Michael Shane's geekery, photography, and shenanigans » Technology

The Last Photo Taken with my iPhone 3GS

Michael — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 07:40:07 +0000

‘nough said? I think so.

A few different treatments of a few different photos of one very special lady

Michael — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 06:21:43 +0000

I’m experimenting with some different treatments of one earlier photo and one new photo using some custom presets in Aperture 3. I agree with Scott Bourne that Aperture 3 is definitely slower than its predecessor in some ways. That said, it’s also true that Aperture 3 could marginalize or eliminate Photoshop from many photographers’ workflows. I have shot little to no HDR recently, so I haven’t launched Photoshop in months. And now that Aperture 3 has a curves brick, I may never need Photoshop again.

I’m on a bit of a 16:9 kick tonight. Can you tell? If you’ve got a preference for any of the photos below, please feel free to share it in the comments.

Hello Aperture 3

Michael — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 17:10:39 +0000

Nice to meet you.

The Best Camera is the One You’ve Got With You

Michael — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 05:07:05 +0000

In the spirit of the oft-repeated adage above, I humbly present to you the following photos, all of which were taken over the past few months with my iPhone, and processed right on the phone using Chase Jarvis’ Best Camera app. This app has become a mainstay in my ‘mobile workflow,’ and many of my recent 365 portraits have been created using my iPhone and Best Camera (you’ll see them eventually).

I am still shooting and archiving for my 365 project. I’ve just been so busy that I haven’t had time to process and publish the photos recently. Rest assured they’ll all end up here (if not in other mediums as well) in the near future, and certainly after the completion of the project. Sadly, daily photography and blogging are luxuries that I haven’t had recently.

125th and Broadway

Michael — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 05:17:10 +0000

A quick snap from my iPhone 3G S. I processed this image on the iPhone itself using the Mill Colour app.

I’ve got a backlog of photos for my 365 project that need to be processed and published. We should be caught up soon.

Day One hundred and thirty: Find your Death Star.

Michael — Mon, 11 May 2009 07:00:04 +0000

I saw the new Star Trek movie again tonight. Decided to use a Star Wars helmet in today’s portrait. Go figure.

My point is: the most important benefits of seminal works of science fiction like Star Trek are hope, perspective, and adventurism. Star Trek/Star Wars/BSG, et al tap into the core of the human spirit: exploration.

UPDATE: I came across this quote attributed to Ray Bradbury tonight, and thought I’d add it to this post:

Science fiction is the most important literature in the history of the world, because it’s the history of ideas, the history of our civilization birthing itself. …Science fiction is central to everything we’ve ever done, and people who make fun of science fiction writers don’t know what they’re talking about.

On PGP

Michael — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 07:49:34 +0000

Although I have little practical use for tools like PGP, I’ve always been fascinated with cryptography. This afternoon I decided to take the plunge and set up my PGP identity, keys, and utilities on my Mac (I run OS 10.5.6 as of this post). I setup utilities to manage my PGP keychain, basic preferences, and I integrated PGP signing and encryption into Mail.app.

The process was a nice challenge and actually a lot of fun. If you head over to my contact page you’ll my shiny new PGP public key. If you’re into that sort of thing, please feel free to use it when you contact me from here on out.

Nip and tuck

Michael — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 07:04:27 +0000

I made some minor cosmetic changes to the site tonight. I added a border/background to the sidebar and adjusted some of the color properties in my stylesheet to try and unify the scheme of the site a bit. An ongoing process, to be sure.

UPDATE: I also went ahead and upgraded my WordPress installation and finally got around to getting a WordPress API key so that I can implement a spam filter for my comment system. Since the launch of this site, I’ve got 15 legitimate comments, and almost 200 spam comments. I’m swelling with pride, can’t you tell?

I now Tweet

Michael — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 20:27:55 +0000

That’s right, ladies and gents, I’ve joined Twitter. You can follow me at twitter.com/michaelbshane. I also added a Twitter widget to the sidebar (that way –>), the reliability of which has yet to be determined. So, if you follow me here, follow me there!

So many browsers, so little time…

Michael — Thu, 01 May 2008 17:09:03 +0000

Do websites need to look the same in every browser?

I agree with John Gruber on this one.