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New galleries added, check them out! 6/29/08

Many of the galleries have been updated and there are also 2 new galleries. Click here to view the galleries and to see what's new!

 

In the galleries you will be noticing that some categories have been renamed, like under Professional - Food / Drink = Food & Land / Water = Scenery. There is also a new category under Professional called "Sports". In addition to adding new pictures for the month of "June 2008", there is now a brand-new gallery called "Commercial", this gallery has its own categories too!

 

All that planning and I had to cancel 6/29/08

Well, I woke up this morning and noticed it was nice and sunny. Okay, it'll be a good day for my trip. Yesterday night, I planned to going to 8 different cities, but then decided to only go to 4 instead. I had it all planned out and I was going to:

• Wineries
• Orchards
• Marina's / Ports
• Shops / Cafe's / Food
• Parks / State Parks
• Golf Clubs / Golf Courses
• and more including the Grand Traverse Lighthouse...

After checking the weather for today, everyone is saying "partly to mostly cloudy" all day long with rain in the afternoon, that's not a good day for photography. I am hoping for a day or 2 of beautiful bright sun with limited cloud cover - but it's not going to happen today! I'll have to reschedule for another day.

 

Planning my state-wide road trip 6/28/08

Some of you may have heard that I am preparing myself for the state-wide Michigan photo shoot. Well, if the weather is nice tomorrow - I'll begin some of that trip. This trip will take about 1-2 months to complete (all depends on the weather too). I'm excited about it, and the best part is... I don't have to pay a dime for it! The company I work at Sutherlands Web Services, will be reimbursing me for every expense I make, and plus I'll be making money as well! I have already prepared my trip for tomorrow 6/29/08. I hope to be able to complete all 8 destinations, that I have planned.

 

Photographs from this trip, will be posted hopefully the next day. For some parts of this trip, I will be staying at hotels and hopefully will be able to get Wi-Fi, so I can post nightly news on my site. I'll be traveling around the state including in the Upper Peninsula area too.

 

Another good day 6/28/08

This morning was a bit rough, the storm woke me up at about 4:30am - we had hard rain thunder and lightning, but to top it off - my head my spinning and I had a major hangover. During this time at 4:30am, I was thirsty, so I got up and made it into the kitchen to satisfy my thirst - afterwards, I went back to sleep. I woke up again around 8:30am and felt fine.

 

I spent most of the morning working on the photographs I took yesterday in Cadillac at the Briar. Since I have that sensor cleaner now, it cut the editing of my photos in half. I don't have to remove that annoying dust from each picture - it saves me a lot of time now! Its not bad if the shoot had a few pics, but normally I shoot hundreds per shoot (on the average shoot would include approximately 50 pics). I did some additional editing to enhance the colors of the course, since many of the photos were shot under cloudy skies.

 

Today, I watched Special Olympics softball and it was exciting, and of course... I brought my camera equipment - many of people there were amazed with my equipment - I was well prepared. What I brought with me to the game included:

• Nikon D80 body
• Vertical grip
• 4gb Lexar SDHC card
• Right angle viewfinder (came in handy too)
• Tripod
• Nikkor 70-200mm VR 2.8 lens
• Chair
• Prime lens (goes everywhere with me) Sigma 18-50mm 2.8
• I had a great setup too!

After the softball game, I stopped for some food at Burger King, close to Toms house - after the late lunch, I went to visit Tom and Jacquie at their "future house". Phase 2 pics will become available, once Phase 3 begins. I normally visit their house every weekend and take pictures of the progress - and after today's visit, its getting closer.

 

At around 5:30pm, I took my dad golfing at the Crown in Traverse City - this was the first time we have played since last season... Overall, we did okay! I'll have to take my buddy Tom another day for a free round of golf with cart.

 

What a day - good and alright 6/27/08

Well this morning, I had a meeting with a client at 9am - which the meeting only lasted 5 minutes and went good too. After the meeting, I went back home to continue with more work - as the time went by, I got a call from Steve and shortly after that - I was packing up my camera equipment and getting ready to leave to Cadillac, Michigan. After about 60 minutes went by, I arrived to the Briar South in Cadillac - I was hoping to see sunny clear skies, but that didn't happen for about another hour in a half. When the weather got a little nicer, my tour guide took me around the course for the photographs. It went alright, but not great - that's due to the weather, sunny - cloudy and back and forth, hey but at least it didn't rain.

 

Some bad news, my grandma will be leaving soon - hopefully she will return again!

 

Saying goodbye... 6/26/08

Since I got the sensor cleaner for my Nikon D80, I took some test shots after cleaning it and all the dust is gone. Well its never gonna be able to remove 100% of it, but removed the spots that were bothering me for months. I now say goodbye to that annoying dust on my pictures and not editing my pics will be cut in half - its about time!

 

In other news, I took my 2007 Nissan Murano in for its yearly inspection and everything is looking good, now I can go on my state wide photo shoot. I'll be planning it soon, taking a few cities at a time, it'll be fun - just hope the weather is nice.

 

Final accessory 6/24/08

Well today was good, better than yesterday to say the most. Today though I got my order from B&H - the final accessory for my Nikon D80 and a cleaner for the sensor. The instructions with the sensor cleaner is easy to understand and within minutes I was able to successfully clean my sensor (removed all the dust). I took a couple test shots and noticed that there wasn't any dust - I am so happy now!

 

The accessory that I got, will make it simple now to take hard to reach photographs, its the right angle view finder attachment (I have been waiting to get this accessory for over a year). I now have all the accessories for the Nikon D80, what's next?

 

Waiting for updates... 6/24/08

It has been about 1 week since Firefox 3 has been officially released, but it seems that many of the developers of many popular extensions have disappeared! There are a few more updates I am waiting for, because I used their extensions more than any others and my browsing experience is okay, but not great. I was able to find one extension that they developer is continuing to update, so its a temporary fix for compatibility with Firefox 3 browser.

 

Over the weekend, a lot happened:

• 1st lunch at McDonalds
• 2nd lunch/snack at Culver's
• Wine tasting at Leelanau Wine Cellars in Omena, Michigan
  • also bought 3 bottles of wine this time, make it last longer this week
• Gambling at the Leelanau Sands casino
  • won & lost - not in debt though
• Dinner at Mancinos
• Shopping at Menards for outdoor products
  • hose
  • batteries
  • grass seed and spreader
• Went out in the yard
• Cleaned my garage
• Cut the grass, part of it
• Watched 2 movies "Jumper" and "Unearthed". Jumper is a great movie!
• Played Grand Theft Auto IV for a bit on my Playstation 3

Wow, those photographs look nice... 6/20/08

I had someone tell me how nice some of my photographs look - they look so crisp and clear. What did you do?, well my photographs go through my process. I will not give out those secrets, because it's something I have learned and researched about to give my photographs a nice crisp and clean look when displayed on the web. I try as a professional photographer to produce nice crisp and clean photographs without spots of dust and such. When someone looks at my photos - I want them to be amazed! Wow, that looks nice. That's why some people know me as the "Wizard".

 

I have been thinking of adding a new gallery to show off some of my commercial photographs. The only problem is... choosing the ones to show, since I have thousands of them. If I add these types of photographs, there will be a limited amount of them.

 

What a wonderful day... sort of 6/18/08

I woke up a bit later than normal, so I didn't make it to the office until 9:30am. Outside at 9am was sunny and I thought today would be a great sunny and warm day (guess what it wasn't). On my way to work, it got cloudy and it was cold outside, it was a tough decision "winter or spring jacket", this is turning out to be a bad summer. It was a good day at work, got a lot done and laughed so hard, my eyes began to water.

 

Did you do your part yesterday by downloading "Firefox 3"? I did. It sure is a great browser, the security is great and the extensions are free - compared to Internet Explorer, you gotta pay for those extensions - boo! Make the switch and download Firefox 3 today! Here are some extensions I recommend to use with Firefox 3...

1. Adblock Plus
2. Download Statusbar
3. Menu Editor
4. NoScript
5. I'm waiting for others to become compatible with the new version.

Gonna get some more work done tonight, have a good day everyone!

 

Friday the 13th continued 6/16/08

It sure seemed like Friday the 13th continued on to today. All morning at work I seemed to be having computer problems, the programs that I use on a daily basis, weren't working today. After multiple annoying windows updates and apple installations, I restarted the computer and try again - no luck though... It was beginning to piss me off a bit! Finally after I manually shutdown the computer and then waited a while, I turned it back on - and it was working... finally! The day got better and most of the day, it was quiet - very nice.

 

Happy Fathers Day to all 6/15/08

Well, today is officially Fathers Day! We got out dad some alcohol, because that is what he requested - and it sounds good too "Tequila Rose" Strawberries and Cream. There are 2 other flavors too, Java and Chocolate.

 

My mom went downstate the other day and will be returning soon with her mom which is our grandma, whom she will be staying with my parents for about a month or 2. We call her "Baci", I guess that's what a grandma is called in polish, but her real name is Mary Ann. My house is all clean for presentation.

 

A beautiful sunny clear day 6/14/08

I woke up at about 9:30am this morning, took a shower, ate breakfast - the usually stuff. Afterwards, I left my house and went out exploring. On my adventure today, I went to the "Civic Center" and took many photographs of the baseball players all ranging ages from young to teens - it was a good time. I then had lunch at Burger King, which was a short drive from the "Civic Center". After lunch, I drove down the alley to Tom's house or what's becoming of it. Tom was there too, so I walked around took some pictures of the progress and then we talked for a while "catching up". After Tom's house, I went out to the soccer fields to take more pictures and watch the game a bit - what a beautiful sunny clear day it was!

 

After I shot all that my memory card could hold "approx. 400 of them - all in RAW format though", I went back home to process them and get them ready for the web. I shot all the photographs today in RAW format, so that I have 100% control when I was processing them. It took about 2 1/2 hours to process all of them, what I normally do is...

1. trash the ones that were out of focus, blurry, or I didn't like it
2. check each photograph for dust and then if needed "remove it"
3. adjust the "white balance" and "tone" - if needed
4. straighten out / crop the picture - if needed
5. adjust the clarity - if needed
6. copyright all the photographs - a must
7. export

It may seem like a lot of work and it is, but it also depends on how many photographs I have taken per shoot. I want to make sure all my photographs are good enough to show on my site, I hate it when I view photographs and there is visible "dust" on it - it just looks like the photographer didn't care!

 

Where did the time go? 6/12/08

Today and this whole week seemed to have flown by. I had a busy day, I worked at home in the morning and then later went to a meeting at the office. The meeting went great, and then we had another one - it was one we didn't expect to have so soon, but better then another day. We are working on some major projects at SWS that are well more worth more than $50,000 dollars.

 

After dinner I was going to cut the rest of my lawn, but instead it has decided to begin to rain, at least I was able to work out a bit.

 

Well, I off to finish my bottle of wine and have some cheese and then watch television and eat some more, good night all!

 

You get what you pay for 6/10/08

Today I woke up about 8:30am, ate breakfast and then begun work. It nice, I'll be working at home 3 days a week now instead of 2, that's until the price of gas goes down. Anyway's, I got a lot of work done, one client approved their redesign and also I almost completed another site - it's about 90% done!

 

In the morning though, it rained a bit, but no thunder or lightning... we finally get a break. The rest of this week though, will most likely be crappy - more rain and storms. I noticed that since I am paying for certain condo association fees, that a company came out to my subdivision and cut all the ditches, you get what you pay for - that's nice! After work, I made a frozen dinner "pot roast" and it was good, I then made my way outside and cut a big majority of my yard, I'll leave the rest for another day.

 

I feel like a new person 6/9/08

This morning, I woke up around 8am, took a shower and then got ready to leave. On my way to work, I stopped downtown and went to "Burrones" 1st Class barbershop right on front street, they even have their own parking lot - which is nice. I arrived at the perfect time, because they just opened, so I was their first customer. Kim is usually the one who cuts my hair and she was there, and I was in and out within 30 minutes - "I feel like a new person". Before I got my hair cut, it was really long and I felt hot a lot, which was beginning to annoy me.

 

Today I had a good day at work, we had a meeting in the morning to catch up on some stuff, and we got some good news... I'll be working at home 3 days a week now! It's very nice, since I have already noticed a change with saving on gasoline for my vehicle.

 

In other news, I found this cool site called "Bomomo", its a javascript based drawing application, that only works in Firefox - this is what I made, look below...

 

Amazing sound quality 6/7/08

Well today was an amazing day, even better when my parents and brother came over and we all watched "National Treasure 2" on my television with surround sound. That movie was action-packed and overall a great movie.

 

In other news, I took apart some of my computer today and modified it a bit. I removed most of the front plastic junk and removed the covers to the drivers, since I have been having issues trying to open them - it should work better now.

 

Another gorgeous day in TC 6/7/08

During the night, I set-up a fan right next to my bed and it felt good. When I woke up this morning, I took a shower and then did some work in my office and waited until my mom arrived with some goodies. After a while, my mom and I went back to their house and we waited for my dad to wake up, so the three of us could go wine tasting.

 

On our way towards Omena, we noticed in the GT Bay all the boats and lots of people on the beach "it cant be that warm to swim yet". We arrived to the Leelanau Wine Cellar up in Omena, Michigan - where we tasted some wine "7-8 of them". My dad was driving, so he couldn't drink as much as my mom and I. After the tasting's, my mom and I both bought some wine - we both purchased the same choice of wines "Apple & Great Lakes Red" - both of which were really good!

 

After this winery, the 3 of us went to Madonna's parents winery called "Ciccone" - and you have to pay $5 to taste 6 wines, but you get to keep the glass. Overall, the wine was nasty, nothing compared to what "Leelanau Wine Cellars" had to offer. Yeah, maybe the wines are expensive, but why buy them - they don't have much taste compared to some others I have tasted - on to another winery. The only good thing that is good there is the oyster crackers :).

 

After the wine tasting, the 3 of us went back into Traverse City and went to Home Depot. I purchased a holder for my garden hose - which will make the appearance of my house look better.

 

Wow, what happened last night 6/6/08

Last night, I drank a bit too much - I realized that after the 3rd beer. Normally I don't drink beer, but since my brother and his friend left me with so much beer the other night, I might as well drink it. I fell asleep fast, but woke up thirsty - then made my way into work... a few minutes late. There was plenty of work to do at the office.

 

Wow, what a surprise in the temperature this morning - hot and humid. I got word towards lunch time, that we are in a tornado watch until 10pm - wow what a shocker.

 

My parents and my brother and I went out to dinner at a place out in the boon docks, where they so-called "have award winning pizza" and the food wasn't that good. After dinner, my brother and I rented the movie "Meet the Spartans" - it was alright, but not all that good.

 

Gray day today 6/4/08

Wow, what weather we have had the last few days - cold and gray! Its a bit warmer than yesterday, but the sun hasn't shined once today and it looks like a storm is coming or rain. It's june already and it should be much warmer, its not looking good for our summer.

 

It was another busy day at work, took 2-3 hours to fix an email issue - very strange, the answer is still unknown. We'll see how tomorrow goes, hopefully better.

 

Party time at my house 6/3/08

We had a mini party at my house yesterday, there were supposed to be 3 people coming, but it turned out to be a small get together at my house to watch the Red Wings game. My brother Brian and his friend Mike from Colorado came over and brought some snacks and beer. I had a drink myself "White Russian", since I had all the ingredients to make it and it turned out good. The game was exciting and looked amazing on my 50" television with surround sound. The game finally ended around 12:30am and the wings lost, it was an intense game - 3 overtimes. I went to bed right away and fell asleep fast.

 

Yesterday at work, we had server issues all morning, and it all had to do with our host company blaming us for a mistake they made - I wasn't the one who recommended this company. The day got better and all the problems were fixed.

 

Maintenance time 6/1/08

Today, I opened up the case of my computer to see how dusty it was - overall it wasn't that bad. I took apart some of the inner pieces and completely cleaned them by removing the dust, which on my computer is fairly easy to do. My machine is a monster though, heavy and meant to play games on it - even though I don't play as much games anymore. Now I just gotta backup some of my files especially my photographs.

 

New stuff including new pics 6/1/08

Well, its a new month - and that means new pictures added in the May 2008 gallery. Along with the new pictures added, the about page has also been updated with new content.