Find Waldo at FUDCon Blacksburg 2012
If you were at FUDCon Blacksburg 2012 can you find yourself in this picture?
These are the group shots I took of everyone at FUDCon in January. I posted these to my Fedora People space a while back but recently Ben Williams asked me to make a blog post so folks on Planet Fedora would get to see them as well. I’m happy to oblige.
We took a well-behaved version as well but it's just not as cool as the other one.
Just one last question…:
Who's this guy?
He's cracking me up.
Brave Boys
Many of you are familiar with the tragic events my family experienced last year. It breaks my heart to tell you that a family that has been so supportive to mine, because they had gone through the same thing, is experiencing the same thing again. No couple deserves children more then they do. I can’t imagine being deprived of the opportunity a second time. This is my response to them, its so small but all I can do: 😦 If any of you live in Jerusalem please find them, give them the biggest hug in the world from me. I’ve never met them but I love them…
Leora, I can not express how heart broken my wife and I are for you and your family. You’ve never met or communicated with me but your support of my wife, Doracy, has meant world to me. Even though I know what it feels like to look into the face of your child and watch them slip away from you I can’t imagine what it must be like to go through that same experience a second time. It would break me permanently for sure, the first time almost did. When I heard the news of Asaf’s passing I cried for hours. I feel like I know you and David from what Doracy has told me about you. When I read that David had spent the morning looking for Micha’s grave it reminded me so vividly of the morning I spent choosing the grave site for my boys. It was the coldest morning of my life.
In the future you will bring your children home, in your arms, healthy and safe. I believe that, I have to. They will grow big and strong. When they do I want your rainbow babies to meet mine. It may not happen till they are adults, because of the distance between us, but they will share a bond that only children with siblings that came before will understand. They will be beautiful and you will cherish them like no other parent will. No other parent will be more deserving. No other parent will take better care of their children.
We will be here for you and David and we will do anything we can for you. I will always consider you family.
Russell
P.S. tell your high risk OB that you will be getting a cerclage. I firmly believe it helped us get through our second pregnancy with twins. Sadly the only indicator doctors have that a cerclage is indicated is that a family has lost a pregnancy the same we did a year ago and the way you just did. I’m so frustrated with the world medical community for their lack of study in this area. It breaks my heart.
Using Simple Tools
Not all photography tools have to be expensive. Sometimes a simple piece of craft foam with some Velcro can be the most useful thing in your bag.
A number of people have asked me to elaborate on one of the pictures I posted to my 365 this year. Its one of the most simple tools I keep in my camera bag and one of the most useful.
It’s just a bit of black foam that can be found at any craft store or art supplies place with some Velcro strips around the edges. In general photography terms it’s a flag, or some object you use to block light. Either from hitting your subject or from entering the camera directly.
This used to be a tool I’d only bring out from time to time when I had a specific problem to solve. Thanks to a tip from Brian Mullins this tool has found its way onto my on camera flash when I’m forced to use it.
Lets start with a demonstration. First lets take a look at what we get when we do use on camera flash or a hot shoe flash pointed straight forward.
Direct Flash
You can see that the exposure is acceptable and everything is lit. Problem is the light is very flat and not very flattering. Besides it looks like every other flash photo out there and who wants that. To fix it without using an off camera flash we can try a few things. Lets start by bouncing our light off of the wall to my left.
Bounce Flash
That’s a bit better. Now the light has direction giving the face some shape and its a bit softer as well. Overall much better, but it’s still a bit hot for my taste and you’ll notice if you look closely two catch lights. The main one from the wall and a smaller one from the flash head. This means there is still some direct light falling on the subject. Lets try using our flag on the side of the flash closest to the subject.
Flagged Bounce Flash
Now all the light is coming from the wall we bounced our light off of and none of it is coming directly from the flash head. The light is soft and doesn’t have any of the hot spots we were having problems with earlier. The effect is subtle but makes for a better and more flattering shot in my opinion.
Bonzer in the Kiddie Pool
Something on a happy note:
One of my favorite applications using the flickr API is Photojojo’s PhotoTimeCapsule. It’s a simple app that just sends me an email twice a month with the most interesting photos I uploaded a year ago. Today I found a picture of a very happy puppy in my Inbox. How could you not see that and smile?
Jimmy Allen Photography
I just wanted everyone to know how much my wife, my family, and I appreciate Jimmy. Sadly we met him because he volunteers for an organization called Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep. Something I feel he probably doesn’t tell others because his personal modesty won’t let him. Everyone in my family who was there commented on how wonderful the photographer was who came to help us through the most painful moment of our lives. In the most difficult of circumstances he was able to give us images to remember our boys that make me smile because they convey our love for them even at the same time they show our pain from loosing them. His compassion, respect, artistic ability, and warm heart have inspired me to pursue my passion for photography. I only hope that someday I’ll be at a point where I’m able to help another family in the same way Jimmy helped us.
I’ve included a video after the jump that will tell you more about NILMDTS and what they do. You will cry when you watch it, but it is very, very touching and conveys the importance of their work.
Read more…
Classics in LEGO
A lego reconstruction of the famous 1932 photograph "Lunch atop a skyscraper" taken by Charles Ebbets.
Mike Stimpson has clearly put a great deal of thought into how some of the most famous photographs were shot. So much that he’s recreated them using LEGOs! He even included links to how he setup each shot which is a fun way to learn a little about lighting as well. Just plain fun!
A Lego recreation of Robert Capa's 1944 photograph taken during the D-Day landings on Omaha beach during World War II.
See more and the Originals on flickr, via A Photo Editor
GIMP Resynthesizer
I’ve been pretty amused by the buzz about the new “Content Aware Crop” feature in PhotoShop. It never occurred to me that it wouldn’t have that feature because I’ve used Open Source tools to do the same thing for years.
The bench really distracted from the composition of this image so I simply used the Resynthesizer plug-in for GIMP to remove it.
- Free select tool to “lasso” the bench.
- Filters -> Enhance -> Smart Remove Selection.
- Done
Recent Portraits
I’ve been working on my photography quite a bit this year and feel like my images have progressed dramatically from what I’ve learned. I’m finding I enjoy doing portraits and have done a few shoots recently for friends and family. I hope you enjoy them.
They are an example of what can be achieved with only Open Source software. To achieve the same results using proprietary solutions would require spending well more than $1000 on software alone. Instead these and more are available in the standard Fedora repositories. All I had to do was click on “System -> Administration -> Add/Remove Software” and look through the “Graphics” packages. It couldn’t be any easier!
Information For Our Friends and Family
Just this Friday, our twin boys were born to soon to take their first breath. So many of our friends have asked for details about the funeral and /or ways they can help. Rather than relay the information many times I’m just writing up a post to point people to. I’ll write more about what happened when I’m more ready to face it.
Their Funeral
We are going to lay our boys to rest near my family in Virginia. There will be a grave side service 4:00PM Tuesday January 19th at Hebron Baptist Church in Appomattox, Virginia. GPS navigation systems and mapping websites aren’t very reliable in Appomattox County so be sure and get directions from the church website.
For people wishing to attend from out-of-town our wonderful friends at Rockcliffe Farm Retreat & Lodge near our home have graciously offered any of the rooms they haven’t already rented out to people attending the funeral no charge.
How You Can Help
I honestly don’t know what help we should ask for. Our family has all been here over the weekend and taking wonderful care of us but after we come home on Wednesday or Thursday we won’t have them here and from what I’ve been told that’s when things will get really hard. The women in our neighborhood have offered to coordinate meals for anyone interested in making one so we don’t end up with 18 suppers all at once and then none for the upcoming days. I will give you their contact information if that’s something that interest you. I can confidently say that Doracy will need to see some friendly faces in the coming weeks and I’m thinking that the people stopping by will be just as important as the food itself.
The hospital gave us a wonderfully done pamphlet “Family and Friends: How You Can Help When a Baby Dies” which I recommend everyone read. I will support my loved ones slightly differently through any loss they may have in the future because of it. The most important part being on what not to do. I have made some of those mistakes in the past because I didn’t know what the right thing to say was.
Some Links
2009-09-12 Durant Lake One
The red light from the setting sun over my right shoulder almost makes it look like the trees have already started changing colors. I shot this in RAW format using my old Canon Digital Rebel and then tonemapped it using the excellent qtpfsgui tool.
Important Projects
Flickr Photos
This blog by Russell Harrison is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Russell Harrison 