Monthly Archives: January 2009

Photo-A-Day

Stephen TheDog: Doing Big Things in 2009

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Stephen TheDog: Doing Big Things in 2009
Photo-A-Day #1366

Tonight Allison and I went over to see our friends Andy and Rondi. They are also known as Stephen TheDog’s A and R. Stephen does not like to use their names on his blog, me I will. Oh, you don’t know StepehnTheDog? You are missing out on a very industrious dog.

Okay, so industrious may be a stretch but Stephen attempts to blog on his O.D.D. (Online Digital Diary and oh yeah he things blogging is odd, but he still does it). Stephen ran for all open posts in 2008 as a throw away vote candidate, basically if you didn’t like either candidate then Stephen was your dog. He even got 714 write in votes in an election in Baxter, Iowa. Stephen is campaigning Nabisco to make Double Stuff Nutter Butters. So far though he has been met with many a deaf ear. But Stephen has big plans in 2009.

He didn’t tell me his plans per se but one thing that is at the forefront: Name Recognition! Stephen will be attempting to get his name out there in many ways possible. I suggested to him that he start making Stephen TheDog T-Shirts with famous Stephen TheDog sayings. He didn’t have any though. And he says that he doesn’t wear T-shirts. But I do know that he wears ties. So I suggested that he make some ties instead. I think a tie with Stephen TheDog wearing his tie would make a great tie, it would end up in my next box of Awesome.

Okay enough of that, I can’t write nonsense like Stephen TheDog. We had a very nice visit with Andy and Rondi and Eva was very good with Stephen. She started off a little cool at first but eventually warmed up to everyone. She also found that she enjoys playing with a tennis ball. She was laughing like crazy when we played. You know that wonderful laughter that makes us want to have 50 more. But don’t worry she got “nudgie” later (A Nudge where the “u” is pronounced like the o’s in the word good.) that curbed us of that desire. But overall she was wonderful and went right to bed too. Even better.

Andy and Rondi made a delicious lasagna and ice cream cookies that were somehow tax deductible. After dinner we played Mario Kart on the Wii on the Big screen. Playing at Andy’s house is like playing at our house but everyone gets a split screen the size of our whole TV. Before we left I got some photos with Stephen for BenSpark’s PhotoBooth. Oh and I got to play with Andy’s new toy, a Nikon SB600 Flash, I now have Flash envy.

And now I’m off to do my 15 minutes a day of trying to learn Chinese. It has been pretty fun so far.

Photography

BenSpark’s Photobooth

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BenSpark's PhotoBooth

One of my 2009 Commitments is to be more creative. The other day I was watching Eva while Allison was at work. She was being her funny self and kept telling me to put on my hat. She would emphatically point to my head and shout “Hat”. I was wearing a hoodie, I was scruffy and probably had not showered (I was working from home. I need more discipline or an office to motivate me to shower when working from home.) Each time I would put my hood on my head Eva would squeal with laughter. She was wearing one too so I flipped her hood up and she laughed. I wanted to get a picture of the two of us.

So I picked up my camera and attached it to my XShot 2.0 then I set the timer for the custom setting. I had previously set my custom setting to take 5 pictures with a 5 second delay between each photo. The settings can be as long as 30 seconds between pictures and you can set the camera to automatically take up to 10 photos. Now I know the traditional PhotoBooth has 4 photos on the strip and I was going to take one off but decided against it. I don’t know what exactly made me think of a Photo Booth. I was just open to the creativity of this little photo shoot. But I then Googled “Photo Strip” and “Photo Booth” and found my inspiration.

I loaded each photo into Photoshop Elements and pulled all the images onto one. Each image was a separate Layer. I then cropped the image to 100 X 125. I created a blank file and then pulled each of the layers onto that file. I added a drop shadow to each one and spaced them evenly on the new file. I then cropped the whole thing to look like a photo strip and there you have it.

I will be at events and conventions all over the country this coming year as a member of the IZEA Insiders and I’ll have my XShot 2.0 and Canon Powershot with me at all of them. I hope that if you meet me you will step into BenSpark’s PhotoBooth.