It’s (finally) that time of year when we start getting a lot of afternoon light on the terrace. I’m fascinated by the shadows the sun casts on the terrace, & now with the prime lens I’ve been having some fun with depth of focus shots against the patterns the shadows cast.

The Bay Area’s Maker Faire gets bigger every year, and despite the hefty crowds, it’s well worth the trip.

I was there today with Scott & some friends and despite being there from open to close, we still didn’t see everything there was to see. You can find everything from robots and tesla coils to musicians and chickens. I saw a DIY butter making station, a human-powered merry-go-round, a bunch of art cars (shades of Burning Man?), the awesome Eepybird.com guys, and WAY more than I could possibly list here.

What’s sticking with me the most was the steampunk stuff. I’ve been aware of steampunk for a while now in a casual way but after checking out several of the substantial steampunk displays at Maker Fair I’m very impressed.

I’ve got some photos from today up here.

It took me a month but I finally got a few snapshots from my trip to London online. Here’s one that I had a little fun with in Lightroom and really liked how it turned out:

Work continues crazy-busy with no light on the horizon. I’m not at SxSWi (again) and feel a bit bummed about that. I did get down to 360|Flex for a day and a half and that was fun. I will be going home for Passover though.

Still dual-wielding the phones — I can’t break free of my dependence on a real keyboard for email. Other than that, though, the Nexus is really nice & I’ve been adding apps to it like a fiend.

I’ve been pondering a blog post taking a longer look at location-based web services to update the one I did on Google Latitude last year, especially since in the ensuing months I’ve started using Forusquare. The bottom line is I am still deeply ambivalent about them. Perhaps there’s not much more to be said on the subject than that.

Happy Hanukkah!

This is a neat way to embed a series of photographs in a page!

Photos are from my rail trip earlier this year.

This shot (from a weekend sunset shoot at Half Moon Bay) turned out pretty well, I think.

I was sitting out on the terrace this morning, enjoying some coffee and thinking about photography and lessons learned.

While walking through downtown Chicago this past spring, I was struck by the contrast of a green staircase against the red brick of the building it was attached to, so I shot it. Later, to my great dismay, I looked at the shot and for the first time noticed the large shadows on the building spoiling the effect I was going for. How I managed to not see those shadows, I don’t know — but I was so intent on the color contrast that I completely missed them.

A series of digital manipulations later, I have a shot that’s more or less what I was going for (although still not perfect). I also got a valuable reminder of the fact that you don’t get the best results if you focus on the parts, and not the whole.

This (rather obviously) applies in plenty of other areas in life, not just photography.

Our cat Tommy expresses his regret that Summer will be ending soon by claiming my flip-flops as his own.

On the bright side, it’s Rosh Hashanah this weekend! A happy and sweet New Year to all.

I was playing with the depth of field on this shot and am pretty happy with how it turned out.

Only thing I wish I could change is the pillow in the left corner, but if I’d moved it Tommy would have woken up.

It was a little windy out by the ocean today, but the sun was shining and all in all it was a great day to enjoy the weather (and some Mimosas) with friends.