Ex Patria

Picture of the week

(Click on the image to go to the large size on Tumblr.  Click there again for supersized version.)

85mm at 2.5, ISO 400, 1/200 sec. 

It didn't need much editing at all, but I wanted to add a little more zest to it, and the image was on the very, very cool side.  I warmed it up a bit with "Miracles" by Paint The Moon. I turned off the "Brighten" layer (my camera does shoot brightly to begin with, I almost always turn the "Brighten" layers off in her actions), and dialed the whole thing down to 45%.  I sharpened the eyes a tiny little bit - it's not even visible in the layers but it makes a difference in print. 

This particular image is downsized for web with my trusty go-to Totally Rad Actions Facebook prep action.  That's a very handy little action that comes for free when you like them on Facebook.  It sharpens and downsizes all in one.

The image was take at 5 pm in our frontyard.  I had the kids lie down on the ground.  I stood on a chair that I had taken outside and put over Leah's legs.

I love the catchlights in their eyes and the way they had to laugh because it was so silly - that got me some very natural expressions.  But it really bothers me that I keep forgetting to push her hair out of her face.  If it wasn't for that errant strand of hair on her forehead, it'd print this up on canvas. 

Sigh.  That learning curve, it curves forever.

Confidence!

So I'm going to a photography workshop in DC in a few weeks.  I'm so excited!

First, I get to spend over a week with my best friend.  That alone is priceless. No kids, no homeschooling, no mom-24/7, just me and my camera and my friend (and her kid, and her husband, and her cats...) Heh.  The only thing I have to do at her house is make lasagna.  Easy-peasy, as my kids would say.

Two days on the weekend are taken up by the workshop and I'm so happy that I finally get to go.  I've been wanting to go to this workshop ever since my friend Monique put that particular flea into my ear.  She's one awesome photographer and has encouraged me every step on my way.  Without her selfless praise, I don't think I'd be where I am today in my photography. Check out her work!  Those adorable twins are hers, by the way.  An all around lucky girl, Monique is.

She introduced me to Me Ra Koh and her photography and I've followed Me Ra's website and blog for years now.  We've dreamed of going to a workshop together but with us stuck in Germany between jobs and little money, and her living in Colombia and then Spain, it was difficult and turned out to be impossible.  Monique ended up going to the workshop in Arizona in the spring and I am going in a few weeks to DC!  Yay!

So, what do I want from this workshop? 

I want to shoot in Manual.  At the moment, I'm primarily shooting in AV mode (aperture priority) which means I'm setting the aperture and the ISO and the camera works out the shutter speed.  I can adjust that up and down with the spin of a wheel and I often do that - that's sort of shooting in half Manual.  But I rarely shoot in full M.  I just get confused with too many things to do at once.  (I have to admit that I felt the same way when I just jumped into AV mode - I often forgot and still sometimes do, to adjust the ISO settings from one shoot to the next.  So maybe I should just do it... Hm.)  I've gotten fast with AV and M just slows me down so much.  I photograph mostly children and they are fast moving targets.  Speed is of the essence. So, I need some encouragement with that.

Me Ra says we will shoot in M after the workshop but how that works, I'm curious to see.  The range of photograpy skills in this group is wide - from the professional photographer to the new mom who just got her first camera.  The teacher in me whispers that she's glad she doesn't have to teach 22 levels of skill at the same time.  Apparently, Me Ra pulls it off and that's why I go to this workshop.

Also, I want more confidence.  I have this little nagging voice in my brain that always tells me I'm not good enough, don't have enough experience, blah, blah, blah.  So, confidence in my skills is definitely on my list of things I need. 

Let's have at it!

 

Two reasons why you should never ever buy an HP printer ever in your entire life

1.  Their printers are regionalized.  That means if you move from one region to another, you are royally screwed.

2. Their ink cartridges are time locked.  You can not store inks in large amounts (like, because of 1.) since they will seize to function after two years.

So, be warned and don't buy HP. (Or Epson, for that matter.)  Buy a Canon.  I was very happy with my Canon printer.  End of story.

Here's the extended story for those who like to suffer vicariously:

When we knew we were moving to Moldova, we bought a MacBook Pro in the US and I am super dooper happy with it.  It's the best move I've ever done, Apple makes it so easy and fun to buy their products that you just want to throw your money at them, their techs are knowledgeable and honest and fun and just the most sympathetically bit geeky.   For the super dooper MacBook I needed a new printer and (the only failing of Apple, really) the Apple site recommends various HP Photosmart printers. (Remind me to write to Apple about this!)

So we bought an HP Photosmart Premium C310 printer in Germany.  I received the printer, unpacked it and stuffed it into the move.  I never even tried the printer out - I thought it better not to have inks installed when bumping it around in my car roof box.

I admit I forgot to buy replacement cartridges.  I forgot loads of stuff, and the inks were among them.  Not to worry, I thought, I have one set and they do last a while, and we'll probably find some cartridges before too long.

Wrong assumption no. 1:  The ink cartridges that come with HP printers are so-called setup cartridges and only have tiny amounts of ink in them.

I ran out of ink in the second week here in Moldova.  Shucks!  One cannot buy HP cartridges (or any other cartridges, to be fair) in Moldova.  Doug's office employs a refill service - a guy with inks and a syringe who goes around, refilling people's ink cartridges.  Unfortunately, that didn't work so well for our cartridges.  Also, the printer got a bit huffy - at that point, I found that amusing.  ("These cartridges were depleted.  If you have purchased these cartridges, they may be counterfeit...")

I really did want genuine ink.  I print photos and this is a photo printer and I want good quality in my photos.  A US friend of ours was coming to Moldova on a business trip and he kindly asked whether he could bring something for us. Why, yes, we said, for sure!  A quick check on the American HP site revealed that the inks had a different name (564 instead of 364) but we're used to that and didn't think any further about it.  The 564 were named the correct ones for our printer C310a by HP, so we ordered two XL batches, paid rather a lot of money for it, had it shipped to our friend and received the coveted cartridges on Tuesday.

Wrong assumption no. 2: Only because HP says that the cartridges are correct doesn't mean they actually work in your computer. Because you asked HP in the wrong country, stupid!

I was a happy camper.   Out with the old, depleted cartridges, in with the spanky new ones! And print all those files I needed to print out for the homeschool....  "These cartridges are not intended for use in this printer as it is configured." Freeze touchscreen, no go, nothing budges.

I was flabbergasted.  My first thought was we ordered the wrong inks.  Oh!  The name is different!  Those are not the right ones! No, the husband says, I checked.  So we checked again and there it was, black on white: 564 for use in HP Photosmart Premium C310.  That's what we have!  So why, oh, why??

I called the tech support.  Oh, a very chipper Alvin C. says, your printer is regionalized to Europe, those are US cartridges.  We have to change the region on your printer.  No worries, we can do that.  Where are you?  Moldova? Where is that? Um, okay...  But you have US cartridges?  (I don't understand!  That's three countries, it's too complicated!) Well, perform the following four steps...

I my relief to have this  issue solved quickly, I only had a fleeting thought of "regionalized printer? How assinine is that!". 

So, he said, do this and this and print out this page.  "Um, you know, my ink is depleted? I can't actually print anything out!"  I tried anyhow and got a print report that was barely readible but I could make out the numbers.  The tech support asks me to read to him lines 12, 17, and 43.

So I read to him: "Line 12: Total borderless pages printed: 8.  Line 17: Admin Password: Not set.  Line 43...  Um, my report only has 29 lines?" He didn't accept that.  He apparently thought I couldn't read the print-out due to the low ink levels and didn't believe me when I said that I was very certain there was no line 43 on that page.  He'd refer me to a higher level.  I confessed to disgruntlement and the question whether he thought this was at all worth it?  Wouldn't I just be handed around until I gave up?  He ignored this completely, and gave me a case number and told me I'd be contacted.  "Give a two-hour time frame when you are available tomorrow."  Ok, I gave him a window for the next day.  Also, I could just go ahead and call HP Switzerland.  Why? Oh, just because. 

The next morning, I had a huffy email in my inbox - they tried to reach me and I didn't answer?

Puff, I thought.  It's hours until the US wakes up, how about I try the Swiss tech support? I did that and was transfered and then they hung up on me.  Puff, I thought again, I don't get why Sitzerland in the first place, so let's call the German HP support.  I did, and I heard the most amazing things.

First, since I'm in Moldova I am not allowed to reset the country zone to US, I will have to reset it to Moldova, and purchase my cartridges in the Ukraine.  "But I'm not in the Ukraine, I don't have an intention to go there solely to buy ink for my printer and I really do not want to set the region to Moldova. Can you set the printer to the US zone?"  No, apparently they cannot.  Only the tech support in the US can do that.  Towards the end of the conversation I said, "I know it's not your fault but you have to admit this region thing is completely stupid.  I really don't understand the reasons for that."  He said it was for climate reasons.  "Um, you know, if zone 1 reaches from Florida all the way to Alaska, I really cannot accept that as a reason.  I can only conclude HP does this to rip the customers off."  He stuttered a bit.  Then he pointed out that the regionalization can only be done three times, gave me another case number, and we parted our ways.

I tried to transfer the ink from the US cartridges to the European cartridges and discovered that the ink actually sits in a sponge which makes it close to impossible to extract the ink without extraordinarily large amounts of bubbly air.  I got enough black ink out and in to print out the normal, 23-line status report.

That same evening, I tried the tech support in the US again.  I had made the experience that including our residence in Moldova in the equation unnecessarily confused the techs, so I simply didn't mention this little fact.  I want to regionalize my computer to US zone, please, I typed into the tech support chat.  Sure, no problem, was the answer from Asia B.  I tried to keep things easy and transparent, so after five minutes I said, Oh, and I have a Mac.  Surely that can't be the source of the problem, no?

It turns out that the regular HP chat help line is for Windows OS only. For Mac, you have to actually call another number.  But we'll try, Asia suggested.  I was game.  So we tried.

Three hours and three more levels of tech support later, having explained and re-explained my case over and over again, we were where we had started.  My printer didn't react to any of the secret touch-sequenes and would not print what is called a "10 tap test".*  Since the HP techs need line 43 (which lists the serial numbers of the cartridges) we cannot do anything.  Pressed, the tech admitted that sometimes, certain printers just had this problem and would not print the 10 tap test.  Would I mind being referred to a higher level yet?  I declined.  After over three hours on the chat and on the phone, I was beat.  I gave them an eight-hour time slot for the next day, got a case number, and went to bed, seething.

The next morning, another huffy email from a tech support who could not reach me -- after I had stated I didn't want further contact on that day.  He'd try for another three days, or I could call him back.  Friday was a crazy day where everything went wrong and we also had guests and I needed to make dinner and dessert and all that, so I thought I'd not call him and wait for his call that evening.  Only, he didn't call.

Upon reflection, I wrote HP an email explaining why I feel obliged to warn my friends and readers about HP products and their assinine anti-globalization strategy.   I have a printer they can't get to run, I wasted loads of time on a tech support that was really nice and patient and forever gracious but ultimately ineffective and thus worthless.  I spent money on cartridges I cannot use, nor return since they have been opened.  If you think it through, HP basically forces me to use the ink refill service even though they point out it's counterfeit.

I am having my mother send me cartridges from Germany.  That turns the printer from a paperweight back into a printer but I am very unhappy with HP, with the printer, with their service, and this had been the first and very last HP product I've ever bought.

I am not really consoled by the fact that I'm not the only one to run into this problem and quite astounded that so much negative feedback has not bothered HP one bit.  A company that shows such a open disregard for their customers really deserves to be boycotted.

(Again, note that the region change can only be done three times. Also, outside the warranty, HP charges you quite some money for this.)

*I know, I know. The curious mind needs to know:  We tried two different sequences: bottom left, top left, bottom left, bottom left.  Or, bottom left, top left, bottom right, top left. (Pushing the non-lit buttons for "home", "return" and "cancel".)  I cannot tell which one is the correct one, as none of them worked. I have heard, though, that once that report is printed, the printer will lock and can only be unlocked by the HP techs with more secret hand-shakes and dancing around the camp fire.  Use your discretion.

It's an eye swap!

Yes, indeed.  Not a wife swap.  An eye swap.

Imagine this: You have to shoot a group of siblings and as luck has it, they are your own kids.  For some reason, I have found, kids work better with photogs that are not their moms.  Go figure.

Mine are always willing but they are also goofy and funny and while that is nice, it typically results in a row of pictures that has always one kid in a nice pose while the others have their eyes closed, wide open, goofily squinted, what have you.

In comes Photoshop and the awesome possibility of the swap.

Look here is a picture of my kids that I like - only Alan isn't wonderful in this one, and David does something odd with his eyes:

But Leah and Jacob are cute in this one.

Here's a great one, but now Leah has her eyes closed:

Dang it.  So, Photoshop to the rescue. Take Leah's eyes from picture 1, lasso and copy them, and insert into picture 2.  Clean up the edges, and none is the wiser. Erase the road in the back, brighten and darken a bit. Done.  Result: beautiful picture!

My husband is creeped out by this.  I don't understand - they are still her eyes! And she looks cute now.  Some people...

(Hm.  Typepad also darkens pictures, I notice.  How very odd, Typepad.)

Panning

In photography, panning refers to the horizontal movement or rotation of a still or video camera, or the scanning of a subject horizontally on video or a display device.
Wikipedia

Panning is the act of tracking the subject with the camera, whilst taking a single, or multiple shots. Trial and error is the best approach. 15 successful shots from one hundred attempts does not sound like much, but you are doing well if you achieve this. The advantage of this digital age is that you can “bin” anything you don’t need – at the end of the day, if you get one truly memorable image, the viewer won’t know, or even care, how many goes it took you to get it.
PictureCorrect

So I made Alan run.  I made Alan swing on the zip line.  I made him race down a hill on a bike.  I had Alan and David run, and I had David run by himself.  Do you know how very difficult it is to get a subject into focus while it's moving?  It's hard.  You shake the camera and I have the sneaking suspicion that when I press the button, I hold still for just a fraction of a second - which blurs the subject, of course.

No, 15 out of 100 sounds an awful lot to me now.  I made 148 pictures and got 2 (TWO) that are sort of okay.  They don't blow me away, mind you.  (Okay, some shots were of babies in hammocks and adorable 4-year-old's in a sandbox, but still.  148!)  I can show you one:

I love the look of concentration on his face.  He was getting tired but he was a good sport about being chased around the backyard by a woman with a camera.  It was a cool exercise and it's always good to try a new technique but it's not my thing.

May rain brings... cold feet

It's crazy cold in Germany.  I mean, even here it's unusual that you have to wear winter jackets in May.  It's below 10 degrees Celsius (that's 50 F for you imperial types) during the DAY and yesterday I was so cold, I started a fire in our woodburning stove.  I zipped the fleeces back into the boy's jackets.  Leah is still wearing her little down jackets with the (fake) fur.  I blame the stupid volcano but I have no idea whether that's connected in reality.

We built a raised bed and planted it and while my plants are standing like little soldiers, I think they'd like some sun and warmth too, for a change.

Luckily, the kids don't mind too much and we do chase them outside whenever possible. (Did I mention it's also overcast all the time and drizzling rain more often than not?) 

The sandbox is still popular.

Error 99

My camera died.

I had taken a few pictures of Leah on her first birthday today (we're getting to that in a separate post) when suddenly the camera just froze.  Like a bad Windows screen, nothing worked anymore.  I couldn't take pictures, I couldn't view the content of the SD card, nothing.

The battery symbol had indicated low battery so I went ahead and charged the battery, not wasting too much thought on it.  But when the battery was charged and powered the camera up, I took one picture and the little menu screen on the back of the camera flashed irritably.  The flashing wouldn't stop even when I turned the camera off. So I ejected the battery and tried again - same result.  I tried again, then I had an "Error 99" message and the camera got warm.  It had never ever done that before and it sounds very bad to me.  Gahh!

I googled "Error 99" and got about three gazillion hits - and five and a half gazillion answers.  It's basically a generic error code that means nothing and everything. 

We're flying out in 10 days.  The next repair shop is 40 minutes away in Schweinfurt and I have the very bad feeling they would just tell me to send the camera to Canon.  Which would take forever even if they managed to fix the camera.  Of course, the shop might also be able to repair the camera, for not much money and within a day or two.  Sure.

But somehow, I see this result: The camera might/might not get repaired, but not before we leave and maybe not even before we come back.  I have to shoot a wedding the weekend we come back -- but I would need a camera for that.  Camera repairs are usually quite pricey. 

Sigh. I am mentally saying good-bye to the Rebel.  It's been good to me.

Then this afternoon, my MIL called and told us she and her husband (who is not well) are considering coming up to Virginia to see us when we're there.  That's great news and we're very happy about that.  But as I said, my father-in-law is not well, so she asked us if we could stay at the hotel while she and her husband stayed at my sister-in-laws.  Of course we said yes - what a question! I want her to be as comfortable as possible and I am very, very happy that my in-laws are coming to see us in Virginia at all.  It's a great stress factor on them.  I want to do everything I can to make this easy for them.

But... that's another $600+ for the hotel. (I know, Natalie, and thank you.  But we need to stay close and be available at all times, at least for the days when my in-laws are there.)  Doug is making good money when he's got work but he doesn't have another assignment lined up for the fall just yet.  Which makes us very hesitant about spending money.  A new camera is just not in the budget right now.

This is making me more miserable than I want to admit to myself.  Photography has become a big, important part of my life.  And now I'm without a camera - any camera.  My little Point-and-Shoot is broken ever since Alan took it apart two years ago.  We won't have any pictures of our vacation.  I will not be able to do the wedding.  (It's "only" my cousin's wedding, not a paid job - but they asked me to shoot it because they love my pictures.  I thought this might be a first step into a good direction.)

I'm very, very unhappy.

Going through the pile

... of old photos is fun.  I am sorting and deleting those I should not keep, and improving some and leaving others.  I'm pleased that quite a few of my photos are actually best left unprocessed.  Others definitely improve by tinkering with the lighting or the saturation levels. 

Although all those presets I mentioned earlier are loads of fun, I'm quickly paring the ones I use down to half a dozen or so.  Mostly, it suffices if I adjust the exposure a bit, or crop the picture and blur the background. 

The really fun thing is to find buried treasures.  Pictures that don't look like much turn out to be gems when treated right.  Below is one that I didn't even know I had -- Doug took it when we made a huge batch of "welcome home" pix with Leah and I couldn't bear to look at those photos because I found myself so ugly and fat.  Yeah, well.  Hormones are funny things.

I cropped this picture a bit, and played around with some settings.  I think the B&W version is really nice.  My sweet David, trying to find his place in the world.

I'm in love

No, I don't have a new desktop.  Mine arrived months ago and I do love it very much - it's speedy, reliable, speedy - and did I mention it's fast?

I'm in love with a photo editing software.  How strange is that?  Very strange.  But there we go.

I downloaded a 30-day trial of Adobe Lightroom yesterday.  I lost my Photoshop when we transitioned from the laptop to the desktop and have been making due with Picasa ever since.  Picasa is nice and cute but I can't like it much.  I find the editing options too rough-and-ready, I can't downsize the pictures the way I want it and I don't like that Picase overrides my filing system with their own (inferior) version.

I've been looking around and professional grade photo software is just very expensive.   Or rather, it's very expensive for the amateur photographer.  I've been vaguely toying with the idea of whipping myself into shape and pursuing some semi-professional photograph career but so far, I found my photos mediocre. Family and friends raved but I looked at professional photos and there was just something special that my pictures didn't have. "Post processing", that's what.

Even though I liked Photoshop, I found it too clumsy to work with.  I used it mainly for cropping and reducing the size of the photos.  I hardly ever used it for anything else.  That layer thing Photoshop uses?  It scares me. Also, once I found out that the current edition costs $799, that was it for this one. Complicated to learn and expensive won't do for the constantly distracted amateur.

I ran across the 30-day Lightroom trial and thought, oh, why not?  What I expected was that the software was difficult to use, that you had to learn some new way of controling the program like Photoshop or like Expressions, that I would tire of it quickly and then nothing would be lost.

Ah, but non, monsieur!  Lightroom is the awesome.  It's actually not hard to get started without reading a manual or a book although I suspect you'll get a lot more wear out of it once you actually descend into the depths of it.  But even for a bloody beginner, it's loads of fun.  With a few clicks, you can adjust exposure and lighting.  Playing around with the presets is even more fun - you get instant effects, some of which are dramatic and artsy, and some others which are downright awful. 

Presets are pre-defined setting adjustments - they have fancy names like "Alice's less bright dress" or "Elise" and will change your photo instantly - lighting, exposure, vibrancy, saturation, vignettes... and what have you.  Lightroom comes with a few pre-installed presets but there are hundreds, thousands of free presets available on the web for download.  Some are really, really good.  I especially dig the one that lets you even out skin tone and enhance eyes.  Now I finally know how professional photographers find all these kids with flawless skin!

I basically spent the last two days playing around.  I love the ease of use, and the results.  I tend to go a bit overboard with the saturation at the moment but those vibrant colors are so much fun!

Here are a very few examples of some recent transformations.  More pictures are on my flickr site, although mostly without the before/after shots. (Click on the pictures to get a bigger view.)

Alas, this nifty program also costs $299 which is in excess of what one should pay for play.  So I'll be rather busy for the next 30 days, I suspect. Eh, 28.  And running.  Back to work!

From this:

To this:
 

From this:

To this:

From this:

To this:

From this:

To this:

Or this:

Photography

I have a few goals in my life at the moment.  Becoming a better mom is one (patience, where art thou?), loosing the baby fat is another.  About time for both of them if you ask me.  Improving my sewing skills and finally getting into gear to making those baby clothes quilts that I have been meaning to make for the last, oh, five years or so.

Another goal is to become a better photographer.  While being a professional photographer is definitely on my list of dream jobs, that's not what I aspire.  But I take decent pictures and I want to become better.  We have cute kids, and we go interesting places.  Both are important parts of my life that I want to document.  Then, a few days ago my friend M., who is one fantastic photographer, wrote me an email and encouraged me.  I was incredibly flattered and happy, and this turned into motivation and, well, here we are.

I love the creativity of photography and I'm much better at composition than at the technical side - so the technical side is what I need to work on primarily.  I spent the day reading and futzing around, and for the first time in too many years, I think that I've finally wrapped my brain around f-stops, ISO and shutter speeds.  So much so that I'm thinking to myself - hey, that wasn't hard.  Why ever did this seem such a mystery before?  Today, I've ventured beyond the artsy mode on my camera (a Canon Digital Rebel XT) and started playing around with the manual settings and for the first time, the results didn't completely suck.  So I guess some learning has occurred!

My (self-given) assignment today was to work with aperture.  I love blurry backgrounds for kid's shots and so I lean towards larger apertures.  It's a steep learning curve for me.  Here are some results of today (and if you're wondering why the pictures are mostly showing Leah - well, she's at home, the others aren't!)