Bits & Pieces…

Today is September 26, 2007; it is a day for a bit of history. For anyone that is a sports fan, today will be Barry Bonds last game as a San Francisco Giant. After 15 years with the organization and 22 years in the league, he will start his last home game in a Giants uniform and cement his career in Giants Baseball history.

No matter how you feel about the man, he still has accomplished quite a lot. Not to mention a few records that he either broke or shattered. One comes to mind… 756. Barry Bond broke the all time home run record held by Willie Mayes by hitting his 756th homerun. I believe the number is now 762.

Last night my wife and I went to see the Giants play against the Padres in AT&T Park in San Francisco. The Giants lost in the ninth 4-6. Barry Bonds did not play. We were hoping that we could see the man come to bat and hit one into the China Basin. We left after 9:00 PM. My day starts early, up 4:00 AM. That means pumpkin hour comes early for me.

I didn’t have “My Gear” with me, so I missed a great shot of the almost full moon rising over the right field fence, during the “Golden Hour”. It would have been a great image. I did capture it on my camera phone.

~Cheers~

Inspector Gadget...

Sometimes I don’t get to shoot as often as I like. I read somewhere, some time ago, that most great photographers’ take pictures everyday. I guess this is true with everything we do. You can’t be come a Tiger Woods playing a round or two on the weekends. You have to do something related to your skill, interest or sport every day.

The most likely place for me to shoot would be on my way to and from work. I walk from the Embarcadero BART station to the Ferry Building in San Francisco. I don’t carry my bag of tricks with me to my real job... so I miss numerous opportunities to take some memorable images. If you walk by me on my way to or from work, you may hear me murmuring something along the lines “only if I had my camera.”

Since I don’t carry my gear I am stuck with my camera phone. I have a Motorola Slvr mobile phone. This phone has a lot to be desired when it comes to a camera. I guess it was designed first to be a phone, and way down the line to be a camera. If I wanted a camera first I am sure my Nikon would ring when my wife need me to stop at the store.

A few months ago I bought my wife a new pocket camera. We wanted something with a zoom and that would deliver great images, we chose the Panasonic DMC-TZ3K. This is a great little camera. It features a 10x optical zoom and a 7.1 MP image. A nice added feature is the image stabilization when you are on unstable surfaces or at the greatest focal length.

We took this little camera to Guatemala in August. We decided it wasn’t best to take all my gear with us to a third world country. We were afraid that someone may want my camera gear more that I did. However, this Panasonic DMC-TZ3K was big enough to cover the subject, but small enough to keep it interesting. I was very pleased with the results.

Photo by: Kirk Howard Copyright© 2007

If I could change a few things I would give it more manual controls. That is why I may pick up the Panasonic DMC-LX2K or the Leica DLUX-3. Theses two cameras are exactly the same. They are just $150.00 in a price difference.


What’s that ringing…? Excuse me Chief it’s my shoe… It could be 99…
- Maxwell Smart

Read My Blog…

Read My Blog… Is a plea, chant, call, plight or whatever you want to call it. I actually got the idea from a guy who sells bikes in San Juan Capistrano, Southern California. He dresses up in funny costumes. He usually employees is family members i.e. wife, kids, mom and dad. He is a fast talking salesman that looks like Santa Claus, Great Pumpkin or anything else. He usually has 30 second spots that run locally. It’s hilarious for a bike shop owner to go through all this effort to sell bicycles. You know what? It works! This guy moves a ginormous amount of bikes each month. Whatever he is doing, works. His famous tag line at the end of every commercial is… “Buy My Bikes!”

~Cheers~