Telling Story with Pictures, Blurry is OK

When you take pictures, the presence of blur, by being out of focus, motion of camera, or motion of subject ruins the shot you took.  But, when it comes to action sports blur can tell the story of motion.  Yesterday I was at my son’s football game and was on the chain gang.  That gave me a chance to take pictures close to the action.  Using a dslr wouldn’t work and using a smartphone wouldn’t either.  I used my Sony RX100 which is prosumer compact camera, it has a full size sensor at 20 megapixel with a leica lens, so it can capture photos that look as good as a dslr. Working the chains I couldn’t be distracted fussing with the camera so I put it in programmed mode and just shot away, pointing the camera in the direction of the action and not looking at the screen.  The following are shots that tell a story.

The below shows left red defender in focus.  The ball runner is blurred with motion, but his left hand extended is not.  The right defender’s movement makes it look like he isn’t significant threat.

I was panning with the runner so he is in focus whereas everyone else is blurry in their movement relative to him.

The kids running towards me are clear, the defender to the right is crossing.  So he is blurred showing his speed towards the ball carrier.

At the start of a play everyone is clear, except the ball which is moving faster so it is blurry.

Normally with my camera I would focus on getting shots with no blurriness like.

The ball carrier being tackled is in focus as he is moving slower than the rest and he is moving towards the camera.

Everyone is moving in the same direction.  There is little blur as 5 defenders are after the ball carrier.

Here are a few more.  You get the idea. These blurry pictures worked well to tell the action of the game.  I guess blurriness is not such a bad thing.

Here is a photo with little blur.  Final score 33-0.

Ending Summer with An Awesome Event, 1st time Skurfing

It’s been a great summer here in Seattle/Redmond.  One kid is back in school and another goes back next week.

What better way to end the summer season which is technically not over until Sept 21, but for kids end of summer is when they go back to school with something memorable.

Short Blogging Break

Taking a short blogging break.  Today was a day for a hike, a bloody mary, and some sun.  Oh, I admit I did do some work, but when work is fun it doesn’t feel like work.

Kids are Skiing.

You can see the snow on the mountain in this shot.

It is too warm to ski all day, so the kids can go for a swim.

Celebrating Mom's 80th Bday with 50 family and friends

My mom turned 80 and we decided to do something memorable.  What did we do?  We had 50 family and friends join in celebrating at a SF Giants game in a private suite.  Here is my mom.  Well her back.

We have great pictures from my Mom’s neighbor, Tina Case Photography.  Below is the AT&T park and the scoreboard with a Bday message.

Here is mom with a couple of grand kids.

And friends.

Here is the whole group who rode the bus.

7.7% of LinkedIn Contacts work at Microsoft, 8 Years Ago I left and connected to so many more

Last night our family got together with two other families who we ski a lot with and each of us have a kid who ski together all the time, and they spend time together off the mountain as well.

It’s pretty hard to recognize people unless you are familiar with their clothes, so it is nice when you can see people’s faces.

One of the parents mentioned how so many of his LinkedIn contacts are other Microsoft employees.  Turns out both of the dads are at Microsoft.  I didn’t work with either of them when I was at the company, and we talk about so many other things than Microsoft.  The one thing one dad said being an executive is he gets LinkedIn requests so much from Microsoft employees after a while his LinkedIn looks like a Microsoft Directory.

Out of curiosity I wondered what % of my contacts are current and ex-Microsoft employees.  I worked there 14 years (1992-2006), and live in Redmond so Microsoft would be highest.  Adding it up 7.7% of my 944 connections have Microsoft as the company. Next in size of contacts is Gigaom, Google, Apple, and Schneider Electric.  I can understand Gigaom.  What was interesting to see that I had more connections at Google (didn’t work at) than I do at Apple (worked at 1985-1992).  The low Apple count could be leaving Apple to go to Microsoft is not a popular thing to do.  :-)

It’s been 8 years since I left Microsoft and it was good to see that my Microsoft contacts are less than 10% of my LinkedIn profile given I spent 14 years there and live in Redmond.

What did make sense is 20.6% of my connections are in the Seattle Area which is #2.  #1 for where my connections live is SF Bay Area with 20.8%.  Well that is basically a tie and make sense given I spend so much time in the bay area and so much of my work is related to clients in the bay area.  Some people see me so often they think I live in the bay area which I did do from 1960-1992.