Photography & Blog by Adam Montoya

Abyss

montoya — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 07:30:01 +0000

manifestation

I purchased the Pentax K5 a few months ago. Such a great camera. This is a camera that becomes an extension of my own eyes. Most of my frustrations that I had with the *ist DL were gone. The auto-focus is crisp, and the dynamic resolution is outstanding. The only thing I wish it had was manual video controls. I’m crossing my fingers that a firmware update will bring forth those features.

Strange New Year

montoya — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 20:23:27 +0000

On New Years day I went on a walk with my brother Mark and nephew Brendon at the Jamestown Lake View Cemetery. The weather was warming up and a nice fog rolled in. It made for some ideal shooting conditions.

What made it strange is that my freaking batteries starting draining fast. Not cheapo batteries, but AA Sanyo Eneloops. Freshly charged ones at that. Now I have heard of battery drain before at haunted sites, but never at a peaceful burial ground. Go figure.

July: In with a bang, and out with a bang.

montoya — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 21:22:41 +0000

On July 4th 2010 we had man made fireworks.

Then on July 31st Mother Nature struck back with some rumblings of her own.

All in all, July 2010 made for a great visual feast. Lets see what August has to offer.

Strange PESO decisions

montoya — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 19:27:10 +0000

Decided to post a photograph, that i captured yesterday, to the PDML (Pentax Discuss Mailing List). I titled it Train Wreck of a Marriage. This photo was far from my best photo that I took this weekend, but the subject matter is what made the photo worth something in my eyes. There had just been a wedding, and the participants decided to go out back on the train tracks for some photographs. Kind of cool I guess, but the issue is that these tracks are used on a daily basis. I don’t think this bodes well for their marriage. The signs are every where. Yes, the stop sign.

These are my other photos I took on Saturday. All were taken with my new (to me) Pentax-F SMC 70-210 lens. In some of these photopgraphs, I was seeing how the lens handled being used into the sun. All in all, i am quite happy with the results.

Curtain Call

Chicago, photography and Pentax users

montoya — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 19:11:48 +0000

Augenblick: a moment in time

44 Pentax Photographers

(Including me)

May 7 – June 12th @ the DANKHaus German American Cultural Center

If you’re in the Chicago area, drop by and take a look.

The Laptop challenge.

montoya — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 20:19:26 +0000

So about five years ago I acquired a cheap old Sony Vaio PCG 505G. It had 64megs of ram, and a 233mhz processor. The positive is that it was thin. So it was still useful for using the internet, and that is about it. I brought it with me on one of my trips to Rochester. My Mom fell in love with it, and well… it kind of went on permanent loan to her.

Flash forward a few years and it became totally obsolete. Performance wise it had been left in the dust before 2001, but with the netbooks that are out these days, Its size advantage was gone. Plus I could not even tether with my cell phone because It was only running windows ME (the worst OS ever conceived).

My challenge to myself this year was to install Linux on the system and breath new netbook style life into this relic. What made this interesting is that the laptop has no cd drive. And only an external floppy drive. It does have a 1.1 USB port. And that is how I got Linux (Puppy Linux to be exact) on the system. Thanks to a floppy image called WakePup2, I was able to boot to a USB image of the PL image and install. Shortly thereafter I was able to connect to the internet by tether with my cell phone. Since I know I can do that now, my next goal (next year) will be to place a PCMCIA WIFI card in it. When that is complete, this laptop will be an underpowered netbook. Perfect for surfing the net with. Except no youtube…

I think i need to upgrade the ram to 96 megs as well. I really do love linux.

Welcome to 2010

montoya — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 21:52:28 +0000

So I spent my New Years eve at my moms house. I suppose I could of gone out, but the drunks on the road always scare me. Plus I knew I could watch a perfectly good fireworks show about 30 seconds from the front step. After watching the show I finished bringing in the new year with Chocolate Stout and a pile of cocktail weiners. Ohhhh yeah.

Later in the day I finished the fireworks photos in the Lightroom 3 beta. I’m completely in love with this program, and will be purchasing it. The learning curve was low. Only thing I had to look up was how to change the aspect ratio of the crop tool. (Changing from 2:3 to 3:2) This program does everything I do in my own work flow, but makes it easier. From the spotting tool, to the presets.. perfect.

Here are a few photos from the last days of 2009 to the first minutes of 2010.

The semester is done. Oh wait, not it’s not.

montoya — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 03:36:30 +0000

So we had finals last week. All done. But we still have to come in next week and go over the exams. Plus we have clincals all next week. Which also means I’m going to be super busy because I have to make two days. Was only one, but then my car broke down (ish) on Thursday. Meant I had to miss on Friday. Argggg. I flushed the transmission today with the help of my father. Now the car is operating perfectly. The shifts are smoother than they have ever been before. Go figure. Actually, I had brought my car to a few places to have this done before, but no one would touch it. I figured that now would be a good time to try because it wouldn’t hurt (car refused to shift out of first).

I’m just ready for a vacation. Anywho, here is a video made on the Animoto website of a whole bunch of my photos from over the years.

New Adam Kokesh video!

montoya — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 19:48:17 +0000

Lessons learned this semester

montoya — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:10:23 +0000

A few lessons learned this semester (not including all the normal stuff that was learned in the classroom and clincials)

1) Getting sick sucks. I mean really sucks. Especially when I don’t even know what I had. All i do know is that it tapped my energy. I’m still not running 100%. I had to skip out the the 2nd half of lab today just to have the energy to do 9 hours in the clinic. On the way home, I was close to falling asleep at the wheel. And this is on almost a full 8 hours of sleep.

2) 6 hours of class followed by 9 hours of clinical just drained me. Actually, if I could do 9 hours of clinical and follow it up with 6 hours of class, that would be better. Way better. Might seem like the same, but it is not.

3) Yawn

4) ???

5) Profit

6) This semester can’t be over with fast enough. Bring on the 4th semester ASAP!