]]> http://ksimonian.com/Blog/2012/04/29/three-years-ago-they-were-married-at-chardonnay-golf-club-wedding-in-napa-valley/feed/ 0 http://ksimonian.com/Blog/2012/04/26/with-the-first-pick-in-the-2012-nfl-draft-the-indianapolis-colts-select-stanford-quarterback-andrew-luck/ http://ksimonian.com/Blog/2012/04/26/with-the-first-pick-in-the-2012-nfl-draft-the-indianapolis-colts-select-stanford-quarterback-andrew-luck/#comments Fri, 27 Apr 2012 00:06:03 +0000 admin http://ksimonian.com/Blog/?p=5514 With those words NFL commissioner Roger Goodell announced the selection of Stanford quarterback Andrew Luck by the Indianapolis Colts as the first pick in the 2012 National Football League draft. Luck who passed up the 2011 NFL draft to play his redshirt junior year at Stanford was once again the runner-up for the Heisman Trophy for the 2011 college football season. When the Colts released 4 time NFL MVP Peyton Manning on March 7th, 2012 it became pretty much a done deal that they would select Andrew Luck with their first selection in the draft. After meeting with several teams, Peyton Manning signed a 5 year $96 million deal with the Denver Broncos on March 20th.

Camera Data – Canon 1D mark 2, Canon 400mm f2.8 with 1.4 tele-converter ( 560 mm ) ISO 250 f4.0 1/1600 of a second.

Andrew Luck celebrates a touchdown in the 113th Big Game against Cal on November 20th, 2011 at Memorial Stadium in Berkeley, CA.

With the 4th overall pick in the 2012 NFL draft the Minnesota Vikings select USC offensive tackle Matt Kalil. Matt Kalil was a 2011 All American 1st team member who also won the Pac-12′s Morris Trophy. Having played only his junior year, Kalil becomes the 76th player from USC to be drafted in the first round of the NFL draft.

With the 70th overall pick in the 3rd round of the 2012 NFL draft the Jacksonville Jaguars selected University of California at Berkeley ( Cal ) punter Byran Anger. Few punters are selected this high in the draft, but Jacksonville needed to replace their former punter Adam Podlesh who as a free agent went to the Chicago Bears. Jacksonville is hoping that Bryan Anger can put up the same type of numbers he did during his college career where he averaged 43.5 yards a punt, and put 90 punts inside the opposing teams 20 yard line. Anger is shown here punting against the USC Trojans in a 2011 regular season game at ATT park in San Francisco that served as the Bears home field while their permanent home field Memorial Stadium in Berkeley is rebuilt and will be ready for the 2012 college football season.

Thanks for inviting me along Elisa, it was a fun day and with a great couple who had a beautiful wedding.

A couple weeks ago, the VP notified me that one of my photos was now featured on the home page of the Aquarium’s website. As the home page image rotates, here is a screen shoot showing my photo that was used.

You can view all the photos from the post, including the jelly photo HERE. Note: I did flip the jellyfish photo upside down as I thought it made a better photo that way.

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The square of photos.

While the actual team picture is taken in 1/200 of a second, there is a lot of preparation that goes on before hand to make it all run smoothly and quickly. This time lapse movie shows the process involved with the San Francisco 49ers 2011 team picture.

San Francisco 49ers Team Picture Day Time Lapse from Keith Simonian on Vimeo.

A Google search for Facebook Timeline cover photo dimensions gets you two different results. Most of the results indicate the photo should be 850 x 315 pixels to fit the space Facebook has set up. The other result that a Google search gives is that the best maximum dimension for a Facebook cover photo is 851 pixels by 315 pixels. I think 851 x 315 is the correct dimension, and that the size I’ve chosen to use on my Facebook Business Page.

Here’s how I came to that conclusion. When I finally got around to adding a timeline cover photo for my personal account I did what everybody else does, and did a Google search to find out how big it should be. The result I found was 850 x 315 pixels, and that’s the size photo I uploaded. The thing was, it always looked a little pixelated, and I never knew why as I had used a high quality image to make the cover photo. Now I know why, Facebook was stretching the photo 1 pixel to make it fit the correct dimension of 851 x 315 pixels. With the recent announcement that Facebook business pages were going to use timeline, I was determined to use a photo that showed my skills and looked great.

Since there seemed to be two answers to the question of Facebook timeline cover photos, and I wasn’t happy with the 850 x 315 answer, I decided to try out the 851 x 315 answer. I selected the photo I wanted as the cover photo for my business page, cropped and sized it down to 851 x 315 pixels and added a 1 pixel black border around the edge of the photo to improve the look. I uploaded the photo as my Facebook Business page timeline cover photo. No pixelation.

To confirm that the photo had been sized correctly, I took a screen shot of my Facebook business page and went to work checking out the photo dimensions in Photoshop. I pasted the screen shot on a new file, flattened the layers and then used the Marquee Tool set to the fixed size of 851 x 315 pixels. I moved the Marquee selection till it appeared to cover the entire timeline cover photo. I copied the selected area and then pasted the photo on a new file. Finally I added the text and areas to show that the one pixel black border appeared on both sides.  The result is the first photo in this post. I repeated the procedure with the exception of using the Marquee tool at a fixed size of 850 x 315 pixels. At that size the selected area didn’t cover the entire photo. I was able to shift the selection right and left to get the files missing the one pixel border on either side.

Voilà. Problem solved. The current correct size for a Facebook Timeline cover photo is 851 pixels by 315 pixels.

The newly established ( Feb. 29, 2012 )  Facebook guidelines on Page Cover photos mentions that the photo may not contain contact information. As such, I have removed my website info from the photo that’s currently on my page.

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