The First 12 on 12 for 2009

Monday morning in January - we are due for snow and bitterly cold weather this week. To start the week in a warm way, I made biscuits and enjoyed Christmas Blend coffee:

My French press coffee maker:

At work, I had to get out the drawings for a part of the chemical process I am working on. This is called a Process and Instrumentation Drawing, P&ID for short. These drawings are like blue prints for the manufacture of our product. I had to blur out some of the details.

I haven't taken a picture of my violin music in a while. This is the first page of Bach's Partita 3 in E Major - I have been having issues getting the bowing in this section, but it I'm close - it sounds better every day.

A light snow blanketed the backyard patio.


Today's photography lesson - using the White Balance Preset on my camera. I even read the manual for the instructions on how to do this. I used White / Black / Grey / RAW Grey Card I had (taken out of my How - To - PSE 4.0 book by Scott Kelby).

Picture of the card, using Auto White Balance. Ugg - This has never been the D70's strong suite. Yeah, it is supposed to be white, black, grey and light grey.


Still using AWB, a picture of my CK magazine that arrived in the mail:


Then, I set the White Balance Preset, using the RAW White Balance section (a really light grey), then took the pictures again, with far better results:

See, the colors are right!





Now, setting the WB preset can take time and sometimes you just don't have time. This is why I shoot in RAW and adjust the WB in my Post processing step. In fact, I had to adjust many of the other pictures. I'm pretty sure the AWB has improved on the latest Nikon cameras. I'm still saving up for that D300....

OK, back to normal life - I'm checking out my Photo blog.


Brian is playing Lego Batman game on the Wii. I had to bribe him to take his picture....


Also in the mail - a New Year's card from our dear friends in Indiana - it was so great to get their card and update! We can't believe how big their two girls have grown.


Our after dinner desert - Scott toasted some marshmallows, proving you don't need a campfire to enjoy these treats!


That's all for today - hope yours was great!