Tapirtype Blog: Photography

Totally obscure pro tip: If you own a spyder2express monitor calibration thingy you may have been annoyed that the software only allows you to target 65k as your white point rather than using the native white point of your LCD screen, but felt that this wasn't enough reason to spring for the pro version. Turns out you can still download the old (2.2) software that defaulted to native white point if you go and register for their support site.

Now you can launch either version of the software to select the "option" of which white point you want.

Nifty.

This morning, as I was waiting for the T, I saw a turkey. It was scrounging around the plants in the islands that run down the center of Beacon Street, right next to the trolley stop like it was waiting for a train to arrive.

At first, I thought I was hallucinating, but it was right there, about three feet away from me.

A Russian guy started throwing it bread crumbs. I asked, "Is that your turkey?" He said, "No, it is just hun-ga-ry!" I really, really wanted to reply, "No, it's not Hungary, it's Turkey!"

Before she left for Boston to resume law school last Saturday, Sasha and I took a trip to San Juan Island, staying at the States Inn. We had a wonderful time and some of our pictures are up on Flickr.

My parents are visiting us in Seattle. Last weekend we used their rental car to take a trip to Mt. Baker. I have some of my pictures up on Flickr here.

Sasha and I went to the beach today! We spent the morning wandering around Cambridge and wanted to wander around another neighborhood afterward, so she got the brilliant idea that we should take the blue line out to Revere Beach. It was very cool, both literally because it had just snowed--finally, it's been an unusually warm December--and because it was so pretty. Also, Sasha was adorable running around on the sand and snow.

I also put up a couple of movies of Sasha capering at the beach here and here. We also met a dog named Gohan.

Faith was kind enough to invite me over for a pumpkin carving party this year. Which was really nice because without having an excuse to do something like that I tend to just forget that it's a holiday at all. And even for a silly little holiday like halloween, it's nice to mark it in some way.

Faith particularly likes Fall, and I agree. Even with the encroaching darkness and the back to school feeling, there's something nice about the crisp newly cool air and the harvest imagery.

I've just signed up to start using Flickr. I'm not sure what mix of photos I'll post to there versus to here. I figure that Flickr can be more of my unorganized organized (I mean they do make it so easy) photo pile: lots of pictures that I just thought were pretty. As opposed to ones that I specifically wanted to single out, format, and comment on. Anyway, I'll see how it goes with time.

For the moment I'm posting different photos there than here, mainly because I've got the bandwidth limit of a free account. If I decide to get a pro account I might try to just post everything to there and make what is here a selected subset.

I'm certainly enjoying the Flickr experience so far (although I do find myself cringing a little every time I type the "kr" for some reason that just works against muscle memory). It's very easy to post to there especially using the Aperture Flickr upload plugin which works like a charm. My only complaint with that is that I have many hierarchical tags in Aperture which I depend on for searching so that if, for instance, I search for "Plants" that will get me everything that I've tagged with "Gardens" as well as "Trees" and "Flowers." That greatly reduces the amount of keywording that I have to do. But Flickr doesn't support hierarchical tags and the exporter just exports the bottom level tag instead of the whole tree. Still, that's just a nitpick. I'm very happy so far.

Oh, and by the way, the photograph is one I took yesterday of the trees behind the Tops school in Eastlake. We do get some fall foliage here.

Cafe Allegro Photo by: Michael Boyle

Seattle Farmer's Market Sign on The Ave Photo by: Michael Boyle

Sasha and I have made a tradition of going of getting up late on Saturday morning and going to the University District for brunch at Cafe Allegro after which we walk up to the Farmer's Market to stock up on fruit and other goodies.