My Mouth Hurts and Gels

I'm jamming to Weezer right now and you should be too. Enjoy.

I had to go to the dentist today. They took off my temporary crown and replaced it with the permanent one. This was supposed to make the pain stop, but it is still a little sensitive. Hopefully within the next few days I stop noticing it. I have been living with that toothache for so long now that it almost seems like a part of my life. I cannot wait for it to be gone.

I bought some color correction gels for my strobe today. For those of you who do not know, light gives off different color temperature. In other words, the light in the shade is much cooler than direct sunlight. Because the light from the strobe is a different color than light from say, a desk lamp, I cannot use them together. That's where the gels come in. If you place a colored gel over the strobe, it color corrects it to the correct temperature. This means my white balance looks good and I don't have any orange or green things in the picture. I haven't used them extensively yet, but maybe in the future I will post some shots with and without the gels so you guys (and girls) can see what the heck I am talking about.

I love Pandora Radio. To me, it is one of the greatest websites out there. Type in an artist or a song you're fond of and bam, Pandora introduces you to a slew of artist and songs that you will potentially like. The best station I have ever created is my Clint Mansell station. I have reached my monthly listening limit on three separate occasions due to that station. Additionally, I have thumbs upped and downed hundreds of songs to the point where it is extremely rare to get a song I do not like on that station. Needless to say, this golden station did not happen over night. I broke Pandora two days ago. I decided I would start a Cage the Elephant station, mostly because I have been listening to their new album quite a bit. Something wonderful (and possibly magical?) happened. Almost every song that came from that station was gold. Cage the Elephant, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Cake, Beck, Bush, The Offspring, Queens of the Stone Age, Blink-182, and as I write this Johnny Cash is playing. Anyone who frequently uses Pandora knows that even on the stations that are extraordinarily catered to your taste, stinkers get thrown in there every once in a while. I have had a couple, but honestly, there is so much gold pouring out of this station the ones that are mediocre are easily forgiven. So that's how I broke Pandora.

I took a lot of pictures tonight. In my residence hall there was a record breaking competition. Not real records. It was actually more just a contest to see who could do what. In any case, I took many pictures of the event. Most of them are pretty noisy because it was not the best lit room and I needed to capture action shots (so the ISO had to be cranked up a bit). Again, for those of you less familiar with cameras, when you are in low light situations you sometimes have to make the sensor (the thing in the camera that records the image) more sensitive to light. This makes your picture much brighter, but consequently you get something called noise. It looks a bit like this.

All those little specs are what I'm talking about. Boo on this picture too for smacking her right in the center. We all know better than that by now right? Right.

I suppose I should talk a bit about Snowpocalypse II. That's right, there's going to be another blizzard in Houston. At least you'd think there was going to be. I don't care how panicky people get as long as they don't cancel school again. That would be the second week in a row I had missed my photography class, and I want to print bad.

I thought today I would post a food photo so I could ruin food photography for you all.

Mmmmmmm, looks tasty doesn't it? Well forget about it. First off: it's cold. And stale. And probably hasn't been preserved in hours. Unfortunately, most food you see in pictures is supposed to look good, not taste good. For shine, baby oil is usually misted onto the product. And those lovely steam wisp you see that make the product look nice and hot; guess again. That's pure cigarette smoke baby. I like my steaks smokey, but not that smokey (get it).

Anyway, just a few things to think about the next time you see that delicous meal on TV or in a magazine. Bon appetit.