Hi. I'm Kara.
I'm a UX specialist, photographer, designer, tinkerer, and all around geek.
This is Me
I grew up in Cleveland, OH, with three younger brothers.
Right now I live near Dayton, OH, where I work for Elsevier as a senior user experience specialist on a user-centered design team. I love my job. On any given day I can be designing workflows and interactions, creating visual designs, writing code, working on specs, or some combination of all of the above.
If I had to describe myself in one word, I think that I would say “complex”, or maybe “eccentric”. I have a wide variety of interests, activities, and hobbies outside work that range from the normal (jazz-age movies, martinis) to the somewhat unusual (SCA fencing, and studying German longsword techniques). I am always busy, and generally need to be reminded every now and then to just sit back and relax.
I also read a lot. The people at the library know me by sight, if not by name.
This is my site
If nothing else, Infogirl.org can be classified as a perpetual work in progress. I have a tendency to play around with design and style and code, get bored quickly, and periodically re-do everything.
It started out as mostly a portfolio site, back in 2002 when I was getting out of grad school. At the time it seemed like a good idea to have some kind of an online presence, and it still does.
After it was a portfolio site, it was a weblog, then a porfolio/weblog, then a weblog/portfolio, but these days it’s pretty much entirely weblog with some portfolio thrown in as a seasoning.
What's with the site name? Some of my cohort in grad school used to call me the infogirl because I read a lot (still do) and had a tendency to bring up odd facts and nuggets of information (still do).
These are my cameras
I have a lot of cameras. I love photography and I love camera technology.
My primary cameras are a Canon XTi and a Canon EOS 300D (Digital Rebel) with a 28-200 mm Promaster lens. (Other lenses for the Canon include a Canon 28-400 telephoto, a Promaster Macro, a Canon Wideangle, and a Lensbaby with macro and wide angle attachments.) I drool over the really high-end EOS cameras, and would love to get an EOS-5D Mark II, but since I am not a professional photographer, I really cannot quite justify getting a $3k camera body. Yet.
I love the Digital Rebel, but I have to admit that it is not always the most convenient camera to haul around with me all of the time. Eventually I will get a smaller, much more portable, non-SLR digital that I can toss in my purse for day-to-day use.
In addition to the digital cameras I also have a small collection of film cameras, some of which are antique. This collection includes a Calumet 4x5 field camera, Kodak Brownie, Kodak Traveler II, Lomo ActionSampler, and Holga 120N. Yes, I have shot using all of them, even the antique ones. I am always on the lookout for more cool antique cameras to play with.
When using digital, I shoot primarily in RAW mode and do all pf my post processing in Photoshop CS3.
The nice people at the camera store around the corner handle all of my film development. Eventually I will get back to doing all of my own black-and-white film processing. After all, I have all of the equipment. No sense letting it all just sit in boxes in the basement.
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