Making Good Use of Sub Par

This past weekend I saw my friend Sean sing The Messiah. The entire Messiah by Handel, which I did not know what more than 2 1/2 hours long. Sean currently lives in Toronto but was flown in to sing the tenor part of this production. And he was fantastic.

Even better though, was this performance was in an old church in Evanston, just a few miles north of where I live. I brought my camera of course but was severely limited by the capacities of my lens.

I have been trying to find this one particular lens in the city, and thought I was going to get it Saturday. My plan was to play with it all weekend and then use it to shoot my next family session this coming Friday. After calling a few camera retailers in the city, I found one on Friday afternoon that had my lens in stock. I went to pick it up on Saturday but it had already sold out. I'm so mad I didn't ask to have a lens held for me when I called because I can't find them anywhere now, except online.

Any who, if I had the lens I wanted the lighting wouldn't have been a problem. This particular lens is perfect for times when there isn't much light to capture, like in this old church. Since I didn't have it, I put on my photographer hat, pulled out every trick I had. I drew on the knowledge I've collected over the past few months about my camera's capabilities and tricks for shooting in low lights and was able to catch this.



Not too shabby for a girl with sub par equipment.

Of course I didn't stop with one photo. Once I saw what I was able to do, I also snapped the following.




Here's hoping I can get as creative with my next shoot considering I won't have my fancy new lens to fall back on then either.

Perks

Whenever Mike and I tell people we live and work together, their reaction is generally the same. "Oh, I could never work with my husband/wife/girlfriend/boyfriend!" And while they might be right, I can honestly say when the day comes that Mike and I no longer work together, it will be hard.

Given that there are days when we take the train in together, eat lunch together, go on a coffee break together, take the train home to make dinner together and hang out on our couch together, not seeing one another from nine to five will take some adjusting. Granted our relationship calls for a lot of together time, but it's really the only kind of relationship we know. And there are some distinct advantages to it.

For example, on Thursday I received an email at work that sent me into a minor fit of rage. Instead of stewing on the contents of this email for the better part of the day, I immediately emailed Mike. I told him I wanted to get coffee. In the matter of the five minutes it took us to get coffee, I vented, Mike listened, gave me some advice and then I returned to work. I was able to put this minor incident out of my mind, do my job and forget the whole thing by the time 5 p.m. rolled around. That my friends, is a major advantage of working with Mike and one of the reasons why I'll never say we can't work together.

Oh, The Humanity

My hatred for inflatable lawn ornaments has been well documented on this blog. If you have known me for any length of time, particularly from November to December, you know I think the inflatable lawn ornament is quite possibly the worst invention to ever grace this earth.

So it brings me great sadness to say the following. I received an email from my friend Kristin this morning. She's currently living my dream life on the beaches of Australia. However, even paradise has its faults. Kristin said she has spotted inflatables in Australia. AUSTRALIA! My worst fears have come true. Inflatable lawn ornaments are truly taking over the world. And if the world does end in 2012 as Hollywood and The History Channel would have you believe, it won't be from massive earthquakes, meteors or hell fire from above. It will be because the inflatables have finally won.

I Just Had To Open My Big 'Ole Mouth

I have been telling people for almost two weeks now that my photography Web site would be up and running this weekend. I told people to watch for it Sunday night. Check out amysayre.com I said, because it's going up. The more people I told the more certain I was that I was keeping myself accountable to finally get this thing done. And that is precisely why the universe and Windows Vista decided to give me a great big old SUCK IT last night.

I have been working on my site for about a month now, tweaking with it here and there on the weekends and after work most nights. It took some time for me to get used to Flash, but once I did my site really started taking shape. Last night, it was pretty much complete. I few tweaks here a few links there and it would be good to go. And then it went away, lost forever somewhere in the great worldwide interwebs.

The free Showit sites software I was using to design my site kept freezing up my laptop. The software must not be very compatible with Windows Vista which runs my laptop. Every time my site froze up, I would manually force it to close and then restart it immediately. When I restarted it, I was asked if I wanted to save my last session, so it was cumbersome and tiring but it still worked because I didn't lose any info.

Around 7:30 last night, about a half hour before Mike and I were getting ready to head to a friends house to watch some boxing, my site froze. I shut it down, restarted it and this time it didn't ask if I wanted to restore my last session. It wanted me to start over. I did not want to start over. I wanted to continue working on the site I had just devoted three weeks worth of my spare time building.

I searched for my long lost site in my computer files and on my external hard drive where I had downloaded the software. Nothing. My site was actually hosted on the Showit servers so there was no trace of it on my computer. I didn't have access to anything I could potentially recover. I emailed the Showit people, and Mike and I left for our friends' house. There was really nothing I could do at that point. Plus I was pissed and really needed to walk away.

Flash forward to this morning. I turn on my computer. I try to access my site. It's still not there. I check my email. No word from the Showit people. I then began rebuilding my site. If I pared it down, only add the essential info, I thought I could at least still get it up today. I now knew how to use the program, had the design set so it was just a matter of recreating my work.

I started to build the site and decided as soon as I finished one page I would save it, and save often. Only I couldn't save it. The program wouldn't let me. Not only could I not save it, but I also could not preview it. I couldn't do anything. I decided to see if I could publish it just in case, and of course I could not. Everything I tried gave me an error message. I couldn't do a damn thing.

My next option was to use the desktop in our spare bedroom. I hoped it was more compatible with the software than my laptop. I took my external hard drive and plugged it into the USB port of the desktop. And it did nothing. The desktop would not recognize my hard drive.

It was at this point that I literally threw up my hands. I had been beaten. And I did not care to fight this loosing battle any more.

Suffice it to say, my site will not be up and running tonight. I don't know when it will be. I don't know if I can or want to continue using the Showit software but I also don't know if I'm ready to pay someone to design a site for me. And I'm so frustrated with this whole process that I'm not sure when I'll decide to pick it back up. My guess is not until December.

This is more or less a site about photography now, so I thought it only appropriate to showcase some of Mike's work. In preparation for my site launch, on Saturday afternoon Mike and I went on our roof for a little photo shoot. I wanted a decent picture of me on my new fancy site. I had just gotten my hair done, so I figured there would be no better time to take my picture. Plus it was another unseasonably warm, fall day. So had my site gone up today, this photo would have been on it.



But of course I can't leave well enough alone. Towards the end of our mini shoot, I got a little fierce and let my rage rage. Little did I know these photos would end up being a more accurate reflection of how I feel about my non-existent site.


(Click to enlarge. It's totally worth it.)