XO Mike

Graduation

Posted in Events, Personal, Portraits by Michael on May 15, 2010

Elise Nieman in front of Altgeld Hall.

After 18 or 19 years of school (including preschool) I’m finally done! In order to skip disgustingly long lines today and tomorrow, Elise, Xing, Meeker and I went out to all the photo spots around campus and played around in our caps and gowns. I’m glad to be done but nervous about the next few months. Next week I’ll head to San Francisco and Sacramento to visit Chris and Hillary as a mini graduation present to myself. I say mini because travel and lodging will only cost $40 after my free mileage. After that I’m going to be finalizing the plans for my computer repair business and opening doors sometime in June. Wish me luck!

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-XO Mike

Riding the Rails

Posted in Events, Passing Through, Personal by Michael on May 13, 2010

Xing and I went out last night in trying to do some star trails. We realized there would be too much cloud cover but figured we could get some fun shots of trains at slow shutter speeds. There was only one train and neither of us really got something amazing. We drove around to some other spots and I grabbed the one above facing north on the tracks from Chicago to Carbondale. With the cloud cover and light pollution it almost looks like a sunrise and I love how much of a mirror the rails are. The one below is nothing great. I was checking to see how much flash power I would need because I was going to use a red gel (translucent red cellophane). Turns out that a 580exII at full power will melt the gel. Oops. Pic 3 related.

-XO Mike