Quick Hit iPad Centric Monday: My First iPad Disappointment; Blogging From Your iPad; 115 Wedding Tips; Pinhole Cameras: and More

Good Morning Everybody,

Hope everyone had a great weekend and your favorite horse won the Kentucky Derby - yep, that's real big in this part of the country. I thought the best story was about Glen Fullerton, selected from a group of 67,000 entries to place a $100,000 bet at the Derby. Glen bet on the winner Super Saver, and won $900,000 - not a bad day at the races.  Here is all the Derby news right here.

It was pretty rainy in Kentucky over the weekend, but it was one of those really nice rains, steady, cool, and refreshing.  Anyway, the forecast is for beautiful blue skies for the rest of the week.

I had a really cool experience happen to me over the weekend. I was shooting a First Communion at Mother Of God Church this weekend - I always like to see the smiling faces of the kids and the proud expressions from the moms and dads.  Anyway, as I was hanging around, I had a couple approach me, introduce themselves, and proceed to tell me I had photographed their wedding, get this, 31 YEARS AGO. Now that's going back a few!

I, believe it or not, remembered shooting the wedding - I was renting my apartment from the bride's aunt at the time.  It was way back in the early days of Focus Photography - the original name of my studio.  It was a joy to see the couple and we shared a nice visit.

Then I went to the church's social hall for a doughnut and cup of coffee.  I ran into another one of my brides that I had photographed 26 years ago! What a morning this was shaping into. This bride told me how she kept her wedding album in a special place in their bedroom and told me how she paged through it nearly every day - kind of a nice story.  I'm thinking maybe it's my photography that's kept these two couples together all these years;~)

With my Master Class behind us, it's slowing down around the studio for the next few weeks. That's like a really good thing. It will give me a little time to catch my breath and work on a few projects that are not deadline based all the time.

The main item I'm working on this week is images for my latest Kelby Training video.   I promised the images to them this week, so look for my latest release, "Shooting A Real Wedding", to be coming down the instructional pike very shortly.

Hey, time to get on with our iPad centric Quick Hit Monday.  Here we go.

My First iPad Disappointment

I have to say, just like they say in the McDonald's commercial, "I'm loving' it.” That's about 98% true for me and my new iPad so far. I do have a few nits to pic. The first is the  placement of the apostrophe key - it's on the numerical side of the keyboard - not a big deal, but still a bit inconvenient.

The BIG disappointment is with the iPad VGA adapter. You would think that you just plug it in, attach a projector, and project away. NOT - it seems the iPad projects only video ready apps and then not all of them. It DOES NOT show what's on the iPad screen at all! In fact, it freezes the iPad screen when it goes to video view.  It will project YouTube videos without a problem, but who cares?

It will project my Keynote presentations, but blanks the iPad when projecting the presentation. What's that about? That means I have to constantly look at the screen to follow my own presentation - really inconvenient.  That makes it useful only in an emergency situation and of little value in real world audience presentations.

And now the BIGGY - it won't project the movies I play on Netflix.  I love having Netflix on my iPad - to bad I can't do a BIG SCREEN presentation of the movies for the neighborhood kids :-(  Years ago I used to have a neighborhood "Drive In Movie Night". It was quite a "hoot" for the entire neighborhood. More information over here at PC Magazine.  I'm kind of in agreement with many of the commenter's on the post.

BUT, even with those minor disappointments, I'm still loving' my iPad.

Getting Pictures On Your iPad

Terry White, at his Tech Blog right here has a good video tutorial showing how to use the iPad's camera adapter.  The most interesting part of the video is how he shows how to hook up the iPad's USB connector to a Delkin flash card reader so that you can easily move images from ANY type of camera card, not just the SDHD variety that the iPad features.

Sure, you can also import your images through iTunes but remember, to get different albums to show up on your iPad, you need to put the separate albums in separate folders within your My Pictures folders on a PC. The iPad won't read nested folders individually. Subfolders will all be combined into one iPad album. Thought you would like to know.

Blogging From Your iPad

OK, I'm writing this post this morning out on our back deck on my iPad just listening to the birds sing their morning songs and watching the squirrels romp in the backyard.  OK, that might be to "Bambi" like sounding for you, but all joking aside, it is a pretty nice experience.  Now let's say I was in Timbuktu and needed to get my post up for the day, how could I pull it off? The easy answer is with this cool little app called BlogPress [link].

I found it over at AppVee.com during my weekend cruise.  I'll tell you, it is really easy to use, has spell check (and, boy do I need spell checking), will let you add more than one image to your post. I found a free one called BlogWriter Lite, but BlogPress, even at $2.99, looks pretty good to get the job done. 

One minor issue, it won't let me add HTML links to the posts.  I've dropped them an email - and just received a response.  He tells me that feature will be in the next update.  Things keep getting easier and easier.

More Wedding Tips Than You Could Ever Want In A Blog Post

It was a nice over the slow weekend to visit some of my favorite blogs and see what they were up to. EpicEdits has a great post featuring lots - actually 115 - good wedding tips. It's a good read - check it out right here.

More On Pinhole Cameras

Since I was a kid, I've been a pinhole camera aficionado. DYIPhotography has a great post on the subject right here - 23 pinhole camera designs that you too can make in your own backyard ;~)

Got Lots Of Time On Your Hands, Then Read More

Hey gang, here is a pretty cool link to all things photographic at ePhotozine.com.  I remember visiting this site months and months ago, but it has really come into it's own.  Lots of good articles on all things photography. Here is the link - definitely worth the browse.

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Hey gang, That's it for me today. I've got to get started on my Kelby Training edit.  Also, look for a recap of last week's Master Class later this week. Oh, by the way, my Ace #1 Assistant, Nicholas Viltrakis, did a brief recap right here - Thanks Nicholas.

OK gang, I'm hitting the road.  I'll see everyone tomorrow for another mind bending episode of Technique Tuesday.

See ya' then, -David