huntington library

We went to the Huntington Library today. It was our second trip to the library. It started off very overcast and cool, which was nice because our last trip was during the middle of a July afternoon! I snapped pictures in the gardens. I only used my 50mm lens thinking that I really wanted to get a nice shallow depth of field. Reviewing my photos, I did get the shallow depth of field, but often it was too shallow! I was working a lot in the f/1.6 - f/2.2 range and was working close to the flowers. The few pictures that I did take around f/4 turned out much better. I had an idea before we got there to take a bunch of pictures of different color flowers and make a composite image that looked like a rainbow, but due to my DOF issues, I didn’t really end up with enough usable images. Despite the trouble, I ended up with one image that I was pleased with.

Laura and her Mom baked some cupcakes. They asked me to take a couple pictures. I was traveling light (ie. no lightstand or umbrella), so I didn’t feel that I could really pull off some awesome looking pictures. Faced with this lack of confidence, I simply relied on TTL flash bounced off the ceiling to do the trick. I felt like such a goober. The cupcakes looked and tasted better than my photographs turned out.

After being turned down for a job based on my lack of SQL skills, I’ve enrolled in a pair of Oracle classes at Glendale Community College. The first one starts June 17. The second one starts sometime towards the end of July. They are both 1.5 unit classes, so I’m not sure how in-depth they will go. If I end up knowing a lot of it already, at least I can say that I’ve played with Oracle before and they will be easy A’s. If I learn a lot, then I’ll build better web-based applications at work (something they’ve been having me do more of lately). I was disappointed to find that there are no black and white film classes that really fit my schedule in the fall. I may instead take an intro do the digital darkroom (basically photoshop 101) and an intro to digital photography class. The only problem with the intro to digital class is that it’s Saturdays from 8 or 9 until 4:30, so I need to figure out if I can live without a Saturday for 15 weeks. I really think I should just do it.

Zack Arias is giving one of his OneLight workshops in September here in LA. I’m trying to justify the $600. Laura gave me the tentative go-ahead, but I have some reservations about my ability as a photographer. I don’t want to slow the class down based on my novice ability with flash. I’m going to try to practice a lot this next month and see if I start to get comfortable with it. If so, I may enroll. $600 is also a bit of cash and since we’re in the process of buying a house right now, things are a bit up in the air.