Overall I can’t be more pleased with the critique as I feel this is one of the better portraits I have taken. I really like the composition, the lighting and the post processing.  As it turns out Scott agreed and really only had a few minor things he would change.

Scott Bourne over has posted his take on my portrait and you can read the full critique here.

It is great to have an impartial professional take a look at your best work and not only tell you it is good but show you how you can make it even better. Hopefully as I continue to improve I will eventually make some money with this hobby

I received the following email from Amazon.com today

We regret to inform you that the North Carolina state legislature (the General Assembly) appears ready to enact an unconstitutional tax collection scheme that would leave Amazon.com little choice but to end its relationships with North Carolina-based Associates. You are receiving this e-mail because our records indicate that you are an Amazon Associate and resident of North Carolina.

Please note that this is not an immediate termination notice and you are still a valued participant in the Associates Program. All referral fees earned on qualified traffic will continue to be paid as planned.

But because the new law is drafted to go into effect once enacted – which could happen in the next two weeks – we will have to terminate the participation of all North Carolina residents in the Amazon Associates program on or before that same day. After the termination day, we will no longer pay any referral fees for customers referred to Amazon.com or Endless.com nor will we accept new applications for the Associates program from North Carolina residents.

The unfortunate consequences of this legislation on North Carolina residents like you were explained in detail to key senators and representatives in Raleigh, including the leadership of the Senate, House, and both chambers’ finance committees. Other states, including Maryland, Minnesota, and Tennessee, considered nearly identical schemes, but rejected these proposals largely because of the adverse impact on their states’ residents.

The North Carolina General Assembly’s website is http://www.ncleg.net/, and additional information may be obtained from the Performance Marketing Alliance at http://www.performancemarketingalliance.com/.

We thank you for being part of the Amazon Associates program, and we will apprise you of the General Assembly’s action on this matter.

Sincerely,

Amazon.com

I am not even sure how to comment on this, other than to say ”Don’t you get enough of my money”. 

It is amazing how the state of North Carolina will give away hundreds of millions of dollars to Dell, Google and Apple to get them to create a few hundred jobs here and in the same breath they will pass laws to collect taxes on the very tiny amount of money I may or may not make from some Amazon.com referrals.

Give me a break.

Project Description

This tool takes a WCF trace file and a WCF client proxy, or a WCF interface contract, and generates a unit test that replays the same sequence of calls found in the trace file. The code generated is easily modifiable so that data variation can be introduced for the purpose of doing performance testing.
The tool generates code for both Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008. It also installs a wizard into both editions of Visual Studio for creating the trace and processing it from inside Visual Studio. If both editions are present the tool is installed into both editions. The source code is a Visual Studio 2005 project.

Latest Release June 2009

A new beta was released in June 2009 adding support for ASMX web services. Download it from here.

Features

• Replay of captured scenario in a unit test that can be included in a load test.
• Support for the DataContractSerializer.
• Support for message contracts.
• ASMX support (beta)
• Support for proxies generated using svcutil.
• Support for clients that create proxies at run time from contract interfaces.
• Supports calls to multiple services in a single scenario.
• Supports multiple calls to the same service operation.
• Filtering by SOAP action of which messages in the trace to replay.
• Readable and modifiable code is generated.
• Automatic association of trace message with proxy method (requires all operations to have a unique SOAP action).
• Support for client and server side traces.
• A command line tool for processing traces and generating code.
• Visual Studio 2005/2008 integration (Team Developer, Team Test, Team Suite and for 2008 also Professional)) that can be used instead of the command line tool.

Scott Bourne over at photofocus.com has an excellent interview with Scott Kelby.  Scott is known mostly as a Photoshop guy, however, I think he is an excellent photographer and one of my favorites.  I found the interview very interesting and I thought you might as well.

An Interview with Scott Kelby.

I am very excited that a portrait I recently took of my niece is being critiqued by Scott Bourne in the ScottCritiques group on flickr.

As an avid photographer, it is always good to have someone who is impartial look at your work and offer advice on how to make it better.  For the most part my work is seen by friends and family and the overwhelming response is “Fantastic” or “Those pictures are so good”.  While this may feel good, the reality is most of them don’t know what to look for or they are just being nice.

The portrait is part of a larger set I took of my nice for her 16th birthday.  As it turns out she was a very cooperative subject.  We had a great time roaming around the JC Raulston Arboretum finding interesting places that would make a good background for a portrait.

The image to the right is one of my favorites and was taken in the Japanese Garden.  One of the keys to a great outdoor portrait is a very simple background and good lighting. In this case the background was a beautiful  red Japanese maple, which given its color and busy leaves could have been too detailed.  However, to bring the background down and the subject out I chose a very wide aperture of f2.8.  The wide aperture has the effect of blurring the background in any photograph with a very shallow depth of field.  The means that if your focus is on your subject object that are immediately in front or behind them will be out of focus and this will help draw the viewers eyes to the primary subject of the image.

Secondly, I used an inexpensive reflector to direct some light onto my subject.  In this case my brother was standing to my left, subject right, at about a 45 degree angle.  As you can see in the image there is some sunlight coming in from the top right, providing a little rim light on her shoulder and hair.  Using the reflector we were able to take some of that light and direct it back into the front of our subject to give some dimension to her face and provide fill for the shadows thrown by the trees over head.

So far there have been a couple of posts with some very interesting options about what the photographer might change.  I am looking forward to seeing what Scott says at the end of the week and using any advice I get to further improve my work.

Well my new blog is up and running, complete with a theme I like and some good information.  Lets see if I can actually post something worth while here.