See that red circle?  You can now find the like and share buttons after each post.  If you could find it in your heart to spread the love, I’d appreciate it.  I do indeed like you.

UPDATE 6/23@2:45 pm: It is a rare day that any post comes close to touching what is clearly my most popular.  This bokeh post stands head and shoulders above all others on this blog but today, this guy made it to the top.  Thanks for liking me!

I Like You is a post from: Ari Takes Pictures

In the end, I had to delete my whole blog, including the wordpress install and database , which scares the living crap out of me, and rebuild it.  Since the files are all in the same places, after reimporting the XML file I had saved, it mostly came back to life.  I had to rebuild all the pages, reconfigure everything, fix some CSS, blah blah blah.

Along the way, there was a little damage.  If you were subscribed to a post, that went away.  I’m sure I’m more sorry about it than you are and I heartily encourage you to resubscribe if you’d like.  If you made a comment on my last post or two, that’s gone too.  I really like comments.  I miss them already.

Long story short, although there was a bit of damage, I really think we’re back online and relatively trouble-free.  I’m not going to touch anything unless I really have to.  Please tell me if you see anything funny, otherwise, back to doing the photography thing, no more doing the “make it work” thing.

Love,

Ari

Please Kill Me Before I Have To Do That Again is a post from: Ari Takes Pictures

As far as I know, we’re sitting on a new host.  The masthead has been refreshed as well – nice elephant, eh?  Other than that, I know of one problem – the exif information (specifics about each photograph) that usually appear in a little table underneath the shot aren’t showing up right.  I need your help finding out what else is wrong, because I’m sure there is something.

If you could be so kind as to randomly click three links deep, wherever you want to go, and tell me if you see anything else messed up, I would be forever in your debt.  Do it for me, before google finds the problems and destroys my meager page rank.

Thanks team!
Ari

Welcome Home is a post from: Ari Takes Pictures

Interested?  Read on after the jump.

Just like the professional version, we need a rectangular or square frame.  Got a cardboard box?  Good – all set.  Mine is about 18″ tall and 14″ wide, but anything larger than a foot or so should work.  With the bottom taped shut and the top open and pointing forward on your work surface, cut out the left, right and top (actually the side, but you get the picture) panels, leaving an approximately 1″ border on the sides you cut out.  Use a box cutter or razor blade (and plenty of caution) to do this.  You don’t want to mangle your box or yourself.

Once you’re done there, tape some white tissue paper or tracing paper over the open panels.  These are going to diffuse whatever light you decide to shine through the box.  Last thing you need is a strip of poster board or some other sort of thicker-than-paper but flexible material.  Cut it to the width of your box and keep it long enough to add up to the height plus width of your box.  Or so.  Rocket science this isn’t.  Tape it to the inside top rear corner and let it come down the back wall, curve, and cover the inside bottom.  This piece provides the magic.

The last thing you need is light.  The best would probably be one or two off-camera flashes, set to very low power, shining through the side panels.  In a pinch use one.  In a greater pinch, use a lamp or the sun shining on the box – just make sure your White Balance setting matches whatever you use.  The sun worked fine for me here.

If you only have one light but want to knock down the shadow a bit, add another piece of white poster board to the inside on the side you aren’t lighting to reflect the light back a bit.  The only other problem I’ve had is that with so much white, if your object is too dark, the camera is going to have a hard time balancing the two – make sure you set your exposure for the item you’re actually shooting, not the whole scene.

When you’re done, just pull out the posterboard and cut the tape on the bottom of the box and it should fold flat.  Pretty easy, right?  Trash into treasure.

Transmogrification – Trash to Light Tent is a post from: Ari Takes Pictures

About four years since my trusty Digital Rebel XT came home with me, I decided it was time for something new.  The Canon Digital Rebel T1i, stupid name not withstanding, finally forced my hand.  The camera showed up a couple days agoand after far too little time to have much worth saying, maybe I won’t say anything at all – maybe the big smile on my face should say enough.   If you want to hear about the new camera and see more pictures, click the jump.

What am I talking about – of course I’ll say something.  The first thing I noticed?  The beautiful gigantic LCD screen.  Second thing?  The screen turns off when you hold it up to your eye and comes back on when you move it away from your face.  Sweet.

After that I figured out how to unlock the special high-ISO mode.  There are settings between 100-1600, just like on my XT, but the T1i actually goes three jumps higher (Canon just represents the 12,800 ISO with an H for High). I realized that taking pictures in the near dark is pretty much the best thing ever.  The inclusion of an Auto-ISO mode is also great.  Turn it on and the camera picks between 100-1600 ISO on the fly, depending on the picture in question.  It isn’t that you can’t switch around yourself, but having the camera does it is pretty nice on a daily basis.  For certain things, you want to make darn sure it doesn’t move, but there are certain people (or at least certain days) when having a camera that functions like an extremely high-quality point and shoot is exactly what the doctor ordered.  Set to Auto or Program and in Auto-ISO, you can point it and shoot it and unlike your average P&S, it will actually deliver good results.

The build quality is decent.  On par with the XT.  It is very slightly bigger and heavier, with a more angular body.  It doesn’t feel like a tank and it is covered in plastic, but so is my XT and it’s been fine for years.  If you are a professional photographer that has to throw his gear around, there are models for you, but for a sliver of the price, I’m a happy camper.

My Precious is a post from: Ari Takes Pictures

I was just looking back through the Through the Viewfinder stuff I did and noticed that 5 or so of the old posts were missing their pictures.  Luckily it seems like I had a backup (can you believe that?) and actually managed to restore them.  The problem is that I can’t easily tell if there are any other issues.  If you do happen across posts missing pictures or in any other way screwed up, let me know, will you?

Housekeeping… Fixing? Maintenance, ok? is a post from: Ari Takes Pictures

Is This Thing On? is a post from: Ari Takes Pictures

-Ari

100 Posts is a post from: Ari Takes Pictures

We Interrupt This Post… is a post from: Ari Takes Pictures

I know that you devoutely set aribrownest.com to your start page in order to easily keep up with anything I might add, so for the most part, this post is fairly irrelevant.  If, however, you were away from your computer – say the boss makes you set the company site as your homepage – you might want an easy way to keep up with aribrownest.com, right?  Well do I have just the thing for you.

You might notice I’ve moved my RSS feed icon up to the top of the right column.  See it up there?  It’s orange and says “subscribe to my feed”.  I know you know how RSS works already, but just in case you, for example, have been recently hit in the head, I’ll go over it again.

RSS (or “Real Simple Syndication”) is a technology that allows you to see any updates to my site without having to… you know… actually go to it.  All major browsers have it built in.  If you use Firefox, click the link and choose “subscribe now”.  In Firefox this is called “Live Bookmarks” and looks like this – see how it looks like a bookmark with my most recent 10 posts in it?:

In Internet Explorer, it’s called a feed and lives next to the bookmarks.  If you click the link and just keep pressing ok, you’ll end up seeing something like this:

Even better than Firefox and Internet Explorer, Google, Yahoo, and many others have special webpages that act as RSS readers.  My favorite is Google Reader.  Sign in, and add my feed!  It’s the best way to know when there are updates to my site (and any of your other favorites) all in one place.  All you have to do from Google Reader is press the “Subscribe” button and type in http://www.aribrownest.com/feed/.  It’s easy – I swear!  If you don’t get it, email me.  I’ll even play tech support for you.  Let me know how it goes!

Follow Me, Please? is a post from: Ari Takes Pictures