so while i was at the wedding in LA, i decided to stay with warren and viki. they live about an hour away from the wedding site and EVERYONE was making fun of me about how i was staying so far away from the wedding and how long it would take me to get there. truth be told, it was an hour drive, but traffic wasn’t so bad. the wedding ended fairly promptly at 10:30PM and i think i got back to the house around midnight.

they tell me that i was maybe their 10th or 11th guest in the three years that they’ve lived there. i guess that just means that they don’t get very many visitors in their neck of the woods. i was able to check out warren’s home theatre setup. he had told me that because i have the newer, higher-spec’d projector, i should not expect much from his set up, but the first thing that i noticed when i was watching a movie was that the screen was just SO MUCH LARGER than mine. warren says that picture sharpness and contrast were visibly better at my place, but i don’t think that i would say that it was dramatically different. i think his setup is pretty good.

it was interesting to see how our approaches to setup differed. in large part, it was mostly dictated by the constraints of the room. warren pointed out a few interesting tidbits about his setup, my favorite is that he has set his projector upside-down on a piece of styrofoam to get it oriented in the right direction.

i was able to audition his speakers too and i have to say that when watching a movie, his theatre really feels more immersive. it’s crazy. ah, something to aspire to.

warren and i traded stories and we got onto a rather heated discussion about the best protocol for fighting ants. i absolutely hate ants and any time they come into the house, i wage all-out war. warren has been having some ant problems as well and so we were comparing how to deal with our ant problems. it turns out that warren prefers more eco-friendly, natural repellents, whereas i prefer to wage chemical warfare on the ants.

it was a fun trip, and though everyone i know made fun of me for staying out of the way, i’m glad that i did.

there has been a lot that i have been meaning to blog about, but i have been so busy that i just haven’t had the time or energy to go and blog it.

first and foremost, i went to cindy and tim’s wedding two weekends ago. the wedding was great. the venue was actually really cool and it was a lot of fun to shoot. i brought my camera with me and i was shooting in ISO1600 and ISO3200. let me tell you, it is not easy shooting in dark conditions, but my flash helped some. what really saved the photos was RAW. i knew that shooting in RAW gives you better control of your images and helps you save some images, but MAN, it’s incredible how much you can do with them. i am a complete convert. everything i shoot from now on is going to be done in RAW. no joke! my computer is fast enough now that processing the RAW photos isn’t that big of a deal as it once used to be.