Grayson Kim 🥉

One more thought - Good call on a small student set - look for a warm/cool primary palette like Hansa Yellow Medium, Quinacridone Magenta and Phthalo Blue (green shade), plus Titanium White and maybe Burnt Umber for quick neutrals. For the brushes, gold taklon synthetics are great; a 1/2" flat and a size 6–8 round will cover most tasks. To keep paint workable and vibrant, mist your palette lightly with a spray bottle and use a bit of gloss medium rather than too much water, then pop your stay-wet palette in a zip bag between sessions.

To add to that - Good call above. One extra tip: the “flat” look is mostly lighting - try side window light or a simple bounce flash to add shape then pair it with a 50/1.8 (great for head-and-shoulders on a crop) or a 35/1.8 if you’re in tighter spaces. If AF is hit-or-miss wide open, use single-point AF on the nearer eye and stop down to around f/2–2.8; used copies of these primes are usually well under your budget and still light to carry.

Write a one-pager with scope, assumptions, constraints, and the 72-hour compliance gate. Offer Option A two-week reduced scope and Option B six-week full scope and with dates. Ask them to select one in writing and confirm owners.

Set boundaries kindly and though they might still press your time.

The slacker label shows up when you quietly eat the overtime, not when you push back. Scope creep is the scam that steals Saturdays. Make everything cost something: 'I can do it, but B slips to next week. confirm?' That simple price tag stops most quick jobs.

Two things often get mistaken for bad focus in dim rooms. The camera firing before it has focus and the viewfinder being out of adjustment. Set it so the shutter only releases once you get the focus confirmation and spin the little diopter wheel by the eyepiece until the letters in the display look razor sharp. way you are judging focus correctly. Switch to back button focus so the shutter only handles exposure. It prevents accidental refocus as you press down and lets you grab focus once and reframe, then shoot without the lens hunting each time. Worth a try. Avoid focus and recompose at very wide apertures or very close distances because the plane of focus can shift off the eyes. Move the active point to sit on the subject instead or step back a touch to gain depth of field, then crop later if needed. If you zoom, do it first then focus. Many zooms change focus slightly when you change focal length, so focusing after you set the zoom helps. Also pick the most sensitive point in the array for low light and keep it on a textured edge rather than a smooth surface.

If your goal is glare control the single most useful option is a circular polarizer., Rotate it while looking through the finder and stop when reflections on water or glass fade and the sky looks richer. It will cut a chunk of light so expect slower shutter speeds or higher ISO and and it can make wide blue skies uneven so ease off the effect if you see a blotchy band. For protection I keep a cap on and use a hood while shooting, then add a clear filter only when sand spray or blowing grit is on the menu. Extra glass can add flare in backlight, so do a quick test at home by shooting a lamp with and without it. Clean with a blower and soft cloth before you leave. Done.

Because the minute I answer one 10 pm ping, it becomes the norm. My nights are bath times, math homework, and trying to get two overtired gremlins to sleep, not triage for non-urgent questions. Last week I paused a bedtime story to chase a thread about a dashboard color and both kids melted down. I am not on call and I am not paid for surprise second shifts. It bleeds into the next day too because you sleep like garbage and then you are foggy at standup. So yeah, I'm salty about it. It is totally fine to set the boundary and not tank your rep. Pick a line like I am offline after 6 and will pick this up first thing unless it is blocking a release, and stick to it. Turn on Do Not Disturb and add a status or auto-reply in the chat so they see it right away. Offer an escalation path for true emergencies, like call me if the site is down, which keeps you helpful without being always on. Then talk to your manager about team norms, quiet hours, and using scheduled send so folks can dump thoughts without pinging. The reputation part comes from being reliable during the day, not from being available at midnight.

Swapped a brunch shift for 'home lab' once and accidentally DHCP'd my neighbor's smart fridge—long story, they brought me cupcakes and I fixed it. Point is, your hospitality muscle is gold for users who are hangry and confused, which is most of IT support. If money's tight, aim for A+ first, then sprinkle in basic networking and a tiny bit of scripting so you can automate the boring bits. Learn a ticketing flow, practice phone etiquette with a friend, and write down mini case studies of fixes you've done at home. On the resume, turn 'handled angry guests' into 'resolved high‑priority incidents while maintaining CSAT 95%+' and nobody blinks. Timeline wise, evenings and weekends can get you interview‑ready in about 4–8 months if you treat it like a light second job.