Inked!
By Tris Hussey | June 18, 2008
I finally did it, I got my first tattoo. It is, in case you’re wondering, the constellation Scorpius.
Why Scorpius? Because I’m a Scorpio, but everyone seems to get the “M” symbol or a scorpion, so I wanted to be different (funny that).
Did it hurt? Oh yeah. But not as much as I feared. The stars were okay, the lines hurt (they are gray actually).
Is this going to be my first and last tattoo? Nope, already thinking about my next one (sorry Mom).
I have a Flickr set going for my first tattoo, I’ll update with a semi-healed version soon.
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Today is his birthday
By Tris Hussey | June 13, 2008
Today is my Dad’s birthday. He would have been 72 today. He didn’t get to see any of us get married or meet his grandchildren. He didn’t get to see how much I love photography now, or how talented is granddaughter is at taking pictures.
Today, I’m remembering him.
I have a few of his favourite jazz albums playing. I’ve called my Mom.
Dad, I miss you everyday. Your life, your wisdom, your drive, passion, and humour inspire me always.
I know you’re out there watching over us. Hope you like the mustache. I like it, makes me look more like you, which is fine by me.
T
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Leaving Salt Spring for the last time
By Tris Hussey | June 9, 2008
Yesterday I dropped off my kids on Salt Spring, for the last time. They are moving this week to Ontario, so after 8 years, yesterday was the last time I have to set foot on that island.
A touch sad, but sometimes you have to have a few “lasts” to make room for more “firsts”—and I’m going to have a bunch of firsts coming up, let me tell you.
Photo by Tris Hussey
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A Rite of Passage: Had my first heart scare last night.
By Tris Hussey | June 5, 2008
Before I get into the story, I will start with: I’m okay. I didn’t have a heart attack, I was thoroughly checked out at the hospital and sent home (at 2:00 AM).
And now the story…
Yesterday was relatively “normal” day for me, email, twitter, RSS, etc. But towards the end of the day, I had buried the needle in my stress-o-meter in the red zone. This should have been my first clue.
By evening, thoroughly stressed about life stuff (something I will elaborate on at MapleLeaf 2.0 shortly), I went to visit a friend for a bit. On the way I started to have chest pains. Uh oh.
Chest pains, then nausea, then trouble breathing, then my left arm started to feel funny.
Yes, you can see where this is going.
When I got to my friend’s house, intermittently clutching my chest and saying “no I think I’m okay”, I decided that I wasn’t okay and that a trip to the ER was in the offing for me.
I could still drive, but my friend came with me for moral support.
The rest of the evening (this was about 7:30 PM by this point) was as you’d expect.
First ECG (gotta love those sticky tabs), wait for the doctor to read it (I got to wait in the lounge and dressed thankfully), get called into the back (which means the hospital gown fun), hooked up to the heart monitor, IV started, little O2, lots more questions, blood taken, waiting, chest x-ray, waiting, another ECG, more blood taken, more waiting.
Pretty much by 10 PM I was feeling much better. Chest pains were gone and I was feeling okay. I was given the clean bill of health at 11:30, but they had to keep me there until 2 AM to do a confirming bit of blood work (turns out elevated heart enzymes often don’t appear for up to 6 hours post event).
I have to say that the nurses, doctors, and staff at Victoria General were awesome. I was comfortable, kept informed, and treated with good humour and cheer. It certainly helped me to relax. Okay my b5 friends will also add that I was in rare comedic form last night, and that continued once the pain stopped.
In the end what was it? The doctor’s weren’t 100%, but it wasn’t a heart attack or angina. The likely culprit: stress.
Yep, stress. So this is something I have to work on. I have to learn to let go and relax. Maybe even cut myself some slack and take a decent break occasionally.
So there it is. My first heart scare. I have to thank all my friends (I told a couple people at b5 that I was going) for their support.
So if I’m not posting a lot today, I’m giving myself a little break and time to reflect.
Just so you know.
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Indiana Schools Punishing Kids for Being Poor
By Tris Hussey | May 29, 2008
Imagine this: Your class is going on a school trip to Washington D.C. Your parents can’t afford to send you, so you stay back (with some other kids in the same boat), but instead of spending the time learning about anything you play word search and Sudoku for days.
When your parents find out what is going on, they decide that your time would be better spent at home doing something interesting and productive so they keep you home.
All sounds like a good plan, right?
But when the end of the year fun day/field day comes around you’re not allowed to go and not only that you have to spend the time in detention because you missed school.
Yeah, I’d be pretty pissed off. My parents would be livid. The sad thing is, I’m not making this up, though I wish I were.
One of the Channel Editors here at b5 is going through this right now and getting no satisfaction from the Principal (who isn’t being a “pal” right now) or Superintendent of the school system.
Here are her posts on this saga:
- Expensive Class Trips and Those Left Behind
- Punishment After Shocks
- Open Letter to a Public School
- More Expensive Class Field Trip Drama
Gayla, our beloved Lifestyles Channel Editor, is standing by her boys. In fact, as you’ll read, she is going to spend the detention time with her boys as a show of support for them. Oh, if Gayla’s boys don’t spend the time in detention, a completely unsuitable punishment–not that they should even be punished at all, they won’t get their report cards.
Great, holding grades hostage because you had the unmitigated gall to stand up for your kids’ education and not make them feel like economic pariahs.
Not good guys.
I find this whole thing just sickening. Why do the kids who are left behind, because their parents couldn’t afford to send them on a class trip, have to be punished with just sitting around all day? And then be further punished when their parents chose to take charge of their education and decide they’d be better off being at home?
Come on, they could have done a virtual tour of D.C. The Smithsonian has some great stuff online. What about Google Earth? They could have “flown” all over the city. Something to give the kids something fun and, perish the thought, intellectually stimulating to do.
As MJ our Travel & Culture editor said: “Traveling can be expensive, but it shouldn’t cost you a grade”.
I hope that we can draw some attention to this issue and do something good from it. Any kind of discrimination is wrong. Economic discrimination, essentially punishing kids for being poor. So, so wrong.
Education is a right, not a privilege!
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Just claiming for BlogrRize … that’s all
By Tris Hussey | April 8, 2008
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Taking pictures is your right, but know the rules first
By Tris Hussey | March 19, 2008
As photographers we’ve all had the situation where someone has asked us why we’re taking pictures and/or asked us to stop. While taking photographs in public is a right in the US and Canada, it’s a good idea to know your rights, the rules, and a few tips.
I’ve been challenged a few times and have been able to deal with the situations with body, camera, and images intact (my media pass from an Apple event helps…it says MEDIA on it). But the question is, when do I have the right to take pictures and when don’t I? When do I have the right to but it might not be a good idea?
From Photojojo I found a great post for US folks on your rights as a photographer and a link to a post that covers the rules in Canada.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. Take the advice here for what it is, advice. For specific legal questions or situations you should consult legal counsel.
Myself, one of the rules I follow is not to take pictures of kids unless I ask the parents first. Meaning, a specific picture of that child. Sometimes kids are in the background when I’m taking pictures in the park of my own kids and if asked I would delete pictures if a parent asked. I’m also very careful not to include extraneous youngsters in my shots though. Also, when I take a picture of someone, I generally will show them the picture and give them my card in case they’d like a copy.
From all the advice and rights I’ve read the one thing that I keep reading is to keep your cool, don’t give in, don’t give up your camera, and call the police if you need to.
But most of all, it is your right to take pictures…
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Sometimes shooting in automatic isn’t so bad–but I still like aperture priority more
By Tris Hussey | March 17, 2008
When I only had a Canon point and shoot camera I stuck to Automatic and the presets for most of my pictures. Then I got into Program mode and started to play with white balance and such. With my D80, shot in auto a little bit, but pretty much started with aperture priority from the get go.
However, is shooting in auto or one of the presets a bad thing? According to Natalie Norton writing on digital photography school, shooting in automatic has a lot of benefits:
ANY friend of mine who comes to me early on in their photography “career” asking for lessons is forbidden from shooting in any mode other than AUTO for at LEAST 3-6 months. In my mind that’s enough time to get your framing style down to the point where it’s just, for lack of a better word, automatic. . . second nature. When that happens, THEN you’re ready to explore other settings. I’ve known too many photographers who are technically off the chart but can’t frame an image worth poo. Don’t fall into that trap by plugging up the artist in you by focusing too much on the technical aspect. It will come. It will. I PROMISE. Source: 4 Reasons Not to Write off Shooting in Automatic
I’ve been shooting long enough that I’m pretty good at framing (I can always improve of course), but the freedom of auto, and the other presets, does let you focus on the subject not the settings.
So on Saturday the kids and I went to a park by the ocean and I figured it was the perfect time to give this a shot (so to speak).
This was shot in automatic mode:
It’s not bad, a little washed out I think. The depth of field is a little too much for my liking, as well. It’s pretty good though. This is a shot using some of my standard aperture priority settings (f/2.5 ISO 250, -0.3 exposure, more vivid colour):
Of course I like this one better. But … I think for general practice I’m going to play with automatic and other presets so I can work on framing better pictures and capturing things that I might lose in fussing with settings.
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My first pro photography gig: Official photographer for Affiliate Summit East!
By Tris Hussey | March 14, 2008
I’m so excited about this. At Affiliate Summit West in Vegas last month I took a lot of pictures (Affiliate Summit set on Flickr) so as it was wrapping up I told Missy and Shawn that I’d be happy to be their official photographer for future summits.
Well as I say "luck favours the bold"–the hired me for Affiliate Summit Boston Aug 10-12!
I’ve told a lot of you already and Kris Krug gave me one of the best compliments I could get–that my pics were certainly good enough for that gig. Wow.
I was practicing big time at SXSW (SXSWi 2008 Flickr set) and I’m pretty sure that I’m up for the challenge. I’ve been working on my workflow and technique, still needs some work though. I’m going to have to save up for an external flash, though. The D80’s built in flash is great, but I think an external flash is going to take my photography to the next level.
Wow. Who would have thought it …
P.S. Yes, I know the comments are broken here … I’m working on it.
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My SXSWi 2008 Flickr set slide show
By Tris Hussey | March 9, 2008
From a Lifehacker post (old, but good) … I’ve found a way to put a slideshow here. Since I’m doing more conference photography (more on that later) thought folks might like to see these here:
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Cropping your pictures for maximum effect: part 2
By Tris Hussey | February 20, 2008
Last night I wrote about cropping pictures to bring that extra something out. Tonight my best friend had me over for dinner and I took some pictures of her birthday cake.
Basic, simple stuff, right? Okay I tried my usual odd angles thing, but I didn’t spend a lot of time on composition on them.
Take a look at these two pics (Nikon D80, ISO 800, 50mm prime lens, f/2.8, shutter 1/25, aperture priority mode):
In the top photo I didn’t even notice until I loaded it on my laptop that I caught the tendrils of smoke drifting off the candles. In the second one I realized that, wow, lots of black around that cake. So went into ACDSee Pro2 and did some cropping. Here are the same two pictures cropped. Just cropped, no other editing:
This is when you have “wow” moments. I think just cropping on the details has given these shots whole new looks. I could go in closer, get the smoke and dripping wax or just a lit candle. This is what I’m finding most fun and exciting about photography now. I can take a picture, see it right away and then just see where I can go with it from there. Fast, easy and simple.
Wow. I love this hobby.
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Learning and edit better pictures with cropping and a prime lens
By Tris Hussey | February 18, 2008
I’m not a newcomer to photography. From my first Polaroid One Step to my Kodak Disc to my first 35mm Pentax K-1000 to digital point and shoots to now my Nikon D80 DSLR I’ve used a lot of different cameras. My dad was an amateur photographer and took some great pictures too–I don’t have any of them here with me, but maybe I can get some soon–and I learned a lot from him. I think he would really love the new digital world (he had his own dark room at one time), thinking about it I wonder what kind of pictures he would take. However, I didn’t get the chance to learn everything about photography from him. I was just doing vacation shots and such when he passed away.
So while not a newbie photographer by any means, I am doing something new now–taking my photography seriously and trying to learn as much as I can on how to get better and better at it.
The Magic of Cropping
Recently I’ve been reading a few photography blogs and trying to learn a thing or three. The first thing I picked up was learning how to crop the pictures I’ve taken to make them really stand out. I got the tips and ideas from the Digital Photography School blog from a recent post on, of course, how to improve pictures with cropping. Taking these tips, here are some of the results (not nearly as stunning as the examples in the post).
First here is the uncropped original picture:
And here is the same image cropped to a 5×7 image:
Okay the differences between those are pretty subtle, but this is a better example:
vs.
I wanted to highlight the cool architecture better, cropping did the trick here.
It’s the glass baby–50mm prime f/1.8 lens
Of course photographers will tell you that it isn’t the camera but the “glass” (aka lens) that makes all the difference in your pictures. I read, and was inspired by, this article on Josh Hallett and his photography (which I love) from mediabullseye. The one thing that the article made me really crave was a 50mm prime lens. Since Josh said that they were pretty affordable (around $100, which is really affordable for a lens) I thought I’d shop around for one. This past weekend I bought one and just like the woman at Kerrisdale Cameras said, I’m addicted to it already. Why? Well this post I was sent via Twitter says it all:
I suppose my favorite thing about prime lenses is the fact that you have to use your head. Composition becomes a thinking game. You have to move your feet to get that shot you had in mind, so you really start to evaluate what’s important in the scene. Fast primes also make you think a little harder about your f-number. The DOF can be extremely shallow; sometimes too shallow to produce an effective shot. Not only that, but on bright sunny days, you actually can’t use the lens wide open without an ND filter because you’ll let in too much light and max out your shutter speed. From: 7 Reasons To Love Prime Lenses
Here are some of my favourites from my first few times playing with the lens. I’m still learning it so they aren’t as great as I’d like yet. Its ability to pull in light is just mind blowing and the clarity speaks for itself. Like Brian Auer said in the article above, you have to think when using this lens. That is something that makes this even more fun.
I keep saying I’m going to go on a photowalk with this lens, but still haven’t made it. Maybe Tuesday…
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Moving! Update bookmarks and feeds to trishussey.com
By Tris Hussey | February 14, 2008
One of the great things about coming back to b5 is that I am able to move this blog to their servers and get onto their ad program.
With this post, larixconsulting.com is going to be retired as my official URL. Yep, I bought this domain something like five years ago when I started as a solo consultant. I struggled with the name for a long time. I haven’t really been pushing Larix Consulting for a while, so this is a good change for me.
If you have my old larixconsulting.com email addy … don’t worry it will still work (it had better cause I have a lot of things tied to it!). I prefer Gmail now (so same beginning as you have, just gmail.com as the domain), but larixconsulting.com has been on gmail for domains since I moved this blog off blogware last summer.
In a bit I’ll be transferring the DNS of larixconsulting.com to b5 and all requests for larixconsulting.com will go to trishussey.com …
Cross your fingers. I always hate DNS changes….
Oh and the blog will still be called “A View from the Isle” … good thing I switched that a long time ago!
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Shai is giving out the link love this week
By Tris Hussey | January 23, 2008
B5media VP of Community Shai Coggins (an uber cool person and budding photographer and artist) is on week two of her year-long Blog Community project. This week, link love–52 WoC #2: Give The Gift of Link Lovin’ - ShaiCoggins.com. You know linking to folks who are writing good stuff and you just want to give props to. Actually linking to other bloggers is something that I try to drill into the heads of bloggers (new and old) at b5.
Link love isn’t just linking to the source of the story, it’s also linking to the people who are discussing it and linking to them. Here’s the other part of it, if you want to build your community, link to people who are likely to link back to you. The big sites get so many links in that it’s doubtful you’ll ever get their link love. It’s us down-in-the-trenches bloggers, slogging away at this day after day. People just like you and me. Yeah if you link to me I will, generally, subscribe to you in my RSS reader. Once I’m subscribed, you’re on my radar, and that’s the first step to getting a link. Not that a link from me is all that much…
Part of the deal in Shai’s link love project is linking to the person who left the comment above you. For me that was Jen Hill of Mythbuster Beauty.
Yeah now that I’m done with the obligatory link you’d think I’m done right? You know me better than that!
I looked at Jen’s blog. Yeah makeup and beauty tips aren’t really up my alley. Okay I was given a pineapple-juice based exfoliant for men and I do use it once and a while (hmm my skin is feeling a little tight…), but that’s not what came to mind. Photography. That’s what struck me. I know nothing about makeup for photography! I doubt any woman in her right mind would let me apply makeup on them, but maybe I should read up on this a bit. I love taking pictures and if I ever want to do semi-professional stuff (like portraits) it might be good to know some tips for the ladies.
Okay … I think I’ll pass Jen’s blog onto my female friends, they will probably get more out of it anyway.
Props and links given. Job is done!
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The Frozen Pea Fund, PEAvatars and social media
By Tris Hussey | January 15, 2008
What an amazing, amazing show we just had! With Connie Reece and Susan Reynolds, you know it’s going to be interesting, but this was just amazing. Jim and I had a great hour-long chat with Connie and Susan about the Frozen Pea Fund, Susan’s battle with breast cancer and just social media for good in general.
From what I saw on the chat, since I man the switchboard, it looked super busy too! We had 148, yes one hundred forty-eight, live listeners and 11 callers! I just am floored by the response.
You can listen to the show via this widget below:
and don’t forget to check out the Frozen Pea Fund!
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