Nicole + Neal {the wedding}

Nicole and Neal were married at the Olmstead in a beautiful ceremony. The weather was perfect, rare for a Louisville weekend this spring. We had time for a few nice shots outside before the ceremony. Nicole’s beautiful dress was handmade by her mother, and suited her personality perfectly!

Widget Wednesday #1

Sharing an Affinity for Gadgets of All Kinds

Welcome to the first edition of Widget Wednesday, where I will examine a product, device, or piece of software that makes my life easier…or just has really cool lights and buttons.  If you have a suggestion for a gadget that I might be interested in, leave a comment!

Antec Easy SATA – Hot Swap Hard Drive Caddy

The Problem:  Sharing catalogs over a network in Lightroom is not supported.  In addition, accessing images over a network is incredibly slow.  I needed a way for  my assistant to work in Lightroom catalogs on a different computer, both quickly and easily.

The Solution: Lightroom does not have an issue with internal or external drives, only network drives.  By installing my files on an external hard drive they can be moved back and forth between computers without compromising the integrity of the files or catalog.  The fastest way to do this is with an eSATA drive, as opposed to USB or Firewire.  Enter the Antec Easy SATA…an “internal” external drive dock. 

Cost: $29.99 at Staples

Installation:  The dock installs into an open 5.25″ expansion bay on your PC.   A SATA cable for the eSATA port is attached.  An additional SATA cable is required (not included) for attachment to the motherboard, and the dock must also be plugged into a SATA power cable.  The extent of the included documentation is a few diagrams and the instructions “Pop it in.  Pop it out.”  Not a problem since, who needs directions anyway.  Well, apparently I do because my drive did not read when I “Popped it in.”  After a quick trip to the Antec website, I did find a manual.  I guess they assume that if you are installing this piece of hardware then you are knowledgable enough to do so.  In this particular case they would be wrong.  It turns out my issue was with my BIOS setting and after changing the settings according to the (not included) manual, I was good to go.  I also learned from the manual that the button (labeled “eject button” on the included diagram) should actually be pressed when installing the drive, as well as ejecting it.

Pros: It doesn’t take up any space and there are no extra cables cluttering the desk like a traditional hard drive dock.  It’s faster than a USB or Firewire connection.  It also provides an eSATA port on the front.  And it fills up some of the insane number of expansion bays (6) on the front of my PC.

Cons: Not portable like a traditional dock.  The internal components do not look incredibly sturdy…I plan to be very gentle.  The drive does stick out 5/8″ from the bay, which is not a real issue for me but may bother some.

Pitfalls:  You must have a motherboard that supports SATA.  If your hard drives are IDE you will have to purchase more hardware to make SATA drives work.  Make sure your BIOS settings are set to AHCI and not IDE to allow for hot-swapping the drives.  Also, be sure the the drive letter assigned to the drive by each computer is the same so that the path to your files from Lightroom will work.

See you next Wednesday when I will discuss the Logitec G15 Programmable Keyboard.

Melissa + Mike {the wedding}

After having a great engagement session with Melissa and Mike, I knew their wedding was going to be wonderful. Melissa was just stunning, and Mike was glowing and grinning all day. I especially love the look on his face when he saw Melissa coming down the isle. You can see many more images from their wedding in their Facebook Album.