A fine squirrel specimen

Named after one of the football teams in my fantasy league, this fine squirrel specimen was captured on SD Card this past fall, feasting on a slice of bread we left for him.

Howdy, all!

Well, my little business has finally gotten to the “invest in equipment” stage. In the last month I’ve added:

• A MacBook
• A Nikon D40
• An HP Photosmart C4280

and a few other bits & pieces that aren’t relevant to this post. (There will be others!)

The Photosmart came with the MacBook free (er, free pending rebate), which ended up being a much better deal than I anticipated. When I bought the MB, I didn’t realize that I’d be doing historic site photography a week later. The requirements for this photography are very specific on the print side of the equation: only certain photo paper / ink combinations can be used to make prints. Fortunately, and unexpectedly, this (free!) printer supports one of those combinations. As a bonus, it makes damn high quality prints as well.

My only gripe is that this particular model doesn’t support a black-and-white cartridge. The photo quality inks available for it are only multi-color carts, black being one of the contained colors. Since another requirement of the National Register of Historic Places is Black and White, I could really increase some efficiency by having a grayscale cartridge.

However, other Photosmart printers have grayscale cartridges available, so hopefully when the rebate comes, I’ll upgrade.

There’s something really pleasing about printing your own photographs that you’re getting paid for. Not only are you flexing your artistic might, you’re also printing money. Granted, money isn’t everything; but getting paid for doing something you enjoy kills two birds with one stone.