Sloss Furnace Shoot

Originally uploaded by ruffyen.

So pretty much ever since I bought my camera I have wanted to go out to Sloss Furnace and take some photos of the place. First off the place has TONS of historic value for the city of Birmingham, secondly the old rusty fixtures there just seemed like something that was begging me to shoot. And I was pretty spot on. There were some really fantastic shots that I got out of this outting. The one here was in my opinion the best of the shots that I took. Very little editing was required of the image and ultimately I thought I really looked good. The rest of the set can be seen here
One thing that I was not aware of was all the red tape that you have to go through to take pictures at Sloss, even for "educational" purposes, or if you just think the place is cool and want to shoot photos. Basically they own all the pictures no matter what you do, and if you ever plan to sell them in a gallery or anything they get one complimentary piece of thier choice. It's pretty crazy if you read the entire document which turns out to be like 5 or 6 pages. None the less, none of it really mattered to me so not a big deal in the end.
Additionally my wife and I decided to make a day trip out of it and go explore downtown Birmingham camera in hand and see what else we could find. My second two favorite pics of the day came from the peanut gallery. The first image is of what I think is an antique roaster, and the second image is of one they actually use at the factory.
Overall I learned a few choice pieces of knowledge. If you are going to shoot somewhere that is protected by the Parks and Rec department, make sure you know what you are getting into. Secondly, when someone says they ask for donations, what they really mean is, " there is a fee to shoot here, but we wont tell you how much that fee is you just have to decide what it means to you.." to me it was $5 bucks :).

Pull the Plug

Ok, so I made the jump today and cut off the cable/satellite. You heard me right completely cut it off, didn't mess around with reduced price packages etc. that they try to do when you are pulling out of their services cold turkey. The service officially cuts off next Monday, as that is the end of the billing cycle. Now with that being said I am certainly not giving up TV. I actually put together a pretty sweet setup. I bought a Western Digital Live TV Hub which allows for netflix streaming and can pretty much play ANY codec that you throw at it. I coupled this with PlayOn which allows streaming of Hulu and various other services.

Truthfully PlayOn is where the setup really shines and is worth every penny of the $60 I spent on the life time subscription. I have had the setup running to make sure there would be no major hiccups when the connection to satellite finally goes black. The biggest hurdle was going to be some of the shows that Jill watches, but we were able to find those through various services that the PlayOn has.

Overall really satisfied with the setup. We will see how it goes in about a month and I will write up any pitfalls that happen along the way as well. If you have any questions etc either email me or leave one in the comments.

Police officers Acquitted in Alabama Brutality Case

You have to watch the full video to understand both sides of this story in my humble opinion. Disregard the men talking just watch the video. It is my full belief that officers of the law should take every means they have available to them to be safe, they have families as well. But it is also my opinion that what happens in the last 11 seconds of the chase was completely uncalled for. The acts that they performed were, from my point of view, completely filled with emotion. I am an avid mixed martial arts fan (read UFC for most people), and even I am appalled by the actions I saw these officers take.

I have heard the argument that these officers are trained to think that every criminal of this stature is armed to the teeth and dangerous. But it would be my understanding that they are also trained to act without bias or emotion. They can't get wrapped up in the moment, they can't act on instinct, they have to act above the people they are serving and protecting. I cannot honestly believe that a panel of jurors watched this video and did not think that what the two officers, that were charged at a federal level, did no harm. While I am not 100% who the two men were, I am going to go on a limb and just say it was the initial officer with the night stick and the officer beating on the guys face.

There are good cops out there, I served in the Air Force with a guy who is now a cop up north, and I can honestly say that I would think he would have the presence of mind to not do what these officers did, and would have probably pulled the jack ass off that was pounding on the guys face.

Truthfully, the first guy in the image after the criminal is thrown from the vehicle(37secs in to the video) and laying face down, not moving, I can almost give him a pass. That was around 5 seconds after the man was thrown from the car and it is nearly impossible to see that he was knocked out in that time. The guy beating on the man's face came in at the 44sec mark of this video, and that is roughly 12 secs after the man is thrown from the vehicle. If anything that man should have had the book thrown at him.

None the less I am going to wrap this post up. I am not happy that both of these men were acquitted of their charges. While I am content with them losing their jobs over the matter (again it is a tough call on the guy with the night stick), I can not say that justice was served here. The man that ran the cop over, and lead AL police on a 22 min chase, should have been tried in front of a jury, not on the side of the highway by 5 armed men. We live in a society where laws are supposed to serve justice and while I do not agree with a vast majority of those laws, as stated here, I think those that blatantly feel they are above the law should be struck down with furious vengeance. Thoughts?

Alex Lambert

@TrueAlexLambert posted some crazy stuff on twitter last night. This kid is REALLY talented. He honestly has one of the BEST National Anthem Renditions I have ever heard in my entire life. And you can ask my wife I always listen to how an artist sings the National Anthem. Everytime I hear this kid sing, the rawness that he brings is amazing. I honestly didn't pay him much attention when he was on American Idol because I wasn't a fan of his look, and he seemed like he was very scared and intimidated. None the less saw him for the first time again on If I Can Dream on Hulu and the kid was amazing. The show almost focused on him which I was ok with :).

None the less I want to do my part to help this guy out. I dont have a grip of followers, or even people that read this blog, but none the less I want to help where i can :). Follow him on twitter, and get this guy 100,000+ followers. In the words of my Mother-in-Law "He deserves it."

Additionally Alex, if you stumble across this lonely little blog, I want to just say DO WORK :). While you would love to give your music away for free, you have to make money first. I would also like to apologize for giving you shit about retweeting your Mr. Twitter stuff.

That is all.

Took the dogs to the park

Originally uploaded by ruffyen.

So in an attempt to get some more practice with the new camera I decided to take the dogs out to a school near my house and let the dogs run free while I took some pictures. Overall I was very impressed with the pictures that I am getting even at this stage of learning. While most of the pictures are not perfect, they are very impressive to me and my wife's amateur eyes heh. Click through on the picture to see a few more that were taken of that day.

All the photos are taken with a Canon Rebel XS with a 50mm f/1.8 lens. The camera settings were all over the place as I was just testing out some of the settings and playing with some of the stuff that I have learned while scouring the net.

All editing of these files was done in the same fashion. Nothing too fancy, I just import the files into GIMP and do any blemish and major color edits then save them to a location where Picasa can get a hold of them and and make the final adjustments. One thing that I am learning...I have a LOT to learn about photography and photo editing. Editing the RAW image is nice but there is a LOT of stuff you have to do with them to make them look presentable.

Just bought a DSLR (Canon Rebel XS)

Palmer Chilling on the couch
Originally uploaded by ruffyen.

So I finally purchased a DSLR. I got a Canon Rebel XS after Jill decided to break my fujifilm point and shoot. Decent trade up if you ask me heh. None the less I purchased a starter lens after refering to my Photography friends both on IRC, IRL, and on the web. The lens I purchased was a Canon 50mm f/1.8 which is so far a really fantastic lens for the stuff I have been playing around with. The photo linked on this entry is a pic I took which is up on my flickr page in a set of a few photos that I have taken so far. Overall with 3 days of use under my belt im really impressed with the photos. I plan to do some more shooting this weekend around town to see what I can come up with and will post here.

Also this is the first post I have had since 2009. Over a freaking year...certainly going to have to change that. Either way 2010 was a great year and I hope to update this blog more often to keep better track of 2011 :).