Undesirable conditions

Unfortunately for me when I am home it's Dial up internet and slow moving photoshop on a slightly dark monitor. So the updates are not so daily and the pictures not so well toned... but I promise it will be when I return to the 'Cuse.

This afternoon I suddenly learned how to use a flash on manual... not sure what I was thinking of before but it's self explanatory... before I used to shoot and monitor it by the back of my camera to see if it was over or underexposed. Now I realized that I shoulda paid more attention to my flash. Oy. But I learned something today, Yay!

Stuff to slightly regret... When driving to drop off prints at my fire school I passed by a truck on the access road that had a cow strapped onto the back of the bed of the truck. It was one of those chick-fil-a billboard cows and the front door of the truck was open with no driver in sight. The access road was deserted and just plain Texas dry grass. I drove by thinking to myself, that could be a great picture... and kept driving. When I returned after dropping off the prints, as expected truck was gone. And another irrelevant thing, after going into the Star-Telegram on Thursday I learned that I coulda been freelancing for them this whole time. So instead of waitressing I coulda been shooting.... damn, I'll learn from my mistakes this time. Next large plastic cow I see, you're mine!

Horst Faas. I actually just picked up a book that he and Richard Pyle composed. It's a look into the tragedy that killed 4 photojournalist and 7 vietnamese soldiers over Laos. The book Lost Over Laos looks into the helicopter crash that killed Larry Burrows (Life magazine), Henri Huet (AP), Kent Potter (UPI), and Keisauro Shimamoto (Newsweek). Faas is yet another photographer that I admire for his work in Vietnam... aside from it being my cultural background I have some strong connection and want to learn more and more about Vietnam. Being not as fluent as most and never having visited Vietnam it will be a challenge for me to make it there someday, but someday I will be there.

Yay for knowing how to use my flash... the wooden floor looked spectacular so I couldn't pass it up. Any ideas for doing self portraits? This was done with extended arms and flash laying on the floor. Whenever I tried setting the camera on timer and using the sync cord to play with the flash I always end up in awkward positions trying to stretch the cord and not drag my camera with it. (maybe its just the simple solution of a longer cord...)