Last night, I printed up four of my favorite photos (from the photos I’ve been posting these last few weeks) on my inkjet photo printer. I cropped them to square dimensions, just because I like that look.

Today, I took down all the craziness I used to have hanging above my desk at work and replaced it with the four photos and a postcard of a Charles Rennie Mackintosh botanical illustration which had been hanging there, but was surrounded by xkcd comics, book covers, and pictures of animals from CuteOverload.

I like that I will have my own photographs hanging at my desk; granted, they’re not framed or anything, but they’re lovely all the same and I’m proud of them.

There’s other excitement happening tomorrow at my desk. It will be a good day.

(Also, to bring me back from emotional wreckitude from “Away from Her”, I’m now watching Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell in “His Girl Friday”. It’ll cure what ails ya.)

Photoshop has done this for me lately:

On the left, the original untouched photo. On the right, the same photo with some increased saturation and a fun multi-layer effect consisting of Gaussian blur on one layer, the “multiply” effect applied to the other layer and the brightness increased on the total package.

Eez very different, no? It gives it a surreal effect I enjoy. Maybe I’ll get craziness printed up and framed. Hrm.

Also - in the category of f’ed up things parents can say to their fully grown children, the following is a portion of a phone conversation I had with my father last night while I was on the train back from work. Said he:

“How much are you earning now? I’d like to be able to brag to everyone about how much money my daughter is making. The more you make, the prouder I can be.”

I wish I was kidding. This is quoted verbatim; uncharacteristically, he spoke this entire bit in English instead of Polish. There was no humor behind it (he doesn’t joke about salaries); he was quite earnest about making this a compliment for me. It backfired; I was dumbstruck and just said I’d talk to him later.

I don’t find it boring, actually. I’m just tired because I’ve been up since 5 a.m. That was almost 2.5 hours earlier than I normally get up. Hear me when I say, “I AM TIRED.”

Still, I got home, ate some soup, took some photos, refilled the windshield washer fluid receptacle under my car’s hood and debated installing new wipers (but then read the instructions. Not tonight. These yotches are silicone ones from PIAA and they require some prep work. This is a project for another night.)

And now, le foto.

And below, a close-up from the first photo and a reason I love my camera. This is without a macro lens and it’s not the sharpest ever (a lens would help), but you can see the fine “hairs” around the edges of a CLOVER.

Hungry insects make quick work of leaves.

More on this last photo tomorrow…

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More photo fun on a summer Saturday. I entertained myself with the titles… mouse over for the title tag to appear, in case you want to see if you’re similarly entertained.

I am on a bit of a downhill slide right now, post-vacation (which was great). Here are some photos until I’m ready to write:

I didn’t get a chance to take (m)any photos today. There were many characters of interest including a disturbing-looking man wearing a lamé (or lame) bodysuit and (quite obviously) no underwear. I had to turn my head and look away if only because I didn’t know WHAT my expression was conveying. At all. If anything.

I walked the floor a bit looking for a few companies/booths, but didn’t find any aside from the mimobot people. I have a USB drive, but I really could NOT resist. Really. They were discounted, and I only wanted 1GB and it came with a free gift! So, here’s my new mimobot friend:

Number 810 of 2000, if you please.

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Well, today was the first of my two days at New York ComicCon. The annual east coast comic convention at the Javits Convention Center. I was at the booth alone from 3:00 on, so I didn’t get to wander the floor and see what was going on, but I did get some photos. Kind of boring photos since they were taken from the confines of my company’s booth:

In the two images below, I’ve circled a light-saber battle for you. They were pretty far away and I don’t have a true telephoto lens for the camera, and there was a lot of motion and I didn’t have a chance to change the shutter speed since I just saw this craziness happening and NEEDED TO CAPTURE IT.

There was a girl and a guy, both in weird Captain America-esque outfits. Just -boom!- in the middle of the aisle as people sort of scooted around them, totally nonplussed by the sword battle going on in their midst. It’s amazing how one’s acceptance of the non-traditional really reaches new levels here (half-naked women wearing red contact lenses and 8″ high platform boots? Ain’t no thing!)

Yeah. There was that. And lots of other interesting things and people. Thankfully, unlike the last convention I attended, the time passed by rather quickly and before I knew it, it was time to leave. I took the ferry back over to New Jersey and took this photo in the ferry parking lot - that’s the New Yorker building, among others… :

Yup. Rinse and repeat - doing it all again tomorrow, though not for nearly as long. That will be nice; I looked up an old friend from my bookstore days who is a comic book artist and learned that the studio he co-founded has a booth at ComicCon. I went over to say hi to him before I was due at our booth and we chatted for a bit, but I’d like to pop over again and perhaps buy a sketch from him or some such Fun.

Phew. I am planning on spending the rest of the evening watching highly entertaining silliness with my sister and her boyfriend - “Wet Hot American Summer.” From the folks responsible for “The State.” Yes. It’s quite funny.

Today was a pretty nice day. Very spring-like. Sunny and breezy and warm. A little chilly off the water.

I’m not typically a warm-weather aficionado, but I have to admit that today was nice. And I did get to go rock-climbing for a little while late this evening, so I feel good and tired from a combination of fresh outdoor air and physical activity. Still, I have to admit that it might be even nicer to be somewhere like this:

(My father traveled to Fiji about a year ago and he took these photos. It looks decent enough, no?)

I love this photograph of my friend Michelle’s daughter, Juliette.

I snapped it today while she was crawling up onto my lap - and I just gave it that soft glow in Photoshop.

My only issue is that my knee is in sharper focus than her face, but I will learn how to take better pictures using this new camera with time and practice and by reading through the various books I have.

That’s another nice thing about working for a publisher: access to books I can USE in real life (not that I don’t love fiction, too). I’ve got the field guide for my camera (Nikon D40), and a whole slew of Photo Workshop books.

Still, for an amateur shutterbug attempt, I do like this photo quite a bit.