It is coming together....

The room that we built this year is starting to come together. I've brought down some more equipment and we now have two tables and a desk set up in a "U" shape. We had the furniture made in Dolores Hidalgo and it turned out okay except I'm finding that I need one more table. The Epson Stylus Pro 4000 printer is BIG.

Ned has the 24x60 inch desk and I have the "L" part of the worksurface which is 10 feet of space and every bit of it is covered with equipment. Fortunately we have more room and I'll add another 30x40 table that can hold the printer which takes up almost a 36" square space. The additional table will give me an open desk space for stacking prints and working. My workspace is covered with lamp, scanner, 2 LCD monitors, computer, 2 small back up batteries, 2 external HD and the printer. The maze of cables and cords is amazing and it seems like no matter how careful we try to be to have a plan for where they are plugged in and to keep them from getting tangled, they are tangled.

There is wonderful light in this room and if I were a painter or sculptor it would be perfect but I'm a photographer and I need a lower, consistent light when I'm working on images. I'm having curtains made that I can close during the day when I need to work but most of the time we enjoy this wonderful view of our street and the centro skyline.

I'm very happy with my new equipment. The Epson 4000 is an amazing printer. I knew that from other people who have one but even from the small amount of printing I've done so far with it, it looks like it has wonderful paper profiles and I'm not seeing the blocking of the shadows as much as I do with the Epson 2200.

The other thing that I'm very pleased with is my new LCD monitor. Many photographers are sold on high-end CRT monitors for imaging because they feel that they can be calibrated to a higher degree of accuracy. But the high-end CRTs are going out of production. I did a lot of research and ended up buying the NEC LCD 1980SXi that has the widest viewing angle of any LCD, the capability of color calibration and is much lighter weight and has a much smaller footprint than an equivalent CRT. I bought the 19" because I have another LCD that I can use for palettes in PhotoShop, but primarily because the cost of the 21" was almost double the cost of the 19" monitor. Using my new Eye-one display-2 from Gretag MacBeth to calibrate the NEC monitor and using the paper profiles for the printer is giving me an excellent color match between the monitor and the print.

Last, but not least, is the new computer, a HP Pavilion a1130n with AMD Athlon 64 3500+ processor, upgraded with a 128 Meg video card, two more Gigs of RAM for a total of 3 Gigs and an additional HD. So far it is performing like a champ with my digital files.

The open closet where I have a 4ft. chrome rolling shelf storage unit is providing easy access storage. If I can find another 40-44 inch similar unit I may add that. We still want a couple of comfortable chairs and a hammock for in front of the fireplace as well as a bookcase, armoire or some other piece for the window/fireplace end of the room. The good thing is, I don't have to do anything right away. I can take my time and when I see what our needs are and I find the right thing, I'll get it.

What a great space. I'm very fortunate to have it to work in.