Happy 4th of July!

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Download Day

There are lots of reasons to use Firefox and not Internet Explorer. The biggest being it’s faster and safer. And maybe even most biggest, is it’s customizable with great add-ons, the best of which may be Ad-Block plus which pretty much erases all the annoying ads and banners that are everywhere.

Today the latest and greatest is released, Firefox 3, and at 1 pm EST, you can download it and be a apart of a Guinness World Record…most software downloaded in one day. It’s a slick little marketing ploy, but they already have almost 1.7 million pledges from just about every corner of the earth.

Ballerina Girl

A few Saturday’s ago I had the honor of seeing my 4 year old daughter grace the vaunted Cumming Theater stage (ok, maybe not so much vaunted) for her second ever ballet recital.  It was dark, and I couldn’t use my flash, but I managed to snap a few pictures off.  Sophie is such a ham when she is home, but so shy when she is in front of people, and completely adorable in her ballet costume.  We managed to get some video of her at her dress rehearsal from the day before as well.  I’m not sure if “riveting” is the word I would use, but it is pretty cute.

Yes, Sophie is the only one with a dozen roses.

Rivalry Renewed

Pardon my fanboy moment, but my beloved Celtics are heading back to the Finals for the first time since I was 15, to face their biggest rivals, the Lakers. There’ve been about 60 NBA championships, and these two teams own half of them.

A Few More From Mother’s Day…

Here are a few more pictures from Mother’s Day. I’m also posting one of Bella that I put up the other day in black and white. Here it’s in color. I can’t decide which one I like better!

DV Artistry

I initially labeled this post as a time waster, but I couldn’t start the next sentence in good conscience. Because while I hope you spend some time surfing away on this site, I don’t’ really think you’ll be wasting your time. It’s also a bit of a disservice to the blogger and his work. Aaaand, if you have the means and are getting married, you may want him at your wedding. He is Daniel Boswell, and it is his blog and business Digital Video Artistry. Boswell is a Wedding Videographer, the kind you wish you knew about before you got married, then feel better about because you wouldn’t have been able to afford him anyway. Though you might just plunk down that dough after seeing some of his work. It is very artistic, very cinematic, and honestly pretty moving. The clip below is one of his “cinema reale” works which is a 3-4 minute highlight reel of an actual wedding day set to a specific song picked by bride and groom and shown at the wedding reception, same day. Check out his blog and his actual site (DVArtistry)to see more of his work (in the proper video format) and services. It’s good stuff.

from www.dvartistry.blogs posted with vodpod

Mother’s Day

This year we “celebrated” Mother’s Day by heading out to an old field where there are a couple of barn-like structures and took some pictures, blew some bubbles, and goofed around. We pass by this small corner lot of nature goodness on the way to church every week. It’s quite pretty but the sale of the property and development of the land into more unnecessary homes is inevitable and unfortunate. We had a good time, in spite of the requisite tantrum and whiny-ness and general frustration our girls create by being unable to take a good picture together. That and my ability to miss good shots when they happen. Out of 115 or so pitcures, I think 10 were good, 50 were alright, and the rest I got rid of. Here are a few of the better ones.

This last one I tried as an idea I got online. The girls are pretending to be holding a bouquet of flowers. I had the picture developed as a 5 x 7 and framed it without the glass. Slit a hole in the picture where there hands are and inserted some small fake flowers. It turned out just ok, but the picture is a keeper I think!

Baby Sophia

I recently had the privilege of photographing the baby girl of some really good friends of mine, Mike and Colleen. Their little girl Sophia is an absolute doll, and was just so easy to take a few (or 120) pictures of! Despite the lack of sunshine, Sophia was still able to pull off some awesome photos for us.

Filemail

Have you ever wanted to send someone a really large file (say a digital photo of something, or a large mp3) and weren’t able to because it was too big to send or to big to be received?  Or maybe you have a dozen files that you want to send, but they are all huge.  You have to either resize the photos, send them all individually, or if you’re savvy enough and they files aren’t already compressed, you can try and zip them up into a zip file and send them that way.  Any way you try it, it’s all kind of a hassle.

That’s where Filemail comes in.  So easy to use, even in its beta state.  I’ve used it once, sending a handful of photographs to a friend that were all over 1mb in size.  It’s basically like web mail, except you’re simply sending files.  Enter the recipients address, your address, a message, and choose the files from your hard drive.  You can send files up to 2 gb in size for free, or more if you pay.  The recipient receives the email that there are files for him to download.  You can set the number of available downloads, and password protect the files as well.  The image above is what you see when you go to download the files.  Especially slick is the slideshow application available if you are sending photos.