December 26th, 2007 | by: Doug
This year Julie and I spent Christmas day at my parents place along with my brother, his girlfriend and of course his two dogs. Chrismas day is always a nice gathering for our family and this year was no different! The best part for me is going home to Mom’s cooking!! I’m sure everyone would agree… you just can’t top a home cooked meal from Mom!!
Julie and I just wanted to say thanks to everyone for making this a great Christmas and a very happy and productive year! Follow this link for a few more pictures… (read more »)
December 18th, 2007 | by: Doug
Welocme to the ‘New’ 2008 Ocean Imagery Photography online web journal. Over the next several weeks I will be conducting a series of tests and making a lot of theme/content changes to this journal. Feel free to add your comments and suggestions to this or any of our journal posts, while this part of our Web site is being re-developed and tweaked to better match the rest of our site’s theme! Thank you for your support…
A little background on the ‘New’ Web site:
Over the past month I have been in the process of building a new server to host my Web sites. Hardware has never been my problem… I can put just about anything together and make it work! But tweaking it and setting up the software is another story. For this project I have had to go ‘back to school’, so to speak, in order to learn how to read & write PHP script. As this online journal starts to take form, you will find that it is much easier to navigate and more user friendly than the old one. Once I’m sure that the security I have in place is tight enough, I will open the journal up to my friends so that they may register as ‘users’ and place their own posts as well as comment on the posts that I make. Stay tuned… there will be more to follow!!
Thanks,
~Doug
December 14th, 2007 | by: Doug
You would, think that in this day and age, a person would know what you mean when you use the word ’server’. The other day I was having a conversation with someone at work and I mentioned that I was getting a new server for 2008 and their reply was “wow…I didn’t know you had a butler. How much does that cost you a month!?” I almost started to laugh and then I realized that this person was kind of serious. After I explained what I was refering to, they said “Oh yeah, I knew that… I was just trying to get your goat!” Ha… You can have the goat… I like beef!
I started putting together a new Web Server about a week ago to host all of my Web sites and any future hosting jobs I might aquire. It was at first a request of my brothers to try and free up some space on the other servers, but it soon proved to be a needful change. I will be able to run more applications and server-sides having my own dedicated machine. (read more »)
December 10th, 2007 | by: Doug
I have finally finished fixing my house up for sale and listed it on the market! My realtor has warned me that the market is in pretty poor shape and right now is not the best time to be selling a house. At the same time I don’t have a choice as Julie and I have already purchased and moved into our new home. I guess there isn’t much one can do about the timing of things, but I don’t believe that dropping the price on a home to make a quick sale is the way to go either. After all, people put a lot of time and energy into their homes over the years and to have to settle for less than what it’s truly worth all because of the ‘timing’… well, that just isn’t fair!
Any way, I have a little time still before I get desperate about selling… so for now, I’ll hold out and see what the market does for the first quarter of 2008!
November 22nd, 2007 | by: Doug
This year Julie and I made plans to spend Thanksgiving with her family in St. Michaels, Maryland. In the past, I have always gone home to spend Thanksgiving with my parents. It’s not just the fact that my Mother is a great cook, it’s also important to me to spend quality time with the ones I love and don’t get to see often enough.
This goes both ways now that Julie and I are married… now there are ‘two families’ that we have to think about spreading our time between, so we have decided to alternate the holidays between each family and each year. This year we spent Thanksgiving with Julie’s family and next year it will be with mine… that’s as fair of a trade off you can get I think.
We did have a great time in St. Michaels (as we always do) and it is always nice to spend time with Julie’s folks. However, it was unfortunate that Julie’s sister and her kid’s were unable to attend this year due to issues with her husbands company. We really did miss you guys and we hope you had a nice turkey day and all is well up North! We will get together soon!!
Some photos from Thanksgiving in St. Michaels» (Coming Soon!)
October 21st, 2007 | by: Doug
This past weekend Julie and I were with another group of friends in Boston Massachusetts to help celebrate in yet another wedding for 2007. This makes the forth wedding for this year if you include our own back in July! But this time it is Karen and Dan’s turn to take the plunge into holy matrimony and we wish them all the very best!!
Karen use to live in the Washington metro area and has been friends with Julie for years, so we would have felt terrible had we not been able to be there for her on such a special day. I will say that all the travel for weddings this year is starting to burn us out though. We moved into our new home together back in August, after our wedding, and we are still trying to unpack and put our lives back into some type of a ‘normal’ circadian rhythm.
You can now browse the photos & buy prints online»
(read more »)
October 14th, 2007 | by: Doug
Charlie and Chris looking to put something down on a new Fountain!
This past weekend Julie and I went up to Annapolis Maryland with a couple of my friends for the annual US Power Boat Show. We think we may want to become boat owners, but are still kicking the idea around, so this weekend was like a preliminary ‘test drive’ if you will, to get a feel for what’s out there and what we might be interested in if we should decide to buy a boat. We are both big on researching our purchases and buying a boat can be like buying a second home, so it shouldn’t be taken lightly!
(read more »)
October 8th, 2007 | by: Doug
I know this is probably not a subject that most people care about and even less want to read about, but I have come across a situation where I feel the need to clarify what most professional photographers already know. I was recently asked to ‘proof’ a collection of pictures online… after viewing over 1000 images I was flat out depressed! The saturation levels for all the images were way too high… at least that’s what it looked like on the three different monitors I use for digital photo editing. “How could that be” you ask…!?!
In the world of computer graphics and digital photography, all computer monitors and working color spaces are not created equally. Let me reemphasize this… just because a jpeg (compressed image file) looks good on your color computer monitor at home, that doesn’t mean that it is going to look good on mine. Hell, what you see on your screen may look completely different once you print it out on that expensive new photo printer you just bought! Why… you ask? Because most people don’t calibrate & profile their output devices for color… that’s why! (read more »)
October 7th, 2007 | by: Doug
Their first dance together as husband & wife!
Last weekend Julie and I flew up to Norton Massachusetts for Chuck and Caroline’s wedding celebration at Wheaton College. For Julie, it was like a little reunion, seeing all her girl friends whom she attended college with so many years ago. It’s normal for people to scatter when they get out of school and start their professional lives, but it’s nice when close friends stay in touch and can make time to get together for special events such as this one!
The ceremony was held in the Catholic Church on campus and the reception in a beautiful dining hall just on the other side of the courtyard. The entire wedding celebration was just fantastic! The location was perfect, the food was excellent and the ‘live’ entertainment outstanding! It was truly a great time for all who attended. Julie and I are so happy for you both and we wish you all the best in your new life together!!
And yes, I did manage to sneak my camera in under my suit jacket :-)… So I’ve put together a little slideshow of the wedding celebration and other festivities from the evening… Enjoy!!
You can now browse the photos & buy prints online here»
UPDATE: See their wedding photo gallery here»
September 28th, 2007 | by: Doug
Tuckers Point Club - Hamilton Parish, Bermuda
Out of all the places I like to travel to on vacation, Bermuda has to be one of my favorites! We just returned home from a week in Bermuda with Julie’s family and even though the weather was a little on the uncooperative side, the week as a whole was fantastic! We knew before the flight over that we would have to pass on some of the diving to spend time with Julie’s parents and the rest of the family. What we didn’t count on was the low pressure system that decided to stall just to the North of the island for the entire week… yes, that means lots of rain!
We did get one day of diving in before the weather took a turn for the worse and I also managed to find some breaks in the clouds for some land photography. There was also one morning that turned out to be perfect for some nice sunrise shots too! You’ll be able to see all the trip photos in my travel section soon! I’ll also be working on the Trip Journal along with the image galleries in the next couple of weeks (as time permits), but for now I have thrown together a slideshow to hold you over… I hope you enjoy!
UPDATED: Check out the trip photo slideshow here»
UPDATED: See Our Bermuda 2007 Trip Journal and Image Galleries»