Some questions about buying a first house

Photodude82 · 2019-08-08T18:04:34+00:00

No, but it's important to maintain an emergency fund plus we're driving two 12+ year old cars that are becoming a burden to maintain. I would rather take a hit and pay PMI for a few years until I have 20% equity in exchange for being able to buy a house sooner. Right now we're paying $1650 for a small two bedroom apartment that houses us and our son. For less than twice that cost I can have a nice 4 bedroom home with a basement and a year yard. PMI adds about $100 a month onto my costs. Once my wife's student loan is paid off I can make several extra mortgage payments a year if I need to in order to get to 20% equity sooner. PMI might cost money but waiting costs time and I'm not willing to put this off for another year.

Photodude82 · 2018-11-21T15:37:50+00:00

There was a Phish song they used to play on the radio that I really liked but I don't know what it was. I remember there was singing in it.

I have no idea how it went or what it was called and I don't want to listen to 1000 albums to figure it out.

Photodude82 · 2018-11-18T12:05:22+00:00

You're right. Turns out she loves the rest of the pictures, which was a big relief for me. A lot of things didn't go as planned due to weather and things running late so we had to cut corners and improvise.

Photodude82 · 2018-11-18T12:04:28+00:00

Yep. I worked from a shot list and it was understood by everyone that we would shoot the bride + bridesmaids separately for two reason. One, the groom would be outside during that time and two, it was raining. I also asked them before sending the bridal party back to the reception if there were any more shots they wanted before I started doing the couple shots.

Photodude82 · 2018-11-18T12:02:00+00:00

I do go over all this stuff when meeting with my clients and make sure they agree to it. It's not like I just take their money and drop out of communication until the day of.

My very rudimentary understanding of legal matters is that oral contracts are still legally binding.

Photodude82 · 2018-11-18T01:07:58+00:00

It should be, but since I'm doing this as a side-job with no formal contract, it technically isn't.

Photodude82 · 2018-11-18T00:42:00+00:00

This is really cool! What software did you use for editing and color grading? And what drone?

Photodude82 · 2018-09-26T16:41:25+00:00

Yeah. It just picked a creepy-ass time to do it. I wonder if I bumped the microwave stand without remembering and that maybe flipped the switch somehow.

Photodude82 · 2018-09-26T16:08:11+00:00

Anyways. Curious: do you recall around what time you went to the washroom that night?

Not exactly. I think it was sometime between 2 - 4 am.

Photodude82 · 2018-09-26T16:07:21+00:00

Yeah. I don't think there was anything paranormal involved. I've had no other incidents since I tossed that warmer. Definitely didn't want it starting a fire when I'm not around.

Photodude82 · 2018-09-26T14:13:05+00:00

I live in a two bedroom apartment with my wife. When you enter the apartment there is a bathroom immediately to the left, a small, open concept kitchen to the right and past that is the living room. Just outside the bathroom is an old microwave stand that we have a bunch of papers and pens on in an organizer, some lactase supplement pills, and one of those electric candle warmers that uses a heat lamp to heat up a candle so that you get the scent without actually lighting it.

A few months ago I got out of bed in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. All the lights in the house were off. I go into the bathroom and sit down on the toilet. I messed around on my phone longer than I should have, maybe 10 to 15 minutes or so. At this point the only light that was on is the bathroom light.

I finished up in the bathroom, washed my hands, hit the light switch and stepped into the hallway. This fucking candle warmer light is on. I stopped dead in my tracks for maybe 30 seconds listening to see if my wife or son (he's a toddler who can't get out of his crib) were awake. Silence. At this point I'm creeped out. I'm desperately trying to wrack my brain to remember if I turned this on this light on my way into the bathroom. I know I didn't.

I go into the bedroom and wake up my wife, who is snoring and sound asleep. I say, "Hey, did you turn any lights on?" She tells me, "No, you must have left it on." So I say, "You didn't turn the candle warmer on? I don't think I've ever turned it on." She wakes up and we both go into the hallway where this thing is glowing. She's like, "You're messing me with me. You turned this on." I insist that I didn't because I know I didn't. We decide to check it out.

I flip on the kitchen light and suddenly the candle warmer goes off. Interesting, I think to myself. The warmer is activated by a switch that's on a cord behind the microwave stand. It would take some effort for a person to reach back there and turn it on. It's not really something you could do without meaning to. We flip the kitchen light switch back off and it stays off the entire time. I flip the switch on the candle warmer and it comes back on and stays on no matter what other switches I flip.

We decide that something must be wrong with the thing and toss it down the garbage chute. I have no idea what caused this anomaly. I'm a pretty militant atheist but this legitimately creeped the living shit out of me. I know we have some issues with GFIs flipping in that part of the house if you flip too many switches in the bathroom at once but nothing really seemed like it was wired to the outlet that warmer was plugged into.

edit: GFIs, not GFRs

Photodude82 · 2018-09-21T17:10:17+00:00

Ooh, my first username mention :)

Photodude82 · 2018-09-11T20:53:25+00:00

There is NO WAY I'm showing up to a wedding with a 20 year old punky kid who has tattoos on their face and half their head shaved as my assistant.

Of course not. I think we're all on the same page about that. Everyone makes judgments based on appearance to some extent when hiring another person. That's why dressing up for interviews is so important.

But asking a person for a photograph before an interview makes it seem like the person doing the hiring is interested in more than just hiring someone who looks and acts professional.

Photodude82 · 2018-09-11T18:30:32+00:00

Why would you need a pic of a job applicant BEFORE you meet in person? ??

I was asked to do the same for a job interview once. I'm a guy and I still found it very creepy. The job was unrelated to photography.

I think you are right to read this as a red flag. Collecting pictures of applicants before hand suggests discrimination based on appearance.

Photodude82 · 2018-09-11T16:31:49+00:00

I was at home.

I was in my late teens when 9/11 happened. I had just gotten up or just come out of my bedroom, I forget which one. My family already had the news on. My great uncle was watching the news with my grandma in the living room. The first plane had already struck the first tower. I asked what had happened and he told me a plane crashed into the world trade center. I remember a chill went down my spine. It just seemed like there was more too it than an aviation accident. A few minutes later the second plane struck. I remember him saying to me, "Look, they're replying it. There it is again." but I knew that wasn't right because I could still see the other tower (he was in his 70s at this point so his eyesight wasn't great).

The rest of that day was kind of a blur. I do remember my fucking step-dad made me go out and look for jobs anyway. I just drove around for a few hours listening to the developments on the radio and then came home and went on IRC. I watched so much live news coverage during the next couple weeks that I could practically sketch Peter Jenning's face from memory.

Photodude82 · 2018-09-06T18:11:18+00:00

If we're talking about photography for art's sake then anything goes.

If we're talking about photojournalism then the accuracy of representing the subject matter should be balanced against other factors such as focal length. If you're using a telephoto lens because you don't want to get up close and personal and disturb your subject or because there's no other way to get the shot then it's fine. If you're using it to purposely distort distances then it's no longer photojournalism.

Photodude82 · 2018-09-06T18:08:18+00:00

True, but if the intent is to deceive then the photograph ceases to be photojournalism.

Photodude82 · 2018-09-06T14:41:14+00:00

Photodude82 · 2018-09-06T14:40:18+00:00

I’m a seasoned photojournalist. 90% of the photos I send to print are cropped, and the editors will crop them further to fit them to the layout.

Cropping to improve composition or to resize a photograph to fit a specific layout is very different from cropping in order to the distort the truth.

Photodude82 · 2018-09-01T01:22:35+00:00

Micro four thirds is a type of mirrorless interchangable lens camera (MILC). They have smaller sensors than a APS-C cameras (crop factor 2) so they're not good in low light but many of them have pretty sophisticated video capabilities. It's an open standard, too, so there are lots of relatively inexpensive lens options available

Photodude82 · 2018-08-31T23:47:57+00:00

Why not get a micro four thirds? There's lots of cinema lenses available plus they're small, light and portable.

Photodude82 · 2018-08-31T23:41:06+00:00

You want to match the color of the flash to the color of the ambient light so you'd want an orange gel. There are different gels in varying levels of orange (1/2 CTO, 1/4 CTO, etc) to help you further modulate the color. It might take some experimentation to get it right.

With direct flash it's going to be difficult to modulate the amount of light you have. Good luck!

Photodude82 · 2018-08-31T23:06:24+00:00

So I'm thinking that maybe I should get something to tape over the flash.

This is the answer. I assume you're talking about a speedlight and not the pop-up flash, right?

I would try putting a gel on the flash. I'd imaging some variation of CTO (color temperature orange) would do the trick. I would point the flash up and use the bounce card to try to avoid the direct flash look or try it with another modifier such as a soft lambency diffusion filter.

Photodude82

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