Brad’s Blog

The New Year is upon us and I’ve decided I’m going to start up Project 365 again. A bunch of us did it in 2007 and I found that I accomplished more throughout my day because I tried to find interesting stuff to take photos of. So in hopes of making my life more interesting this year, I’m going to try it again. Not sure where I’ll be uploading everything to. I may make another Flickr account, but whatever it is, I’ll link it off of here. Here’s the current location of it.

I’ve also decided to issue myself another challenge: to watch every film that I haven’t seen on IMDB’s Top 250 Films list. So far I’ve only seen about 35%. I started this challenge today by watching Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window from 1954, which is currently number 16 on the list. I’ve seen references to it before, like on the Simpsons. And I saw the movie Disturbia last year, which has a pretty similar plot but is in a more modern setting.

I enjoyed Rear Window way more. Jimmy Stewart is an awesome actor full of these subtle mannerisms that add depth to the character he’s playing. I had just watched It’s a Wonderful Life last week and you can see how much his acting had improved since then. He seemed much more mature and more comfortable in the Hitchcock film. Hitchcock also does an excellent job at creating suspense. He uses off-camera sound really effectively, like the screaming and footsteps. I don’t want to ruin the movie for anyone who hasn’t seen it, but I’d recommend it.

Next in my viewing queue is Il Buono, Il Brutto, Il Cattivo.

I’ve been interested in concert photography for a while now and still don’t quite know how to get into “the biz.” I’m trying to build up a decent portfolio, but it’s difficult when I have to sneak in a camera, and the only thing I can sneak in is a point-and-shoot.

I’ve developed my technique, which involves the highest ISO setting and the lowest exposure setting. The photos aren’t as blurry, but they’re dark and ridiculously grainy. It takes quite a bit of post-processing just to make them look acceptable. And even so, I convert most of them to black and white to eliminate the colour grain.

I’m working out a plan for getting an SLR into shows, but then there’s the chance that I’ll be spotted and either kicked out or have the memory card erased and camera temporarily confiscated. I don’t really want that.

I’ve read some articles on doing this semi-professionally and they recommend getting in touch with a smaller local band and asking to tag along. This would allow me to get in closer with a better camera and would hopefully result in some better shots. I’ve also heard that you can offer the band to use the photos and this may cause them to “perform for the camera” a bit more.

If you know of any local Vancouver bands who wouldn’t mind getting some live photos taken, let me know.

I’ve recently been researching various content management systems (CMS) for work and have decided to post some of my findings online. I have always wanted to write my own custom CMS but I don’t have time for that right now. So I’ve been evaluating a bunch of CMS services based on the following criteria:

• customization
• navigation
• ease of use
• modules/plugins
• implementation
• coding/programming level
• price

Here’s a short list of the CMSs I’ve been looking at:

1. Drupal
2. Joomla
3. Cushy CMS
4. Expression Engine
5. Light CMS
6. Wordpress
7. Frog CMS
8. Symphony

I’m not going to get into too many details right now, but I plan to make seperate posts reviewing each of these options throughout the week. I hope to conclude with a summary post comparing the CMSs and possibly rating them somehow. We’ll see how it goes.

So stay tuned.

Hi. I have decided to move my Italia blog to italia.brad-slavin.com so that I can have a general blog at this location. I don’t know how often I’ll be updating it or what sort of content will go on here yet. Hopefully I can keep up with it a bit.

So I guess here’s the customary “hello world” and I’ll try and get back on here soon.