Discussion Group Notes December 12, 2008
Lots of people coming and going, it seems. John is back from his trip to Thailand, Lee and Terri were off hobnobbing with the city bigwigs, and Don made a cameo appearance then went off in search of food. I found out the other day that Eric, the tall, skinny guy at King Photo, moved to Portland a few months ago. I guess that shows how long it's been since I had money to spend.
Jo brought in her pocket camera with a few questions, some we were able to help her with, others we offered an intelligent shrug to. She also had questions about Photoshop Elements. Since I had my handi-dandy laptop with me John and I were able to answer a couple of her questions based on my CS2. Not perfect, but we're making progress.
John told us all about his month in Thailand. He did quite a bit of research before he went and so was able to work things out to suit his needs and desires. He said it was a photographers dream location. He only wished there had been more clouds. While there he kept up with his e-mail, even reading my notes. As soon as he processes his pictures hopefully he'll bring some in for us to see.
Don said he bought a new program for his computer (IOLO I think) which was supposed to improve his system performance but did a hard drive reformat on him, losing all of his photos. We suggested he buy more software to recover his files or to go to someplace like Tiger Tech which has people who can do that for a fee. We also talked about external drives for backing up data. I told him about the Terrabyte drive Deborah just bought for $180 at Best Buy and her 120G Pokey, which is about the size of a 120G IPOD (now there's a coincidence), great for carrying around.
I was going to show John how my Willow Springs photos seemed to have lost a lot of quality when I reduced them for the internet, but when I brought them up on my laptop they looked OK. Now I'm unsure of what I've got. I showed John one of my photos of a Porsche going downhill and he suggested that it would look better going uphill. I hadn't thought of that but I think he's right. I showed everyone my (terrible) photos of the Rosamond Parade of Lights and John gave me a few suggestions.
I showed John my beginning list of places to take photos in the Antelope Valley and beyond. I'm up to five pages of text and have a lot of places to add along with detail. The LPA forum has a good list already so I'm not duplicating that effort. I did find an interesting web site (http://digital-desert.com) which lists, among other things, over forty ghost towns just in the Mojave desert area, many with photo tours. As soon as I get my list into a more readable condition I'll post it on the internet for all to add to.
Refrain: We meet each Friday at Bianco's Cafe at the South end of the Lancaster Market Place, behind and across the street from Movies 12. The core times are from 7 to 8 PM but there's typically someone there from 6:30 to at least 8:30. Bianco's will keep the lights on for you.
P.S. There will not be a discussion group meeting on December 26 but I plan to be there all other Fridays through the holidays.
Glenn Olson
Coordinator and Moderator
oglenn@earthlink.net
