Learn how you can help without growing a stache.

I have noticed that many professional photographers have been using split toning for very pleasing effects with their  photos. In fact, split toning has probably reached the point of overdone, which means it is time for me to learn it. I used the split toning feature in Adobe Lightroom and whipped up these in a matter of minutes. Would you like to know how you can do this too? Watch Yanik’s Split Toning in Lightroom tutorial and learn all you need to know about the split toning tool in Lightroom.

Time for more research so I can master my mimicry technique.

Aquafrolics - a wakeskate film from Nike 6.0.  Amazing!!!  Stream it or download if for keeps.  Watch it closely because we are going to up our game on the water next year!

Check out my photos of the Munnies on display at this year’s munny show at lost marbles in Ottawa.

Rebecca and I just returned from a wonderful vacation in Rome & Prague. I am slowly posting pictures to my flickr account.

War is over! if you want it.  From the  The Peace Ballad of John & Yoko Exhibit at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Free Admission from April 2 – June 21, 2009 – www.mmfa.qc.ca/imagine/en/

Three main measurable ingredients of a healthy development team/environment  are:

1. speed: The rate at which we get things done.  Or a better term would be pace.  Are things moving so slowly that no progress is being made?  Are we operating at breakneck speed, or with reckless abandon?  Are things moving at a manageable pace where we can think, design, re-think, and execute?  Can we turn if we need to? or stop when necessary? How often does our speed fluctuate?
2. velocity: (veloci-raptor):  I have been using this term with account managers to describe how quickly we can complete projects, and every time I do my college Laura thinks I am talking about dinosaurs.  Velocity is a measure of speed in a direction.  It can also be explained as the distance traveled over time.  You may remember from physics that a car moving 100km/h forward for 10 minutes, and then 100km/h backwards for 10 minutes has an average velocity of  0km/h.  Why? Well, while the car maintained a speed of 100km/h the the entire time, in the end it didn’t go anywhere.  Adding direction to the mix begs the following questions: which direction are we heading? Positive? Negative? Towards a greater goal? Short term? Long Term?   Are we moving in a direction at all?  Does the direction change so often we are actually going in circles, or nowhere at all?
3. mass:  this is the long shot of the analogy, but  lets make mass represent the team’s attitudes.  A team which is positive has more mass, while a team which is deflated has less mass.  Contributors to mass are simple:  Positivity, Support, Teamwork, Collaboration, Leadership, Accountability, and more.

momentum = velocity * mass

Momentum is all about velocity and mass, and remember that velocity is your speed in a direction. To maintain speed and course through a hostile collision, the more momentum you have the better.   A team with momentum can easily bump small challenges out of the way, and can maintain speed and course during a collision with a larger issue.  Conversely, a team with little momentum can find the even smallest  collisions challenging.

Speed, Direction, Mass and Momentum. I am going to re-focus on gaining momentum using throttled speed, by gaining mass and most importantly by maintaining a net positive direction.  Remember that friction reduces speed, as do turning, and collisions.  If you want speed, you need balance the straightest path with the least resistance, while avoiding the catastrophic collisions.   Oh, and once you are rolling with velocity and mass, inertia will keep you moving.  Note: the speed and direction need not reflect soulless productivity.  You control the speed and the direction, and you can direct the ship anywhere you want.  It is up to the leaders and the team to balance these components.

Next I will turn my focus to kinetic energy, potential energy, and gravity.

What are your thoughts?

It has finally happened and it feels like a right of passage. My XBOX 360 has died with the infamous Red Ring of Death.

Now begins the hassle of trying to get my XBOX 360 replaced by Microsoft.  Step one was to figure out their support site, and now I have been waiting a couple of days for them to email me a shipping form.

No NHL’09 for me this month boys, see you online sometime in February.

We like the SB600 speedlight and use it often, which is far more than I can say for the camera’s built in flash which I have permanently taped shut.  Our favorite feature is the rotating head which can bounce the flash off of the walls and ceiling to diffuse the light and have it light the subject from a non-direct angle.

More flash photography to come as we figure it all out, and once I sort through the 500 photos we took over the holidays.