Lec Lec.

The motion blurr was created with photoshop.

Zidane.
Boston Bruins Captain.

Time for a hockey Break. Enjoy these videos.

Awesome skills of a 13 year old.

Amazing college hockey goal.

York Photo has several coupons listed below. All supposedly last through 12/31. Their everyday low price is just $0.10 for 4x6" prints!

Buy one 5"x7" Print, get one free with coupon code YBB5X7 [Exp 12/31]

20% off photo gifts ordered online with coupon code YBBGIFTS [Exp 12/31]

20% off slimline cards, 4x6 or 5x7, with coupon code YBBSLIM [Exp 12/31]

Best photoshop tutorials.

I recently stumbled on the best photoshop tutorials.
The artist/teacher is Bert Monroy who specializes in painting with photoshop.
Check out his recent painting.


His techniques can be used with digital photography as well.

His tutorials are found in revision3 website, and they are free to download.
Click on pixelperfect podcasts.

Also, dont forget about photoshop.tv
and Russel Browns tutorials.

I made this guitar in photoshop.

This picture will be our holiday 2006 card.
It was a daytime picture. I darkened the sky and added a moon to create a nightime photo.
Click here for The link I used for a moon tutorial.
In google, search for pictures of the moon. Click here for moon pictures. Copy a picture of the moon with a black backround and paste it into your picture. Dont forget to set the blending mode in photoshop to screen. Voila.

PhotoWorks.com has several worthwhile coupons to cut down your order cost. New customers get 25 free 4x6" prints as well. A small shipping fee applies to your order. Enter the coupon in the special offers section of your account.

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20% Off Coupon at PhotoWorks.com: Coupon Code: C608-38-5124-41

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Free Shipping on your first order of $5 or more C725-38-5104-91

One free pack of photo cards with any card purchase c772-38-5112-51

Walgreens wants you to try their photo printing service. They are offering a free 8x10" print with coupon code GIFT4U. Pick it up in as little as 1 hour locally. Regular 4x6" prints cost $0.19 each.

Also, someboday mentioned that there is a WW2006 coupon code for half off of holiday gift cards for mailing to friends and families. Not sure if this works.

Went to the Stone Zoo today .

SnapFish.com has a new coupon for 10 free 4x6" prints with code BBARAGINSTEN11 [Exp 1/15/07]. New customers also qualify for an additional 20 free 4x6" prints. A small shipping fee applies.

SnapFish.com has 20 free 4x6" prints for new customers with free shipping on up to 25 prints using coupon code HALLOWEEN [Exp 11/13].

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This is another picture I took at camera club. Here I practiced creating a flame from photoshop.

I used a tutorial from O'reilly's book Photoshop effects cookbook. This book is not for beginners. I have found it very helpful though. See the before and after photos.

We went to camera club today for the photo hijinx session.
Here are just a couple of pictures taken.

We got a nice call from Jet Blue and they were very apologetic and are handling our situation in a very professional manner. Hopefully, they can begin to correct their problems.
Based on the telephone conversation and follow-up emails, I think I have faith.
Just curious...I wonder what others experiences with Jetblue have been? Positive? Negative?

Our Jetblue trip to vegas was horrible. This is a letter I sent to Jet blue.
Its a long one..so read it if you have the time and energy.

Dear Jet Blue:

This is a formal letter of complaint. My wife and I have been very pleased with your company and have always raved about your service until today. On October 17, 2006, we had multiple (and I mean multiple) bad and unacceptable experiences with Jet Blue. Let me describe our horror.

On the above mentioned date we flew out of Boston’s Logan airport. Our final destination was Las Vegas with a stop over at Kennedy Airport in New York.

Our flight number from Boston to Kennedy was 1007, and it was scheduled to depart at 11:40 am. However, for some reason (I think the plane was delayed in Buffalo) our plane was delayed. Well, it took the Jet blue crew in Boston a while to communicate this delay to the passengers. We overheard one passenger say our flight was delayed, but it took Jet Blue ½ hour later to make an overhead announcement. Weird I thought. Anyway, our flight was delayed one hour. While in the air to New York, the flight attendant pointed out the fact that there were 3 connecting flights in Kennedy that could be missed because of our delay. One was Florida, which the crew was mainly worried about. Another was the Las Vegas connection, our flight, and the crew was not that worried about missing this one.

Anyway, our connecting flight to Vegas was scheduled to depart at 1:40pm, and we landed at 1:30 pm in NewYork. There was not much time to make the connection, but still some time. The flight attendant told us to hurry to our gates and reminded us repeatedly that “Jet Blue always waits for the connecting passengers”. Anyway, we and many other people including elderly people ran to our connecting gates (having to take a shuttle in the process) only to find that all planes took off without the connecting passengers. We were told by the gate attendant at our connecting flight that if our flight attendant called the connecting gate, they may have waited. We then saw our flight attendant who told us that she did call. Well, there is a "call" discrepancy here. Something went wrong with the process. Let me also say that the two female flight attendants seemed more preoccupied with smiling at each other at both ends of the plane during the flight. I got the sense or lack of sense of professionalism.

Needless to say, the next flight to Vegas was not until 6 hours. The customer service person adjacent to the gate booked us for that flight and gave us a gate number. Well, 5 hours later we showed up at the listed gate (We had to take a shuttle to this gate since it was not physically connected to the other gates) only to find the gate number was changed. Well, I ask, where is the communication? Couldn’t Jet blue have made an announcement over the PA system explaining this change? Many people were extremely upset over this lack of communication. Well, we jumped back on the shuttle to the changed gate and boarded our flight to Vegas.

Our connecting flight to Vegas was delayed for an additional hour on the ground due to airplane traffic on the runway. Now, let me discuss the flight attendants on this flight. We sat in row number two and did not realize that we could not get up from our seat when the pilots were on bathroom break or socializing break with the flight attendants. My wife tried to get up to use the ladies room while the pilot was socializing at the front. The flight attendant rudely told us to sit down. There was no “please” in his command. And, there was no instructions beforehand that we could not leave our seat. We felt belittled. Next, we asked if there were any “healthy snacks” when the attendant was handing out the jet blue snacks. The reply was somewhat rude (maybe just trying to be funny). But, the reply was “No, we just have crap, crap, and crap. Well, we chose crap. Finally, we and others were appalled my the flight attendants response to a passengers trash. When cleaning up the plane at the close of the flight, a mother threw a diaper in the attendants trash bag. When the flight attendant realized it was a diaper, he exclaimed that it was "extremely disgusting" for her to do that. And, she should have changed the babies diaper in the changing room. He was not quiet about this, and stormed off to the bathroom to dispose of the diaper like it was nuclear waste. We all (not just my wife and I) felt emabarassed for the woman. She too was belittled. Oh, before I forget, a woman behind me had a choking episode. Upon trying to relieve her choking, huge clumps of mucoid saliva flew onto my head, arms, and another passenger's head. (No, I am not making this up) I thought this was disgusting and thought a passenger spit on us. But, she later apologized to us and explained that she was choking. Anyway, having this body fluid on me, I needed to clean it off immediately. However, it was pilot urinating and socializing break time and I could not get up from my seat. My wife politely asked the attendant for help, but he refused (Actually..he said he would get back to us but never did) and was preoccupied with socializing with the pilot. Well, 10 minutes later, the socializing and bathroom break was over and I could then get up out of my seat (without being yelled at) to go wash this material off of me.

Finally, we arrived in Vegas airport, but the horror was still not over.

When claiming our bags, we discovered that my bag was wet and my wife's bag was completely soaked, drenched and dirty including all her clothes within the bag.

Now, the process of bags must be reviewed here because something very very careless and wrong happened here. Our bags must have been left out in the rain in New York for those 6 hours that we were stuck there. Well, we immediately went to the Jet Blue customer service area next to the bag claim area in the Vegas airport and explained our horror to two woman employees. Alia Cole was one of the employees. They both were nice and professional. They documented and confirmed the soaking wet suitcase, made a note of it in the computer, but could not take a formal complaint. We were told to call the 1-800 number to complain. So, we did. And, the customer service woman told us that we could “vent” but that’s all we could accomplish over the phone. We were told that we must write a formal letter of complaint. So, here it is. Let me add that our return flight was uneventful. We arrived in Kennedy airport early and noted that there was an earlier flight to boston that wasn’t scheduled to leave for approximately one hour. I thought..wow..Jet Blue could make up for all the mishaps of our previous flight if they could put us on this earlier flight (We had a 3 hour layover in Kennedy). We immediately went to the customer service area and requested this earlier flight. However, the woman said there was no way our bags could make it on the plane in time. (I was disappointed since the plane was not scheduled to take off for another hour). I then told the woman about our misfortunes on our flight to vegas. She told me that is was commonplace for the flight attendants to tell passengers that they wont miss their connecting flights. Extremley common. And , she admitted that they send emails complaining about this deceptive practice routinely to Jet Blue.

Well, we did not deserve any of this. I ask, "Where is the company that we once raved about"?

Sincerely,

From Vegas 2006

Back from our Las Vegas trip. We stayed at the Flamingo hotel. The location was great, but wifey was not impressed with the room. It was filthy. The bathroom had mold, and there was alot of food under the bed. We complained and got a bigger and better room the following day, but there was still french fries under the bed.

The above picture was taken of the strip from an overpass across from our hotel.
I placed the camera on a wall (to act as a tripod) and set the exposure to 3 seconds to create the streaming of the headlights.

I found that the best time to take pictures was at night or even better..at dusk.
A great place to shoot is at the top of the Eiffel tower. It is not free and costs $9.

From Vegas 2006

I forgot to take my flash, and my camera (canon 5D) has no built in flash. So, at night or indoors i found that i was cranking up the ISO of my camera to increase its sensitivity to light. The picture of the pumpkins (below) was taken indoors with ISO set to its highest level 1600.

The NewYork New York hotel was pretty cool. We took a ride on the roller coaster . $25.

From Vegas 2006

The Bellagio hotel was beautiful inside and outside. Inside there was a beautiful display of pumpkins and flowers....a photographers heaven! The Bellagio conservatory and botanical gardens.

From Vegas 2006

From Vegas 2006

The leaves are turning now.

Photography Course:

Being familiar with composition, depth of field, shutterspeed, aperture, lenses, Iso, lighting, filters, etc
is essential to taking your photography to the next level.

There is a free photography course on the web that is really good. I highly recommend it.

Today is an exciting time for photography with the advent of digital photography.
There is no longer the need to buy or develop film, and the quality of digital images is superb. There are many different brands and types of digital cameras. There are point and shoot cameras and SLR (single lens reflex) cameras. My camera is the canon 5D. This is a 12.8 megapixel SLR camera. I do not own a point and shoot camera, but I would like to get one soon.

The two software programs I use are:
1. Photoshop
2. Picasa

Photoshop is excellent, but the learning curve is steep and it is expensive.
There are many excellent websites offering photoshop tutorials. One that I find helpful is Russel Browns website.

Picasa is a poweful and free software program that allows for some basic image corrections. It has some neat filters. It also integrates well with my Gmail account and this blogger. Its a must have.

Mac verses PC? Many people have their opinions. My first computer was a Mac, but I quickly realized that there is more software for the PC. So, I switched to a PC. Dell is my favorite brand.

Deals on cameras and computers? I always search for the best deals. The website I use is bensbargains.net. This website also often lists coupon codes that can be redeemed on Dell websites and other websites. In addition, one can also buy coupon codes on ebay for Dell items.
So, before buying a digital camera or computer, check these two sites first. You could save hundreds of dollars.

Rockport 2 weeks ago.

Rockport, MA.
about two weeks ago. Motif #1

Malden, MA.
Camera: canon 5D.