Time passes too quickly

The lessons for week 4 have already been posted in the LVS classrooms, but I have yet to complete my homework for week 3.

Part of the problem is that SouthWest Florida is in the midst of “Fire Season” which occurs every year between the beginning of April and the start of the “Rainy Season” (aka “Hurricane Season”) and begins somewhere around June 1. The county I live in is the driest in the state and brush fires have been starting up almost spontaneously for the past 2 weeks. In addition, Lake Okeechobee in the middle of the state is actually on fire! Vegetation floating on the lake caught fire and continues to burn. The end result is smoke, and I’ve been having a very difficult time with my eyes due to the smoke. I can’t stay on the computer and read or write for more than an hour at a time and I find when I try looking in my camera’s viewfinder that my eyes start to burn and tear within the first 5 minutes. Sooooo……taking photos now becomes a very difficult, if not impossible endeavor, not to mention the difficulties in reading lessons and writing blog posts and/or assignments.

The weather forecasters are predicting the Rainy season to begin this coming week which will mean heavy showers and/or thunderstorms late each afternoon. I hope they’re right because I’m fairly chomping at the bit to get out and take some photos. I think I’m suffering from camera withdrawal, especially since I just bought 3 new filters I want to play with.

I think I’ve become an addict.

Tags: Florida brush fires, Lvs classes, Photography

Digital Photography Class and the new camera

I may have overextended myself a bit this session. In addition to the Blogging class, I’m also taking Painter AutoPalettes, Photography 102, and Digital Photography 101. I’m learning so much in the photography classes. For Week 1 of Digital Photograpy we only posted photos of things we liked to take pictures of, but in week 2, Ron had us do experiments with exposure. We were to take photos of backlit objects, one photo on complete auto settings and then a second photo using whatever exposure compensation we preferred (or a combination of several). For my assignment I used varying shutter speeds and for the very first time ever, the EV setting on my camera.

So far, I’ve only posted 2 subjects. One was a white rose, and the adjustments didn’t seem to change the photo very much, but the second subject was a cut glass candle holder in front of a sliding glass door and I was really amazed at the difference adjusting the EV made.

Check out the photos here.

I’m just so excited to finally learn how to use all the manual settings on my new camera, including, what to me, are the more obscure ones, like EV.

If you have a digital camera that you only use on the auto setting and would like a better understanding of how to use it, I highly recommend this class.

Digital Photography @LVSonline

The next LVS session begins on 8/30/08, registration opens on 7/28/08.

See you around campus!

Tags: EV adjustments, Lvs classes, Photography

Blogging Class-Week 2

Well at long last I have learned how to install a WordPress blog. Of course my journey was not without its pitfalls. For some strange reason my brain decided to go on vacation and while setting up the blog via Fantastico, instead of telling the software to create a directory for the blog, I left that area blank. Fantastico obediently installed the blog in my root directory.

“So what?” Well gentle reader, if you install a blog in your root directory and you already have a web site, you have no way to access the blog because when you click on the link it keeps taking you to the index page of your web site, i.e., the root directory…..duh……

If all of the above sounds like nothing but geek speak, just ignore me…..I do tend to ramble…..<ggg>.

It was quite late when I began my homework (1:00a.m.), so I was probably too tired to pay close attention to what I was doing.

(That’s my story and I’m sticking to it…..)

Anyway, after hunting around in WordPress help and finding nothing, it finally dawned on me what the problem was and I created a new blog and deleted the old one, both actions were pretty easy using Fantastico once I figured out the directory business. I don’t have Fantastico installed on my Nightshadow site , so if I want to create a blog there I’ll have to create the dreaded SQL database…..shudder…..
Bean says we’re going to cover themes in detail next week. I can hardly wait. I really hate this default theme…..can you say….”ugly”?

That’s it for now folks. Stay tuned for the further exciting adventures of “Nightshadow learns to blog”.