Jud Dagnall Photography Blog

We had a hot (in every sense) engagement session at Piccetti Winery in Cupertino. Sarah and Evan braved the heat, and the results were well worth it.

Here are a few images

Kami and Kit had a great wedding on September 30th at the San Juan Oaks Golf Club. I was there again with Craig Smith, and we had a ton of fun. Kit’s a golfer, and we spent a little time on the driving range. They were definitely enjoying the day, and Kit even managed to get in a round of golf before the ceremony! Kami’s father gave an incredibly touching speech, and had the whole place in tears.

And now, the images:

Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes were at Yahoo! yesterday. I got a chance to play paparazzi, and get a few pictures.

Tom armwrestling with Yahoo! CEO Terry Semel:

Tom waves to the crowd:

Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes in a sea of Yahoos:

A friend of mine has started a new online referral site called “Mutual Win” – where referrals are golden!

It’s a simple, cool idea– a place where you can take post and/or take advantage of various referral bonuses. If your gym or appartment offers a bonus when you refer someone, you can list it on the site. If you’re looking to join a gym, or find a new appartment, search for it on mutualwin.net. Contact the other party, and arrange to split the bonus. It’s not just limited to gyms and apartments: there are a variety of categories for posting, and you can also create “golden opportunities”, items that don’t fit into the existing breakdown or from which you may not directly benefit.

It’s well worth checking out, and I think there’s a lot of potential here!

The Palo Alto Camera Club has a monthly digital “slides” competition. As part of an ongoing project to automate image submission, I’m creating several scripts to resize/frame and “mat” the images using ImageMagick, a command line utility for windows and linux. It could be also be done via photoshop actions and/or scripting, but since this will eventually be running on a server, I wanted to do outside of photoshop.

The basic requirement is that the final image should be 1024×768 pixels (the resolution of our digital project). If the image is smaller than this, then it should be placed on a black background ‘mat’. The club guidelines require an image that is max1000x750 pixels, and then note that a simple border will be added. So my image magick script does the following:

1. Read an image named input_image.jpg
2. Resize the image to a max of 1000×750 pixels (length x width).
3. Place a 1px white border around the image
4. Place a 1px black border around the image
5. Center the final image on a black background that is 1024×768 pixels.
6. Sharpen the image
7. Save as a quality 85% jpeg with the name “output_image.jpg”

And now, the script:

convert -size 1000x750 input_image.jpg -resize 1000x750 \
-bordercolor black -border 1 \
-bordercolor white -border 1 - \
|\
composite -gravity center - \
-size 1024x768 xc:black \
-sharpen 0x1.0 -quality 85 \
output_image.jpg


I ordered a canon 20d from [buydig.com](http://buydig.com) yesterday. Actually, I puchased one from San Jose camera too, got back to the office, and then Andrei found it for $275 cheaper online. Even with 2 day shipping it was still almost $250 in savings. I couldn’t pass that up. I’m selling the Canon G6 that I got last month as a backup– although it’s a nice camera, using the Canon D60 DSLR for the last two years has spoiled me. My trusty D60 will become a backup, and I will take advantage of the slightly higher resolution, and better low-light functionality for the 20D. Also, I’m really looking forward to having a camera the can autorotate vertical images!

I got hooked on *The Apprentice* this season. That’s pretty surprising because I don’t normally watch TV (I bought an antenna 4 years ago to see the Olypics, and this is the first show I’ve regularly watched in years). I was drawn in by the boardroom byplay that went on. The tasks weren’t terribly exciting, but seeing how each of the contestants spun reality was very interesting and even applicable to real life. It was very interesting to see how each person represented themselves, when they waited and watched, and when they attacked. So I was looking forward to the finale. However, one thing stood out even more clearly than the winner. Kelly’s good, no doubt about that. But I was astounded that Donald Trump couldn’t even drum up even one female exec outside of his sidekick Caroline to comment on the candidates. It was astonishing to see, actually. Jen completely dominated Kelly in their discussions, attacked him on issues where he had no credible response, and left him looking flat and unimpressive. Trump even warned him that he was getting schooled, before firing Jennifer.

I couldn’t help feeling that the glass ceiling had smacked down pretty hard on her. Yes, Kelly was great, a natural leader with impeckable credentials. But come on! Jen was outstanding too, and seemed to posess the skills and aggressiveness that Trump values. Does Trump really not know any high-powered females that he’d invite onto the show to share their perspective? Although the numbers might truly be representitive national averages, I’m left with the dissapointing feeling that the status quo was just reinforced: The old boy club just picked one of their own. Trump seemed to feel that Jen had a lot of opportunities ahead: perhaps he meant that he’s saving a spot for her in his Miss Universe pageant. Boo!