Carl Hutzler’s Blog

I have been learning/practicing the art of photography for 30+ years now. But there is one area of photography which I have always wanted to learn more about. The area is portraiture, and more specifically, how to use lighting properly and creatively.

Over the last 6 months, I have been considering buying some studio strobes to get started with learning lighting. I never got the nerve to make the purchase and get started learning as the equipment is in the $3,000 and up range and I was unsure whether or not it was worth the investment.

But then I came across this amazing little site called Strobist created by David Hobby of the Baltimore Sun newspaper.

David decided to share a ton of information about lighting which he has learned over the years as a photojournalist. First off, he shares that you don’t need $3,000 worth of strobe equipment! All you need is some small, used (cheap), strobes….the kind you would normally put directly on top of a camera. But David uses these “off camera” on light stands with umbrellas/snoots. The only disadvantage to a small strobes is that the small strobes do not put out as much light as their bigger brothers. But unless you are lighting a large group of people, a small flash is really all you need.

But David went further as he started to gain some readership with his site (and as he started to have some fun with it). He initiated an online course called the Strobist Boot Camp. The idea was to try and get his readers to actually start practicing what he was preaching. Boot Camp is ongoing in the 3rd assignment (of six) right now and it is very well done. I am learning a lot.

I can say that I have learned more about photography from David and the Strobist “membership” than at any time in the last 15 years (since school).

A personal “Thank You” to David and his generosity.

In 85° heat. Yuk. I did pretty well for the first 12 miles and then started to feel it. At mile 16 the heat was bad and the shade was gone and we were under the Wilson bridge. They were doing a lot of work on the bridge and the diesel fumes were very strong. That’s when I stopped with one of the other folks I was running with. Together we walked for 1.5 miles and then ran in the last half mile.

Even with the walk, we finished in a respectable 3 hours 57 mins. Considering the heat, the 13.5 min mile pace is actually fairly good. Next time we have a long run (20 miles), if its hot, I am going to run at 2am…in the dark!

Just a few pictures from the day…
http://carlhutzler.com/family/

(click on independence day 2006)

I like the PDF. Download it, it is not a long thing.

From Shawn’s Blog
(Thanks, Shawn!)

No, this is not my thoughts on the great director Spike Lee. This is about life at AOL.

I got an email yesterday from a fellow employee who read my blog entry “What a week!” Basically there was something in this person’s craw which had been there for a while. When they read my blog entry, it made them boil over a bit and send a very well thought out professional email to me, essentially about “why we are putting more ads/footers in mail our members send”.

(I have my own viewpoint which I fight vigorously on this seemingly none-sensical feature for our email system, as do our members who have started a petition. But this is not the point of this post.)

I think the most important point is that this person decided to take some action and do something about it. My message to everyone left at our great company is to follow this example and “Do the right thing”. Don’t just sit back and accept what is going on. Fight for what you think is best. Fight for your idea. Fight for another way of doing something.

You might find that a lot of people agree with you and that we just needed a leader to stand-up and lead.

Perhaps folks have seen this, as it was a commencement speach he gave at Stanford in 2005. I came across it  today from a friend of mine (a fellow photographer, website designer, and apple lover). Anyway, I thought it was fun to see how a great leader innovated and invented and some of the fairly major setbacks he encountered along the way. Take a look at Steve’s commencement speech.

In my quest to run my first marathon (Marine Corp), I made it to 14 miles (in about 2 hr 45 min) today. It was hot and my last long run was only 10 miles, so this was a big jump (and bigger than the experts recommend).

It kicked my ass. Between the heat, big jump in miles, and fairly quick pace (for my level), I was dead when I got home. I managed to go to the pool and hang out with some friends for a few hours. I ate two lunches back-to-back which helped. But I needed a nap after all that :-)

This week I am going to get more serious about the smaller daily runs I should be doing much more regularly. Hoping that will help for next week when I try for 16 miles.

But overall, I did a half marathon today. Not bad!