar then got bored looking for places to go. We probably should have stopped and asked a local where to go find some nice scenery. I was really looking forward to seeing some fall colors but it seemed like we missed the boat on that. On the drive west there was some nice colors but once we got through to the Western side of the Rockies most of the trees were already mostly brown.

On the way back we stopped in Frisco and Silverthorne and spent some time near the Dillon reservoir. As the sun went down my girlfriend reluctantly posed for me while we waited for the sky to show some color. Unfortunately there was not a cloud to be seen so the sky was a little dull, and once the sun dropped it got really cold really fast so we didn't stay as long as i had originally planned. In the short time we were there though i got a couple of nice pictures of her. I didn't take my light stand or umbrella so i had to improvise with my tripod and a bare flash. The bare flash was pretty harsh compared to an umbrella but i really liked the combo of hiding the sun behind her back and while using a flash on her front side. I really need to invest in some color correction gels but over all i really liked the results considering how improvised they were and how little PP was done. Some of the pictures can be seen in my flickr.

first update from colorado

So the drive was pretty easy, if you can ever consider 16 hours of driving easy.  I actually shaved about 2 hours off of the google maps time, which was nice.  When stopping for dinner in Utah i was the only male in Carls Jr. that was not wearing a tie, i am assuming an LDS night service just ended or something, but it was definitely awkward.  Other than a decent sunset in my rear view when leaving Las Vegas it was rather boring since it was dark for over half the drive.  It probably would have been cool to have stopped in Moab and gotten some pictures at Arches had i not been in such a hurry. 

So far Denver is nice.  I have a second interview coming up with Apple on friday for some inventory/shipping job.  Apple seems like it would be a good company to grow with since they are one of the few that are actually growing right now and they seem to be in touch with their clients and impoyees.

The picture at the top is the view of downtown from our balcony.  We have had some pretty good sunrises and sunsets so far, i really hope to catch some lightning storms from the balcony and i can already see the city making for a cool portrait background.