Category Archives: Seattle

Guess What I’m Cancelling in 6 Months?

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seattletimeslogo_homeHello from Amazon.com,

As a Kindle subscriber to Seattle Times, you might like to know of a price change to Seattle Times. Effective March 12th, 2010 the price of Seattle Times has changed to $9.99/month for new subscribers.

As an existing subscriber to Seattle Times you will continue to be billed at the previous rate of $5.99/month for six more months (until September 12th, 2010) after which you will be billed at the monthly rate then in effect. We believe that the Kindle edition of Seattle Times continues to provide excellent value for customers with a free 14 day trial period, wireless delivery via Whispernet, no long-term commitments, and substantial savings vs. regular print subscription rates.

As always you are free to cancel your subscription at any time. If you are still in the 14 day free trial period of your subscription you will not be charged, otherwise you will receive a prorated refund for the unused portion of your subscription. To change or cancel a subscription, please visit http://www.amazon.com/manageyourkindle

Sincerely, The Amazon Kindle team

Photo of the Week – HDR Imaging

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I went to the Kenmore Camera Expo on Sunday and sat in a session to learn about my new Canon EOS 7D.  While in there, I heard about high dynamic range (HDR) imaging.  After a bit of search on the Internet, I found this link which explains how to do HDR in Adobe Lightroom, my tool of choice for now.  The general operations in Lightroom are as follows:

  • Set recovery to 100%
  • Set fill light to 100%
  • Set contrast to 100%
  • Set clarity to 100%
  • Set vibrance to 100%
  • Reduce saturation but keep some color
  • Adjust the white balance
  • Drop the exposure
  • Bring up the blacks
  • Adjust the colors using the saturation sliders
  • Use the tone curve to boost up highlights and drop down shadows
  • Use noise reduction if needed with luminence and color at 30

Here’s an example of the results of this technique:

hdr-spaceneedle

This was shot with my previous body, the Canon XTi with my 17-85 walking around lens.

UPDATE: I just discovered Photomatix, a tool which does this.  I’m going to download it and give it a try.

Photo of the Week

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Admittedly a little edited, but I liked the result.  I’m experimenting with shooting in RAW instead of JPEG and this is one of the pictures I took.  I did a bit with the color afterwards to make the colors more vivid.  I especially like the effect on the windows behind the dragon.  This photo was shot in the international district in Seattle.

International District Dragon

Another Successful STP

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Yes, another 200 mile bicycle ride from Seattle to Portland is in the books.  On the 12th and 13th of July 9500 cyclists got up early and started pedaling to Seattle.  I did the same routine as last year, stopping at the halfway point in Centralia for the night on Saturday, but with my new LeMond, my average speed was significantly faster.  My speedometer calculated an overall 16.4 mph for the trip, but I was told that was pessimistic since it included all of the 1 and 2 mph segments where I walked my bike from a rest stop back to the road.  Removing those, someone in my group calculated that we were running closer to 17.5 mph.  Pretty awesome.  The below picture shows the four of us that did this together — Edmund, Eric, me, and Malcolm.  Next year, perhaps we’ll think about doing it in one day instead of two :-)

Stp2008-134_SM.jpg