Going home for a Week

There ain't nothing like going home.

This past week I was lucky enough to score several speaking gigs in the DFW area of my beloved Lone Star State so I got to stay for 6 days. First I did a little ditty on digital photography for the Cowtown Mac Users Group, then enlightened two UTA commercial graphics classes on the gloriousity of iStockphoto, I spent the afternoon with a cool design firm called Church Media in Keller, taught a two-hour hands on Photoshop course at the Art Institute of Dallas on Friday, then finished the week out with a tex-mex lunch with four area iStockphoto contributors--a good time was had by all! Gads they just really can't do spicy up here in New England.

I spent some quality time with friends I used to see on a daily basis, ate at my very favorite restaurants, and drove familiar roads that I've been down a thousand times. It was a little like going back in time and I have to say, it was fun yet melancholy. I've always known I missed that area and the life I led, but I guess that's just part of life. I wouldn't trade what I have now and the experiences I'm having being this close to Manhattan, but... you know--I *really* miss my friends.

Anyway, included in this post are a few of my favorite shots during the week snapped with a Canon 40D I'm lucky enough to have in my possession (thank you Canon!). I *so* do not want to send this thing back. My own camera is a Rebel XTi which is great, but it's nothing like the 40D. With the 40D, I actually feel like a pro. It's easy to use and the photos are just amazing. I also didn't have to RTFM to figure it out, which was nice. (Okay so I had to look up how to set aperture when in Manual mode.)

On Sunday I drove to East Texas to spend some quality time with Mama which was great. On the way home I suffered many delays due to weather, which meant I should have just stayed put an extra day. This was the view outside the airplane window:

Fire Island Lighthouse shoot

Not much has gone on in the way of travel since getting back from San Francisco for Macworld Expo. That being said, I did drive to Long Island, NY on Friday to shoot the Fire Island Lighthouse. Much fun was had as after shooting, my husband and I spent 4+ hours at the Brickhouse Brewery.

Going out for a photo shoot is a rather new experience for us, and this one taught us several things:

1. Only shoot lighthouses in the summer, else you will freeze to fracking death!

2. Monopods are USELESS! In a fit of generosity, I let the husband borrow my new tripod because he was testing Nikon's new D300. Foolishly, I thought the monopod would help me in the low light situation that is sunrise, but I was dreadfully wrong. I had better luck handholding the darn camera (Rebel Xti).

3. Scout the location the day before. Thankfully we did a drive-by, but didn't actually walk to the lighthouse. Not only was the address of the lighthouse wrong on their own web site, getting to the lighthouse involved a one mile hike. That much we learned driving by, though if we had gotten out and walked it we could have scouted a better position than what we ended up with early the next morning.

4. Not all sunrise pictures are going to be great. Since I got up at "the crack of ass," I fully expected the pictures to be fantastic. Alas, they were not. Either because of too many or too few clouds, the time of year, or whatever, this particular sunrise wasn't worth the 4:30 am price.

All in all, it wasn't a total bust for as disappointed as we were, we retreated to a fabulous pub for many pints and good food with good friends at noon. I'd probably do it again... when it's warmer ;)

Click here to see all the photos from our Fire Island Lighthouse shoot.