lucas-photo.com

Shots from the 2010 Florida Championships, held August 21 in Orlando, are going up on the site.

The lighting was marginal at the Rosen Center ballroom– two cans on either side of the stage plus the room’s incandescents set low. Not trusting the light, I shot at 1600 ISO with custom white balance and that seemed to turn out passably well– though of course I prefer some room to work with. (There’s a firmware hack to allow the Rebel to shoot at 3200, but I’ve never been able to get it to work.)

I’ve never been a big fan of flat-floor venues for contests, either; the view from the back rows and side wings is nearly always problematic. That said, both the number of competitors and the level of competition were wonderful.

The bikini contest took up an excess of time, both in the judging and in the post-processing. I am seriously considering just skipping that portion of the shows… we’ll see how many hits those shots get in comparison to the shots of the athletes. To their credit, though, some of the bikini class participants are getting noticeably more athletic… likely tired of looking like the Sta-Puft Marshmallow Man in comparison.

I also did a shoot afterward with amazing competitor Iris Davis, and those shots came out spectacularly. Look for it shortly…

Because Thursday has just ended, today must be Causal Friday.

You have to admire Microsoft for their success.  Before Bill Gates, only the government could support a business model based on selling you what you already own.

These days, though, everyone seems to be gawking at Google. “What would Google do?”  “How can we be more like Google?”

It might be smarter to instead be looking at IBM.  They’ve been in business an order of magnitude longer, and still rake about twice as much profit as does Google. They’ve also successfully reinvented both their business and their culture on multiple occasions… a feat not to be dismissed lightly.

For those who think we can’t afford any tax cuts:

If the stimulus package, a.k.a. “we will take your money and give it back to you”, is part of what “saved the economy from recession”…

…wouldn’t it have been more effective to have simply never taken the money from us in the first place?

Correct answer: “Sure it would, but how could I fund my pork projects that way?”

I have two new cats
Yakkity yak, smacky-smack
I have two new cats

I keep having this recurring vision
of all the Mayan calendars in the world
simultaneously crumbling to dust
on December 21, 2012.

It would explain a lot, actually.

Our feline family member Buddie passed today, June 29, 2010, peacefully and without pain, following the sudden onset of an aggressive cancer.

She had been declining for the past month or so. She made a brief resurgence in the wee hours this morning and seemed to revert somewhat to her normal self, which allowed us to say our goodbyes.

Sadly, though, she rapidly declined shortly afterwards and throughout the morning, refusing food, sleeping most of the day, and not reacting to sights or sounds.

We conferred with our vet, and with no one seeing any possibility of recovery, we made the decision in the early afternoon to send her home in comfort rather than force her to face the inevitable.

“I said take this child, Lord,
from Tucson, Arizona
Give her the wings to fly through harmony
And she won’t bother you no more”
- Paul Simon, Under African Skies

She has been a great companion to our family for her seventeen long years, accompanying Sheila on the long trip from Arizona to Florida. Needless to say she will be missed terribly.

Rest in comfort, dear Buddie.