Nikki and Zac

This weekend I shot Nikki and Zac. Zac is my son, Nikki is my ex-wife. Most people freak when they see Stacey (my current wife) and Nikki shootin' the breaze like the best of friends. I have to admit it was a little strange to me at first. Hey, it's better than fighting, and it works out a whole lot better for the kids... there is no better reason than that. Anywho, this set features a very laid back Nikki and Zac, and a guest appearance from a strange man (you know who you are!), and Minnie (Nikki's sister). I think even most of the silly ones are worth a look.

These are straight out of the camera, converted from RAW. Find them here.

Going the distance...

So, I have really been getting into the Strobist movement / style lately. One of the most expensive things about shooting this way (off camera flash) is triggering your flashes remotely. The industry standard is a radio device called a Pocket Wizard. A set of Pocket Wizards will set you back to the tune of about $600 bucks! That's just the kind of scratch I don't have in liquid form right now, so what to do? Fortunately, my Nikon camera is able to trigger off camera flashes with something Nikon calls CLS (Creative Lighting System). CLS works pretty well indoors, but should be called CDS (Can't Do Shit) when you are key shifting in daylight. Well, realizing that I had to do something, I quickly went to paradise to see what I could find. I found a set of "Studio Radio Triggers" at a company that I am pretty used to dealing with, called Alzo Digital. At less than $40 for a transmitter and receiver, how could I go wrong? I ordered one transmitter, and two receivers.

When they came in, Korey said they looked very much like Cactus V2s, or the Gadget Infinity triggers, AKA "Poverty Wizards." I really hadn't heard much good about them, but hell... it's $40 bucks. Since then, I have really put them through the paces. Each time they work in about the 80% range... not bad... not really good though either. Fast forward to yesterday.

I was looking for something on the Internet, and stumbled on a large number of DIY hacks to add an antenna to the transmitter of my triggers. Hmm. I read numerous ways of doing it, and most yielded really great improvements with the range of the Poverty Wizard, or E-bay trigger. Common sense would tell you that if you increase range, you will increase reliability along with it. I decided to do the modification... did I mention that they were only $40?

First thing was to get a baseline measurement of distance before making the mod. I placed the flash on a chair on my porch and started walking away, popping the flash with the transmitter which I held in my hand. I made it about a house and a half away. I know, my Mr. Wizard, scientific approach to measurement is hard to understand! I figure each of my neighbor's yards are about 70 feet wide (yes, we live in zero-lots). Calculate that, to equal about 105 feet. I was sort of surprised with the results to begin with. I guess this was a good night.

Now it's time to do the mod. I used:

• Cordless Drill


• Drill Bit (just about the same size as a pen cap)


• Pen Cap


• Approx 5.78" of copper wire


• Soldering Iron


• Solder

First, I disassembled the transmitter. You should know how to do this or you are screwed when you need to change the batteries. Next, I drilled a hole in the top cover of the transmitter so I could push the pen cap through snugly. Then, I cut the pen cap so that it would clear the innards of the transmitter, and look halfway decent.

NOTE: The pen cap is strictly for appearance. I got the idea from another person's blog. Google "GI antenna mod" and you will find all of the same information I did.

I pushed the pen cap in place and moved on to the actual working part of the mod. When you are looking at the PCB... oh crap! Quick! Take out the battery! Ok, as I was saying... while looking down at the PCB with the battery facing toward you, you will notice a hole in the top, left corner of the PCB which is empty. Solder your wire to that hole. If you are unable to solder, put the transmitter back together and find someone who can. After the wire is soldered, wrap it around a pencil, pen, or letter opener, like I did to give it a spiral shape. Feed the wire up into the pen cap as you reassemble the whole shebang, and put it all back together (one screw).

RESULTS: Remember the scant one and a half house distance I got before? I do too. I will soon, however forget it. First test, I got a reliable SIX HOUSES!!! After just about crapping my pants, and a quick call to brag to Korey, I put the transmitter on my camera (before I was testing by pushing the test button) and tried it again. This time SEVEN AND A HALF HOUSES!! This was amazing, because the triggers always seemed to work better when you pushed the test button, now it's reversed... the usable way!

Anywho... sorry for no pictures of the mod process, there are plenty of those on the web for you to enjoy.

Toilet Transcript...

Here we are again in the company latrine. Its shortly after 1700 hours Zulu. All is quiet, till Charlie decides to occupy the foxhole adjacent to my bunker. Ready for anything, I hold my breath to escape detection and to avoid inhalation of the napalm cloud which is most certainly coming. The enemy is quiet... Usually by this time I would have been taking fire for some time. I guess this Charlie's bombing mechanism must have jammed, because he raised trou, and aborted mission...WHEW! I'm not out of the woods yet! You see, sometimes the enemy will leave biological remnants on door opening apparatus in hopes to sicken you at a later time! This time Charlie washes his hands and evacuates the latrine PDQ. I will live another day! Being a battlefield photographer, I was able to snag a quick snap of Charlie using my communication device (see photo)

Supra Smackdown!

Tonight Korey and I shot a Toyota Supra. The dark blue car ate up all the light we could throw at it and our daylight ran out a lot faster than normal. This car was pure evil. After 66 shots, I had ONE... only one... that was decent. This is it. I am tired now, and just want to go to bed. Our rematch with this car is on Wednesday... let's see who takes the prize then!

Baseball and skunks...

Ian plays for the Orioles this year (his third year playing ball) and has always been a good player. Last season, he was struck out only twice in the whole season! This year it seemed that Ian forgot how to hit the ball. His coach spent some one-on-one time with him and has really improved his hitting. This team actually warms up/practices an hour before each game... whatever it takes I guess.

Tonight was the Orioles -vs- Dodgers. The Orioles played extremely well. Everyone was catching the ball, hustling, and rooting for each other. The poor Dodgers were getting it handed to them for most of the night. Ian slammed (see photo) an infield home run bringing himself, and two runners home. Later in the game, Ian stopped a drive down the third base line and flung the ball all the way to first base. I don't think anybody thought that the kid on first base was going to even be able to catch it. He reached up, grabbed the ball, and stomped on the base! OUT!

Hit men and explosions...

My brother has been asking me to take his picture for a couple of weeks now. My first idea for a shoot portrayed him as a gamer (i won't go too far into it because I still want to shoot it). He told me it wouldn't be cool to be photographed as a gamer. So... you work, eat, sleep, and play Call of Duty all day... but your not a gamer, okey dokey. One of the coolest games I have played (and I don't play many) is Vice City... I may not even have the name right, but I am sure you know what I am talking about. So let's start there. Add to the fact that (I think) Brett has sort of that Jason Statham look if he is dressed up. So this set is sort of inspired by video games, and The Transporter - I hope you like it, the set is here.

As for the explosions... I am home sick today. The explosions are pretty much staying in the southern region of Shaneland, which is good. The killer headache, and raw door gotta go though.

Potty Publishing

So it's that time again...
In the bathroom here at work, there are hundreds of eyes looking at you at all times! For some reason, people have drawn faces on the rocks on the wall next to the throne. There is Dime Rock, Hitler Rock, Penis Rock, Fraggle Rock, Kid Rock, and (pictured above) Roswell Rock. I would have taken a photo of a different rock, but most of the others are surrounded by rude rocks which have human genitalia drawn on them by some of Denton's most talented bathroom artists.