It’s been a crazy/busy weekend at our household. With the clock ticking and our first meeting with our Realtor on Wednesday, this weekend was filled with home projects including cleaning up the yard, mowing the lawn for the first time this year, weeding the garden, and finishing up the bathroom. We still have a bunch of de-cluttering to do before Wednesday, so I might have to bug out of work early and get some of that stuff done. I know the basement and the garage will be no small undertaking—they’re both disasters right now.

I managed to squeeze in a little bit of photography time, during my wife’s prime sleeping time. I’m finding it a bit more difficult to come up with ideas for subjects as the area is just “too familiar” and I’m just so used to seeing things the way they are; that at a moment’s glance they seem too ordinary and not worth the exposure. But despite that minor dilemma, I’m at least considering which aperture to use, the appropriate shutter speed, and where to take my light meter reading from.

For part of my exercise, I shot entirely in black and white mode on my camera, which produced some fun results. However, once I brought the photos into both Adobe Bridge and Adobe Lightroom, they ever so rudely removed my black and white mode from the RAW file settings and set it back to color. WTF!?! I couldn’t find any preference settings anywhere, that indicated removing the camera’s RAW information upon import. Apparently I’m not the only one having the problem.

I know it’s not that difficult to move the saturation slider in Photoshop RAW editor or switch to Grayscale treatment in Lightroom, but that’s hardly the point. I would some day like to reach the point, where I can take great pictures that don’t need to be touched in Photoshop or Lightroom. Apparently Canon (as well as other manufacturers like Nikon) uses some undocumented data “forks” to store information like color modes or other artistic settings. And of course, the only way to bring the RAW files in and have them preserved correctly is to use the software Canon provided…and that isn’t going to happen. I simply cannot stand their software…it’s bulky and not all that great like Photoshop or Lightroom.

One user suggested shooting in RAW/JPG mode, where it captures both a RAW file and a JPG…but I’d rather not have to do that. It defeats the point of shooting RAW in the first place.

In other news…

Our first batch of CD’s are on their way to the radio stations; so with any bit of luck in tandem with all the hard work we’ve put into the CD, you may start to hear a single or two appear on some of the radio stations in the Midwest.

We sent out 109 CD’s this round to radio stations throughout Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, North and South Dakota, Illinois, and Michigan. Next round we’ll do the East Coast and eventually the West Coast and down into the South. So next week, start asking stations like 89.3 The Current (or your local indie-friendly radio station) to play some of the songs off our EP, particularly “Beauty Queen” or “Bomb”.

I’m pretty excited about the EP’s leaving my house and reaching the radio stations, but with things coming down to the wire with our home and needing to sell, like NOW, I’ve been too preoccupied with getting our house ready. Hopefully we can sell soon, so I can get that distraction out of the way before mid-summer.

Likewise, I’ve decided to put off school for a bit as well. I haven’t really had too much time to think about it, let alone to take as many photos as I’d like. (If only I could like not go to work but still get paid…) But that’s not happening.

Anyway, there’s my busy weekend in review. Busy week ahead with our Realtor coming over on Wednesday and getting the house ready…then of course the big beer shindig on Friday at Macalaster College, Cinco De Mayo on Saturday… busy busy busy.

April 30, 2007, 12:45 pm

Filed under: Home Ownership, Photography

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