Discovery Project Earth

Discovery Project Earth is a new show documenting 8 geo-engineering ideas to quell the onslaught of global warming. So far, I really like this show. There are some idiosyncrasies though, mainly the constant mention of global warming. I’ve seen 3 of the episodes so far and am excited to watch the rest of them.

In other Discovery Channel news, I can’t watch Smash Lab anymore. They went from bad to worse and all the show seems to care about is blowing stuff up (while cool, they go about it the wrong way).

2008 Worldwide Photowalk

When I found out that there was going to be a Scott Kelby Worldwide Photowalk in Cedar Rapids, I jumped on the opportunity to go take pictures with new people.  Our leader John decided we should wander around the Czech Village on the south side of town due to the area being ravaged from the flood.

Pretty much right off the bat, a family thought I worked for the local newspaper, The Gazette, second time that has happened while taking flood related pictures.

Of the hundreds of people who lived down there, I think I saw only 8 or so actual residents, there were a good 8 volunteers from a church at one house helping clean it out.  One of the business owners on the main street though the area was out talking to a group of us and he said he was evacuated from his house (above his storefront) by boat, just like multiple other people down there.

I will admit it was hard trying to come up with picture ideas since the sort of photojournalistic approach isn’t my strong point, but I think I did well.

After seeing some of the storefronts and what items used to be sold there, I regret not making it down to that part of town before the flood.  It’ll be a long time coming for those businesses to recover, if they can.

Here is a link to the shots I uploaded on flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/xtacocorex/tags/scottkelbyphotowalk2008cedarrapidsia/

Best Work Afternoon Ever

Yesterday was the best afternoon at work I’ve ever had and it’s all due to being able to work with the company photographer.   I was tasked by one of the senior engineers to get pictures taken of the product, mainly because of my interest in photography.  Completely badass.  I picked up a little bit of stuff about lighting, at least for product shots.  I also got to play with the D100 that was sitting on a rack, which the photographer doesn’t like.  After playing with it, I realize that it’s not that great of a camera to use, not as easy to figure out as the D80 (which still took a while to get comfortable using).

As for the shoot, I did a lot of the composition of the various parts.  The cool thing is, the photographs will be used for the catalog and for showing to the customers in various mean, which I think is huge and makes me feel special because I helped out getting the images.