Eclectic Echoes

Thank you to all who expressed their thoughts and concerns for me regarding my surgery and recovery. Working with the VA medical system is a royal pain, but I guess if it gets done in the end…

We ended up going to Storrs on Sunday to represent the Marine Science Department for the open house, then going down everyday to New Haven related to the surgery. The surgery was on Wednesday. There was a marked difference in the way that everything was handled. The Dr. made sure to talk to us before the surgery and to Tammy afterwards. They released me from the recovery unit as soon as I was able to pee. Amazing how a simple thing like that can become so important yet impossible to do. Basically all the things that were wrong with the first time around were corrected this time. Fortunately they were able to get the stone and use a home removable stent (ACK!!) so there will be no return trip for that.

I was pretty out of it though for the past few days, couldn’t focus enough to get any work or studying done, slept half the day away, so when I was awake I cruised some photography web sites. I was looking for some ways to do some more advanced studio type lighting on the cheap and looking to see if I could find a repair for the focus mechanism on one of my lenses. I ran across a few websites I wasn’t already familiar with so figured I’d share them here…

ProPhotoLife - a site with lots of video tutorials (through YouTube) that is aimed mostly at studio and commercial type photography. Lot’s of good hints here for those specific fields but also for general photography including color management, gear bags, lighting theory, composition, starting and running a business.

Strobist - a site dedicated to photography using off camera flashes and strobes. A lot of good stuff in there including a lot of good DIY ideas for creating complex lighting effects on a beer budget. It covers the range of photography styles including macro, nature commercial, assignment and studio. Their Lighting 101 and Lighting 102 series will get you up to speed with off camera flash photography easily and the On Assignment series (how an assignment shot was created) is always fun to read.

Canon themselves have an interesting Virtual Lens Plant, that shows how their excellent lenses are made including the science behind high quality optics. It’s done in an easy to understand way using graphics and video to best effect. It also has interviews with the lens craftspeople who are responsible for making them. Pretty cool for an optics geek to see how those lenses are actually made.