February is BOGUS email month!

These seem to be coming out of the woodwork this month:

( ps - this is my 200th post if that accounts for anything. A medal of honor? A gold star perhaps?)

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Hello,

I am Rev. Edwin Donko, District Pastor of International Central Gospel Greater Accra Region Ghana. I got your contact details from the USA Tourism directory. I will be coming over to Connecticut with my wife Nana for our silver jubilee wedding anniversary coming up on the 15th of March and we will be arriving on the 14th of March 2008.

I will be needing the services of a photographer who will be covering our entire vacation from the 15th onto the 21st of March.

 

Could you please send me more details about your work and what the cost of your services for the 7 days coverage will be.  The International Central Gospel Church will be paying you in advance of our visit as they will be covering the total expenses for our wedding anniversary, so that we can be assured of a photographer during our stay.

An early reply will be appreciated. Please acknowledge if you can offer us your services and give me a call on my direct line (+233242667198) as soon as you receive this email, so we can conclude on all other arrangements ASAP, as time is not really on our side.

 

God Bless You,

Rev. Edwin Donko,

District Pastor,

International Central Gospel,

P.O. Box 5051

Greater Accra Region

Ghana, West Africa.

fireworks

also from someplace in Tennessee,  which is chock full of this kind of crap.

Knee-mail

I was going through old discs and found this image i shot in tennessee in 2002---always love this one!

wedding email-BEWARE!

I just received this obviously bogus wedding email today via The Knot-so use caution if you receive this...sounds like  scam that we'll see in about 6 months on Dateline NBC...

The typos are actually pretty funny if you read it carefully.

Hello,

How are you doing?i just want to know if you will be available for  my wedding coming up in May 4,2008.

My Name is Mark Taylor and my fiance's name is Jennifer Walter.I works for an auto company in United Kingdom where i'm presently.

I will be coming to State next month with my fiance.So i want most of the  arrangement to be done before i come.

I want you to be in charge of the wedding as the WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHER expect the minister that will be coming to ministry that day.

I am having a budget $8,000 and i am expecting a guest of 100 at the wedding.

I just want a mini-wedding,it could be an indoor or out door.

My company will be taking care of the wedding expenses and they will be happy to send you the first deposit payment.

Here is my cell number 44 703 194 3191 you can call me anytime.

Let me know if you will be available for my wedding and also you last asking price for your service.

Thanks 

Billy Mays is still yelling at me, and I don't need any more Orange Clean

I can't stand that late-night-TV-hawker-of-unnecessary-crap goods, Billy Mays. I was going to write something clever but while doing a search for the photo of him, I found this hysterical article that says all I have to say much better than I could----

Normans Travels!

This is something I have been slowly working on now - believe it or not - for 4 years. It started with the illustration of the motel sign I did from scratch , which kind of took...ummmm... forever. Then I left it alone, went back, tweaked it some more, added stuff etc. The IDEA being it would be a site for me to promote and hopefully sell my travel photography. My goal now is to get it going and maybe posting it here will be the incentive I need to work on it more! Let me know if you have any issues with the way the page loads or reads, some people have had a few problems.

here's the link!

gross, but terrific!

gotta git me a set of these!

new toy - coming soon to a wedding near you

After being out of stock forever at B&H, I just ordered the Nikon 70-200VR, mostly because Carla yelled at me and said I had to. But I also used it at at my workshop in Montana as well as at the wedding I helped out with that Miss Amanda shot in Hartford...can't wait, and any and all donations are happily accepted.

before & after

I was showing some of my prints from Yellowstone recently and happened across a 'before' in Lightroom of one of my favorite shots. The person i was showing to looked on in puzzlement and said something like, "Well what the hell did you DO to that photo before you printed it?" I can't go into all of that here, but thought it would be fun to show you what it looked like before I fussed with it.

Toshiba quits HD DVD business

FINALLY! Someone has made up their mind and I won;t feel so bad buying a player now!!!


Decision hands victory in DVD format battle to Sony-backed Blu-ray technology.
February 19 2008: 4:36 AM EST
TOKYO (AP) -- Toshiba said Tuesday it will no longer develop, make or market HD DVD players and recorders, handing a victory to rival Blu-ray disc technology in the format battle for next-generation video.

"We concluded that a swift decision would be best," Toshiba President Atsutoshi Nishida told reporters at his company's Tokyo offices.

The move would make Blu-ray - backed by Sony Corp (SNE)., Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., which makes Panasonic brand products, and five major Hollywood movie studios - the winner in the battle over high-definition DVD formatting that began several years ago.

Nishida said last month's decision by Warner Bros. Entertainment to release movie discs only in the Blu-ray format made the move inevitable.

Nishida said his company had confidence in HD DVD as a technology and tried to assure the estimated 1 million people, including some 600,000 people in North America, who already bought HD DVD machines by promising that Toshiba will continue to provide product support for the technology.

Both HD DVD and Blu-ray deliver crisp, clear high-definition pictures and sound, which are more detailed and vivid than existing video technology. They are incompatible with each other, and neither plays on older DVD players. But both formats play on high-definition TVs.

HD DVD was touted as being cheaper because it was more similar to previous video technology, while Blu-ray boasted bigger recording capacity.

Only one video format has been expected to emerge as the victor, much like VHS trumped Sony's Betamax in the video format battle of the 1980s.

Nishida said it was still uncertain what will happen with the Hollywood studios that signed to produce HD DVD movies, including Universal Studios, Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Animation (DWA).

Toshiba's pulling the plug on the technology is expected to reduce the number of new high-definition movies that people will be able to watch on HD DVD machines. Toshiba Corp. said shipments of HD DVD machines to retailers will be reduced and will stop by end of March.


Despite being a possible blow to Toshiba's pride, the exit will probably lessen the potential damage in losses in HD DVD operations. Goldman Sachs has said pulling out would improve Toshiba's profitability between $370 million to $460 million a year.

The reasons behind Blu-ray's triumph over HD DVD are complex, as marketing, management maneuvers and other factors are believed to have played into the shift to Blu-ray's favor that became more decisive during the critical holiday shopping season.

Once the balance starts tilting in favor of one in a format battle, then the domination tends to grow and become final, said Kazuharu Miura, an analyst at Daiwa Institute of Research in Tokyo.

"The trend became decisive I think this year," he said. "When Warner made its decision, it was basically over."

With movie studios increasingly lining up behind Blu-ray, retailers also began to stock more Blu-ray products.

Friday's decision by Wal-Mart Stores Inc (WMT, Fortune 500)., the largest U.S. retailer, to sell only Blu-ray DVDs and hardware appeared to deal a final blow to the Toshiba format. Just five days earlier, Netflix Inc. (NFLX) said it will cease carrying rentals in HD DVD.

Several major American retailers had already made similar decisions, including Target Corp. (TGT, Fortune 500) and Blockbuster Inc (BBI, Fortune 500).

Also adding to Blu-ray's momentum was the gradual increase in sales of Sony's PlayStation 3 home video-game console, which also works as a Blu-ray player. Sony has sold 10.5 million PS3 machines worldwide since the machine went on sale late 2006.

HD DVD supporters included Microsoft Corp (MSFT, Fortune 500)., Intel Corp (INTC, Fortune 500). and Japanese electronics maker NEC Corp.

Microsoft's Xbox 360 game machine can play HD DVD movies, but the drive had to be bought separately, and Nishida said about 300,000 people have those.


Sony said it did not have numbers on how many Blu-ray players had been sold globally.


Also Tuesday, Toshiba said it plans to spend more than $15.7 billion for two plants in Japan to produce sophisticated chips called NAND flash memory, which are used in portable music players and cell phones. Production there will start in 2010.

Canon: disassembled

Since my Canon point and shoot crapped out and I ordered a G9, I decided---just like when I was a kid- - to take it apart and see what was going on inside. I have always done this with stuff I am throwing out, don't ask me why. Curious, I guess. I sure now I have lead poisoning or something, but it was SURE worth it. Such satisfaction in destruction!!!
So join in the fun and follow along~I have too much time on my hands. (sorry these are kind of out of order!)

Canon's $100,000.00 lens! Hurry while supplies last!

I thought this was a gag at first but it's really not! Suddenly makes my D3 seem cheapo.

Buy it here right now at B&H which I might add is also one of the only amusing listings i've ever read on the B&H website!

check out this photo of it in use!

Or perhaps i'll buy this 5200mm lens and just shoot weddings while sitting at my house!

watch out for these guys - file under 'CAUTION'

I recently ordered a Canon G9, and not from anyplace I normally order from since they were all out of stock and I was being impatient. So instead I used Broadway Photo in Brooklyn (I bought something I can't recall from them ages ago) anyway, the price was very fair and then you get an email wanting you to call to 'confirm the order'. This turns into sales-pitch number 2, as they try to sell you extended warranties etc.

He tells me that the "battery included only has a 10-20 minute usage time" which I know is crap ( what? do you CRANK it to get it to run?), but i figured a longer useage battery couldn't hurt. He eventually talks me into a $69.00 one ( as opposed to the $175 battery he first started plugging!!)

Then he tells me, "You'll need an external battery charger otherwise you have to plug in the camera like a cell phone to charge it." MORE crap, and I say no, then the warranty speech starts, then this then that.

OK, so it comes today (right when they said it would) but the battery in the box is the one that comes with the camera. So I call and he says something like, "Well we sell different cameras, USA and foreign and you have the Super-Executive Package which includes the extended battery"

I said,"Come on, i've been doing this a long time, you cant tell me Canon packages the same camera in different configurations of battery."

"I can tell by the tone of your voice that you are dissatisfied, and i'd rather keep you as a customer, so i'll send you a second battery." he quickly offers. I think to myself, hmmm---is this not a common call if he's so ready with an answer like that?

I said,"Well OK,but what's the deal with the guy saying I needed a charger to externally charge the battery, you KNOW that's a load of crap."

"Like I said sir," he continues, "You have the upgraded package and i will send you an additional battery." As I'm saying OK, the phone goes dead.

The moral? Be patient and buy from places you know!

Super-Boring civic duty

I sat for nearly 8 hours today in the lovely Bridgeport Court for jury duty today, and what made it worse was I had a headache tht felt like the back of my head was going to crack open. Anyway, it was down to the last 3 people, one of which was me, and they come in and say gesturing to me and a woman near me, "...You 2 can leave, we won't have time for you today. Thank you." So while that constitutes that I 'did my time', I will never get those 8 hours back again...it was just so P A I N F U L sitting there doing nothing all day.

It is certainly an interesting cross section of humanity at court. There was one woman there was I kept avoiding as she seemed to want to make friends with whoever would listen to her jabbering, all I wanted to do was nap. Anyone who's ear she could grab had to suffer through her tales of how much her recent car repairs cost ( $7500...I have no idea why ), how she has a shrink appointment next week she couldn't miss, how she couldn't hear well, what happened last time she was at jury duty and how much money she was losing being there.

I was hoping the judge would throw a gavel at her head.

trash the dress -redux

These are from that old trash the dress session I had, but somehow found these online tonight along with the gals wedding photos (which i did not shoot) It's wedding, honeymoon and TTD---These photo live on!

heres the link

I LOVE The United Parcel Service

...because they bring me fun things (I haven't had the stomach to look at the invoice yet...even though i KNOW what I spent)

Looks like they have included a functional (as opposed to trail) of Capture NX, which for the cost of this they should also come and install for you, as well as make you lunch. The manual is about a foot thick, and I think i'll use the Spanish one to make it more fun!!

Santa is coming today---

on Thursday I received a package from Adorama (some Epson paper and a portfolio) along with a post-it on the door that I had to sign for something. This made no sense as I was sitting here and the doorbell didn't ring. "Why do I have to sign for inkjet paper?" I wondered. The next day they left another which I thought odd.

So it didn't occur to me until 8 am today as i'm lying in bed ( which you know is E A R L Y for me) that perhaps the D3 had finally shipped. So I ran down today, turned on the computer and sure enough, THAT'S what they were trying to deliver. So i'm sitting here like it's Christmas morning waiting for Santa/UPS to arrive----more later and don't call me as i'll be fiddling with my toy all day today! :)

The Moment It Clicks

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I'm very excited about Joe McNallys new book The Moment It Clicks. Not only because he was an instructor on my workshop, but because I have seen him speak at Photoshop World and he is a just a talented, down to earth guy who tells a great story. He has also shot some amazing tuff over the years and gets REALLY excited about what he does. he doesn't seem to take what he does for granted...check out the video and order the book!

Obsidian Dawn brushes & patterns

Not sure if i've posted or mentioned this before, but this is an EXCELLENT resource for free Photoshop brushes and patterns. She has some really cool stuff in here, and I have loaded in a lot of the brushes. Haven't used them much, but they're sure cool to have just in case!!!

check it out here!