FAQ

1. I hear you have some photo tutorials — where can I find them?
   • They’re all right here.
2. What camera do you use? Well, that depends on what I’m doing…
   • Canon Digital Rebel Xti – this SLR started out as Jason’s camera but I sort of took it over. Ha! I take most of my card pictures with this one, using either a 50mm or 100mm macro lens.
   • Canon G12 – love this little point and shoot camera! I use it for traveling, hiking, and pictures around the house. (I had the G10, and loved it so much I wore it out!)
   • My iPhone – I always have it with me, so handy
   • Canon Elan 7n – for when I’m using film
   • Leica minilux – the hiking film camera — the lens on this is just super
   • Fuji Instax – just for fun! (I have the choco version, got it in Tokyo!)
   • Canon FT – an old all mechanical SLR — I only have one lens for it — 50mm — but have lotsa fun playing around with it
3. What lighting do you use?
   • I use natural light whenever possible, but for those times that I can’t, I have two lamps with daylight balanced compact fluorescent bulbs on my table. Love these! It’s almost perfect, the only things you have to remember are not to have any other lights on — since that would defeat the purpose of the daylight balance — and to set your white balance on your camera. Check out your camera manual for how to do this, it really does makes a world of difference.
4. Do you use PhotoShop?
   • Yes, I use PhotoShop CS3. I try to limit my use of it on photos to just sizing, cropping, and color correction. I feel cheated when I find out that a photo was digitally manipulated.
   • I used a free, open source image editing program called The Gimp for years + years before I got PS — the controls are very, very similar + you can do pretty much all the same stuff! And you can’t beat free.
5. What blog software do you use? And how do you do “live blogging”?
   • I use WordPress and I love it! WordPress is open source software, which means that it’s free + there’s a whole community of people all over the world working on it. I have a self-hosted blog, but you can sign up for a FREE hosted blog right here. I love their slogan — “free and priceless at the same time”.
   • To blog live, I have this app installed on my iphone — it makes it so easy to write posts, plus you can upload pictures right from the phone. Note that it condenses the pictures to make them smaller and that results in some loss of image quality, but it’s not too bad!
6. How do I get a personalized image to appear next to my comments?
   • Easy! Go to gravatar.com, create an account and upload an image for your gravatar (globally recognized avatar). Then post a comment with one of the email addresses you registered with gravatar.com and your image will appear next to your comment! Your gravatar will also will work on many other sites that support gravatars.
   • Note: If you don’t have a gravatar, then the “mystery man” image will be displayed instead.
7. What’s it like working for Hero Arts? And where can I get those yummy stamps? Are there openings on the Design Team?
   • Working for Hero Arts is not just a job — it’s an adventure! It’s my dream job — I’m an engineer and artist. I get to do web/techno/geeky things + creative stuff, and meet interesting people at classes + trade shows! Plus I work with a great group of people. I am truly lucky. See the About Me page and my Hero Arts bio for more information.
   • You can purchase selected stamps and kits here in the Hero Arts Online Store, or use the store locator to find an online store or retailer near you.
   • If you are a retailer and you’d like to carry Hero Arts stamps, you can go here.
   • For the design team, the best way to get noticed is to enter the Hero Arts challenges. Check them out here on the Hero Arts Blog.
   • And one thing I wanted to mention — although I do receive products from Hero Arts, this blog is my own and I’m not paid to write anything on it by Hero (or any other company). :)
8. What did you do before working for Hero Arts?
   • Before working for Hero Arts, I was a software engineer for 10 years and stamped for fun on the side. For any geeks out there, I worked on security and system management software (unix + windows), plus I worked on the Java encryption library. I have a master’s in math and computer science — yep, I’m a geek girl.
9. What computer do you use?
   • I have a MacBook and I love it! Unix rocks! I also use Linux server machines.
10. I have a question for you, where can I ask it?
    • Ask me anything here on formspring.
11. How can I contact you?
    • Send me an email — here’s a handy link. Note that I get tons of emails, so it might take me a bit to get back to you.