The Green Machine

Today's post is going to be a fun one on so many levels featuring a hot car, a cute girl and gratuitous placement of photography equipment. Let's start with the car, my first new car ever and only my second car, has been a source of endless flak, I mean is the green really that bad?

Hmm... before you answer that consider this:

• The children have no problem spotting me for pick-up at school
• Since driving this car, I have zero instances of losing it in the parking lot
• I suspect the car is less likely to be stolen and if it is, recovery should be a snap :)

Okay in hindsight I probably had more negotiating leverage with the dealer than I realized. Onto the cute girl (and um sorry this isn't that type of blog/website). The inside of the Fiesta is a little cramped since the overall car is shorter than a typical minivan by about a 4 year old (i.e. 40 inches). That being said, it's pretty easy to carry a conversation with the chatter boxes in the back. You can make the call whether that's a good thing or not.

Last but not least, the center divide has space to hold two consumer grade lenses and one professional L lenses. Better yet, the area has ambient lighting with the color of your choice (pink, red, green, blue, purple and white) so you can easily find your equipment while driving around texting and talking on the phone. It's amazing how many people still do that... when people should really be focusing on taking photos of the kids in the back.

BTW: If you're looking for a new car, I highly recommend the Ford Fiesta 2011. The trunk is big enough to fit a set of hockey gear, the car is fun to drive (a link showing how to smuggle teddy bears in your Fiesta), is green with respect to the environment (other colors are available), has the highest safety ratings (but doesn't protect you from your own children) and I think very photogenic (see above).

Phat Baby Technical Photography Tips: The most interesting photo is the one on the top. Taken at sunset, the camera settings are actually kind of interesting at 30 sec at f11, ISO 100, 24mm. I actually put an 0.6 ND gradient filter to make everything extra dark, dressed up in black and ran around like a ninja manually triggering a flash as I did circles around the Fiesta. Neighbors thought I was crazy and the kids who were trying to sleep in the bedroom, thought a UFO was landing outside their window. Using a tripod, made compositing three of the photos together a snap. I actually tried using onOne's Perfect Layer Lightroom Plug-in which allows the use of layers in Lightroom. Neat idea, but pitifully slow with three 12MB files on a 2.66 GHz MacPro with 12GB of RAM. The editing ended up being faster in Photoshop.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/PhatPhotographer/~3/fRJLHI27apw/green-machine.html

Eleanore and Caroline Jennifer Lindsay Olivia Lily-Rose Melody