Brian's Blog

Forts Series

briannewman — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:42:09 +0000

These photos I processed using Adobe’s Lightroom software. As much as I like the software it just seems like cheating after all those long hours I spent in the dark room. Also it is just not the same without the fumes.

A window to the Beyond:

This is one of those photos where when you take it you see it perfectly and it comes out almost exactly the way you want it to. My one disappointment in this photo is the fact that I lost a lot of detail in the shadow, I would have liked to at least keep a little of it. Even with the loss of the detail this is still my favorite photo in the series hands down.

Thats not a gun, THIS is a gun:

With this photo I really took advantage of being able to apply color filters within Lightroom. I am still not satisfied with the tone that the sky is but I hit that point where I don’t think there was anything I could have done about it without degrading the picture. I will probably work on this one some more to mainly see if I can get the highlights looking better. When all is said and done I still like the finished product.

A walk to the end:

One of the largest things that I strive for in a photograph is good composition, So many other things you can fix after the fact but without good composition you are just sunk. What draws me to this photo is the use of lines I think it makes the image very pleasing to the eye. if I could change something in this photo I would take out that puddle in the middle of the hallway, it really distracts the eye. This photo is definitely a close second to my favorite photo in this series.

A Hart for Russia

briannewman — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 18:47:53 +0000

I get E-mailed prayer requests from the International Mission board every morning. below is a prayer request that came through today that I thought was the coolest thing ever. Many times anymore people try to limit themselves by saying they do not have enough people, money, or many other reason along those same lines. What these people are accomplishing in Russia just goes to show the amazing things that can be accomplished with a little faith.

SVERDLOVSKAYA OBLAST AREA OF RUSSIA (SOAR) (svehrd-LOHV-skah-ya OH-blahst). B is a small community of approximately 5,000 people in the eastern region of the Sverdlovskaya Oblast, most noted as the birthplace of former Russian president Boris Yeltsin. There is one small Baptist church that has been in existence in the community for about five years, which at present has eight members, and there is a small house of prayer that is currently undergoing renovations. This small group of believers has established a relationship with a local correctional school, and they also have worked in the local orphanages. The pastor of this church, A., has a vision for 1) evangelizing the 11 smaller communities surrounding B, 2) working in conjunction with a Great Commission Christian group to distribute Bibles throughout the region, and 3) helping to start a church in the nearby city of T, in addition to the work in the neighboring communities. Please pray for this small group of believers, and for their pastor, as they work to see their vision become a reality!

http://www.ahart4russia.com

Expression Media

briannewman — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 21:43:03 +0000

Last night I was able to pick up a free copy of Microsoft’s Expression suite. Since it was released last year I have been very interested to see what exactly it was capable of and whether or not it could even compare to what Adobe had to offer.

While I have only really had a chance to play with the Expression Media piece of the suite yet I must say I am not very impressed. it does a decent job of organizing your media and allowing you to tag the files but honestly even most free software will do just as well of a job at that. There are a few features that let you compare pictures mostly just b putting them side by side, letting you zoom into them and showing a histogram. There is also an “image editor” in it also but it gave you very little control over what was happening I would say that it is very similar to the Picas editor. By far my biggest complaint was after a did minimal editing to images I could see the image quality degrading very quickly, which is unacceptable in my opinion.

My final thoughts are that I would never pay money for it but being the poor broke college student that I am I can make it work for me until I can afford a copy of light room.

This is an image I did edit with Expression Media:

On the Road

briannewman — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 22:47:21 +0000

these are a couple pictures that I took one time when I was driving back to Pullman. They are both pretty heavily edited when compared to the way I normally edit my photos.

I really liked the way that both of these turned out, but I doubt I will ever do more like them just because I am traditionalist when it comes to digital photography.

Online Again

briannewman — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 03:18:46 +0000

I realized the other day when Missy was asking me about where my pictures were online that it had been way too long since I had done anything with my Blog. After some work I have transfered everything over from Blogger to WordPress. With much head banging and yelling at my computer I figured out a way to get Twitter working with WordPress.

When everything got transfered over from blogger some of the links were messed up, I think I have found all of them but let me know if you catch any.

Group in Brussels

briannewman — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 19:40:00 +0000

Here is most of the group when we were touring around Brussels.
from left to right:

Back:Re,Martin,Brian
Front:Nia,Leah

Rwanda Pictures

briannewman — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 18:59:00 +0000

While we were in Rwanda I discovered that it Is really hard to blog with slow internet speeds. So I am going to star posting pictures of things we did and people we met while in Rwanda. This is the first one, this is a picture of Leah and I with some of our students from LDK. We took this picture while our students sat outside and waited with us for a our taxi driver to arrive.

Rwanda

briannewman — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

WOW I have been so busy since we landed. it has been an unbelievable experience so far for me. So when we arrived our plans changed so instead of teaching by ourselves we are actually team teaching so Re and Nia are teaching together and Leah and I are teaching together. I am so glad we are doing this because I could not imagine teaching by myself and the two of us are making an awesome teams. this wee we have been leaving to start teaching at 7:30 every morning and we usually get back at 7 so we are deffintally being kept busy. one of the first days we taught at a school we pulled up at the school just as classes were changing and Leah and i get out of the car and all eyes were on us we were like the two little white kids. another funny story we were having tea with a head master and he served us the rolls that were like dough nuts corn and tea…. well the rolls were really filling so I was going to get Leah to eat the corn since I was full well apparently she beat me to the punch so I ended up having to eat the corn and there was no way I was going to be able to finish sooo when the headmaster left the room I tried to give it to Leah but she was full too so I we stuffed in my pocket so not to be rude and not finish it. well I am going to go I will have lots of stories for all of you when I get back.

Brussels

briannewman — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 14:56:00 +0000

We all had a blast today touring around Brussels. It was really fun because Martin had done his homework ahead of time and knew all this history and details about the building and acted as our tour guide. We found this one area in Brussels where there are about three streets of solid restaurants and as Nia and I walked down the street they were all try to get us eat at their restaurants. We all ended up eating at this little restraunt that was pretty good nobody ended up with bad food. Nia and i bothe ordered fries since we were still pretty full from breakfast and she turned me on to eating fries with mayo. after lunch nia and Lisa headed back to the hotel after a bit to get some rest while Martin Leah and I continued out touring. Brussels is a really amazing city there is so much history and culture to it.

we are flyying out for Kigali in the morning at 10Am here wich I beleive is about 2 AM your time. I will blog again when I have time when we are in Kigali.

Plane ride

briannewman — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 10:00:00 +0000

Wow, what a day I have had so far we have been on constant flights all day today. We had a pretty smooth ride over the only bad part was that we were stuck on the plane for about 2 hours at JFK as there was a lightning storm and we had a 35 plane backup in front of us but it was also fun because we met up with a college student that was flying as far as brussels and was by her self so we adoppted her. I got about 4 hours of sleep between JFK and Brussels so I am doing ok with the time change. When we got to our hotel in Brussels Nia, Leah, Carey, Lisa and I had a pretty good brunch we had tons of food and they had a machine that made fresh squeezed orange juice for us. Well I am about to tour brussels with Nia, Leah, and Lisa While Re and Martin go grab some lunch and Carey gets some much needed sleep. I will try and post again before I fly out for Rwanda