Author: adam

Lessons learned from my worst sun burn

A tribute to Leslie Whitfield and survivors everywhere.

Sunscreen. It’s smelly. It’s expensive. It gets in your eyes. It clogs your pores. And for white-ass people like myself, it’s a lifestyle. I put it on my face every morning, apply another coat before day-time runs and pretty much drain the bottle if I’m going swimming or attending an outdoor event.

Yeah, I’m that guy: holding everybody up so I can run into Walgreens and raid the Coppertone section; huddling under a hat, a blanket and an umbrella during a perfect day at the beach; sweating bullets in long sleeves during the scorching desert summers.

And don’t even talk to me about tubing on the Salt River. Sorry. Stuck in a tube in the sun for four hours just doesn’t work for me. You go ahead though.

But despite my photo-paper-esque skin and affinity for the shade, I do love the sunshine and can’t get enough of the practically year-round blue skies we get here in Phoneix. And that’s why I’ve been single-handedly keeping sunblock industry execs wealthy for the past two decades. Because if I don’t wear sunblock, I will get burned. Badly. It’s that simple.

Continue reading Lessons learned from my worst sun burn

How Twitter and Foursquare ruined breakfast and saved Christmas

One check-in shows the best and worst sides of location-based social media.

My Saturday couldn’t have started any better. I woke up on my own accord feeling refreshed, with the sun and a beautiful blue sky seeping through the window. No alarm. No appointments. No noise. My girlfriend woke up smiling too and after a few lazy moments of staring at the ceiling and rolling around in the covers, we agreed that breakfast at a coffee shop would be perfect and decided to head out to Luci’s Healthy Marketplace.

It might have been the easiest dining decision we’ve made together…ever. Furthermore, we got out of the house quickly without harshing the mood by getting wrapped up in chores, laptops or TV before we left. I thought I was still dreaming.

It was mildly busy when we arrived at Luci’s, with a short line leading up to the counter and scattered one- and two-top tables throughout the store. While waiting to order, I checked-in to Luci’s on Foursquare.*

After checking-in to Luci’s and tweeting out my location, I stepped forward in line to pick up our coffee and pay for our order. As usual, I didn’t think much of the check-in or the resulting Tweet (pictured below), but little did I know, my check-in was already rippling through the social media universe.

No more than a minute later, one of the servers, a middle-aged woman, started canvassing the restaurant shouting something that sounded like, “Adam Fuller!? Is there an Adam Fuller here?”

Continue reading How Twitter and Foursquare ruined breakfast and saved Christmas

Lunar eclipse of December, 2010

Time in the shade

This image is composed of six different photos I took of the December 21, 2010 lunar eclipse and stitched together in Photoshop. The progression is the first half of the eclipse, before the moon went into full obscurity behind Earth’s shadow. The shots, which span about an hour, are arranged in chronological order, starting from the 12:00 position and progressing clockwise.

I think this mosaic is cool, and am looking to make a clock out of it, but still, I was hoping for much more color and clarity from these photos. There’s a somber rush that I get from shooting the night sky and I couldn’t wait to capture the vibrant colors of this unique event.

Unfortunately, there were a few things working against me. Some could’ve been avoided, others not so much:

  • Heavy cloud cover over Phoenix skies (bleh)
  • Equipment: 50mm/f1.8 lens; 18-55/f5.6 lens; tripod (not much zoom there)
  • Location: my patio, surrounded by street, holiday, housing and city lights (not ideal for night shots)

For these photos, I set the camera on a tripod extended to it’s highest point. I played around with the aperture mostly and found that the larger stops created too-bright and too-blurry images, so I opted for the smaller stops. Most of the photos in this image I used about an f22 stop and kept the shutter speed set to about 1/4″ – 4″ to compensate.

This is my lunar eclipse photo. There are many more photos like it. But this one is mine.

8 tips to sharpen your family photos

I shot a few family portraits over Thanksgiving and learned something from each shoot. So, now that the dust has settled and the food has finally been digested, I wanted to share a few tips that can help anybody when taking pictures of family and friends…just in time for the holidays! But before we get started, here’s one of my favorite shots I took for my friends’ holiday cards.

The baby’s expression and turn to the camera really made this photo special.

Here are my tips and some of the lessons I learned: