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Shots of the boy from his first K1 Junior League races.

The boy has been super excited about this K1 Junior League. It lasts a total of 8 months (once a month) and each visit consists of a 14-lap qualifying round and a 16-lap race. The final Grand Prix in October will be 1 12-lap practice, a 14-lap qualifier, and the final 16-lap race Here are some of the results from his first session:

QUALIFYING:

  • Overall: 5th Place
  • Best Lap: 41.29 
  • Average Lap: 45.08 
  • Gap: 1.98 
  • Proscore: 99.03 

16-LAP RACE:

  • Overall: 4th Place
  • Best Lap: 39.32
  • Average Lap: 40.74
  • Gap: 0.41
  • Proscore: 100.15

As you can see, he improved in every area, moving up one spot in the final race. During the qualifying, he was actually in 2nd place for one lap, and his best time during the final race was actually the third best overall time.

Let's see how he does next month!

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ESPN article about blackout on use of Olympic athletes in advertising...with their very own ad at the top of the page. #irony

I found this to be quite ironic. ESPN is running this article right now about the blackout on using Olympic athletes in advertising during the games, but check out the banner at the top of the page. I’m sure if you click the link there will be lots of different ads that show in that top banner slot, but the screenshot above is what I got the first time I saw the article.

If you read the top part of that article, it gets in to how Danny Kass was almost disqualified due to one of his sponsors having a good luck message in one of their stores. I understand why the IOC has rules around not advertising with Olympic athletes during the games since I can see it getting way out of hand, but in some cases I think they just go way too far. I love the creativity of how Target used the blacked-out image of Shaun White with “gone to vancouver” in that Times Square billboard, but in my opinion, that's far more blatant than a “good luck” poster in a store window. It’s smack in the middle of TIMES SQUARE! Of course, I haven’t seen how that window graphic was done, so it could have been a completely legit request by the IOC.

Back to ESPN though…seems to me they should have been a bit more proactive in pulling their own ads before releasing an article like this. Nice job, fellas.

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Boy watching TV.

I just thought this was a pretty funny sight so I took a pic of it. There’s a couch but for some reason he doesn’t like to use it. That’s a taekwondo stick lying across his lap. In case anyone is trying to figure it out, he's watching Pokemon.

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M3 is all taped up and ready for AutoX

Getting excited and ready to run my first Autocross in the M3 at Qualcomm Stadium tomorrow. I'm sure if I catch a pebble hard enough the tape won't really be enough, but at least it will help a little. Really wish I got the clear bra now.

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Great footage from a GoPro HD HERO. I want one!

Those guys look like they had tons of fun, and the footage is awesome. It's really amazing how clear the HD video is from such a tiny camera. GoPro makes a Motorsports version as well, which would be great for shooting driving videos in my M3:

And check out this base jump:​

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A few photo selects from our visit to the Peterson Automotive Museum today.

Went up to L.A. today and visited the Peterson Automotive Museum. At first the boy didn't want to go, which surprised me, but once he found out they were having a Hot Wheels exhibit, he was all over it. We had gone to the La Brea Tar Pits first (since his school field trip was cancelled due to rain and he really wanted to go), but we didn't spend much time there since he wanted to get to the car museum.

I was pleasantly surprised at how well that first shot of the McLaren SLR turned out thanks to the lighting of the exhibit. If you look real hard, you can see the boy taking a pic with his camera phone in the shadows on the left.

A visit to the Peterson Museum is not complete without the requisite photo of the Mach 5 and the car from the Green Hornet. The Hot Wheels exhibit was pretty cool since it displayed some of their molds (shot #9). The last shot was the entryway which lit up and engine sounds came alive when you walked through it. That Skeleton Motorcycle was really cool too. At first, you don't realize it's a full skeleton when you approach it from the front, but once you see it from the side you can see the whole thing. More shots of it, along with other photos from the day were uploaded to Flickr:

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Lighting set up for my last batch of toy shots. This one’s for you @shanemielke

Since @shanemielke was asking about the lighting for my latest toy shots, so I figured I’d post a little write-up.

The setup is pretty basic with just 2 soft boxes and one reflector. Since the toys are so small, the slightest movement on the lights makes a pretty dramatic change in the reflections.

  • Some shots had the top light directly above, others had it pushed more towards the rear. 
  • I moved the second soft box moved from the left side to right on several occassions, and in a few I turned it off altogether. Just like the top light, tiny adjustments turning the head left/right were done to get the right areas lit up.
  • The reflector was simply used to create some additional “white” highlights. 

Although the lighting was similar to how I shot the silver version, the look is completely different due to the gloss black finish on this toy.

I’ve been really happy with Aperture 2 so there wasn’t any need for any Photoshop work. All the post was done in Aperture, so the shots were taken, edited and uploaded within a few hours.

Love the Dodge and Burn tool, but wish it could be non-destructive and remain in RAW instead of creating a new raster image every time the tool is used and can't be edited…but it's great to be able to do this all within Aperture. In my workflow now, it's simply the last step so in case I need to revert, most of my changes are stored in the version just before Dodge and Burn. I really only use it to fix “problem” areas so re-doing it is generally pretty easy.


{ Sent from my iPhone }

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Finally took some good pics of my Black Nissan GT-R Alternity Transformer.

These are some of the coolest Transformers I have. Actually, they’re the only Transformers I have. The rest in the house belong to the boy, but he’s been pestering me to give him one of my GT-R’s ever since the black one came in. I also have a silver one so he doesn’t think I need two. Every so often, I let him put one of them in his room, hehe.

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