Its finals week so that means I'll be back home either on thursday or friday. First semester of college was pretty OK, and the art courses were fine in themselves. I loved the live drawing classes and I think I've improved quite a bit in that. Thankfully I didn't fail design 1 thanks to my unfamiliarity with traditional tools. Anyway I've ordered Painter X which arrived back at my home in NYC today. Missed delivery, but it I think it will find its way safe to my mac, so I can't wait to start playing with that. I've actually gotten a lot of ideas as per what my next project will be about. I want to do some more research before I start up though, since I have a rough idea of what I want to get accomplished, though I haven't quite put a script together yet.

Oh, I also have my Macbook Pro, CS3 design premium and Holga 120N. I'm experimenting with CS3, so in the mean time look for updated versions of some of my work, maybe some more designs down the line. I'm going to get the film for my Holga on sunday and then I'm going to go to college on Thursday so don't expect to say any deviations involving that camera for some time.

I'd like to thank everyone for reaching 3000 hits, I've been on DA for about a year, and hopefully for years to come. Thank you for your support, and I hope it will continue well into the future

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So yesterday I bought some new filters for my Camera, a circular polarizer, a UV filter and a Warm Filter, this in addition to the IR filter I had purchased previously but started putting into good use recently. These are filters that I should have bought previously, but nothing like procrastination to teach you just how important such devices are, not to mention lacking the funds to buy them. Though I am a bit disappointed that I got the warm filter, which came with the new additions in a starter pack (as I've said, I've been procrastinating about this for quite some time) Its not as though the warm filter doesn't work, its that I don't really need it. Being a digital photographer who shoots in RAW I'm pretty much free to change colors to make a piece seem warmer in comparison to the UV filter, Circular Polarizer, and IR filter which fundamentally changed the piece in question, or alters a portion of it which would have been painstaking in photoshop. Why Hoya decided against bundling something more useful like a Neutral Density filter into the package is beyond me other than the fact that warming filters are probably cheaper to make, no one really wants them on their own, and there's more money selling the ND filter separately than selling it within a package. That being said, its not like I have a stream to capture, or a water fall, but I really don't feel like spending an additional $50 for a filter that should have been part of the beginner kit. Eventually however I'll cave and buy the ND filter, and good times will be had by all until I overuse the thing and then send it to the darkest corner of my photography bag.

Speaking of caving in, I bought a subscription today, which is nice, because of all the features and no ads, and while like the ability to have CSS and such, I can't say that the experience of having a sub in V6 is remarkably different to having no subscription. Yes I got to see how many people came to my page at x amount of time, yes I can have my own forum (If you want to use it, its there, just click on my journal button, and then add a thread) yes I can go "way back" and yes, I can view an ungodly amount of deviations at once, but I can't say that its really all that much better than using the site for free to justify the additional costs. You get to go to the subscriber's forum, which consists of two forums, the subscriber's thumbshare (as it sounds) and Membership, which is basically deviants but in a gated community and a guard dog that barks at those unfortunate enough to not have a subscription while those with subscriptions laugh at those who don't and jump aboard a zeppelin to throw down pennies at the poor. I suppose that not the best comparison however as the gated community of subscription land is just like the regular people land, except everything is painted pretty colors and there's a couple extra flowers here and there. The disparity was greater back in V5, because subscriptions was really how you would get anything done fast enough around the site, however, now that everyone pretty much has the same basic (the ones people care about) features such as viewing a deviation or a comment in the mailbox, I guess the emphasis is kind of taken out. Still, I haven't bothered to use the beta yet (which is only for subscribers) which is apparently the greatest thing ever, I guess that I'll update this journal later on if I enter the beta and find it to be the digital version of an orgasm on top of a banana sundae with sprinkles on top and then apologize to fella feverishly. But I guess only time will tell.