1 Adventure

Greyhound Painting

I was really surprised and thrilled to receive an email this morning from Tessa Day. She had contacted me a while back and asked if she could use my photo Greyhound Peering Out for a painting she was doing for an exhibition to benefit greyhound dogs. I have read a few articles in the past about some work for these dogs as they retire from racing and general adoption for people that love these lanky elegant dogs.

Here is the final painting. I love it!! How amazingly talented! She got the perspective right and the proportions of the dog right. It's kinda uncanny how similar yet different to the original. I wish her luck with the exhibition and am honored to have my picture inspire a painting.

I would encourage you to check out her other work at TessaDay.com. Some great stuff. Check out a few of the mouse paintings at the bottom. Really creative.

Here is the original again.

New Lens That Rocks The House - Canon Wide Angle-Telephoto EF 24-70mm f/2.8L

Just broke down and finally bought the lens I have had my eye on for quite some time. There are several actually, but this one is what I need for general shooting and good people shots in lower light. It being expensive was one of the delays in buying it, but lately I had just been dissatisfied with the stock lens quality I was getting in my pictures. I knew they were spot on but it constantly bugged me about the sharpness. I guess that means I am growing as a photographer. I know what I needed to do but just procrastinated. So what did I get:

So far I have been impressed and amazed at the crystal clear sharpness of this lens, even in low light. Combined with a 430EX Speedlite, its a nice combo for "people shooting". I will post some photos in a bit. But if you are a Canon lover and considering getting a new lens, I would highly recommend this if you need something to do a lot of things.

Here is summary of it from bhphotovideo.com:
This lens replaces the previous high quality L-series 28-70mm f/2.8 lens, with a lens of even greater caliber. The range has been extended to cover an ultra-wide angle of 24mm, which makes it ideal for digital as well as film shooters, and the optics are even better than before with two Aspherical elements and a totally new UD glass element. It's now sealed and gasketed against dust and moisture, and a new processing unit makes the AF faster than ever.

Image Stealing On MySpace.com & Use Of Images From This Photography Blog

Notice to Myspace Users:Okay, first off let it be known that I enjoy the fact that people on the internet/myspace are loving the photos I take and sharing them with others. Please continue using the images on myspace and other social networking websites ONLY, but consider giving providing credit to this blog (see below). By using the images you agree to these terms.

So MySPACE.com....listen up! You eat my bandwidth like a kid just home from fat camp. I have monitored the use of my images on myspace, xanga, friendster, etc.. for the last several months and at first it wasn't a problem until I had to pay extra $$$ bandwidth charges from my hosting company. Ekk!

They like them so much I know have to say something. Nothing makes me happier to know that people like what I am doing and wanting to make it part of their lives. I created this blog in order to share some of the photography I do and have been doing so successfully for over 3 years. I am not one of those people that insanely protects every image they take, nor am I greedy about letting people use images on their sites, and I charge very reasonable rates for people who wish to use the images commercially. I never planned to use watermarks on any of my images. So might consider that a bad idea. But I have trust in human nature and also know there really isnt anything on here someone would want to exploit extensively.

So What Are People Doing?

Essentially they are using Google Images or Yahoo Image search to find pictures they like and then hyperlinking to them in their myspace profile with a service like Strikefile MySpace Editor. Easy enough, just insert the url, they give you some fancy code you can insert into your profile.

The Data Doesn't Lie

This is a screen shot of myspace traffic from August 2006. You will see that in August the images being used received 34,893 hits, not including all the other social networking sites and individual pages pulling the images. That's pretty considerable! That's awesome!

So What Am I Going To Do?

Well, not that much at this point. I will ask that anyone that wish to use images off this website for myspace please link back to this website with the following code. Insert code into your myspace profile personality or interest sections:

I used free images from Ben Pfeiffer's 1 Adventure Photography Blog

Which looks like:

I used free images from Ben Pfeiffer's 1 Adventure Photography Blog

I don't consider it a big deal, I think its nice to have some good photography on myspace as opposed to the junk I usually see. Myspace is hard on the eyes anyway, so by all means continue to use the images. Some images however I will be watermarking in order to get credit for some of the images. There are two images in particular that are the most popular. These are probably two of some of my most popular images on the net. The New York City Lights are extremely popular. They have even been used in a recent publication pamplet for promotion of Broadway in Nashville and several other publications.

Some example profiles of kid's using my images.

http://www.myspace.com/jaredesgordo
http://www.myspace.com/treehugger7
http://myspace.com/thefivemantrio (this is a myspace band page)
http://myspace.com/left_steve
http://www.myspace.com/mikestheman20
http://www.myspace.com/jesschelle (this girl really likes the city lights photos)
http://www.myspace.com/theistic_dreamer (this guy has a really interesting profile with one of my homeless person photos)
http://www.myspace.com/quirkykirky456
http://www.myspace.com/afatalromance (bizarre page)

Bye Bye Blog Spammers! 1Adventure Kills Spam Dead - New & Improved Features!

Title sounds like a Raid ad huh? LOL. Just wanted to mention and record some changes that have been going on behind the scenes here. In the past year blog spam and trackback has been an increasing difficult problem to combat on this blog. At first it was just a dribble of blog spam here and there that was easily deleted. Over time this daunting task became to much to handle. It was a painstaking process to hand delete each of the bad comments. It has gotten so bad that I had no alternative except to attack the problem and eliminate loopholes for spammers to infect this blog with selfish attempts at leaving links or notes in the comments of this blog. Problem solved. The fasinating part of all of this was that over the course of 6 months we received 11,000 pieces of comment spam! Likely target? Yes blogs are a very likely target these days. This blog was a likely target. Now not a single comment ever linked out nor did much good for those doing this. For them though that wasn't a concern as they use automated software programs to constantly hit blogs, often using proxies and untraceable ip address to circumvent any ip banning to keep them from coming back. A lot of blogs just filter out the spam. Many of spammer programs don't have throtting enabled either, meaning they just hit the blog as fast as they can finding any hole they can spam their referral link into. Bloggers often hit newer blogs or those blogs that they know can't do much about their attempts, or just whoever they decide its time to spam today. If a blog is no longer usable sometimes they eventually will stop and will go somewhere else. Yes, the internet can be a hostile place to hang up a shingle. If you are hearing any of this saga for the first time, then consider yourself lucky. Honestly blogging spamming is a poor profession integrity wise and it's parallel to theivery in my mind.

In any case, the blog was updated to the most recent version of MovableType 3.xx, big time anti-spam features, you may notice a few ads here and there. We are going to be testing these. Basically I need some help paying for the hosting. Which isn't much but anything helps. So far the ads aren't doing much, but hopefully they don't take away from the photography in any way. If you have comments on improvements you would like to see, let me know.

Photo Backlog & High Definition Film

Well its been a busy past few weeks. School is over, and I have been taking so many pictures that its been difficult to get them uploaded onto the site. There are so many good shots, its giving me lots to do in the next coming weeks. Additionally, I had a few requests for some prints. Prints are free, for now anyway. If you would like any of the shots framed, that will cost you. Contact me for more information if interested.

Review of Kodax's High Definition Film
I have been testing out three different types of film the last few weeks. The first too where just for comparison with the Kodak film, those being Walmart branded Fujifilm superia x-tra and regular Kodak 400 speed film. Kodak came out with a new Kodak High Definition film a while back, and has hit stores recently in the past few months.

I took the oppourtunity to stock up on all the deals for this film, and in most cases was cheaper than Kodak regular 400 speed film. The film offers increased fine grain enchancement, better for enlargements (however a 24x36 enlargement still came up a tad grainy, including dark or night shots appear a bit grainy), and top sharpness comparable to professional type films under the right lighting conditions. I have been quite impressed with the film, and the saturation of colors its able to pick up. It also seems to pick up shading quite well in many cases for close up shots with lots of texture. You will see in some shots I took of Milk Thistle flowers to be released as soon as I can scan them that they capture white light and shading of the delicate features very well.
However I do NOT recommend this film for indoors. It will work just fine, but the colors seems a little washed out. So if want to maximize the use of this film take it in good light, outside, or with fast action. It additionally works wonders on Macro shots giving it a nice clarity and sharpness of grain. I give it a full recommendation, try it out!

I will start to review some new products and filters in the next couple of months from an amateur standpoint, meaning in situations that normal people would use the film or filters and then try to branch out to more technical stuff for those serious about their photography. Unfortunately I don't have the budget to review cameras, so if anyone wants to donate some good cameras of various types I would be happy to use them and post my thoughts on the site. Now, taking corporate sponsorships on the site. hehe. ;-)

Blog is up!

I am glad to say I could do this little project of getting this blog up in an afternoon. I succeeded! I am not a whiz kid at installing these types of applications so I am glad my geek came though this time. lol. Now the only problem I am having is getting the thumbnails to work, but the check program is telling me its not installed even though the hosting company says it is. So I decided to forget it for now, the pictures are better in large scale anyway. I shall be posting some pictures shortly.