AbrahamoLincolni

reading the manual, practicing and reading a couple of good books or hanging out on real photography forums and asking questions.

Not all sensors/cameras exhibit rolling shutter effect or at least enough of it to be noticeable as they've been improving camera tech. If you have a DSLR that can do video, use it. Rolling shutter will likely be more noticeable with it than the iPhone.

In the end my wife and I decided not to give him a second chance. And you're right, this wasn't really an issue about amateur photographers. It's about character issues, but I find this in many people who want to become photographers or say they want to become photographers. They spend $500-1000 at least on a new camera and don't even know how to use it properly.

I'm considering it, talking it over with my wife. He would have to change is behavior and attitude. It appears my reply to your comment was never posted. Sure send me a link to your portfolio, but if Akira says it's good, I'll take his word for it. I didn't give the full story. I told him to come meet me the next day in the morning so we could have a private talk. He didn't show up so I went to talk to his father. And right now I'm discussing with my wife how to deal with it as his father is a good friend of ours. If we decide to give him a second chance, he will have to behave in a certain way and adhere to certain rules. Both his parents want him to find a direction or focus for his future, he's been doing one odd thing after another for the past year.

So I had a long talk with his father today, he was present of course. You can imagine the way the conversation went when my friend, his father, turned to him and yelled at him for an hour. His father begged me to give him one more chance, else he will be kicked out of his house. I even got an email from the bride, who is supposed to be enjoying her honeymoon, complaining about him creeping out her friend. @AkiraDaarkst Like you said, we started out as beginners and we want to help others. I take on a few assistants a year, some from art colleges who want to get some hands on experience, others who want to see how it feels like working in a pro environment. They don't always end up becoming pro, but they learn and grow. I can guess which one of the people who commented to my topic belongs in the third group.

Ecuador, no wonder I haven't seen you online on Skype. How is it? And you're going to Bhutan next, must be an amazing trip.

I gave him a brief a few days in advance, telling him what to bring, what to buy if he needed and what I will provide for him and a schedule. He's 21 and yes he has his own car. He has a D5300 and an 8GB SD card, so I told him and even lent him some money to buy a couple of 64GB cards and an extra battery. I didn't have any SD cards since I am using compact flash on all my cameras. I brought my spare 24-70 and a SB900 flash for him to use. All I wanted him to do was stay at one spot so that me, my wife and him would form a triangle around the wedding area. This way we can cover different angles. I wasn't expecting him to catch all the important moments, but just to experience the pace of photographing a wedding. Later I wanted him next to me during the reception and dance so that he sees the moments I'm trying to catch. Instead of coming over when I told him to, I found him flirting with the girl.

So a friend of mine asked me to hire his son as an assistant last month because the kid is keen on becoming a professional photographer, and I looked at the kid's work. They were very nice. Today, his first day in a pro shoot where he can get some experience, he fucking screws up. 1st I tell him to come early, so I can use him as a third cameraman at the wedding I was photographing. He comes an hour late. 2nd he forgets to charge his camera battery and doesn't listen to what I say and does his own thing unless I keep an eye on him. 3rd he brings only a small capacity memory card. 4th he hits on one of the bridesmaids. A few days before the wedding I was going over the plan with him and told him how to prepare. Luckily my wife, who also happens to be my second shooter is there to help me out and the 2 of us manage to get through the wedding. I'm thinking of telling my friend his son won't be working with me any longer. @AkiraDaarkst, what do you think, should I get rid of the kid?

I'll do this, right now I decided to move onto reading Tai Pan by James Clavall instead. Which basically means that the intention of war is not always about annihilating the enemy but more of getting the enemy to do what you want them to do. This I think is a Clausewitzian concept. Thanks for the explanation. I don't recall hearing that dialogue in Starship Troopers movie. It must be a book thing. War is indeed fought by human beings. I'd hate to imagine if machines fought wars for us, it would be a catastrophe. Real living flesh and blood soldiers have emotions, they can make judgement calls on whether to continue fighting or retreat. A machine would just calculate the odds and keep on fighting if the odds look good even if the collatoral damage can be high.

I sure do miss the days when air travel was treated as a luxury and airline employees treated you with respect and passengers dressed nicely on the plane instead of wearing shorts and t-shirts and flip flops. These were the days

Did you also read the news where one of their passengers was bitten by a scorpion? UA is not having any good days lately.

I just finished reading Shogun. It was amazing! Now I'm starting to read On War by Clausewitz, its mentioned in the Honorverse. But I may stop and pick something else to read since its making me fall asleep.

Man, thanks for recommending such great books. I'm already a third of the way into Shogun, couldn't put it down.

Alright will check them out and add them to the To Read list.

Yeah I download a sample of this for the kindle from Amazon because of your earlier comment. It looks to be an interesting book but I had a bit of trouble keeping track of the names as you just mentioned. But I will give it a chance, don't worry. It really looks like an interesting book. You're lucky. I wish I had grown up traveling around the world like that.

Lone Wolf and Cub has already been mentioned to me, but I'll look at the Cleric. I've read that series already. Also read them already.

Must be nice, I've only been to 3 or 4 countries on vacation and never lived anywhere else outside of my own. Which ones did you live in? Do you also speak multiple languages? I've downloaded sample chapters from Amazon for some of the books you suggested and while I want to broaden my horizons by reading non-English literature some books may take me time to get used to reading. So I've decided to start with James Clavell's Shogun and my wife said your recommendation of M M Kaye's The Far Pavilions is interesting.

WOW! 10000 books. If you don't mind my asking why did your family have to move from country to country, were your parents diplomats?

@AkiraDaarkst man you've given me a ton of suggestions I think I will need more than a month to read all of them. And you've read all of them?

I'm a big fan of Asimov and have read the entire Robot and Foundation series. Also Forever War, Starship Troopers, Dune, Ender's Game and I love the Honorverse. But you do mention a lot of books I've never heard of before. Romance of the Three Kingdoms sound interesting, it sounds like an Asian Game of Thrones. Thanks for the suggestions and feel free to suggest more. I have an entire month for reading.

These recommendations are good but I have read them and they are too mainstream. I want something interesting, something new. Something I haven't heard about before.

I didn't say Hunger Games was mindless smut. I said don't recommend books that are mindless smut or cheap drivel. I put Hunger Games in the latter part of the "mindless smut OR cheap drivel".

I'm on a month long medical break from my work and will be spending a lot of time at home so I want to use the time to read some good books. My tastes in books vary so you can recommend almost any book you want, but no mindless smut or cheap drivel like 50 Shades or Twilight or Hunger Games.

It shouldn't. Your flash doesn't look like it's a unit from 20 something years ago.