August Wallpaper

I am gone for a week to Bali, Indonesia. Trying to to drum up some business and network with some folks. Till then, keep spreading the word around about the Penang Lightroom 2 PhotoWalk. At last count we had 22 28 participants. Sign up soon, we can only take 50, space is limited.

In honor of the Penang PhotoWalk, I am posting this shot of the Floating Mosque here in Tanjung Bungah, Penang as this month's wallpaper. Click the image above and a full-sized (1680×1160) image will open in a new window. Right click it or ctr click (Mac) it should give you the option to save it and make it a desktop wallpaper. Enjoy.

Wallpaper for July.

Well, I had high hopes at getting you a wallpaper from Penang for your desktop. But I have been way too busy setting up home, ... a better way of putting it, trying to find a home. Today I met with a friend here in the city, he let me use his scooter for the next few weeks. But the catch was I needed to drive out to his house to get it. His house was on the southern part of the island. No problem, except I have no clue how to get around here yet. So I took my trusty GPS cell phone and once I got the scooter I mounted it on the speedometer. That was fine till about halfway home when it vibrated off and fell with the phone onto the highway. Not one of my better ideas. Live and learn. I was able to pullover run back and pick up the phone before any car or bike ran over it. Lucky for me. As I said, not one of my better ideas.

I will post this image for you from my journey. It was taken last week in at Pier 39 in San Francisco. If I get another more appropriate (read; Penang-ish) image I will post it for you. Just right clicking and save it and make it a desktop wallpaper. Enjoy.

June's Wallpaper and 80 Thanks

Yesterday was great! I had a wonderful surprise party for my 50th birthday. How my wife pulled it off is beyond me. She and two good friends of ours, Julie Mahler and Patty Lynn Weber all got together and schemed. Somehow they managed to get around 80 of my friends to show up at Schoepf's Old Time Bar-B-Que in Belton, TX. Heck, they even had a local radio station there to interview me! No kidding. Now, to be honest, I think the station is there every thursday evening broadcasting live, but they did interview me. My mother even sent a DVD of images of me through out my 50 years. That, I could have done without. She did however send me a copy of The Moment it Clicks, by everyones favorite photographer Joe McNally. So all in all it was a great day. Thanks to all who skyped and emailed me with birthday wishes.

Click the image above and a full-sized image will open in a new window. Right click it or ctr click (Mac) it should give you the option to save it and make it a desktop wallpaper. I shot this with David Duchemin while I was showing him around Nizamudeen. It was his first trip to this fantastic market. I had just taken a header into a mud puddle. The whole day was pretty much like that except for this image.

May's Wallpaper - Lumen Dei

Here is May's wallpaper. It is a little different. A bit of a plug for Lumen Dei. Which, by the way, starts in 136 days. (note: We still have two* one space open.) This image is of men waiting for a meal in a welfare line. I love the intense look that the man in the middle is giving me. This image was taken on last year's Lumen Dei workshop while walking with the students through Old Delhi. Click the image above and a full-sized (1680×1160 yes, it is huge.) image will open in a new window. Right click it or ctr click (Mac) it should give you the option to save it and make it a desktop wallpaper. Enjoy.
* since I published this just 2 hrs ago another space filled.

April Wallpaper

(Silly me, I forgot to give you the location of this shot. This is taken on the edge of Dal lake in Srinagar, Kashmir. Right in front of my favorite coffee shot "The Ice Fern" see the map below.)


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I know, I know you are amazed! Not at the image, but that it is actually on time for once. I have not posted in a while as I have been traveling for business, not photographic business however, so no new images to post.

The Lumen Day One Day that David Duchemin and I will be leading in Temple, TX is happening this Saturday. I am excited, and to be frank somewhat nervous doing this in my back yard. David is flying in early and I am looking forward to hanging with him and showing him some of our Central Texas culture. What would that be...any suggestions? Clem Mikeska's Bar-B-Q?

In other news, the Brandons will be moving to Malaysia in June. So my time in the USA is counting down. We arrive on June 25th! Long story, but suffice it to say, I can do everything I was going to do in England from Malaysia. So why not?!

March Wallpaper Image

Here is March's wallpaper. This image was shot on the road to Padang, Sumatra. Not sure the type of flower but, the background is a traditional Sumatran house. These buildings have a very colorfully carved exteriors. Please feel free to download it and hope you enjoy it.

February Wallpaper & Geotagging Photos

Hazratbal Shrine, Srinagar, Kashmir, India

Here is February's wallpaper. Please feel free to download it or, if you have a Mac running Leopard, (and if it still works after loading the Leopard OS, LOL!!!) just click on it, then once it loads in the browser, ctrl click (aka right click) and you will have the option to make it your desktop image. I love Macs!

If you recall, I blogged my lust for the Jobo GPS device. I had hoped to use it for this next assignment in Sumatra. This is a small GPS gadget that fits on your camera and records the location of each image shot. But alas, Jobo informs me that there are some snags with production and that it will not be ready for this trip. As we say in India, "What to do?"

I knew Sony's GPS device was also made to be used this way. So, I Googled, and found Terry White's blog and review of it. Very helpful. But what I found even more helpful was some of the comments made by his readers (comments are good). Several insisted that any GPS device would work with as long as it can export a .gpx file. Any device? How about my Asus p353 cell phone? So after poking around on the net, I found some every cool and relatively cheap software called Beeline GPS for Pocket PCs. This will give my GPS the capability to record and export a track file. So it will run thoughout the day while I shoot. Note: the GPS device and the camera need to have their clocks synced as close as possible. At the end of the day shooting I take all my RAW (.crw) files, load them into a application called HoudahGeo. This is a really neat little application that grabs your images then loads the exported .gpx data and embeds this data into the EXIF data of the RAW file. Once you do this, you load the images into Lightroom as usual. But this time, in the EXIF data you will get a new pane that will show you the Latitude and longitude and a cool little link that you can push that takes you directly to Google Maps to see where the image was taken. Very fun and I hope it will be very useful for this next trip.

This is a quick sample image I shot of Scott & White Hospital here in Temple, TX.

This image shows the EXIF data in the Library panel in Lightroom. You can see the GPS coordinates listed under my name.

So, after you click on the coordinates in the panel, Lightroom opens up your browser and loads the Google map showing where you shot the image. Very Cool!

January 2008 Wallpaper

I returned from the Philippines and Thailand Saturday night late. It is 5:30 am on Monday morning and I have been up two hours. This is a typical post trip schedule. Many of you who travel know what I mean.

Click the image above then drag it to your desktop to download.

I have been very lax in posting wall paper. Please except my apologies. Here is a shot for January that was taken in Kashmir a few years back. Simply click on the link, drag the file to your desktop and load it, however you load your desktop images for your system.

Click the image to zoom in for a better look.

I shoot a Canon 5D with the battery grip and a few lenses. It is great for what I do commercially, but for shots of the family on vacation or at play, it can be a pain. So, I bought a new camera which arrived during the weekend. The Canon G9. It is a sweet retro point and shoot with 12.1 mp. The way this camera operates in the manual mode really reminds me of my first camera the Canonet QL Rangefinder. The metering uses the old style needle and gauge to indicate if the image is going to be under or over exposed.

As I play with it, I will post some images and maybe write some thoughts on it. There are so many great reviews out there, that to write an extensive review would be redundant. So I will just give you some brief feedback. I can tell you right now I love this little guy. I like the overall retro look to it. It feels well built, with a mix of metal and plastic. One of the features I am looking forward to using on the road is the time lapse video. What I want to do is set up a tripod in the front seat of an Indonesian cab and shoot a ride in a crowded street. More on this idea later. Stay tuned.