I’m sure that some of you participate in various online communities. If you didn’t, you probalby wouldn’t be reading this. My personal poison is photography, so I like a couple different online communities of photographers. I was lucky enough to find my first one very early in its existence. There weren’t a lot of people involved, but those who were, were like me. They were learning and sharing. The discussion forums were great. The content of those forums was priceless to me. This was just about 5 years ago when I found this particular site. The site hosts digital photography competitions as well. I participated in those throughout my learning process. Over time, the site grew. When I first joined, there were about 50 or 75 active participants in those competitions. Of those, there were 35 or so who participated in the discussion forums. Now, there are hundreds and hundreds of regular participants in the contests and quite a few of those are active in the forums as well. The site is very popular. It’s membership spans the globe.
This growth has been good for the site owners. I’m sure they are making a nice chunk of money from the membership dues and the print sale commissions. I’m very happy for them that it’s so successful.
I have basically stopped participating in the photo competitions now. The number of photos that appear in any given competition is so large that it’s nearly impossible to evaluate each photo properly and vote fairly. Much to my dismay, I have also practically stopped participating in the discussion forums as well. There are so many people posting that it’s nearly impossible to keep up with what’s going on. What bothers me the most is that the forums are relatively unmoderated. The only moderation that comes into play is when flame wars get started or when the site’s terms of service have been violated in some way. Lots of users on the site seem to simply enjoy seeing their name on the screen, so they start forum threads that have no apparent meaning. The site is a photography site, but discussions on photography seem to be rare.
Chances are, if you are reading this, you are also a photographer. Do you participate in any online photography communities? If so, do you have similar issues or is your favorite site much better? Let me know…
I was listening to NPR while on a few errands this evening. I caught some brief blurb about Circuit City ditching a bunch of employees in favor of ones who will work for less money. I made a mental note and decided to check it out in a little more detail when I got home.
It seems that the electronic giant cares absolutely nothing about its employees. If someone goes to work here and gives a piece of his or her life to the company, what they have to look forward to in the future is being canned. In a real-world business model, this seems a bit backwards to me. When you have a certain amount of time and money invested in an employee through training and any potential benefits provided, it seems counterproductive to send them home in favor of someone who will work for a dollar or two less per hour. It’s already hard enough to find a salesperson in those stores who can really tell you what you want to know about the products they sell. So now, those who probably know the most will be signing up for unemployment and will be replaced by a new batch of high school kids who know a good bit about the latest video games. I wonder what the cost for the company will be in unemployment insurance? I wonder how many of those employees will actually take a pay cut to keep their jobs?
The article states very simply that people didn’t lose their jobs because of performance or any other issues. It was clearly stated that the amount of money they were making was not consistent with whatever market studies the company had done. What a slap in the face…
I don’t work for Circuit City and I never have. After reading this story, I’ll not shop there anymore either. A company who would treat their own employees this way probably don’t have a large amount of respect for their customers either. If the cared about me as a consumer, they would want senior employees dealing with me whenever possible.
So, in a nutshell, Circuit City has just become the McDonalds of electronics superstores. You can go to work there, but you can’t advance beyond a number on a spreadsheet, no matter how hard you work. The article didn’t discuss any pay cuts that management was taking to increase profitibility.
Madison Bumgarner - South Caldwell
Originally uploaded by John Setzler.
I got to go to my first South Caldwell High School baseball game of the season tonight. There is quite a buzz in the neighborhood these days about the future of Madison Bumgarner. I have had the privilege of watching this young man develop over the last three baseball seasons at South Caldwell and on the Post 29 Legion team. Watching him on the mound tonight made me understand what all the buzz is actually about. I’ll be following up this post in the near future with some more specific information and some additional photos.
Originally uploaded by John Setzler.
This is a recurring theme for me. Form and Function… What does that mean?
I often find myself photographing components of something larger. In this photograph, I focused on the mechanics of an armature of an antique steam locomotive. I suppose this supports some of my previous thoughts on photography as well. How and why do we choose to photograph something?
When I browse various portfolios, I often see themes in play. Certain people like flowers while others like landscapes. Some like children and others like insects. What do I like? That’s the problem. After five years in this hobby, I still don’t know the answer, but one of my recurring themes seems to fall into the realm of form and function.
I don’t choose particular subjects when I’m out photographing on my own. If I see something that catches my eye, there is usually more to it than what it actually is. This locomotive, for example, is a lot like several others at this site. The parts of it that fascinate me most are the smaller pieces of it that make it interesting. I often choose to look at those smaller elements through the viewfinder. These smaller subjects within the whole are the character or personality of this locomotive. This gets lost if I choose to photograph the subject in its entirety. In this particular case, I couldn’t have photographed it entirely anyway.
I don’t often stumble across portfolios where a photographer looks closely at specific pieces of a larger subject. Maybe this would be an interesting exercise. Pick a subject and see how many different interesting compositions you find without photographing the entire subject. This locomotive might have offered several hundred of them. A flower blossom might have offered ten.
Andy Loden - Hickory Motor Speedway
Originally uploaded by John Setzler.
Tonight was the opening of regular season racing at the Hickory Motor Speedway. Tonight’s races included Limited Late Model, Pro-4, Super Trucks, Late Models, and Street Stocks.
Today was my first trip to the speedway this season. I arrived early, as I always do, because I wanted to photograph qualifying to experiment with panning. I wanted to find out where my shutter speed needed to be in order to get consistent pans on this race track. When I walked in the track, the very first thing I noticed was their lovely new addition of a fence about 8-feet tall around the infield. Most of the infield locations where I like to shoot are now inaccessible as far as photography is concerned. Shooting racing through a fence isn’t like shooting baseball through a fence. It’s quite impossible. The only spot I saw where I thought I could work was in the entry to turn one. I set up there and photographed all 60 drivers in an effort to find my panning groove. After everything was said and done, I learned that 1/100″ in shutter priority mode is where I needed to be. I’m close enough to the racing at this spot that I shoot with my 24-70 lens. HERE are all of those panning shots of drives during the qualifying laps if you want to browse them…
Tomorrow morning, I’m hosting a field trip for our local camera club to the North Carolina Transportation Museum in Spencer, North Carolina. I have been to this site several times before, but I never get bored with it. Trains and railroads are some of my favorite subjects for photography, and this site has a lot of photo opportunities in those areas. HERE is a link to my railroad photo collection. A majority of these were made in Spencer at the museum. The museum opens at 10am tomorrow and we are leaving at 830. It takes just over an hour to get there from here. Hopefully, I’ll have a few nice photos to post tomorrow from the trip.
Patrick Johnson - St. Stephens
Originally uploaded by John Setzler.
I did a little bit of experimental work on a baseball assignment tonight. I do have a minor advantage with light at the moment because we started daylight savings time a few weeks early. The first few weeks of high school baseball season is always difficult though. Game time is 7pm and the light is still falling off quite rapidly at that time. I can’t use a flash, so I have to push the camera to its extremes. This particular photo was shot during the first inning while I still had a little usable light left. I put the 1.4x teleconverter on the 70-200 f/2.8 and shot through the fence. In aperture priority mode, the shutter speed I got for this photo was 1/800″ @ f/4. It cleaned up well enough with the help of Noise Ninja, but the result is actually usable.
As the light continued to diminish, the ISO 3200 shots were quite ugly with noise. I don’t think I would be able to make reasonable use of those. The stadium light at this field allowed me to shoot at about 1/160″ or 1/200″ at f/2.8 @ ISO 3200… hardly usable for sports action.
The good news is that days will continue to get longer for quite a while. I would have had more light at the start of this game, but clouds were rolling in about 20 minutes before game time.
I saw THIS ARTICLE link posted in another forum where I participate and just had to write something about it. The Los Angeles Times is not a newspaper I normally pay any attention to though…
I believe that our first amendment rights do give us the right to do what these kids did, but not under these circumstances. I still fear that the US Supreme Court will uphold the rights of these kids in this case.
The LA Times article stated that this was a school event. I don’t know how things work in Alaska, but around here, the kids would have been suspended, just as the principal in Alaska did. When an event is school-sponsored, the kids are under the same rules and regulations they would be if they were on school property. They are also representing the school in the public eye when they are on a field trip. If those kids had put that banner up in or on the school building, I’m sure a rule would have been broken also.
I think someone needs to file suit against these kids for forcing Jesus upon them. They discriminated against Jews, Buddhists, Krishnas, Athiests, and lots of other religions by not offering to take bong hits for Buddha, Allah, Shiva, and a host of other deities. The LA Times article failed to mention anything about the separation of church and state in this article. If those kids had held up a banner with “John 3:16″ or “Jesus Saves” on it, the story might not have made the newspaper, and there wouldn’t be a lawyer taking them to the Supreme Court to guarantee their freedom of speech rights.
I’m a believer in free speech. What I find unfortunate is that the Supreme Court is having to hear a case of stupidity rather than something substantiative. What’s happening here is that a lawyer, Douglas K. Mertz of Juneau, Alaska, is looking for publicity. He doens’t give a damn about these kids and their free speech. He wants to be heard by the Supreme Court.
I don’t have kids. If I had kids and they pulled a stunt like this, getting suspended from school would be the least of their worries. They would be punished severly at home for being stupid. It’s one thing to be stupid and entirely another to flaunt it. These kids’ parents should be getting that lawyer off this case and just dropping it to eliminate further parading of their stupidity and lack of upbringing in public.
I need to figure out a way to keep up with the Supreme Court ruling on Deborah Morse vs. Joseph Frederick so I can find out what actually happens… The case number is 06-278. RECENT DECISIONS can be viewed here, so maybe I’ll have to keep an eye on it. Maybe a Google Alert will be in order also…
Greetings…
I apologize for the change, but I had to do it. In order to leave comments here, you have to choose the link on the right to register and then login. I have spam filtering software installed on this blog, but I have to empty it out every day. It would quickly fill up my database if I left it unattended for any length of time. This blog gets anywhere between 50 and 100 spam messages every day that you never see. The filter catches them nicely, but its an administrative hassle to manage it.
I do appreciate the comments that people leave here.
Thanks :)
John Setzler
I really missed out on my opportunity to pick up a second language when I was in high school. I took one year of Spanish my freshman year and didn’t enjoy it so much. I followed that with two years of Latin since I needed two years of the same foreign language to graduate. Don’t ask me why I took Latin, because I don’t have a reasonable answer. When I was in high school (’83-’86) there weren’t many immigrants in this area. The Hispanic and Asian population in my high school graduating class was probably less than 20. That’s not many out of almost 300 people. Now, in my community, the Hispanic population is very large. There are a lot of Spanish speakers around here. Some of them speak English and some don’t.
Since I’m back in school with the intention of entering the medical field, I belive that being conversational in Spanish would be a great benefit. I’m in my second semester of Spanish at school, but I’m just not happy with it. My instructor is phenomenal. He’s actually one of the best instructors I have ever had. He’s fun, entertaining, and makes the class very enjoyable. The problem I’m having is that the pace of the class is just too slow. We covered more material in my single year of high school spanish than I expect we’ll cover in two or more years in this community college program. I just don’t think I’m going to learn enough to keep me interested in the class. I don’t intend to take the next level of Spanish at school.
I ordered level 1 and 2 of The Rosetta Stone Spanish (Latin American Version) and it arrived here today. Before buying this, I read a lot of reviews and played around with their demo software. I couldn’t find any significant negative feedback from people who have used this software. I also think I’m motivated enough to succeed with this program on my own.
I installed the software this afternoon and went throught the first lesson. I was quite impressed with the format of the program. It’s easy to install and nagivate. The software actually teaches you the language concepts the same way you learned your own native language. It speaks to you and shows you pictures. You simply click on the image that corresponds to what is spoken. This varies throughout the exercises as well. Sometimes you are shown a photo and then click on the corresponding text. You get lessons where you type the text that is spoken. You also get the opportunity to speak back to the system and your voice is analyzed and compared to the native speaker for clarity.
I spent approximately 2 hours on the first lesson, but I was very thorough with it. I completed each segment of the lesson and then took the tests on each segment as well. If the average lesson takes this long, I have a lot of material to work through. Level 1 of this course has 92 lessons. That would work out to about 180 hours of training. Level 2 has 118 lessons, so I’m assuming that those lessons are about the same length as Level 1. I haven’t purchased the Level 3 package yet. I just couldn’t afford it at this time. The Level 1/2 combo pack was $289 from amazon.com. I think the Level 3 package will cost me $225 to buy it alone when the time comes. I think it will take me quite a while to get that far though.
I have noted a few minor annoyances during my first lesson. These aren’t showstoppers for me, but I will note them here:
1. On the lesson segments where you get to type text in Spanish, You have to use the on-screen keyboard to get your special characters. You can get the ñ character with the semi-colon key on the keyboard, but the á, é, í, ó, and ú accented characters require the on-screen keyboard. I have my keyboard setup so I can toggle between standard and international English, which makes typing these characters quite easy. The Rosetta Stone software won’t let you type those characters into the text input area for some reason. This isn’t a huge deal, but it would be nice if it worked.
2. As far as I can see, the software doesn’t really track your progress through the lessons in a visual way. As you take the test, it does track that progress, and you can view it at any time, but you can’t look at the lesson list and visually see what you have completed and what you haven’t. You just have to remember where you left off when you come back.
3. When you run the software, the application CD must be in the drive. It also must be in the SAME drive you installed it from. It will not run from another CD drive in the system. I’m not a fan of this type of installation. I would rather just install all the software to my hard disk and run it from there without a CD in the drive.
4. The application CD is copy protected. The only reason this is a problem for me is because of #3 above. Since the CD is required to run the application, I wanted to make a backup in case my disc gets damaged. I have a desktop and laptop computer, and I intend to use the software in both places. That’s gonna put a lot of ‘miles’ on the CD. If the CD gets damaged, I will have a problem since I can’t make a backup of it. A quick search of their website’s knowledgebase produced this response:
The copy protection on the Language CD will prevent you from making a backup copy of the CD. Additionally, with the Personal Edition of Rosetta Stone, you will not be able to save the contents of the Language CD on your computer’s hard drive. Please make sure you have the original Language CD in the CD-ROM drive of your computer when you use Rosetta Stone.
If your Rosetta Stone Language CD ever becomes lost or damaged, please contact Product Support for replacement information.
Hopefully, they would be reasonable about replacing this. I did register the program with them, so they should have my information. Just in case, I’m saving the purchase receipt from Amazon in case I need to prove ownership.
After my blog post from a few days ago, I don’t guess I can fault the company for protecting their copyright :)