Tim, on being a nerd.

I've had my old glasses for almost 9 years. I've had a little girl for 2 years. I subsequently no longer have wearable glasses. Cause and effect, people. So I've been wearing glasses with only one earpiece and a bent frame for more than 6 months. I finally decided it was time to get some new glasses because I need a backup in the event that I lose a contact at a wedding or something. In fact, at the last wedding I shot, the morning of the rehearsal I found that I had missed the contact case and my right contact was dried up on the desk next to it. Luckily it was fine after about an hour of soaking in the case.

Last week for my little girl's birthday I set up a studio in the garage. I've also been wanting to try some tethered shooting, where the computer is hooked up to the camera and you can see your images instantly and adjust your lighting accordingly. So I took some (dumb) pictures of myself (like always) because no one else will pose for me and some of my new glasses.

Because I'm a nerd.

It was kind of cool, and way easier than trying to do a normal self portrait – you know, hit the self timer, run into place and wait for it to count down, hope you stopped in the spot where it was focused, run back to see if it looks the way you want, and repeat. For this I just have the laptop on the floor, hit the trackpad with my toe and take the picture, look down to see how it looks, and make adjustments to the lighting. And I can control all the camera functions from the laptop too - shutter speed, F-stop, ISO. Then I tried it with some other stuff - glasses, sunglasses, watch. They're not ads (I know, I'm full of myself) - I just pasted the logos on them to see if they could be "ad-worthy".

White background stuff is fun. I know it's overdone and simple, but some of my favorite pictures from other photographers are just on the pure white BG. I had some black velvet for a couple too. Check them out, have a laugh, mail them to your friends and tell them what a nerd I am.

Or tell me how cool my new glasses are.