Wheeee! (read more »)

I’ve posted a teaser video from the Shark Angels project. (read more »)

Taken from my article over at Wetpixel.com.

February 27, 2008 – MSNBC’s The Today Show and CNN feature Bahamas shark footage online and interview both Neal Watson and Rob Stewart. Other news articles are starting to be varied instead of all regurgitating the same content. (read more »)

Humpback whale sow and calf, Vava’u, Tonga

Shot details: Canon EOS-1Ds Mark II, 17mm Tokina lens, Seacam underwater housing, 1/125 sec @ f8, ISO 320

I’m on a bit behind on the one-picture-per-computer-post thing. Sorry. I’ve been distracted and down lately. It’s hard to stay involved and supportive while also staying out of the political bullshit that pretty much defines this industry.

OK, this is driving me nuts. I have a HP Laserjet 1300 that is shared to a Windows PC. On previous versions of Mac OS, I was able to browse to it and add it very easily. But now that I have installed Mac OS 10.5 Leopard from scratch, I can’t find any way to see that printer.

This is strange because my 2nd machine, which was upgraded to Leopard from Tiger, still has the printer installed, and it works.

I installed Gutenprint, which some folks say helps, bit it also didn’t work. I also tried to share out the printer from my other Mac using Bonjour, but not username / password combination will allow me to authenticate successfully.

Any tips?

I was listening to a bit of Vienna Teng‘s music tonight while going over to Obama’s website to donate, and an amazing thing happened when Obama’s video started playing… (read more »)

jim and me

I have been working non-stop over the last two days to help my good friend, Jim Abernethy, whose shark diving operation has just experienced the first mortality from shark bite in the history of organized shark diving.

I’ve been keeping an up-to-date webpage on Wetpixel that lists the details of the bite along with stories in the media (that all say the “attack” was in Florida, for some reason).

My friend, Rob Stewart, will be on the Today Show and CNN tomorrow. Although he will officially be on the show to talk about his film, Sharkwater, we’re all sure that they’re going to be talking primarily about this shark bite incident. Its is likely they will be using footage from Shark Angels, a project I have been involved with since November. (read more »)

Hello, all. I urgently need advice about what kind of video surveillance system to get. Our building is under attack by thieves (car stolen out of the garage last night), and we want to make sure we have the building’s common areas recorded. We have video footage of the two people who stole the car because there was already a camera in the garage, but we need more cameras to track movement inside the building if it happens again.

We need a 6-8 camera system with the best black + white, low-light cameras we can find. The video should be recorded onto a hard disk (existing computer, probably).

Any tips? Thank you!

xkcd

crap. this is totally me.

oh, except for the someone-else-asking-me-to-come-to-bed part.

Some of my images are going to be featured on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition on March 2, 2008.

Sun March 2 8/7c
Ty and the crew give an Iraqi soldier and his family a place
where they can devote themselves to preserving Virginia
history. Country singer Toby Keith performs.

I’m excited to see it! They aren’t allowed to release images until after the air date, so I haven’t seen the final product yet.

UPDATE You can see the results via a house tour video online. It’s the Lucas family episode.

I recently reconfigured my MacBook Pro (of RAID fame) to use an MTRON MSD 3000 32GB SSD drive as a boot / apps / Aperture database drive, plus my existing 160GB ATA/IDE drive as a second data drive (and overflow application area).

Everything SCREAMS now, and I couldn’t be happier. (read more »)

Here are some apps I use or think might be useful as a Mac user (long list!). I use most of them. (read more »)

I’m taking advantage of 2 days at home to revamp the way I backup my MacBook Pro (multitasking rules!). It seems like I do this every couple of months, but one of these days, I’ll get it right. (read more »)

It’s impossible to tell how many people are reading my journal these days because so many people read via RSS. I’d like to say that I’m sharing photos here just for me, but wouldn’t be entirely true. And the only way I know you’re out there is if you leave comments! So… anyway, now you know how I feel. I’ll continue to post photos. :)

Spinner dolphins just off the west coast of Oahu

Shot Details: Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III, Sigma 20mm/1.8 lens, Seacam housing, f7.1 @ 1/200 sec, ISO 200

Went out on Frank‘s boat this morning with JW. It was really quiet out there, but as we were pulling back into the harbor, we spotted a big school of spinner dolphins. Luckily, the 20 Japanese tourists in the water were unable to freedive down to them, so I had them all to myself. I couldn’t get as close as I would have liked to, but it was still amazing to see so many bunched together at once.

Normally, I am insulated from the incredible incompetence of some airlines because I book online using websites like Orbitz. Just now, I was forced to actually call United Airlines in order to book a ticket using credit from a previously canceled fare. A strong Indian accent picked up, and they guy was stuttering and was unable to form thoughts (stumbling over himself). I knew I was fucked.

At first, he told me he would have to charge a $100 fee for using the credit (fine, since my previous ticket was non-refundable), plus a $100 fee to change the routing. I balked at that, and he put me on hold. Then, he came back and told me that he would not charge me for the re-routing fee (that is what I final figured out after about 3 minutes).

It took a total of more than 20 minutes on the phone to book the ticket. I had to coax him during each step of the process because I knew that if I just answered his questions normally, he wouldn’t understand. I had to repeat just about everything I said.

United also recently announced that it will charge non-Premier members $25 to check a second bag.

I am so glad that I switched away from them a few years ago. I only had the credit because I had a cancel a trip to Denver a few months ago (United is direct and inexpensive to Denver). Next time, I’m going to book with another airline.

Long-exposure wave break at Waimea Bay, Oahu, Hawaii

Shot Details: Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III, Canon 400mm/5.6L lens, f32 @ 1.3 sec, ISO 50

Outer wave breaks at Waimea Bay, Oahu, Hawaii

Shot Details: NIKON D200, Nikon 500mm/4 lens, f5.6 @ 1/800 sec, ISO 250

Aaron is headed out to Taiwan for a couple of weeks. Where should he eat? I assume he will be in Taipei for awhile, but that he will be wandering around the entire island as well. He also wants to know if there are any sites he should absolutely not miss.

And tips?

Norb let me try out his Panasonic HVX200. I didn’t really know what I was doing and set it to record 720/60P instead of setting it for 720/24P overcranked to 60 fps, so I had to use Motion to re-time the footage (which may not have been necessary). (read more »)

Wave at Waimea Bay Beach Park, Oahu, Hawaii
Shot Details: NIKON D200, 500mm/4 lens, f6.3 @ 1/800 sec, ISO 200

I have hundreds of shots like this, but here are a few that I picked out to show today. Special thanks to Norbert Wu, who invited me out here and took me to the right spot this morning. I returned in the afternoon, alone, and spent a few hours staring out into the ocean (and shooting). It was much-needed time for introspection, although I was approached and chatted up by quite a few of the friendly locals (which was also nice). (read more »)