MyNameIsBen.com: April 2006 Archives

RAW Image Files

I've recently discovered the beauty of raw image files taken with a digital camera. The .nef files (It appears that in the future the standard raw image format is going to be .dng.) that my camera can save are essentially digital negatives unlike the .jpegs most cameras save images as. Because jpegs are compressed the image quality is degraded and your ability to adjust elements of the photo are severely limited. A raw image file does away with that and software such as Apple's "Aperture" or Adobe's "Lightroom" are built to work with raw images the way one would work with a negative in a darkroom.

I didn't have very many images on my computer that I had taken in .nef format but here are a couple that I have that I've tinkered with a little bit.

Real Life!?

Graduation is in three weeks now and I'm not going to lie... IT'S SCARY AS HELL!

Slowly but surely my life after school is starting to take shape. I'm going to be working at American Express Publishing at least through the summer as a freelancer while also working with Rocketboom on Humanwire.org. These will help me pay my rent and survive in NYC while I do some writing.

The two scripts I'm working on are the first two scripts in my four years here that I've felt were actually worthwhile and wouldn't feel embarassed handing it to someone in the industry. One of the scripts is about Houdini and the other is a high tech political thriller. A romantic comedy is also currently in the planning.

Of course I'll also obsessively be working on my baby, Lucid Screening, which is at about 75 unique visitors a day now (No thanks to my constant plugs on this site).

The one piece in this transitional phase of my life that I've yet to find is an apartment. All I have to say about apartment hunting thus far is that I hate it and that it has been much more costly than it should be as the result of an east harlem apartment fiasco.

And finally, a video for your entertainment!