It's too dark, use the flash
Remember how pretty downtown looked that night?  Remember grabbing a great snapshot of your friends enjoying the night?  Remember getting the picture back and having a great shot of your friends... on a completely black background?  Crap!

Don't fret, there's a solution (for next time, not for fixing your old pictures).

All digital cameras... um... all digital cameras with a flash... well, let's just say most digital cameras come with a special mode that improves the way your pictures look at night.  Traditionally called a "slow sync" or "curtain flash" this mode combines a flash to freeze the foreground (typically your aunt Greta) with the slow shutter speed needed to get the surrounding environment to show up at night.

 
One small setting change and Val goes from standing in the
dark to standing in Disneyland.

Making it work for you
This really isn't magic, but you may be surprised by the results.  Trying it out isn't daunting, there are just three things you need to do:

1. Learn to turn it on
2. Steady yourself
3. Don't forget to turn it off (really... don't)

Turn it on
Turning on the night-time shot mode will differ for every camera, but it is typically grouped in the settings as a flash option.  Try cycling through the various settings for your flash but don't be frustrated if it doesn't just pop up, on my Canon PowerShot S410 (and on my old S110 as well) the mode is called "slow synchro" which requires the camera be put in "Manual" mode.  To find out exactly how to set it for your camera browse through your manual for this icon:

It takes a steady hand
You remember the old commercials for the game "Operation"? No?  At any rate... because the picture will be taken at a slow shutter speed you will find it difficult or even impossible to hand-hold your camera for the shot.  I've managed to get some okay shots by just standing very still, but the best shots always come from either using a tripod or finding some piece of the environment to use as a brace.  I often look for a door frame, light post or fence and just hold the camera against it.

Don't forget!
I have a number of great pictures which have be screwed up by leaving the camera set to slow sync.  And if you have multiple people using the camera you can frustrate your partner by handing them a poorly configured camera.

 
If we hadn't noticed the bad setting, instead of a great picture
with my parents I would have been left with a blurry memory.

Don't be afraid to experiment
The beauty of digital cameras is that you can just go nuts taking pictures and not be wasting film or processing costs.  So go nuts!  Try taking the picture even when you don't think you can hold it steady enough, you might come up with something you like.

A deep breath, a steady hand and a lot of luck
netted me a fun self portait with Paula on
Main Street USA in Disneyland.

I've been going to town uploading pictures to our smugmug site... and I came across this:

The for sale portion amused me... but I forgot to post the picture.  Better late than never.  Good thing that sudden ice age didn't hit.

This picture was taken by Paula in March of 2002 when Leslie adopted Micha.  At around ten years old, with a heart murmur, a little blind and a lot deaf, Micha was not the prime candidate for adoption but Leslie took her in and gave her a great home.

Our thoughts are with you Les.

Rob and Sharon are getting ready to have their first child and they asked Paula and me to come to the beach with them yesterday to take some portraits of the happy parents to be.  We had a great little lunch (their treat: thanks guys!) then headed down to the boardwalk to catch the warm tones of the sunset light.  A combination of some great light, some great equipment and great pre-setup by Rob produced some great pictures.  After grinding through over 300 frames I was bound to happen upon something they liked.

This was my favorite:

Now, I just need to bill Rob for the therapy I'm going to need to get over using his sweet camera (I'm not sure, but buying my own D2X just might cost less than therapy).

Some more wonderful web kismet today... wismet, if you will.

I was looking for a link I had tossed in my "interesting" folder in favorites and noticed another link in there I didn't recognize (it was an old link to an indi comic site).  Through that link I found Andrew Bell's "the creatures in my head" page.  This site, full of wonderful, expressive creatures, sucked me in.  I highly recommend checking out his site.

You can navigate Andrew's pictures chronologically, but I recommend hitting the "random" button on the page (go to his site, click on the creature on the homepage to get the navigation, then click "random"). Andrew creates the pictures then ads a delightfully appropriate caption, take the time to read those too (the picture below-right is titled "but... you said no one would get hurt.")

Well honey, I love you, but the time has come to part ways.

We can still be friends, right?

Yep, I finally got it done, I put the Corvette up for sale on Craig's list.

Want to help?  If you refer the future owner to me I'll give you a 5% finder's fee.

I've built my share of web pages.  I can do the layout.  I can do the CSS, HTML, etc.  I always have problems picking a color scheme.  I've now found a site to help me out with that part of the process.

If you aren't a natural at picking colors and/or were not professionally trained as an artist, you may find getting a set of colors which complement each other is difficult.  I usually use a set of colors from a design book or copy a pretty web.  If, however, I need a specific color... I'm SOL.

Enter ColorBlender.com.  This site is a variation on a tool which has been floating around the net in open source for a while (see "A little history lesson" below).  What I like about this particular implementation is it has a slick interface combined with the ability to export the color blends as a Photoshop Color Tables (great for all the pixel-pushers out there).

Here's how it works:

1. Either start with a color in mind our use their blending sliders to construct a color (I decided to go with a nice, bright blue for this run)
   
2. If you like your blend, you're done!
   
3. If you'd like to tweak the blend, click the "Direct Edit" radio button then adjust individual colors on your palette using the same sliders from step 1.
   

That's really about it, go forth and create.  If you do end up using this on a web site, please let me know, I'd like to provide a link to your creation from this post so others can see how this tool can be applied to web design.

A little history lesson

The original tool was called ColorMatch 5K and was entered by Kim Jensen into a 2001 web competition which required the tools submitted be less than 5, 120 bytes.  Due to the size requirements, ColorMatch 5K was limited and didn't have a ton of cross-browser compatibility, so many sites took up the code and improved upon it.  ColorBlender.com is my favorite, a quick search could help you to find yours.