The U14 Kingdom Strikers won their division Saturday March 27, 2010 in Holland, MI. The morning was chilly, but their game was not. I have posted pictures from the tourney. Follow the link below to get to them. Once there, click on “order prints/ proofing”. That will get you to the Soccer! gallery. Enjoy. 
Below is an outline from the Plainwell Community Schools Community Ed schedule. Bring your camera – SLR or Point & Shoot – and let’s take better pictures. You can still sign up even though the deadline has passed.
www.plainwellschools.org or call 269-685-9531
ADULT PROGRAMS
DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY
This is a short course for both the beginner and the intermediate shooter. Basic topics such as camera control, theory and composition. Intermediate topics include refining your skills, basic lighting, and sftware. There should be something for everyone. If you took this class last winter, there will be some refresher information as well as new information. This course is being taught by Brian Stefl, a local business owner and photography enthusiast.
Bring your own camera and manual and learn about life out of “automatic mode”. Discussions on equipment selection, camera settings, composition, theory and software techniques. We will also have session on presentation and crtiques.
Date: Jan. 26, 2010 – Feb. 11, 2010 (Tuesdays & Thursdays)
3 weeks
Time: 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.
Location: Gikey Elementary Computer Lab #171
Cost: $55.00 (money must be sent with registration)
Instructor: Brian Stefl
I just added several more galleries on the “Proofs/ Purchase Prints” link on my site. These galleries include Landscapes, waterfalls, Birds & Animals, Flowers, Beach, and Things. Locationas include Michigan, Florida, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic. Enjoy!
I have uploaded photos from my trip to Montana in August. We were in Glacier National Park for a week. The weather was great for the first three days…then there was a little time to process files. Thanks much to my Brother in law, Geoff for inviting me. We did a combination of camping, hotel, lots of driving, and even more eating. Geoff writes a blog detailing his travels and the folks he meets. You can check it out here. I am still working on the Gallery.
I have installed a new server based gallery software and hope to have gallery function back up soon. Please be patient. Thanks.
I will be teaching a winter class again next year for Plainwell Community Ed. This class will be offered as:
This is a short course for both the beginner and intermediate shooter. Basic topics such as camera control and theory/ composition and intermediate topics on refining your skills, basic lighting, and software. There should be something for everyone. If you took this class last winter, there will be some refresher information as well as new information. This course is being taught by Brian Stefl, a local business owner and photography enthusiast.
Bring your camera and manual and learn about life out of “automatic mode”. Discussions on equipment selection, camera settings, composition, theory and software techniques. We will also have a session on presentation and critiques.
The dates are Jan 26, 2010 through Feb 11, 2010, Tuesdays and Thursdays from 6P-8P Hopefully at the Gilkey Computer Lab.
You will need to call Plainwell Community Ed at 269-685-9531 to register.
Let me start by saying that I am a backup proponent – bordering on evangelist. I have a RAID 1 (mirrored) hard drive array on my main computer and a RAID 1 array on my external back up drive. I also have been using Carbonite Online Backup. I’ll post about Carbonite later. My main PC has 500G drives in it and was starting to slow down a bit. I checked the drive capacity and realized that the drives were full. I went out and purchased two 1T drives to migrate my data over to. I did a little reading on the RAID array and swapped the drives. As it turned out, I then had 1T drives formatted to 500G drives – that were full!. I put the old drives back in and rebooted. The windows configuration files were corrupt. There have not been many times in my life when every outward bodily function wants to happen at once, but this was one of those times. I knew not to mess around too much with this and started checking what I would be missing from my backups.
My external drive had not been backed up in a couple of months (I was changing backup software) and my carbonite backup still had 5500 files to go. There would be a lot missing. After a recovery call with Dell, the technician suggested I call a recovery specialist. After some searching in google, I went to the member section of the NAPP (National Association of Photoshop Professionals) website and found a recovery company called Drivesavers . These folks offered a 15% discount on recovery services. Now, keep in mind this happened on a Sunday night. I called Drivesavers at 8:00 PM Eastern and spoke with Sam. Sam is considered a Data Recovery Advisor by his employer. To me, he is part counselor for “talking me down”, part salesman for helping me understand the process and pricing, and part MD for helping my physical symptoms subside.
I FedExed my drives to them on Monday, spoke to them a couple of times during the week, and received my drives back the following Wednesday. Drivesavers has a few different pricing structures that are tied to turnaround time, data quantity, and complexity of the recovery. I chose the longer turnaround, had a lot of data, and low complexity (the drives still worked). ALL of my data was recovered with original filenames and directory structure. Great News! Now the hard part. This process cost me $3000.00 AFTER my nearly $550 discount for being a member of NAPP. SO, the moral of the story is twofold. 1. BACKUP YOUR DATA and 2. There is hope if something does happen.
© 2009-2010 Brian Stefl Photography All Rights Reserved