This year I wanted to take the twins’ portraits outside. I’d been wanting to do it at the park for a few years now, but this year the timing actually worked out well. Unlike in years past, Sam wasn’t as keen on having his photo taken so he went full anime on this one:
Even throwing Stella into the mix didn’t get him peeking:
I love the idea of having art on the gates that come down when the the restaurant is closed. Rather than the ugly grey, possibly tagged with grafitti, we get this amazing art.
I saw this when I was doing a boardwalk run this summer. I’d been visiting Coney Island for nearly 20 years at this point, but the recent revitalization has been impressive to see. That includes ideas like this art that bring happiness and joy even when Nathan’s is closed.
I made some portraits of Scarlett. I used the same setup as when I did Sam and Stella’s November portraits, except with the octobox on the left this time.
As I’ve done for the past few years now, a self-portrait at the end of the year to document how I looked this year. This year I went with both a split-tone shot and a black and white shot.
Scarlett created these models one day in October when she was feeling creative. I liked the models so much that I built a small box for photographing them. I fell behind on my photos, so I’m posting my favorite poses now.
Somewhat without intention, I’ve ended up alternating portraits for the twins between outdoor portraits and indoor portraits. This year was time for indoor portraits. (Although, to be fair, if it hadn’t been freezing, I might have ended up breaking the tradition) Here’s the setup I used:
It’s a variant on a setup that has been very successful for me with portraits of the kids. I went back to a white background for the first time in a few years. The last time I used it with Scarlett I had an uneven white that looked horrendous to my eye and was a real pain in the butt to try and correct in Photoshop (or was it GIMP?). I never got it quite right and ended up sticking to the black background for a while. But I wanted to do something different. So this time I grabbed my two studio strobes (I believe they’re 100W strobes that someone got me as a present some 8 or so years ago) and threw them into umbrellas to make sure the light would hit the background evenly. With these lights I had to go to somewhere around 80% power in order to get a pure white background according to the spectrograph in camera. Then I posed the twins in front of those lights, so they needed a light for themselves. I used my old Canon 580EX inside of my gigantic octagon (I think it’s somewhere around 3 feet or more in diameter). I wanted to shoot at F8 to try and get the best chance of ensuring the twins would be in focus, so I had to push the 580EX to full power. After this session, I ended up buying a bracket so that next time I can throw my 430EX in there, too.
Sparklers were an ever-present feature of my childhood 4th of July celebrations. This year we introduced the twins to sparklers (I’m pretty sure Scarlett has used them at least once before). They kids had a lot of fun and there were a couple burn-scares, but I think it was worth the slight parental anxiety. (Did our parents care? They seemed a lot more laize-faire about us with sparklers, but maybe they were just good at hiding their fears?) Took out the DSLR and introduced the kids to light painting. Scarlett had the winning light-painting photo that made it past the multiple discard passes.
Because of my age relative to the era of computer, for a good portion of my life computers were Serious Things used for work and school. They also belonged to the family and there’s no way we could have gotten away with putting stickers on them without getting in trouble. So back in 2006 when I went to Blackhat and Defcon, for the first time I saw people’s laptops covered in stickers. The EEE PC (new at the time) had a meetup session where I saw others who’d painted their machines various colors. I’d ended up with a bunch of stickers after Blackhat and Defcon, so I decorated my first-ever laptop, an Acer.
I love just about everything in this shot. Even the hair is pretty neat, although I would have preferred for it not to cross the middle of Scarlett’s face.
There was something about this image that reminded me of older snapshots. I think it’s the fact that it’s a candid moment, not perfectly sharp as Scarlett moved out of the focal plane; but it’s not out of focus - you can see that from the shirts. So when I was processing the shot, I went for an older look. I think I ended up applying a Kodachrome effect.
It was time to take some portrait shots of Scarlett. As I was getting set up, I decided that I wanted to try something new; something I’d struggled with before, but never been able to succeed at - a flash highlight of a black background. I’d seen Gavin Hooey use the technique to great success on his Adorama TV show on Youtube. But somehow I’d just never been able to get it to work well. So I decided to try and mess around with the setup before the photo shoot. Eventually, I found something that worked well for me. I think, reviewing the photos for the fifth time now, that as I have it set up, it works best for the closeup shots. For the 3/4 shots, it probably should have been either dropped a little lower or maybe pulled away from the background a bit more to spread it out a bit more. The setup looked like this:
I thought last year’s description was perfect, so I’m going to repurpose it here. Yeah, yeah – even before Instagram was a thing my family was already making fun of me for taking self-portraits or for my 365 project of self-portraits 8 or so years ago. But for me this is part of my most primal photographic urge; even stronger than the urge to create art. It’s the urge to document my life and the life of those around me. And so I take these self-portraits at roughly the same time every year to be able to view them as a series documenting my aging. And so here is the one I took in 2019.
Over the years I’ve taken many, many photos of my kids at Coney Island. Lots of them have come out great. But I think this batch of photos is among the best photos I’ve taken of the kids at Coney Island thus far.
In some cases, it’s the expressions on the twins’ faces.
I’m on a motorcycle!
I see you!
Yeah, I know how to use this
Other times, I succeeded in getting the perfect action shot.
Baby birds in BBQ prep station - the mom thought it was the best place to make a nest
I thought I’d blogged before about the bird who made a nest in my BBQ prep station, but a couple quick searches didn’t find it. So the background is that this bird decided the best place to nest is at my BBQ prep station which has a couple shelves that basically look like a bird house (a small, circular hole). I tried to frustrate the bird out of doing it by dumping out the nest daily. At some point I let the bird win. A few months later, these baby birds were born.
Based on the file modification dates, I went from using the Digikam SQLite database to using their embedded MySQL database in May 2018. I did it because at the time everyone was saying that for a large database it’s better to use SQL than SQLite. For a long time it seemed to work well enough like that. But, for the last few months, MySQL hasn’t quite been right. It’s been complaining about issues with InnoDB. Unfortunately, in my Googling I couldn’t figure out how to attempt to fix that issue with an embedded database. All the solutions seemed to involve using a “real” MySQL. So, sick of all that, I decded to go back to SQLite. Since launching Digikam (for the past two days) just causes my computer to go to a load average in the 50s and lead to an unending stream of SQL errors, I had to move the folder that contained MySQL and start from scratch. It was also an opportunity to do what they recommend and have the database reside on an SSD.
Back in March we went to the Baltimore Zoo and I took my 120-400mm lens. I think this may be the first time I’d taken that lens to this Zoo (although I’d taken it quite a few times to the National Zoo in DC). I took lots of photos, but some didn’t come out the way I wanted and others just looked too much like they were in a zoo. I wanted (as much as I could) to have photos that could have been taken in the wild. I didn’t succeed with all the photos I chose for this post, but I was happy with the way they came out.
Back in March it was an incredibly windy day so we decided to go to the park to fly a kite. I also took my DSLR because it’d been some time since I’d used it and thought I might get some good shots. This one was my favorite one and I thought it really captured a special moment.
As I continue to work through my backlog of photos from last year (I’m finally done with 2018 after this post!), I come to my annual self-portrait. Yeah, yeah - even before Instagram was a thing my family was already making fun of me for taking self-portraits or for my 365 project of self-portraits 8 or so years ago. But for me this is part of my most primal photographic urge; even stronger than the urge to create art. It’s the urge to document my life and the life of those around me. And so I take these self-portraits at roughly the same time every year to be able to view them as a series documenting my aging. And so here is the one I took in 2018.
If there’s one pleasure I was denied by growing up in Florida, it was getting to play with the fall leaves. (Of course, I was spared having to rake them - something that takes me a good afternoon here if I do it well). But my kids get to enjoy it.
Sam in the leaves
Sam’s expression notwithstanding, I wonder what it is that kids enjoy about it. Is it making a mess of a pile? Is it the crunch of the leaves? The novelty of it all? Scarlett’s been doing it for a while and she still enjoys it. Whatever it is - I’m glad I get to be there to see it and enjoy their enjoyment.
Just as with the farm portraits, this year both kids were enthusiastic about the portraits. I was bracing for Sam to once again hate the idea of portraits, but his urge to do what his sisters were doing was stronger - or maybe he’s just over whatever he hated about it last year. I’m really happy with how the portraits came out this year - particularly for Sam. It helps that the little guy is ALWAYS smiling (unless he’s been told he can’t do something). Here’s my favorite Sam portrait:
Another year and the kids grow older. Last year was a disaster - the twins did NOT want their photos taken. We didn’t get any good portraits. This time everyone was game and we got good portraits - at least the first time around. When we reconvened a little later, the kids were over the idea of pumpkin photos, or at least Scarlett was.
Funny thing about this is that I could say this reflects their moods, but really only Stella is being genuinely Stella. Usually you can’t catch Sam without a smile on his face (although he *is* going through the whiny 2 year old phase), and Scarlett’s the most neutral.
Danielle and I went to Mount Vernon back when we first moved here and were exploring new things to do in our free time that were unique to the area.
We’d thought of bringing our parents to see Washington’s house and property, but the timing never quite worked out - you really want to visit in the Spring or Fall, not during the Summer or Winter. So it remained a place we’d only been to once even as we made multiple trips to the same couple Smithsonian museums and zoos.
This Easter we went to the farm so they kids could hunt for eggs there and then enjoy the farm. Unlike my childhood, Easter’s pretty cold up here as you can see.
It’s pretty ridiculous to me, considering almost my entire childhood consisted of going to the local park.
Stella’s been enjoying horseback riding for a bit now, but this was the first time she was old enough to do it on her own without me holding onto her the entire time.
I brought out all my old cars for the kids to play with. They’re having a blast even if they don’t know who any of the old McDonald’s toys are representing. I have the Chip n’ Dale Rescue Rangers DVDs, but the kids haven’t shown interest in it yet. (They find it way scarier than Duck Tales)
For the past couple years (ever since my mom got back into photography), I’ve been trying to get her to come in the winter to go photograph American Bald Eagles at Conowingo Dam. They tend to be there from around November to about early January and I usually go in December. This year at the semi-last moment she decided to visit and I suggested we go try and photograph some eagles. So she brought her long lens and we took off. Of course, the one day we had available to do this also happened to be the coldest day of the 2017-2018 winter so we were physically being tortured. I had told her ahead of time to make sure to get long johns, so we didn’t get hypothermia.
I took Sam and Stella to the park on Columbus Day (Scarlett was in school) and they were finally old enough that I could step back to take photos while they worked their way through the jungle gym.
I had been experimenting with a Van Dyke and I would soon be shaving it off, so I took a few self-portraits with the facial hair. First a straight-forward one:
Then I couldn’t decide between a high key (which I rarely do) or a straight-forward black and white, so here are both:
Going back to where I was before posting Halloween costume photos, a baseball game I went to as part of Dan’s wedding festivities. Got some good shots relative to my usual luck. Had to push things a bit to be able to get the shutter speed I needed so the ISO’s a bit higher than I would have preferred.
Jumping forward (I’m still generally working on photos from August because I’ve fallen behind with other responsibilities and playing some video games for Extra Life), we get to Halloween photos. Once again these awesome costumes were sewn by my mother-in-law.
I got pretty lucky to arrive as they had some neat birds out where you could get right up next to them. There were also some cool birds out in the bird sanctuary area.
Each of the three kids is a little different, of course. Sam LOVES loud things. He loves cars and trains and planes and …. lawnmowers! When I cut the grass he follows me around. When others cut the grass he wants to follow THEM around.
The weather was finally improving and so we figured it was a good time to take the twins to the zoo for the first time. When Scarlett was around the same age she didn’t care for the animals as much. She was much more interested in the kids around her. So we weren’t sure if the kids would enjoy it. The National Zoo seemed like a wise choice since it was free to enter.
Got together with Scarlett to shoot a portrait session for her fifth year of life! I can’t believe 5 years ago she was fighting for her life at the Johns Hopkins NICU. (Support them through my Extra Life campaign) Thanks to Dan getting me a boom stand for my birthday or Christmas (I don’t remember which) I could have a hair light and keep her hair from fading into the background as I made sure it was pure black (or close enough).
Every year I do a self-portait to document the passing time and to keep up to date on various studio lighting techniques. Here’s the series I did last year:
One of my favorite photo sets was from the first time Scarlett was running around chasing bubbles. I tried to do the same with the twins, but since they were less familiar with bubbles, they decided to catch them with their faces…
The photos appearing over the next few days are from the first time we took them out to run around on the driveway. Before that, they’d always been pushed in tricycles or strollers.
Year one with Sam was a year full of smiles. There almost isn’t a thing you can do that he won’t smile at. I think the only times I haven’t seen him smile were during teething and when someone took a toy from him (usually Stella).
We did it, we got through a year with twins. We had a lot of help - mostly from my mother in law, but also from my parents and with a little help from our friends. With Stella it was extra tough because we didn’t know for the first couple months that she was lactose intolerant. Once we figured that out, she was less miserable and life was good.
Finally got time to review the photos from the birthday party. We got lucky because we took a bet that the weather wouldn’t be too cold to have an outdoor birthday party at the park. Everything worked out and the weather was great! Sam and Stella were still a little too young to enjoy the park, but the older kids had a blast. Dina did a great job with their birthday cakes, recreating the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse in fondant. Overall, Sam and Stella behaved really well - not trying to smash the cake or anything - and it was fun all around.
[caption id=“attachment_12341” align=“aligncenter” width=“840”] Sam’s First Carousel Ride[/caption]
Why do kids enjoy carousel rides so much? Shoot, why do we have so much nostalgia for them as adults? I have no idea. I could probably put together some BS about a cultural memory of horseback riding, but frankly I think it’s just the first amusement park ride a kid is able to go on. This is Disney before your tiny brain can even comprehend the existence of such a place. And, unlike a car, I think it’s pretty evident even to the kids that there is no utilitarian function here - you end up roughly where you started.
I figured this might be the only year I can pick their costume, so I *had* to go with The Wonder Twins from the old Super Friends cartoon. My mother-in-law sewed up the awesome costumes.
That near-year flew by! I can’t believe a year ago we were nervously attending Dina’s wedding, unsure if the kids were going to want to pop out early and steal the show.
Every year since Scarlett was born we’re been going to Clark’s Eliok Farm to get a pumpkin to decorate the house (and in later years for Scarlett to carve). This time was the first year for Sam and Stella. Overall they did extraordinarily well for 11 month olds who’d never been to a pumpkin patch before. Only Stella cried and that was only after it had gone on for a while.
When I went to do the 10 Month Photos for the Twins, Scarlett really wanted to participate. She helped me with the color picker and white balance. Then, afterwards, she wanted to do these veil photos. My favorite thing is that I didn’t tell her to do ANY of this. This is what she wanted to do and I just photographed. I enjoy her creativity.
Thanks to having Scarlett be the first photo with a color checker that has a white balance section, I was able to get the lighting and white balance perfect in that photo and then copy those settings to the other photos. After that, just a few tweaks to get each photo perfect. Allowed me to make the most of my limited time. Enjoy the photos!
Once kids learn how to open doors, drawers, etc - it’s all they do. Overall, it’s not too bad - they’re learning how the world works, gaining physical skills, etc. But unless you’ve child-proofed the crap out of every single thing that can be opened, it becomes very easy for the kids to make a mess. Since they are (as of late September/early October) currently obsessed with opening their drawers, we practically never play with them in their rooms.
Once again just assigning intention to some random toddler stuff, but I just love how he looks like he just heard his favorite team won the World Series, or something.
While I think that part of what really makes this image work is the way I converted it to black and white, I do really envy my wife for having a good eye and good timing to capture the photo.
I just noticed there’s a watermelon on the ground next to Scarlett. That isn’t some kind of asian ritual, shame on you if you thought that. Anyway, Scarlett had her first day of school a while ago. I guess it can be an emotional time for some parents - that’s what I’ve heard on the grapevine. For me the only emotion was excitement! I was curious to see how she’d do in school and what she’d think of it. She’d never been in daycare, but we did do a couple one-week classes this summer and she seemed to enjoy those. Turns out that school appealed to some of her nature - wanting to know things and wanting to be around other kids. She’s excited about school every day and sad on the weekends when she doesn’t have school. Couldn’t ask for a better start to her educational career.
It’s a recurring theme that we forgot that our kids are people, just tiny people who perhaps haven’t finished developing all of their mental and emotional abilities yet. You expect them to eat the same thing every day and like the same TV shows and songs. But we aren’t like that, why should they be? That’s often made pretty evident to me with Scarlett and photos. Sometimes she’s dying to be in photos and ends up photo bombing everyone. Other times it doesn’t matter how much it means to me to have a photograph of a particular event or moment in her life. She does NOT want to be photographed and nothing can make her participate.
Sam constantly reminds me of Linus from The Peanuts. He loves nothing better than to cuddle with a nice soft blanket or toy and he can’t keep his thumb out of his mouth. I was successful in keeping Scarlett from getting into that and we had to make Stella stop because she kept throwing up. No luck with Sam, but I’ve yet to see a mentally stable adult sucking their thumb, so we’ll get through it eventually. (First time parents should remember that with everything - like potty training - have you ever seen someone who doesn’t have mental issues who isn’t a potty trained adult?)
I am flabbergasted at the level of detail in the items created for the Calico Critters toy franchise. I’m not surprised it’s Japanese (although I wouldn’t have been surprised if it were German either). But what fascinates me more is how Scarlett uses the toys to approximate her life. It reveals what she pays attention to and what she imagines is going on in the heads of the adults around her.
Scarlett’s first time at the beach was much younger - five or six months - but with the twins it was just a lot harder to go on vacation. There are two of them to deal with, to pack formula for, etc. Also, for a long time Stella would spontaneously throw up. We’d dealt with that with Scarlett when we went on the trip to her first Christmas - where she kept throwing up in the car. It’s not fun.
It’s pretty crazy how much Scarlett has grown since she first started going to Coney Island. Before, there were only a few rides she liked or could go on. Now she’s going on roller coasters! I wonder if she’ll want to go on adult coasters with me when she’s old enough. I guess we’ll see what thinks about being twisted and turned about.
I was surprised I was able to get a decent fireworks shot with my cell. Of course, compared to my DSLR, it was a lot more random and i had a lot more crap shots that I couldn’t use than I get with my DSLR where I have exact control of f-stop, shutter speed, etc.
When I saw this happening by my garage it freakin’ BLEW MY MIND! As a kid who grew up in America, I’d heard about spiders and their proclivities for climbing water spouts via kiddie propaganda - aka Nursery Rhymes. But I’d NEVER, in my 30+ years of life, actually seen a spider climbing a water spout before.
I did not stay long enough to see if the rain would wash the spider out and if he would climb again if the sun came back out. I’ve got stuff to do, I’m a grown up! WITH KIDS, EVEN!
I’m catching up on my photos before I get further than 2 months behind and I came across this panorama that I didn’t even remember creating.
It’s interesting that, at least to my eyes, it’s easier to see the second rainbow on the left and I don’t even see it on the right. Also, this What If is particularly relevant and I’d read it just before going to the party.
This is a short series I’m going to run here on the blog featuring photos from my most recently developed roll of medium format 120 film taken with my Yashica A twin reflex lens camera. I’m grouping photos together by subject.
Between the last post and this one is one photo that didn’t turn out. I’d taken a photo in the woods during my Nude in Nature photo shoot that, unfortunately, was severely underexposed. For a year the camera sat untouched. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to shoot. There isn’t as big a street photography scene here as there is in NYC. Because I had ISO 160 film in the camera, I couldn’t use it for indoor shots. So what to do? Well, I started talking photography with one of Katie’s aunts and so I decided to bring the Yashica to Dan and Katie’s Engagement Brunch. And, who better to take a photo of than my grandfather. He’d probably been photographed with 120 film when he was young. It’s not a technically great photo what with the leaf shadows. But I like it. Still, this is what shooting film helps you remember - you need to look at all the detail before you shoot. You don’t get a redo by the time you have the film developed.
This is a short series I’m going to run here on the blog featuring photos from my most recently developed roll of medium format 120 film taken with my Yashica A twin reflex lens camera. I’m grouping photos together by subject.
It’s interesting that after the photos I took at the park, I put the camera away for almost exactly 4 years - these photos are from 13 April 2015. We don’t go to the Cherry Blossom Festival every year because it seems pretty pointless. The same trees and masses of people do not make for the best of times. But, with Scarlett finally 3 years old we figured she might enjoy it this time around.
This is a short series I’m going to run here on the blog featuring photos from my most recently developed roll of medium format 120 film taken with my Yashica A twin reflex lens camera. I’m grouping photos together by subject.
These photos were taken on 30 April 2011 when Danielle and I went to Centennial Park. I tend not to be an absolutist with most things. I am neither of the opinion that digital is the only way nor that film cameras are some magical instrument capable of some authentic capture that cannot happen with digital. Instead I cherish each for their different properties. One of the neat things with film cameras (especially given that we have digital cameras and film is just extra), is forgetting what you shot and being pleasantly surprised when you get your roll back.
Well, everyone’s growing up. Dan’s the last to get married (the youngest three siblings don’t count because there’s too big a gap). Here are some photos from his engagement party.
Stella and her great-grandparents at Dan's Engagement Party
Eric and Dan at Dan's Engagement Party
Eric, Dan, and Katie at Dan and Katy's Engagement Party
Double Rainbows!
Double Rainbows!
Dan, Katie, and Rainbows!
Dan, Katie, and Rainbows!
Somewhere over the rainbow!
Dan, Katie, and Rainbows!
Scarlett and the Rainbow
Scarlett and Abuelo Roman at Dan's Engagement Party (and a rainb
Scarlett and Abuela Carmen at Dan's Engagement Party
Scarlett and Abuela Carmen at Dan's Engagement Party
A great photo doesn’t necessarily need good planned posing. Take a look at this shot of Tony, Alex, and Scarlett:
I didn’t plan it, but I did have to wait for the right pose to present itself. It would be a tighter story without Scarlett, but I think it still conveys a coherent message: kids enjoying ice cream and conversing. A kiddie version of going to the bar, essentially.
Lots and lots of people ask on Reddit every single day how to get photos that look like they were created with VSCO. Basically - crushed blacks and split-toned. Everyone always gives instructions on how to do it in Lightroom. But no one ever talks about how to do it in RawTherapee, so I decided to create this little tutorial.
Take what you learn here and adapt it to fit your style.
We’re hardly ever dressed up so nicely. So when we all got dressed up for Dan’s engagement party, I wanted to get a quick family portrait before we left. The pose wasn’t perfect due to the rush, and I’ll be elaborating a bit more on that in a future blog post, but I do like it as a bit of record keeping. Slightly more than a snapshot, but not how I’d have done it if we weren’t in a hurry.
After we were done doing our multi-generational photos, my mom put Stella on the grass to take some portraits. If you follow her on Facebook, you already know how those turned out. I took a few. These two were my favorites:
Ever since Sam was born, I’ve been looking forward to a 4 generation male portrait. I’d done a female line portrait with Scarlett up to her great-grandmother. It was finally time to do the same for me. While we were out there and dressed up, we took a few other configurations of family photos. All the males are wearing guayaberas, a traditional shirt worn in the Caribbean, especially in Cuba.
It’s a time-honored tradition for us to photograph babies in the purple bucket. We did it for Nam, Lan, and Scarlett. Now it was time for the twins to do it.
Twins in Purple Bucket - 2016-07-04--004-1
Twins in Purple Bucket - 2016-07-04--021-1
Twins in Purple Bucket - 2016-07-04--032-1
Twins in Purple Bucket - 2016-07-04--034-1
Twins in Purple Bucket - 2016-07-04--046-1
Twins in Purple Bucket - 2016-07-04--047-1
Twins in Purple Bucket - 2016-07-04--055-1
Twins in Purple Bucket - 2016-07-04--060-1
Twins in Purple Bucket - 2016-07-04--063-1
Scarlett wanted to do it again, so now we have this comparison. Baby Scarlett:
I wanted to take a photo of Scarlett on this background with this dress. She’s in her crazy 4 year old phase, so the poses were all of her own design0. The only one I was able to direct her to do was the one with the glasses. Here’s the lighting diagram:
So much I want to say all at once…I hate when that happens - makes me wish we could speak in parallel threads. Well, I guess I’ll start with the credit. There are lots of photos I’ve posted on here taken by Danielle. But usually by the time I get a chance to post photos I can’t remember for sure who took the photos. Generally, if the photo is taken with the Canon Powershot S100 it’s a greater than 80% chance it was taken by Danielle. But not only has not much time passed since the photo was taken (allowing me to know it was Danielle who took it), but it’s just so perfect, I had to make sure to credit her for having the photographic eye.
I meant to write about the lighting setup in the blog post in which I uploaded the photos from the 7 Month photo shoot, but with twin 7 month olds, there’s never enough time for anything - even with my mother-in-law in town helping us out. Oh well, at least I don’t have to pay per post.
First of all, I’d like to discuss the concept I wanted to go for. For the Five Month photos, I went with the balloon theme I posted about here. For month six, I didn’t do anything special. Danielle did her usual couch portraits. But this time around I had a bit more time for the photos and I started thinking about it a week or two in advance. Unlike 2 months ago, both children were able to sit on their own now for extended periods of time. As of when I took the 7 month photos, the only thing that made them tip over was when they got over-excited and tipped back. It’d been a while since I had done portraits with the black background and I wanted to switch it up a bit. Because I don’t have any formal photography training, I like to browse the work of other photographers to get ideas I can take and make my own. Gavin Hooey, who has a great series of videos on Youtube through the photography store Adorama, has a dark grey background at his studio. He likes to have a highlight behind the model rather than just a plain dark background. If you look at his photos, he does it more often than he doesn’t. I figured it might help with the look of the photos. If you don’t do it, then you really do need to use a light as a hair light in order to keep dark-haired subjects from merging into a black background.
Most of the time I avoid taking my camera to the park because I know I’m going to be busy playing with the kids and the camera would just get in the way. But this weekend I brought it for some reason and I was able to get some fun shots like this one.
One of Scarlett’s favorite things to do is to slide on this slide and then have me touch her so she can discharge all the static onto me. Sometimes enough charge has built up that it actually hurts!
When Danielle brought out a hoodie for Sam a few weeks ago, I knew I had to photograph him in it for the incongruity of him just being a little baby in a hoodie. But I wasn’t sure what look I was going to go for. Then I remembered my snoot. Hooked that up to the flash and boom, no need for Photoshop or anything - this is exactly how it came out of the camera.
Danielle mentioned that it looked like I’d messed around with the image because the strings on Sam’s photo looked fake. Actually, that’s how it was captured in the camera. The strings were reflective and, as I’m about to get into, there was a lot of light in this shoot. There are only two things I did to edit these photos. For both of them, the balloons ended up floating higher than the backdrop. So I had to extend the backdrop digitally. Luckily for other reasons that I’ll get into in the lessons learned section, I’d been trying to blow out the background and make it pure white. In computer terms, I wanted it represented by (255,255,255) or pure white. So it was less of a pain to extend the background to make it look real - I didn’t need to use a clone or healing brush. It was already white so I just painted in white (I actually did something a little more complex, but this is fine for the analogy). For Sam’s photo, the balloons and strings caused a bit of a shadow behind the strings so it’s not pure white there. The strings are so skinny that it wasn’t worth trying to paint over this with white. I tried a couple times and then gave up and reverted it.
Now that Google has released the Nik Collection for free, I wondered which is the best way to convert a color image into a B&W image. So I wanted to compare the results from RawTherapee, GIMP G’MIC Plugin, and Nik Collection in Photoshop. What follows are four videos as go through the processes.
On my way out of the house in the morning, and this great bit of art just happens due to the sun being in just the right place. I’ve never seen this in the half dozen years I’ve lived here. But this morning, it was there to give me a little mood lift.
I know that Scarlett is just 4 and she’s still learning things like putting in pupils and giving people proper heads and bodies. But sometimes I wonder if I have the next Tim Burton living under my roof. Plus I think the thick, black marker adds to the effect.
As an adult I have discovered a love of cooking. Sure, it can get mundane on a day-to-day basis, but I enjoy creating something tasty. I especially enjoy learning how to cook food that is much more expensive to eat out. Recently when I went to Costco, I was in the pork section and noticed they had pork bellies. So I wanted to try and recreate a Samgyeopsal-gui dish. So I found a recipe that included the sauces that go along with the dish and tried it out. It was a hit on the first try. Enjoy some images of my cooking:
You never know what’s going to happen when you try to take portraits of babies. Throw in the extra unpredictability of kids of any age and it’s a crapshoot whether a photo shoot is going to turn out to be fun with rewarding photos or a series of photos of your children crying.
One thing we have on our side with the studio being in the basement is that we can take photos when the kids are ready, not on a hope and prayer that they’ll be ready when we get to Sears, Target, or wherever people are getting portraits done nowadays. So we started off with easy portraits in the morning on the “Baby Portrait Couch”. Hey, it’s a tradition started with Scarlett!
I’ve been watching Gavin Hoey’s GREAT series on studio lighting. While he has a better studio than I do, he still has a small home studio so I find his advice and tutorials match what I’m able to accomplish. When I saw this video ( https://youtu.be/PIoWwx-elCE) I really wanted to try it out.
You might remember the photos from Scarlett’s birthday party. For some reason Dina wanted to hide when holding Sam. Her shoulder and back ended up being incredibly distracting in the photo. It would have been better if she would have just stood up and held him normally rather than pretend he was sitting on his own. Since we weren’t planning for this shot, I didn’t have a corresponding shot of the blank wall. Because she was not surrounded on both sides by the wall, it was hard to use the healing brush. So the guys over at Pixls.us helped me figure out this technique.
It was raining and a solitary flower had bloomed in anticipation of a spring that ended up being delayed by a sudden cold front and snow just before the first day of spring. I went out with my macro lens and the ring flash mom got me recently for Christmas.
Just in case the captions for the photos don’t appear on your RSS reader or on Facebook, here’s what I wrote as the caption to the photos:
“Inspired by title I chose for my photo for the twins’ four month photo which didn’t come out quite the way I wanted it to, I decided to do this image. I love how it came out.”
I also usually don’t post more than one version of a photo - I have a definitive version and just go with that, but this time Scarlett came up while I was trying to to figure out which one I preferred and she insisted on a different one than I would have chosen, so I decided to share them all.
I wanted to do this earlier - somewhere around 2 month portraits. I was re-energized to try the idea after seeing someone do a photo that made it look like their kid was bounding out of the crib with her stuffed animals. I did not take the Sam and Stella images from some other random image. They were right there where you see them. All I did was erase my body (or I’d be in here thrice). Still, if I were to do it again, I’d have Sam and Stella flying near me rather than against the wall. They end up too small and it lessens the impact of the shot. Well, there’s always next time. (And there’s always less edited shots!)
Welcome to a new set of posts in which I take a look at the t-shirts I’ve accumulated and comment on why I have them and what they mean to me.
It was the 1990s. I was fully into my Christian revival and the USA was into swing music. I was at a concert to see my new, favorite ska band, Five Iron Frenzy.
Back in October, I created a video showing my workflow with Digikam and RawTherapee. After spending lots of months working with both programs and tinkering to see what works best, I have updated my workflow. Based on the current versions of the programs, here is my updated workflow:
There was a good chunk of time where I was converting all my Canon Raw files into DNG files on the thought that it would be better and make them more readable in the future. But with KDE able to read Canon files as well as the libRaw in Linux - it seemed a waste of time.
This article by a professional photographer gives another reason. Certain software may not be able to produce as good a result from DNG as when the files come unadulterated from the camera.
They always say to use a little extra cable because you’re going to kick yourself in the butt if you’re short by an inch. But this is a bit ridiculous in terms of how much slack they have.
I believe that’s the cable for the traffic camera on this intersection. After seeing it a few days in a row during part of my commute, I just had to take a photo to share just how much slack they have here.
I’ve never seen it this empty before, but it still had more food than most grocery stores, including Trader Joe. (Last image will be Trader Joe chips aisle)
I’ve reduced the size to make it load faster on the net. If you want a larger size for printing out a photo, let me know. (Although these might be good enough for 4x6 in photos)
I could have gone for something more elaborate, but at this age, it’s a lot just to get them awake enough for portraits. There are plenty of months for crazier shots.
Been taking lots of shots of the kids, but one finally came out nice!
(edit: Ah, I figured it out, I can’t let the blog create resized versions of my giant files. To get the original size file (for printing) click here! It will look horrible in your web browser)
Mom got me a new LED ring flash for my birthday. I’ve wanted one for a while, but they were always too expensive for a niche subject (they’re mostly only useful for macro shots). But with an LED ring flash, the flash can be cheap because it doesn’t need to be TTL or E-TTL. It is always on so the camera just uses that light as the ambient light calculation. Again, it works best when you’re doing a macro shot. As a test, here’s my mom’s eye:
We went apple-picking just about midway into October, but this year only the Stayman apples had ripened by that time.
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They had this creepy-looking building near the apples, so I decided to take a photo. While I was processing it, I couldn’t decide which look I liked best, so here are my favorites:
A while back I wrote about geotagging my photos when I was using Lightroom. I wanted to demonstrate how much easier it is with Digikam as everything’s built in and it works nicely and quickly.
For the first time in something like 3 years I took my Sigma 120-400mm lens to the zoo. I had intended to get some Firefox (Red Panda) photos and videos, but they weren’t there. That was also a bummer for Scarlett as seeing the Red Pandas was the reason she’d asked us to take her to the zoo.
First off we saw one of the pandas:
But what was a lot of fun was taking photos of the birds; birds that would have been quite hard for me to see in the wild. I think they came out pretty nicely considering the darkness in the bird house and the fact that I was hand-holding the lens. It seems like some of the higher ISO photos didn’t even have too much noise, so I’ll explore using it in the future to get the exposure a little more correct in camera. (if the photos look blurry when you click on them, give it a little time to load)
Recently we went to the pumpkin patch to get a couple pumpkins for the house and for Scarlett to have some fun at the farm. Here’s a gallery of my favorite photos from that visit and aftermath:
Back in May I posted a video of my RAW Workflow in Adobe Lightroom. Now that I’m fully on the Linux photography bandwagon, here’s a video of my current workflow with Digikam and RawTherapee:
Coney Island is quite photogenic at night, but even I surprised myself (who had gone a few years ago specifically to take photos there are night) with just how photogenic when I got on the carousel with Scarlett (and her cousins). Here are some photos from that night:
We had an inflatable pool for use with ball pit balls, but I thought it would be fun to take it outside so Scarlett could play with a water in a different way than usual.
Back when I was looking into doing all my photography on Linux I saw that whenever I would add a tag to a bunch of photos that it would crash Digikam. I filed a bug and was told it was a problem with Baloo that would be fixed in Digikam 5. I wanted my photos to have metadata that would be indexed in Dolphin and Baloo search, so I tried to deal with it as I moved to doing all my photography on Linux. But after it kept crashing as I worked on my July photos, I had enough. I turned off Digikam and Baloo integration and am no longer having crashes. Here’s what it needs to look like in the settings if you’d like to do this too:
I’ve been looking forward to this moment for a long time - Scarlett finally plays on her own, allowing me to photograph her. It’s much harder to capture the awesome moments if you’re also playing along with your little one. I have lots of spontaneous photos of her extended cousins (and even my adopted brothers) at a young age, but a lot less of her because of that. Here’s a batch from April:
This year was the first year since Scarlett was born that we went around the entire Tidal Basin. I’d say it was well worth it as we all had a good time and I even got some good photos out of it!
Scarlett and Danielle at the Cherry Blossom Festival
I found one way around the situation involving a DNG going to RawTherapee and creating a JPEG image that’s missing the title and tags when read by Digikam’s Exiv2 library. It may not be perfect, or even the best way. But it’s one way around the issue that I was easily able to confirm with about 5 minutes of messing around today. First up you want to tell Digikam to make XMP files to go along with all files:
Issues with tags and titles aside, I am really liking RawTherapee so far as my Lightroom RAW processing replacement. I wanted to document my process for getting to a black and white photo that I like both as a tutorial of sorts, but also to document for myself how it works with RawTherapee.
I’ve activated here one of my favorite features RawTherapee has that Lightroom does not, two windows showing just a small region up close. Too often I’m stuck zooming in and out of an image to check various parts of the image as I make changes. It’s not as crucial with this image, but I just wanted to test out the feature.
After having filed some bugs and spent a bit of time trying to figure out what’s going on, it appears that the issue with the metadata not carrying over from my DNG and CR2 files to the JPEG is not in any way RawTherapee’s fault. The problem is where Exiv2, the library used by Digikam, is expecting to look for this data. Of course, what I don’t understand about this is that Exiv2 is what wrote the data to begin with. Why write it to a location they were not going to be able to read from? Or maybe they only expect it to be there in DNG and CR2 files, but not JPEGs?
Two redeeming bits of news for RawTherapee (even though one of them means there’s still something to be solved before I can switch completely to this new bit of software).
When updated to the latest RawTherapee (the version in Fedora 21’s official repositories is old), the issue with pink images disappears
RawTherapee is indeed preserving the metadata in the JPEG. The problem is that it’s doing so in a manner that Digikam does not read through the exiv2 library. I’ve filed a bug report and hopefully this can be resolved. Once that’s done, I’d be able to leave Adobe Lightroom behind. If I wanted to, I could use the new software now, safe in the knowledge that the metadata was being written, but until it’s time to replace my photo hard drive (later this year), I won’t be moving the photos over to Linux.
Last Fall I started considering moving away from Lightroom after having used it for nearly a decade. Back then I was making use of the student price to actually be able to afford it. Competition from Apple Aperture and other programs caused it to eventually drop to $150 per version. But Adobe seemed to be moving more and more towards a subscription-only model. Lightroom is still available standalone, but it appears the rest of the CS suite (including, for example, Photoshop) are on the treadmill now. While there are surely some benefits to being able to rent Photoshop and Adobe’s awesome video editing software when you need to do a project rather than for a thousand-plus fee, one way I’ve afforded Lightroom is not upgrading every year. So while it’s cheaper to pay monthly than buying outright (at the prices they had when they went subscription), I rarely found the upgrades worth is and so was able to save some money. I started considering alternatives. But I’d had Lightroom 5 on my wishlist and someone bought it for me for Christmas. So I figured I’d be a Lightroom user for a few more years.
note: This is a blog post about fine art nude photography. While there is no pornography or erotic image on this page, you may not want to load it up at work. Also, to see all my work with this model on flickr, you’ll have to sign in so they can verify that you’re old enough to see the photographsTo keep my front page from being NSFW, I’m going to use a MORE tag to make you jump to see the photos themselves. See you after the jump.
It’s once again time for my latest Photojojo post. For those of you who haven’t been following my blog for a long time, Photojojo is a digital time capsule service. Every two weeks they send me an email that has my most interesting photos posted to flickr from one year ago.
It’s once again time for my latest Photojojo post. For those of you who haven’t been following my blog for a long time, Photojojo is a digital time capsule service. Every two weeks they send me an email that has my most interesting photos posted to flickr from one year ago.
Scarlett at the Beach in Florida and my dinner at Universal Studios.
It’s once again time for my latest Photojojo post. For those of you who haven’t been following my blog for a long time, Photojojo is a digital time capsule service. Every two weeks they send me an email that has my most interesting photos posted to flickr from one year ago.
It’s once again time for my latest Photojojo post. For those of you who haven’t been following my blog for a long time, Photojojo is a digital time capsule service. Every two weeks they send me an email that has my most interesting photos posted to flickr from one year ago.
It’s once again time for my latest Photojojo post. For those of you who haven’t been following my blog for a long time, Photojojo is a digital time capsule service. Every two weeks they send me an email that has my most interesting photos posted to flickr from one year ago.
This time from the Cherry Blossom Festival. The blooms were predicted to come early that year, but lots of the trees weren’t in full bloom because of a cold front that came through.
It’s once again time for my latest Photojojo post. For those of you who haven’t been following my blog for a long time, Photojojo is a digital time capsule service. Every two weeks they send me an email that has my most interesting photos posted to flickr from one year ago.
This time from our trip to San Francisco for Daniel’s wedding
It’s once again time for my latest Photojojo post. For those of you who haven’t been following my blog for a long time, Photojojo is a digital time capsule service. Every two weeks they send me an email that has my most interesting photos posted to flickr from one year ago.
It’s once again time for my latest Photojojo post. For those of you who haven’t been following my blog for a long time, Photojojo is a digital time capsule service. Every two weeks they send me an email that has my most interesting photos posted to flickr from one year ago.
It’s once again time for my latest Photojojo post. For those of you who haven’t been following my blog for a long time, Photojojo is a digital time capsule service. Every two weeks they send me an email that has my most interesting photos posted to flickr from one year ago.
It’s once again time for my latest Photojojo post. For those of you who haven’t been following my blog for a long time, Photojojo is a digital time capsule service. Every two weeks they send me an email that has my most interesting photos posted to flickr from one year ago.
It’s once again time for my latest Photojojo post. For those of you who haven’t been following my blog for a long time, Photojojo is a digital time capsule service. Every two weeks they send me an email that has my most interesting photos posted to flickr from one year ago.
I think this is the first time her face looks really similar to the way it does now. (Only it had more fat back then)
It’s once again time for my latest Photojojo post (ok, I think this’ll probably be the last one in a row…I’ve been busy!) . For those of you who haven’t been following my blog for a long time, Photojojo is a digital time capsule service. Every two weeks they send me an email that has my most interesting photos posted to flickr from one year ago.
The National Christmas Tree (it’s too bad that because of my schedule I won’t get to see it this year) and a few other random shots from last year’s period just before Christmas.
It’s once again time for my latest Photojojo post (yeah, they’re back to back this time). For those of you who haven’t been following my blog for a long time, Photojojo is a digital time capsule service. Every two weeks they send me an email that has my most interesting photos posted to flickr from one year ago.
More Scarlett - this time getting the Christmas tree. It made me sad that we didn’t do the lights on her again this year. Then again, she might have wanted to do it all the time - so maybe that’s a good thing.
It’s once again time for my latest Photojojo post. For those of you who haven’t been following my blog for a long time, Photojojo is a digital time capsule service. Every two weeks they send me an email that has my most interesting photos posted to flickr from one year ago.
Once again a focus on Scarlett. Looking back on these photos I realize how easy it was to get to smile back then. It sounds ridiculous to say she’s gotten more jaded - she’s not even two, for Pete’s sake. But she does spend more time brooding and is a bit more specific about what makes her smile. Perhaps this is part of the reason why some couples decide to have more children - to get back that ultra-innocence of baby-hood before the slightly less innocent toddler-hood what with its tantrums and such.
Scarlett first did this about three weeks ago before she started watching Disney’s The Little Mermaid non-stop. I was playing with her in the living room and she was making her various stuffed animals dance to the music. Then she took two animals - a dog and a cat or something and put their faces together and said “kissing”. This was baffling to me because Danielle and I don’t really have lots of PDA. It’s not a conscious decision, it’s just that we’re usually trying to juggle about three things at once when Scarlett’s around. And she pretty much only watches PBS and I doubt there’s much lip-on-lip kissing on there. So I wonder where she picked it up? It may be like the other things that people blame on daycare (biting, hitting, etc), kids just pick it up from the ether or they see it once - that one time you had some TV show on or that one time the wife and I kissed in front of her - and it just gets ingrained in their heads. Not sure, but definitely fascinated that it happened.
It’s once again time for my latest Photojojo post. For those of you who haven’t been following my blog for a long time, Photojojo is a digital time capsule service. Every two weeks they send me an email that has my most interesting photos posted to flickr from one year ago.
It’s once again time for my latest Photojojo post. For those of you who haven’t been following my blog for a long time, Photojojo is a digital time capsule service. Every two weeks they send me an email that has my most interesting photos posted to flickr from one year ago.
Once again I can’t believe how young she looks. But, having gone back to the pumpkin patch, I can say it was definitely easier to take photos when she was younger.
It’s once again time for my latest Photojojo post. For those of you who haven’t been following my blog for a long time, Photojojo is a digital time capsule service. Every two weeks they send me an email that has my most interesting photos posted to flickr from one year ago.
A break from the Scarlett photos as all the photos in this photo time capsule are from Baltimore Comic-Con. As I mentioned before, I’m sad I couldn’t go this year, but I did get to go to the pretty awesome Color Run in Brooklyn. Perhaps those photos will make it next year!
It’s once again time for my latest Photojojo post. For those of you who haven’t been following my blog for a long time, Photojojo is a digital time capsule service. Every two weeks they send me an email that has my most interesting photos posted to flickr from one year ago.
It’s once again time for my latest Photojojo post. For those of you who haven’t been following my blog for a long time, Photojojo is a digital time capsule service. Every two weeks they send me an email that has my most interesting photos posted to flickr from one year ago.
In this installment: the first time we ever took Scarlett to the beach. Heh, I’d completely forgotten about that car-walker.
If you’re taking concert photos professionally, you will get access to the pit area and will be able to photograph there for the first three songs. Put your camera into manual mode and, depending on the lighting, manual focus and try to get original and heartfelt shots. This blog post is for the rest of us.
First of all, unfortunately, you probably (MOST LIKELY) won’t be able to take your SLR and the lenses you’d need to properly photograph the event. The reason the photographers get to take photos for only the first three songs is to make sure they don’t disturb the people behind them so they aren’t going to take kindly to an amateur ruining things for others. At best you can bring in a premium point and shoot like the Canon S110 or G15. At worst you’ll be using your cell phone. The most important thing to know is that you need to turn off your flash and pump up your ISO. Anyone more than a couple rows back does not have a flash powerful enough to reach the stage and all you’ll be doing is lighting up the heads of the people in front of you.
It’s once again time for my biweekly Photojojo post. For those of you who haven’t been following my blog for a long time, Photojojo is a digital time capsule service. Every two weeks they send me an email that has my most interesting photos posted to flickr from one year ago.
I think in these photos Scarlett is finally starting to have the same facial features as 1.5 year old Scarlett.
Whether or not you consider my 365 Project to be a year’s worth of selfies depends largely on whether you believe in the point of 365 projects. But I would say the selfie is more like the pictures you see on Facebook. Like others I viewed them with disdain. Then I came across an interesting article.
I know most people hate selfies. They groan and complain about them, from the duck lips to the filters. Why, just the word “selfie” can induce legendary amounts of eyerolling.
If you have a huge party like someone’s 60th or a graduation party that you want to take photos at, there are basically three things to remember whether you’re doing it for money or just to document a special time for the family and friends.
If You Can, Get Photos of the Preparations/Empty Venue
Once the people arrive, it will probably be a controlled chaos that you’ll be trying to capture. People often put a lot of thought into decorations and centerpieces. Take some time to document them.
Back in 2009 I went to Manhattan at night with my Rebel XTi and my 50mm f/1.8 to do some night time photography at Times Square. The 50mm was key because its wide aperture allowed me to keep the ISO low and get nice, clear photos. (Although there’s something to be said for the aesthetics of grainy night shots of busy cities) Of course, it also helped that Times Square is quite well lit. Cities like Toykyo and New York City are well-served by color photography when you’re trying to document the crazy, colored buildings, but I think when doing street photography, it helps to have the output be black and white so that to focus is on the people rather than the colors. Here are my best shots from that night:
It’s once again time for my biweekly Photojojo post. For those of you who haven’t been following my blog for a long time, Photojojo is a digital time capsule service. Every two weeks they send me an email that has my most interesting photos posted to flickr from one year ago.
Again mostly Scarlett, but also a scan from a photo I took when I was in High School. Dan’s all the way on the left, in the water.
It’s once again time for my biweekly Photojojo post. For those of you who haven’t been following my blog for a long time, Photojojo is a digital time capsule service. Every two weeks they send me an email that has my most interesting photos posted to flickr from one year ago.
The video called Keyboard Scarlett comes from the fact that I found out I was able to make her laugh hysterically if I moved her hands back and forth on the table like Keyboard Cat. Interestingly, now that she has full agency over her limbs, she hates when I do anything like this.
Summer is here and for many of us that means going to a beach - whether it’s just a drive away or a cross-country flight. But that doesn’t mean you have to give up on photography! There are great opportunities whether you want to do landscape photography, wildlife photography, or portrait photography. Let’s start by talking about equipment. The equipment you bring to the beach depends on your purpose for being at the beach that day or that session. If you’re going specifically to take photos, then you’re probably OK bringing your dSLR and, optionally, flash. If you’re going to the beach to enjoy it and also want to take photos, you’re best off getting an underwater housing for your camera or getting a weatherproofed camera. Sand and sea salt (which is in the air at the beach) are both VERY bad for cameras and could wreck your expensive camera. If you will be having fun you don’t want to take the chance that someone who’s with you or a stranger kicks sand onto your camera accidentally. Also, sometimes waves can come up farther than you realized at first. An underwater housing or weatherproof camera is protected from the elements. It also has the bonus of allowing you to carry it with you into the water (should you happen to be at a beach where you can get into the water) and lessens the chances of your camera being stolen.
It’s once again time for my biweekly Photojojo post. For those of you who haven’t been following my blog for a long time, Photojojo is a digital time capsule service. Every two weeks they send me an email that has my most interesting photos posted to flickr from one year ago.
Of course, it consists of Scarlett photos. I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again, I can’t believe now much she’s changed in just one year!
It’s easy to lust after photo opportunities elsewhere as I did in a recent post. But when you find that happening, just remember there’s a whole world in your backyard. If you live in an urban neighborhood like the protagonist of Pecker, you can focus on portraits and street photography - candid or otherwise. But if you live in a suburban or rural area, you’ll find a lot of naturalistic photo opportunities in your backyard. For inspiration, take a look at these photos taken in my backyard and my parents’ backyard. (I’ve stretched the definition of backyard a little to include the surrounding neighborhood that’s within a short walk - say, within a mile) (Yes, a lot of them are birds, but that’s what really interests me outside)
Unsurprisingly, Scarlett is once again the subject of the Photojojo. Also captured, a visit by the in-laws. I think the most interesting thing is that I find her way cuter as she looks now vs a year ago. But back then I found her way cute. Scientists say it peaks at age 4. I guess we’ll see.
[caption id=“attachment_6300” align=“aligncenter” width=“640”] Aida at the Park back before digital[/caption]
I have mentioned many times before how much I was into photography back before digital existed. Despite film and developing costs subsuming all my allowance money, I still took tons of photos. Three years ago, I decided to check out the film photography renaissance. In April I got my first batch of film and a Holga. And soon I had shot some photos. And a few weeks later I had my Holga and Yashica film back. And since then I’ve … not shot very many more rolls of film. There are a few reasons for this; some of them don’t even have to do directly with film. For example, I’m just taking less photos in general. A lot of that has to do with Scarlett. I have lots of photos of other kids in the family because you can hang back when it’s not your kid. You don’t have to worry about anything- someone else is taking care of him or her. But children, at least at the toddler and below stage, require a lot of attention. Also, I want to be present in her life. In order to photograph you have to withdraw a bit. And that’s fine when they’re five or six and off playing on the playground on their own. But Scarlett needs our assistance and attention to be able to use pretty much any part of the playground. Indirectly, because I have a desire to play with her in a way that my father couldn’t (his 9-5 rarely ended at 5), I have to be a better manager of my time. And I have committed to writing more this year. And there are some games I want to play. And there’s TV and time with the wife. Also, I am traveling less and I don’t happen to find Baltimore anywhere near as photogenic as New York city or Oahu.
It’s once again time for my biweekly Photojojo post. For those of you who haven’t been following my blog for a long time, Photojojo is a digital time capsule service. Every two weeks they send me an email that has my most interesting photos posted to flickr from one year ago.
More Scarlett photos. The one of her sleeping on me, melts me. The one of me talking to her with her eyes open like “WTF IS GOING ON?” is hilarious. (the last image)
I don’t think any father ever sets out to spoil his daughters. After all, not only does that lead to a mal-adjusted human, it makes her more likely to make bad decisions. But when she’s capable of looking this cute (at least to me, but all parents get like +100 cuteness points on their own kids over strangers’ kids), it’s so hard to be cross with her for long. In fact, I don’t know if this theory has ever been discredited, but some scientists think that kids look cute exactly for this reason - so we don’t lose our cool with them as much as otherwise would - at least until their brains have developed to the point where they can be liable for their actions.
[caption id=“attachment_6229” align=“aligncenter” width=“683”] Tony Hangs On[/caption]
This photo is a great example of the magic moments you can capture when you’re not focused on getting kids to say “cheese”. Just hang back and go to the most telephoto you can and you’ll capture some magical moments.
One of the biggest trends on flickr is to start a 365 Project. This usually means taking one self-portrait a day for an entire year. This project is often misunderstood by those outside of flickr, especially since they’re used to the selfie-culture of MySpace and Facebook. It’s not a vanity project. A 365 Project is about taking the adage about becoming a better writer through writing every day to photography. It also has a special bonus of teaching the photographer what it’s like to be the subject. Many of us photo-geeks are behind the camera way more often than we’re in front of it. Sometimes we struggle with how to communicate to our subjects how to achieve the vision we have in our head. By being both the photographer and the subject, we learn to appreciate both points of view.
It’s once again time for my biweekly Photojojo post. For those of you who haven’t been following my blog for a long time, Photojojo is a digital time capsule service. Every two weeks they send me an email that has my most interesting photos posted to flickr from one year ago.
Scarlett’s only 2-2.5 months old in these photos and the most striking things are how tiny she is and how much in awe she seems of the world around her. No mean feat considering how tiny she remains compared to her peers. But it definitely takes a lot more to astound her than it did a year ago.
Every phase of life the children in your life go through presents different sets of challenges. For example, take a look at this photo of Scarlett’s first Easter:
[caption id=“attachment_6095” align=“aligncenter” width=“450”] Scarlett’s First Easter[/caption]
She couldn’t sit up and she didn’t have the slightest clue of what was happening. We could try to get her to look at her mom, but it didn’t hold her attention for long and she might start crying on a dime. Now, take a look at her as a toddler:
It’s once again time for my biweekly Photojojo post. For those of you who haven’t been following my blog for a long time, Photojojo is a digital time capsule service. Every two weeks they send me an email that has my most interesting photos posted to flickr from one year ago.
I took a long time to publish the previous post, so here we are again. It’s mostly Scarlett Easter photos. As I sit here and look at a photo of this year’s Easter photo, it’s pretty awesome to see how much she’s changed. For one thing, she’s mobile now, so it was a challenge to get her to sit there while we took the photo. For another, she can actually sit on her own.
It’s once again time for my biweekly Photojojo post. For those of you who haven’t been following my blog for a long time, Photojojo is a digital time capsule service. Every two weeks they send me an email that has my most interesting photos posted to flickr from one year ago.
The biggest takeaway which is SOOOOO crazy is how much Scarlett has changed in just 1 year. Only 365 days. And she looks COMPLETELY different!
So…..apparently the most interesting photo has nothing to do with Scarlett being born? It must be based on when I uploaded it, not when the photo was taken.
Apparently, I only had one interesting photo last January. (Makes sense - we were probably spending all our free time getting ready for Scarlett’s arrival. I expect she’ll be a huge chunk of the photojojo in the coming year)
Interestingly, this year we had some snow in Dec, but if my title is correct here, the first snow of last year was in January.
Yesterday we took a look at the most interesting, now let’s look at the most viewed! Two photos of Nam that I took with my holga have really been taking off.
The last time I could quickly find where I did this was last January. While there are some photos that are similar, there’s been quick a shake-up on the Most Interesting Photos (as determined by flickr’s algorithms).
As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, I’ve been into photography since I was five years old. That’s when I got my first Kodak Instamatic camera and started shooting photos and creating photo albums. I have about ten photo albums, with most of them coming from when I got to high school and could really afford film and developing. Ever since I got my first digital camera in my second semester of college, the number of photos I’ve taken yearly has increased nearly exponentially. Because I’m an organized person, I started off putting my photos into event-based folders. Once I realized that’d quickly get unwieldy, I decided to put them in folders by date. Eventually, software like Picassa, Lightroom, and digiKam came out which would have allowed me to continue to to organized my photos by event because they could read the metadata and reorganize them by date. However, I’ve found that my system has two main benefits 1)my photos remain organized even if my descendants don’t have access to programs that can read the metadata on the photos. 2) it’s very easy for me to very quickly find a photo. It would be somewhere like 2010->Jan 10->So and So’s Wedding.
Back when I compiled the Top 200 Photos feature, this was #10:
and now it’s:
which was not in the top 20 before, so it has really gained a lot of views. That comes from the fact that it’s on Pixel-Peer as an example of that lens’ abilities.
The original Top 200 Photo #16 was:
and now it’s:
which has fallen just one position from #15. Pretty funny that they’re both fireworks - although on very different scales!
The original Top 200 Photo in the #18th spot was:
and the current #18 photos is:
this photo has been on the rise ever since Bradley Manning’s trial started up.
Since it took about a year for my Top 200 photos feature to run its course, I wanted to go back and see how things changed within the Top 20 in that year. When I posted the feature, this was #20:
I’ve fallen a bit behind on these photo time capsules. Here’s the one from early December. Apparently, all my interesting photos from back then were taken in NYC.
Just click on the image. Then right-click and set as desktop background or save it to your computer and use your OS’s methods for setting the background.
This is from my first Otakon photo shoot - the one I mentioned before in which I had no idea Otakon was even going on until we arrived in Baltimore. He was one of three people I photographed. Why? Because, even though I’d never watched it, I actually knew what InuYasha was. InuYasha is a manga/anime by Rumiko Takahashi, the creator or Ranma ½. Because manga artists tend to have a very recognizable style, I knew it was by her just from the character designs. The main characters look like Ranma and Akane.
I called this photo Ghetto Shoes because I’ve only seen this type of stuff happen in less well-off neighborhoods. It was a pretty regular site in the neighborhood where I grew up. Thinking about it, it probably happens anywhere there are teens and preteens, but more affluent neighborhoods tend to have their phone and power lines buried. I have absolutely no idea why this photo has 5400 views.
“How do you do?” And shake hands. On this Top 200 Photo
photo #3 is:
I’d been reading online about how awesome the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade was. In 2008 Dina and Brian went and confirmed that it was pretty awesome so Danielle and I decided to go because it was falling on a Saturday in 2009. Eventually we decided we’d go ahead and get dressed up as well. We thought about it for a while and realized that 2009 would be the last year for a while in which it would be original to be a character from Alice in Wonderland since the Tim Burton film was coming out in 2010. So we had Danielle’s mom make us costumes.
The final appearance of these two in this Top 200 photo
photo #4:
And so these two show up once again with 2579 views as of the time I’m writing this (in March). I’m not quite sure what it is about this particular photo of a Soul Eater Cosplay has garnered it more views than the others. It’s technically an inferior photo when compared to the others. Part of the awesome hat on the left is cut off. And the woman on the left has her eyes closed.
The final Cornell-based photo in this Top 200 Photo
photo #5 is:
I think is it bizarre that, as of the time of this writing, nearly 2.5 thousand people have wanted to see a photo of my standing in front of a statue of Ezra Cornell. After Danielle and I got out cap and gown, we thought about what a circus it would be on graduation day. Everyone and their 20 family members would probably be trying to get family photos by all the famous Cornell landmarks. So we went around campus and took a series of photos, most of which are just sitting on my hard drive. One of the ones I took of Danielle ended up becoming her “official” graduation photo. Sometimes I wish I’d done more at Cornell, but I couldn’t have done much more and still graduated with an Electrical Engineering degree.
I got this shirt when I went to visit MIT in 2000. We were on a visit of universities along the East Coast so I could decide where I wanted to apply. I guess it also functioned as the same thing for my brothers because I don’t remember them going on separate college visit trips.
I liked the shirt because it was quirky and had equations on it and mixed with religion. It wasn’t until my Sophomore year at Cornell that I found out these were Maxwell’s Equations. It was such as awesome epiphany when I realized the equations we were studying in class were on my shirt. Since most engineering exams at Cornell were either open book or allowed cheat sheets, I used to wear the shirt during exams as a little joke. It wouldn’t actually have been practical because I would have wasted too much time reading it upside-down. And it was on my front, so it didn’t help my fellow students either. I love this shirt, but it became ridden with holes after all these years and it had to go.
This is Pope John Mole IV. Back in High School, many moons ago, we had to make stuffed moles when we were learning about moles in Chemistry. They had to be creative, usually revolving around work play with the word mole. This was mine. The idea was completely mine. But my mom actually made it. All throughout elementary school she used to make my science project boards (while I did the actual work). I think this mole she made for me in HS was the last time she helped me with my homework. It’s kinda nostalgia-inducing to think of it that way. While we lived in the apartment, it was on the bookshelf along with a bunch of other knickknacks we had all over the bookshelves.
This is the reflection photo that started them all. It broke 1000 views in less than a year and was the first one to over-take photo #9 (back when it was my #1 photo). We were just looking for something to do on a boring day. We took out the camera and started experimenting with different ideas. When we finally came up with this idea, we must have tried at least a dozen variations to try and make sure to get it right. It is, to this day, one of my absolute favorite photos.
The penultimate Cornell photo in this Top 200 Photo series
photo #9 is:
This photo is, other than my Last Supper Photo (link), my favorite Photoshopped photo. This photos is my most commented on, my most favorited, my highest position on Explore, and was at one time my most viewed. I took my camera to class and just placed it on my desk. I turned off the flash and just took shot after shot as the professor taught. The title, “he Impression Left On Me by the Offspring of Euler", comes from the fact that he can trace his PhD advisor lineage back to Euler. At the end of the semester I sent him the composition and he loved it.
And we finally make it to the last 10 photos in the Top 200 Photos
photo #10 is:
This is part of that reflection series I mentioned a LONG time ago. This photo used to be quite popular. In fact, four years ago it was my #3 most viewed photo. Now it has sunk to #10. Will its being featured in this series revive it? I don’t know; time will tell!
This is the last time these photos appear in the Top 200. I had no idea they were so highly rated. I think they look so awesome if you look at them at “original size”. They lose a lot of impact at the size at which they’re displayed here or flickr. I’m definitely going to zoom in or crop the photo next time I do something like this.
Another example of the beauty of Ithaca, NY in the summer. Cayuga Lake is in the distance. Again, it’s just a shame that almost the entire school year takes place during the part of the year with horrible, horrible weather.
This is another photo that’s featured in the blog’s header. In case you don’t know, this is The White House, the mansion where the President of the United States of America lives. As I was thinking about what to write for this photo, I noticed the title, “My first daylight pictures of the Whitehouse 2". I meant it was the second photo I’d taken of The White House in daylight. But the alternative reading, that this is the sequel is also correct. The original White House was set on first by the British in the War of 1812, a side conflict of an early World War.
I was looking for stuff around the house to photograph (something you have to do if you don’t live in a big city) and decided to use my wife’s wedding ring and a wedding anniversary gift I’d given her. I thought it was a pretty neat arrangement and so have a lot of others because it has, as of this writing, 1669 views. Unfortunately, I learned after this that she’s not into Precious Moments or any kinds of collectibles.
It’s pretty funny to have this photo of firecrackers appear right above the photo of fireworks. After all, it’s just a mini-version of the same thing. While I’ve been to a ton of Vietnamese weddings and this is the only one that had firecrackers - I was told that they’re traditionally set off during weddings.
This photo is also featured on the Pixel-Peeper site for the Sigma 10-20mm (B&H link). I’d taken photos of fireworks before, but they seemed to be missing something compared to other photos I’d seen. Then I learned that many times (although not always) these photos were really long exposures. What you do is use something dark to cover the lens between fireworks explosions to keep the shot from getting over-exposed. Then you can get a sky full of fireworks. Both methods produce pretty different exposures so it’s worth experimenting.
When I went to England in 2006 the Iraq War was in the middle of the worst period for American and allied deaths. This bunch of protest signs was sitting across from Parliament. The interesting thing is that no one was there guarding them, yet no pro-war people were defacing or removing them.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the 13th most viewed photo in the Top 200 Photos
photo #18 is:
triscadecaphobia (also spelt Triskaidekaphobia) is the fear of the number 13. I don’t have triskaidekaphobia - I am not paralyzed on Friday the 13th. However, I do get bad vibes from the number whenever I see it. On the other hand, 2, for me, is a conforting number. But I like it in script better than printed.
Until I went to the Grand Canyon and saw an awesome rainbow there, this was the only photograph I had of a rainbow. I was going to a work breakfast when I was working at P&G and when I got out of my car it was there. I decided to photograph it before going inside. It languished mostly unseen until I posted it to a photography related forum. Then it shot up to 200 views in one day (from <50). Now it has 1239 views.
When I was first learning about stroboscopic images, I wanted to do something with humans, not just bouncing balls and scissors. It would be a while before I could get Dave doing martial arts. So I tried a few things, but it was hard to keep from interfering with myself and ending up with an indistinguishable mess. So I figured I could extend my arm out so each pulse would have my arm in a non-overlapping position. As you can tell, I started off fast and then realized I was going too quickly so the last few pulses are closer to each other.
I finally figured out the right number of flash pulses so that the separate images of David could be distinguished. I think it was the best photo we came up with that night.
And so, we as are about to enter the top 20 images, this image has, as the time of this writing, 1151 views.
This photo was taken on the first time I discovered Otakon in Baltimore. We were just walking around Baltimore and noticed cosplayers here and there. At first I thought it was just a strange group of friends. But when we kept seeing more and more of them, I figured something was up. I didn’t know it yet, but it was the last day of Otakon. Since it was the last day and the convention was officially over, people could just walk into the convention center and so I did and took some candid shots with my 55-200mm lens. I didn’t know at the time that these people wanted to be photographed and were used to being photographed. So I was doing most of it candidly.
I created this during my earlier Photoshop period. It’s called “How the Ad Industry Sees Us”. I really like it a lot and I think it still stands on its own as a statement.
I previously featured the writing desks you can see at the very bottom of this photo. This is a wider view of the Andrew White reading room in Uris Library at Cornell. It has a somewhat magical and surreal feel to it. Part of it is from the fact that walkways are everywhere and part of it is the lighting. It’s a pretty awesome room to be in and looks like something out of a Hollywood set.
It’s one of my early images from when I thought you had to Photoshop images if you wanted people to stand up and take notice. (I spoke about this earlier in the Top 200 Photos series) I still think it was a creative idea. However, with what I am capable of now, I can see that it’s pretty sloppy photoshopping and I probably would have used some of the 3D tech in Photoshop (or combined it with Blender) to make it look more like a bunch of masks hanging there.
We return to the stone pier in Oahu, Hawaii for this Top 200 Photo
photo #29 is:
As I mentioned before, I saw these two on a stone pier that jutted out into the Pacific. I mentioned that I was bored so I went for a walk to take some photos. Looking over the sets that the photo’s in reminds me that I actually went out with a challenge - take 10 photos of 10 people at one photo length. I chose 50mm so I actually had to get pretty close to my subjects. This resulted in my having to get over some of my fears of getting close to people to photograph them rather than zooming in.
When I was playing with the macro mode of my Fuijifilm Finepix S7000, I started to get into flower photography. This flower was on the other side of a small wall on the walkway that leads to Ho Plaza, near Olin Hall. Thanks to the position of the sun, the wall gave a nice black background for the shot.
It was quite a challenge to paint my house when we first moved in. Of Danielle, her father, mother, and I, neither of us had painted before. Her mother had done some painting under the direction of her uncle, but not on her own. So over the course of a weekend we slowly figured out different techniques to speed the process up while still getting good results. At the eleventh hour (unfortunately, figuratively and not literally), Danielle’s mom remember this technique for protecting the area being painted when painter’s tape couldn’t be used. I just took this photo to document the technique for the future. Thanks to google hits, this one ended up with 928 views as of the time of writing.
This annoying orange fencing is what I spoke about when I said that when Slope Day became an official event, it became annoying to navigate around campus. As I mentioned in my Libe Slope panorama, nearly all the upperclassmen have to pass through it to get to class and not everyone is able to party on Slope Day. I’ve been in classes that had quizzes, exams, or labs on Slope Day. It doesn’t matter that it’s Slope Day, it’s still the last day of class.
Much like the Nam photo that was #40, in this photo I am taking advantage of the effects wide angle lenses have on their subjects. Things closer to the lens look much larger (compared to a normal lens) than those further away. Like the candle photo, this one only ended up with this many views because it was used on a website. In this case, it is Pixel-Peeper, a site that contains example images to see how well lenses perform. On that page I linked, this photo is, at the time of this writing, the number one image on there. This has led to this going from an obscure photo to being the most-viewed photo in my 365 project. This is annoying in the sense that I feel I have lots of photos in my 365 which are much more creative (like The Last Supper, or the last five photos), but neat because, as an artist, I want as many people to see my work as possible. So if this leads to more views on my 365 photos (and it has) or of my stream in general, then it can’t be that bad.
I opened the battery compartment to my Fujifilm camera and dumped the batteries out. I was going to throw them in the charger when I realized I really liked the arrangement they’d fallen into. So I decided to practice with my camera’s macro mode and shoot the photo. For a while it was one of my favorite macro shots. And it’s one of my few photos to be used on another website thanks to the fact that it was licensed under the creative commons.
It was one of those trips to Hawaii without Danielle. I was really bored so I went out onto the beach since my hotel was right across the street from the beach. I found this long concrete pier that had a crowd of people on it. I figured I’d go check it out. Essentially, people were waiting until the waves stopped, then jumping into the water. It was a good 20 feet or more to the water below. The reason for waiting for the waves to stop is that otherwise they’d slam you into the concrete pier. Also, you had to launch yourselves a ways out because you didn’t want a wave to arrive as soon as you’d landed. I was standing behind two girls (who you’ll see in photo #29) and they jumped in one-by-one. I love shots of dynamic action like jumping because it tends to look really cool. I missed her friend, but I got her jumping in.
These were the computers I was using in 2005. The one on the left was running Linux. The Laptop was running Linux. The computer on the right was running Windows XP. I no longer have any of those computers, monitors, speakers, or mice. They all either broke or were replaced. The longest lasting was the computer on the left which was my print server until recently. (/2011/02/11/replacing-the-fileprint-server/)
I forgot about this little project for a while, but I remembered in time to make October’s background. I’ve decided to stop making the square versions of the background. If I get enough people who actually want it, I’ll reinstate it. To set as your background, click on it then right-click and set as desktop. If that option’s not available, save it to your computer and use your OS’s method of setting the desktop.
More stroboscopic photography for this Top 200 Photo
photo #37 is:
Galileo postulated that in a vacuum (in other words with no air drag) that any two items dropped should fall at the same rate regardless of their mass. I didn’t hold both of these scissors at exactly the same height, so to compare you have to look at the distance each travels per unit of time. Of course, it is right (and has been tested in space).
I have forgotten whether I was inspired to go shoot at the Maryland State Fair at night by a magazine or if I came up with the idea on my own. I really enjoyed all the photos I took that night and it has inspired me to go and attempt lots of other night shoots. I like the look of the lights at night and how they cast different shadows and give the objects different appearances than during the day. I also played around with different shutter speeds to be able to see things differently than with the naked eye.
There are three differences between this photo and the previous similar one: Dave is not stifling a laugh, Dave is wearing a shirt, and it’s in color. But it has a bunch more views. What does that mean? Do people not like topless Dave? Do they hate black and white martial arts photos? Or is it Dave’s serious face? Or maybe it’s just completely random.
This photo, again, is from before Nam was afraid of my photography. I was in town for the Lunar New year and just doing some kid photography of him by getting to his height to take the photos. He was interested in my camera and started getting closer and closer so I had to keep zooming further and further out. So I ended up at 17mm and that makes his head larger than it would otherwise be because of where it is in the frame. (Somewhat ameliorated by the fact that I shot this photo on a crop-sensor camera)
I think this is now the third time Mai has appeared on this list. I speculated about her smile, but I’m not really sure what it is that flickr loves about my portraits of Mai.
We’ve finished another twenty photos and are now, at the time of this writing, at 819 views for this photo.
This is a photo of our cars in the parking of the Apartment Complex we used to live at. It was probably right after the snow had finished falling. We used to think that was a lot of snow. Now (after the 2010 storms) we know better.
Danielle gets very restless being stuck at home all the time. Since Maryland isn’t like NYC where you can just go walk around the city, Danielle has ended up gaining an appreciation for nature. Over the last six years she’s gone from someone who’d grimace at the mention of a hike to the person most responsible for getting me out of the house on the weekend.
Drip….drip…drip…. it’s time for another Top 200 Photo
photo #44 is:
This is another photo from when I was playing with my flash and attempting to catch water droplets forming those cool patterns they sometimes do when they hit a body of water. Going over these has definitely made me want to try it again.
Titled “The Last Supper”: this is, I think, my most ambitious digital composition. I was deep in my 365 project and I didn’t know what to do for the 264th day. I had thought of this idea once before, but not in any depth. Originally I thought about doing it at the dining room table so it would be closer to the famous painting. But it turned out that even with my new wide angle lens, (B&H link) I wouldn’t be able to fit 13 copies of myself in that room. So I moved it to the living room. There is one pita chip on each plate to represent the bread. And one cup of wine from the tradition that one cup was passed around. As you know, if you’ve been following this Top 200 Photos series, I’m no stranger to composite photos. But this time I wanted to do it right. So I found thirteen different shirts to wear. Because it might be a little hard to notice at the size at which this photo is posted, notice the text on Jesus’ shirt. (If you don’t get it, read on)
This is an ad I used to pass by every day and night while I was in Las Vegas. Because of the glare it may be a little hard to read the text of the ad. It says “Always a Happy Ending at Tao” which is described as an Asian Bistro, Nightclub, and Lounge. I took this photo because I was unsure of how I felt about it. In case you don’t know the idiom, a “happy ending” is a euphemism for getting oral sex at the end of a massage (it could also mean masturbation - but not by the self). It originates from using massage parlours as a front for prostitution in places where prostitution is illegal. This allows the owner to claim (or ATTEMPT to claim) that he had no idea what his masseuses were doing. He thought everyone was just getting massages back there. These erotic massages and the term “happy ending”, in particular, are heavily associated with asians. Additionally, the billboard employs the image of a naked woman and either Chinese or Japanese script. (I know it’s not Korean which is bubblier)
This is the black and white version of a photo I mentioned before. As I mentioned then, I prefer the black and white version. Apparently the flickr community agrees since this one has so many more views.
This photo is from that wedding at which I was the official photographer. A few hours into the wedding I realized I didn’t have a post-ceremony photo of the bride and her sister. So I got them together and we started riffing off each other because I wanted them to express how close they were as sisters. I ended up with this fun photo. I think it’s in my top 5 favorite photos from that wedding.
Otakon and some familiar faces for this Top 200 Photo
photo #49 is:
These Soul Eater cosplayers have appeared before on this list and will appear at least once more. I think this photo is unique in showing them from head (or hat) to toe. For the first time, I’ve realized that the woman on the right has “elf shoes” or shoes with curly toes. I think it’s pretty odd how much of a gap there is in the number of views between all these photos of the same subjects.
Las Vegas is a really weird place. There are many reasons for this, including squaring gambling, family friendliness, and topless revues. As I mentioned before, I was in Vegas to attend BlackHat and Defcon. For the three days of Defcon I would walk all the way from Caesar’s Palace over to The Riviera. From what I could tell from the dilapidated looks that part of Vegas was the oldest surviving area of the Vegas strip. There were empty lots that were soon to get new casinos and old ones that looked like you’d get a disease just from stepping in the front door. I wonder what the recession has done to the construction efforts there.
I’ve always loved how trees demonstrate fractals and I think that’s almost nothing so beautiful during the winder as a tree covered in a small bit of snow. It really brings out the structure of the branches and makes it easier to notice them.
Another computer project for today’s Top 200 Photo
photo #52 is:
I built this computer for Dave when he graduated from High School. I learned that, although Windows XP 32-bit should have been able to read 4 GB of RAM, it wasn’t able to. It had the most powerful graphics card I’d installed up to that point because Dave was a big WoW player at the time. It really transformed how well the game played for him (graphics and speed) and that was satisfying to see.
Here’s yet another Coco Peli. I wonder why he was in the middle of these palm trees. Here’s some more info on Coco Peli, from wikipedia:
Kokopelli is a fertility deity, usually depicted as a humpbacked flute player (often with a huge phallus and feathers or antenna-like protrusions on his head), who has been venerated by some Native American cultures in the Southwestern United States. Like most fertility deities, Kokopelli presides over both childbirth and agriculture. He is also a trickster god and represents the spirit of music.
This is from the Greenwhich Village Halloween Parade. If you want to see some of the best costumes outside of an anime or comic convention, you have to go to the Greenwhich Village Halloween Parade. This photo is not representative of some of those amazing costumes, but those will show up in a future post. I think it’s pretty obvious these are supposed to be three breasts. Other than that, I’m not sure what the connection is. I just always think of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’s mention of the Triple-Breasted Whore of Eroticon Six. Danielle always thinks of the girl from Total Recall.
This photo is not photoshopped in any way. This photo, taken in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, is just an example of how cameras can help us see things differently. If you leave the shutter open long enough to have the scene lit up, you can some unique colors. In this case, I left it open for 5 seconds. So as the photons collected on the camera, the scene lit up in a way I could never experience with the naked eye.
Back to wedding photography for today’s Top 200 Photo
photo #56 is:
Any wedding photographer can get the usual shots (and better if he doesn’t want to lose business). Shots like this one are the ones that set you apart. Once you’re done with the ones you need, just follow the bride and groom around and stop directing them. Let them do what they want to do and they’ll do some great stuff that will reveal their personality and give them something to talk about when they go over the album.
This is the computer I built for my father-in-law. At this point I was essentially done putting it all together. It was time to test it before closing it up.
Baltimore’s Farmer’s Market in Today’s Top 200 Photo
photo #58 is:
We were looking for something to do and decided to check out the Baltimore Farmer’s Market. It was OK. As always, it’s a hard decision to make because it’s great to support local businesses, but I don’t run a charity and if I spend my money on that produce I can’t spend it on other things. And, nowadays, more and more grocery stores are buying locally anyway.
Once again we find ourselves at Cornell for this Top 200 Photo.
photo #59 is:
I think my flickr description is perfect:
Every year on Columbus Day our Native American and Hispanic groups on campus protest the celebration of a man who began the genocide of an entire race of people. The photographer (myself) currently does not hold an opinion either way, but since this occurred in the middle of the Cornell, Ho Plaza, I wanted to record what was going on.
When Danielle and I went to London for about 24 hours, we had no idea we’d be able to see nearly every landmark. It was pretty awesome to be able to achieve it all. I think all we missed was the Tower of London. (And a leisurely stroll along the Thames) I love this shot of Big Ben, Parliament, Westminster, and the Thames and it’s currently on display in our dining room.
The only reason this photo even made it into the ranks of the Top 200 is that it was featured on a website talking about how to remove candle wax from a carpet. That led to 474 views in one day! And hopefully some of those looked around my photostream and became followers of my photography.
While putting some lotion on Danielle’s back, it looked to me like the way they prepare cakes at nice restaurants. I hadn’t purposely tried to do this, so I *had* to photograph it!
It took forever to get the Photoshopping just right for it to look this good. In the end, lighting kinda messes up the effect, but I think it’s my most meticulous surreal photo.
In a very strange role reversal, I was the only one out of myself, Danielle, Dina, Daniel, Marlene, Brian, Ho, and Lauren who knew this girl was dressed as Katy Perry from her “California Girls” music video. Usually I don’t know jack about pop culture. I’d seen the video on youtube because it was the explanation behind someone’s flickr photo idea.
This it not the oldest Synagogue in the USA, but it’s one of the oldest. I found it during a walk around Cincinnati during a trip P&G sent us on to see corporate headquarters.
This is from the Anberlin concert I’ve mentioned a few times here. This was my third photo to be published somewhere. In this case it was WNYC the NPR affiliate up there. That was really awesome and really made my day.
I don’t remember if he’s messing up while doing a jump or coming off the ledge. I know this might sound racist or something, but it’s more a case of being ignorant - until I came to the Maryland/DC area, I never knew there was a skateboarding African American sub-culture. I lived in Miami and in Portland, OR. Both places were pretty devoid of African Americans. Sure, there were people of African descent in Miami, but most of them tended to be Latin American - and that’s a VERY different culture from Africans who’ve been here for generations. And in Oregon, there just wasn’t a strong presence. In fact, as we lost our tans from not being out in the sun 365 days of the year like in Florida, Dave, who was like 6 years old, said, “I know why there aren’t any black people in Oregon! They all lost their tans!”
Again experimenting with my strobe and Dave’s karate skills, we went out into my parents’ backyard. This shot is at 20 Hz, meaning twenty pulses of flash for every second. That turned out to make the photo a bit too busy. So I had to lower the frequency. I also had to work on the timing with Dave because, as you can see here, I was starting while he was still running into the jump.
Dina decided to do a “V for Victory” pose while wearing her light-brown wig due to a tendency of Japanese women, especially in the USA, to dye their hair that color.
This is from the periphery of Coney Island. I’m not sure if this ride is still there after the restructuring of the area in an attempt to revitalize it. With the how crowded it gets on summer nights I’m not sure how much more revitalized it could afford to get. We’ve all been on rides like this at the fair. It’s a fairly basic ride. You spin around, usually backwards, and loud music blares. I used to always ride the one at the state fair. Like most of the rides at Coney Island, I’ve never been on this one.
Objection! This photo should be ranked higher in the Top 200 photos!
photo #73 is:
This is a cosplay from Phoenix Wright. It’s a video game where you play a defense attorney. You’d think that couldn’t possibly be fun, but it can actually be quite a bit of fun to play.
Computers are once again the focus in this Top 200 Photo
photo #74 is:
I love building computers. So, when my father-in-law needed a new computer, I jumped at the chance to build it. It was a small form factor computer about the size of a pizza box. (A little bit taller) This is the motherboard with the CPU already installed.
Back to that surreal October for this Top 200 Photo
photo #75 is:
This was tougher to do than you might expect. It’d be a piece of cake if someone else was at the shutter. In a rare move, I also uploaded a black and white version which might appear later on this list. Usually I pick one interpretation or the other. But in this case I did both. And I tend to actually like the black and white version better.
I had to go to Hawaii a few times for work. It didn’t make sense financially for my wife to accompany me each of those times and waste her vacation time. So I would walk around taking photos to keep myself from getting too bored. I used it as an opportunity to get some non-NYC candid street photography.
Another water splash photo for today’s Top 200 Photo
photo #78 is:
Here’s another photo where I used the flash to freeze the splashing of the water. I’d like to try this again in the future with dyed water and a colourful background.
I love how impossibly large these beaks are. I also love how ridiculously colorful these birds are. The beak itself is about 3 different colors. Then the bird itself is another 3 different colors. I really like the depth of field effect in this shot.
Well, we’ve made it to photo #80 and the images are starting to spread out more. Basically, as a general trend, the photos that people like tend to get more views more often. So the images start getting further and further apart in views. As an example, at the time that I’m writing this, this photo has 590 views and #61 has 683 views.
This is another panorama from Cornell. This is on Libe Slope, where Slope Day takes place. It is also climbed by nearly every upperclassman living on West Campus or beyond. Engineering students can avoid climbing it most of time as most of their classes are in the Engineering Quad which is south of West Campus. You just need to walk the circumference of the slope which isn’t nearly as steep. It is NO FUN walking up Libe Slope when it’s recently snowed and the university hasn’t cleared the walkways yet.
Another visit to Otakon for today’s Top 200 Photo.
photo #79 is:
Views-wise this photo is where I thought the red Cowboy photo would be. Both feature semi-nude women. However, what actually attracted me to photograph these women was the crazy hat the girl on the right is wearing. As a kid I was a HUGE fan of Dr Seuss and Tim Burton’s style seems, to me, to be a darker version of the Seussian style. Her hat reminded me of this style.
Back to Philly and a concert for this Top 200 Photo
photo #86 is:
Taking photos during a concert is always hard. First of all, let me say that I think people should be allowed to shoot photos during concerts as long as they aren’t using flash. The point of going to a concert is to spend extra money on a band you really like in order to hear them live. You should be allowed a memento of the night. Anyway, a photo is not representative of a concert, so it’s not like I’m going to see a photo of a concert and decide not to go.
I can’t do any better than the description I have on flickr: (Although I’ve made some modifications for clarity)
My brothers and I were avid LEGO builders/players. This was our city. Of the sets here (back when 99% of the LEGOs didn’t have much of a facial expression) most of them are mine. The gas station, race track, RV, and police station were mine. Dan had the fire station, pizza place, and underwater set.
In prior photos I used the flash in strobe mode to trace movement. But flash is also useful for freezing movement. This photo is from a series of experiments in freezing water droplets.
These are some old computer parts I had lying around. They were broken and I think I was saving them as teaching tools. I think I threw them out before we moved. It’s a graphics card, sound card, and hard drive.
Dina is a cake-decorating prodigy. This cake does not do any justice to her abilities, but she had to bring it all the way from NYC so anything too 3D was out of the question. Still the attention to detail here is pretty awesome.
Skipping the first number in the Fibonacci series (which is 0), each picture is displayed as many times as the Fibonacci number at that point. So the first picture is displayed 1 time and the 13th picture is displayed 233 times.
Once again we arrive at the USA’s Capital for today’s Top 200 Photo.
photo #94 is:
I spoke about the Cherry Blossom Festival early in this project (/2011/02/09/top-200-photos-195/). This is a panorama I constructed of about a quarter of the tidal basin that gives a good idea of what the cherry blossoms look like.
Once again a trip to Cornell during the winter for today’s Top 200 Photo.
photo #96 is:
This photo was taken during my freshman year with my brand new digital camera. That was actually a very mild winter. So mild, in fact, that my cross country skiing class became a hiking class. It did NOT prepare me for the rest of my time at Cornell. This dorm, where I stayed my freshman year, was brand new that year. It actually had air conditioning!
I mentioned before that one of the things I love about photography is the ability to allow you to see things you couldn’t otherwise see. In that photo I mentioned using photoshop to allow the photo to display changes in time as well as showing the other 3 dimensions. In this photo, I did not use photoshop. Instead I used stroboscopic photography. I was so excited when I found out my 580 EX was capable of these types of shots. I’d always seen them in my physics textbooks and I wanted to emulate them. This is from one of my first experiments with this type of photography.
Here are your new desktop backgrounds for July 2011!
Just click on the one that matches your monitor type and then either right-click and set as desktop or save it to your computer and save it as your desktop manually.
I wanted to capture Dave doing karate for a long time. But he wouldn’t let me go to a practice or anything, so we did some photography in my parents’ yard. I’d love to get him and Kendra in some more neat shots. But I really like this one. (Except for the fact that he’s trying not to laugh)
I previously mentioned how Ranma ½ got me into anime. At the time I also discovered Bubblegum Crisis (the original OAV) although I never got to finish it because the video rental place didn’t have the entire series. After that, other than borrowing Slayers from a friend in HS, I only ever got into two other series - Cowboy Bebop and Trigun.
I saw this while walking around an area near Clearwater Beach. Here’s what I wrote on flickr:
Coco Peli is a Mexican legendary character. My fascination with him began when my mom got me a lamp where Coco Peli was the base of the lamp. She said it was free spirited like me, but more importantly it had a denim top and I was really into demin at the time.
I came up with this photo while exploring with taking reflective photos where I’m in the shot without having the camera obscuring my face. This one ended up being my favorite and it’s even featured (as of the time of this writing) in the header of this blog.
Tai Shan’s birth at the National Zoo attracted lots of people. Many of them became regulars and I got to know a lot of them over a few weeks and months.
Of all the children born in the Year of the Pig, I’ve seen Nam the most. He only lives two houses over and, until he was old enough for daycare, Danielle’s mom took care of him every day. This photo is from before he was old enough to be scared of me and my photography. It’s one of my favorite photos in which he is the subject. I think it’s because we always see babies as innocent and he looks so sly in this photo.
My parents’ neighbor likes to build cars from the scratch. Of course, he doesn’t build the frame, but he buys it separate from the engine, seats, etc. He explained it to me once but I think it stems from some US regulations on what your car can be capable of and how emissions regulations are affected by custom-built cars vs dealer-bought cars.
Staying at Cornell and adding a bit of celebrity for today’s Top 200 Photo.
photo #107 is:
Bill Nye got his undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering from Cornell University. In an example of the awesome professors you can have at Cornell - one of his professors was Carl Sagan! Cornell has a program that invites alumni to come back once a semester and teach a class for a day. Here Bill Nye was teaching my Physics 213 class. My wife had alumni and former attorney general Janet Reno teach one of her classes. Anyway, I knew Bil Nye both from his appearances at the end of the animated Back to the Future show and from his show Bill Nye the Science guy, which I used to watch religiously.
And we bounce right back to Cornell for today’s Top 200 Photo.
photo #108 is:
It’s a shame that we go to school in the winter instead of the summer. I know it has to do with our rural past and having to help out in the farm, but it’s extra annoying at Cornell. Summer is really the best time to be there. It’s so pleasant and awesome. The campus is huge and has lots of greenery and it just feel so much better to be there during the summer. I think Cornell should be the first northern university to buck the trend and have school during the summer and no school during the winter.
Since I was going to the middle of England for work, I decided to fly into Manchester instead of the insane Heathrow in London. Then I just took the train to my final destination. It was great. I snuck in a five minute nap here and there, but mostly I looked at the British countryside. This photo is from the suburbs of Manchester and it reminds me a lot of the way Brooklyn is laid out.
I’d been a fan of Mo Rocca since I saw him on The Daily Show. I also enjoyed his contributions to VH1’s “I love the [decade]” series. These days I’m likely to hear him on NPR’s “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me” as a panelist. It was his involvement with the Broadway show “The Putnam County Spelling Bee” that made want to see it. Although he’s not Jewish, he was invited to Cornell in 2005 at the behest of the Hillel Club. He gave a talk about his career and interests. Highlights included his incredulity at being hired an as editor for men’s magazine Perfect 10, his friendship with Flava Flave, a clip of him on The O’Reilly Show, and his love of presidential childhood homes.
What happens in Vegas gets captured by Eric, put on flickr, and ends up on his Top 200 Photos!
photo #111 is:
After years of trying, I finally got work to pay for me to attend Blackhat. It was happening at Caesar’s Palace and I booked my room early enough to get a rate within what work was willing to pay. So when the conference wasn’t going on (early in the morning or late at night), I’d wander the Casino looking for photographic opportunities. At that time, 2008, they had a gambling area that was Pussycat Dolls themed. Basically that involved everything being pink, dealers in more modern clothes, and a go-go dancer in lingerie. Oh, and I think they had pop music playing, but I don’t remember if they did or not.
And we’re at Cornell once again for today’s Top 200 Photo.
photo #112 is:
This is from the Andrew White reading room at Uris Library. I didn’t properly take advantage of the library spaces in my freshman and sophomore years. It was when I really got serious about my studies in my Junior Year (after a scare in which bad grades almost got me kicked out of the electrical engineering program) that I began to utilize the libraries. In my first two years I would go back to my dorm between classes even if I could only be there for 10 or so minutes and I’d check my email and the net. I only did my assigned homework so I didn’t need all the time I was wasting going back and forth. Once Junior Year rolled around and I started doing extra problems in order to ensure I understood the material well enough to gets Bs and As, I needed to use the libraries to study. So I started to frequent the Uris and the Engineering Library at Carpenter Hall. The engineering library was my first introduction to Linux (they had Mandrake installed) and Firefox (before it was even called Firefox).
This was during a trip Danielle and I took to Philidelphia to see an Anberlin concert. We decided to also go ahead and see the sights. We saw the Liberty Bell in its new home, tried a real Philly Cheese Steak, and just enjoyed being somewhere else.
This photo is just a reminder that people won’t always say ‘no’ when you ask to take their photo. In his case, it’s because I really liked his uniform.
Another photo taken from the top of the clock tower. This time it has the business school as the most prominent building. It’s crazy how much that skyline has changed with new building construction.
Most of the buildings at Cornell had multiple entrances. Because of the hilly nature of the campus some of these entrances, like this one into Uris Library, went unnoticed by the majority of the student body.
Reflections and Self-Portraits in today’s Top 200 Photo.
photo #116 is:
Ever since I was young I was fascinated by visual depictions of infinity. It’s such a strange concept to get one’s mind around and I’m a visual person. So I’ve always loved looking into parallel mirrors. I also used to love hooking up a video camera to a TV and then filming the TV. The infinite scene there was so awesome to observe.
Confusingly, Lolita fashion has noting to do with the novel by Nabokov about a man falling in love with an underaged girl. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lolita) Instead, it is an emphasis on Victorian-age fashion. It is, according to Wikipedia (and substantiated by what I’ve seen), subdivided into Gothic Lolita, Sweet Lolita, Classic Lolita, and Punk Lolita. I think this girl falls somewhere between Gothic and Sweet Lolita.
This is Cornell’s famous clock tower and the attached Uris Library. The clock tower is called McGraw Hall. I knew that at some point in my freshman year, but pretty much everyone just calls it the clock tower. It houses chimes that are played throughout the day. Every quarter hour it’s the usual chimes that every clock tower plays. About four times a day they play a few songs. At least once a day they’d play our Alma Mater. I loved hearing that when I walked through campus. It almost always brightened my spirits and made me feel happy to be a student there. Also every day (or nearly every day) they played the evening song at 1800. At one chimes concert I attended they cheekily said that it “resembles Oh Christmas Tree”. No, it IS “Oh Christmas Tree”. But they invented these songs back before copyright. For example, I learned that something like four other schools have the exact same Alma Mater song as ours. And I think that it, like The Star Spangled Banner, also was originally a drinking song. According to Wikipedia (caveats about the accuracy of Wikipedia apply), our Alma Mater, “Far Above Cayuga’s Waters” is “set to the tune of “Annie Lisle”, a popular 1857 ballad by H. S. Thompson about a heroine dying of tuberculosis.” Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about the Alma Mater “theft”:
Cardinalis cardinalis is featured in today’s Top 200 Photo.
photo #120 is:
Danielle and I love cardinals. We love how bright red they are, their “masks”, their mohawks, and the way they hop around on the ground. The funniest thing about cardinals is that they try to act tough with the smaller birds, but the cardinals are the first birds to run/fly away whenever something scary happens. And they’re the last birds to come back to eat.
Otakon and video game characters in today’s Top 200 Photo!
photo #123 is:
I’ve mentioned my love of Final Fantasybefore. And that was the main reason for photographing the girl on the left. I saw the moogle and had to photograph her. Later I found out she is a character from Final Fantasy X. Every time I see this photo I’m filled with regret that I chose to do it in landscape orientation to include her friend (From Elite Beat Agents) because the bottom half of the costume is very intricate. It was only my second time photographing at Otakon and I was very nervous to ask people to take their photos and then I tended to rush through it. I’ve gotten better with each Otakon, but I’m still working on getting over it completely.
An interesting self portrait in today Top 200 Photo.
photo #124 is:
One of my favorite things about photography is how it can allow us to see what is impossible to see with the naked eye. Nowadays I tend to do that by freezing action or doing macro photography. Back in the early 2000s I mostly did that with Photoshop. Sometimes I just played with painterly effects. But one of my favorite genres at the time involved exploring the dimension of time along with space. So I created a series of photographs like this one were I imagined that the camera could capture time as well as space. (I would later learn how to recreate this with flash and without any aid of Photoshop)
Wedding bells are ringing in today’s Top 200 Photo.
photo #125 is:
I saw this photo when I went to DC with Danielle’s parents to see the Cherry Blossoms. When we were waiting to cross the street back towards the mall I saw this awesome wedding limo. I’m sure they got some awesome photos for their wedding.
note: This is a blog post about fine art nude photography. While there is no pornography or erotic image on this page, you may not want to load it up at work. Also, to see all my work with this model on flickr, you’ll have to sign in so they can verify that you’re old enough to see the photographs
I’d been wanting to photograph a model for a long time. I’d read that photographers often get together and rent out studio space to do so, but I didn’t know how to find it. I did a few google searches in 2006 and couldn’t find anything so I gave up. I’d also wanted to do nude photography since that time. I even bought a book about techniques. It all floundered for five years. Then I heard on This Week in Photo about meetup.com. There I found a group doing Boudoir Photography. I joined them. They were going to do a workshop at The Carriage House in DC. So I joined that group. And The Carriage House arranged for professional model Devonny Sandrick to be available. At $125 for time with a professional doing fine art nude and getting a liberal model release in return, it was a great deal I couldn’t pass up.
I didn’t take this photo. (I didn’t take a tripod on our honeymoon trip) We went to Puerto Aventuras, an hour south of Cancun, for our Honeymoon. This beach was right outside our hotel. It was, more or less, a perfect trip. I’ll blog more about it if other photos show up.
As I mentioned before, I enjoy the costumes people work on for Otakon. In this case, the person has chosen a video game character rather than an anime character. Dan informed me that she is Crimson Viper from Street Fighter IV. In the background you can see a group from another video game, Valve’s Team Fortress 2.
Cornell is once again the subject in this Top 200 Photo.
photo #128 is:
This is another photo from the top of the Clocktower. In this photo you see Ho Plaza, Willard Straight Hall, a chapel, Olin, Ganett, and Ithaca in College Town and beyond. (And a bunch of other buildings on the periphery)
And once again we return to Brooklyn for this Top 200 Photo.
photo #129 is:
Danielle’s family lives off of the last stop for the Q or B trains (as of this writing). So it’s a great place to photograph if you want to have an empty subway car. It can get really busy in the summertime with people headed to the beach, but usually it’s pretty empty at that stop.
Another photo of Tai Shan. This time he’s small enough to get on these flimsy branches without falling immediately. It was fun to watch him test the branches to see if they would hold his weight.
I had the good fortune of being sent to England on a work trip. Danielle was able to take some time off from work to join me for a week. We took day trips and weekend trips throughout England whenever I was off from work. One of the places we went to was York - partly because Danielle is from New York - so I thought she should see “Old” York. While there we saw York Minster. That was so much fun because it was so beautiful in there and also because York has such a rich history.
I don’t think I could describe this any better than I do on the flickr page:
I walked into my parent’s bathroom on the last day before the end of the final spring break of my life. I saw this beautiful image coming through the windows, the rest of the bathroom as just as dark as the picture portrays. It took some fiddling with the shutter speed and aperture to get the camera to record what my eyes were seeing, but I was amazed at the beauty of a sunset where I couldn’t even see the sun.
I now know this is a red-winged blackbird. At the time I just thought it was an awesome-looking bird that let me get really close to it for a photo. The most unsettling aspect of this photo is that the beak doesn’t hinge where it seems that it should so I think it looks creepy.
I took the source photo for this on the footbridge that leads to College Town. Then I threw it into Photoshop and started messing around. I arrived at this look by accident, but I really liked it.
This month’s calendar is from Rehoboth Beach in Delaware. The Dolles Salt Water Taffy place is in nearly all the postcards and other media for the city.
I enjoy all the birds in my backyard, but nothing beats the thrill of identifying a new bird. It’s hard to get a good enough shot to be able to ID it because enough birds look similar enough that it can be hard for the novice birder to identify them.
I got this idea during the swine flu epidemic. I’d heard that some people in less-educated countries were afraid that you could actually catch the swine flu from pigs. The truth was a bit more complicated - the original strain that could infect humans did come from a pig. But that was just one mutation of the virus. It only existed in that one pig. But people were boycotting having pigs in zoos and all kinds of stuff. So I thought of this idea. The title is “You Told Me You Were Clean”
I mentioned Tai Shan before. This is his father, Tian Tian. My wife is always expressing how pandas should be extinct already from having such a dumb diet. They eat bamboo, but it is so nutrient deficient that they essentially have to eat non-stop or they will end up actually losing weight by just laying around and being alive.
No #140 because it was already covered. As I write this, photo #140 has 416 views and photo #121 has 459 views. So they’re still close enough that just one view can cause a photo to jump 3 or more spots up.
photo #139 is:
Another boring night in Maryland. Another cool photo with the wife. I had been reading a book of famous photographers and there was this one guy who took photos of beautiful women, but always framed the shot so that he would be reflected in a mirror. So I decided to go with that. Danielle decided to play with kimonos Dan had brought back from his trip to Japan and put on some makeup so I could take photos. I think my favorite aspect of the photo is her half smile.
Time again for my photojojo time capsule. It contains my most interesting photos within a two week period. This time around it’s mostly my 365 plus one of my first Holga photos.
This terrifying photo is from a bee box in one of the Smithsonian museums. It was scary being so close to a box stuffed with bees. I just kept thinking about what would happen if they got loose.
Once again we return to Cornell for today’s Top 200 Photo.
photo #142 is:
Until I went to Cornell I didn’t really know anything about Indian culture other than that they were Hindu and had some elephant god. I ended up discoverying Bhangra, Diwali, and Holi. This photo is from the celebration of Holi. We (Danielle, Lisa Lau, Dina, and I) just happened into the court of Annabel Taylor where the celebrations were taking place. Basically it involves throwing colored powder onto each other. That stuff took quite a bit of time to wash off. But, as you can see here, it does lead to some pretty awesome photos.
Nearly everyone who does a 365 photo project ends up doing an interpretation of the Seven Deadly Sins. It tends to be really fun to figure out how to depict it. Most people never do the Seven Virtues. This was my depiction of Lust. I want to include here the text I have on the description on flickr.
One thing that all Cornellians should make sure to do is climb the iconic Clocktower. It’s so great to just look out over the entire campus that you spend all day navigating. I climbed it about four or so times and each time I enjoyed looking out over the campus.
To New York City at Christmas time for today’s Top 200 Photos.
photo #145 is:
In 2006 I went, for the first time ever, to go see the Christmas Tree at Rockefeller Center. It was crazy to see so many people there given how cold it was. My takeaway was that the tree always looks bigger in photos and on TV than it does in person. I had a great time during that trip seeing NYC all decorated for Christmas.
To Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn for today’s Top 200 Photos.
photo #146 is:
One of the main bonding activities between my father-in-law and myself (and other members of Danielle’s family) was going fishing. Danielle’s father has almost always owned a boat and used fishing as his method of relaxation. For quite a number of years, I joined him on his Fourth of July fishing trips. Usually along for the ride were Anh Dat and one of Co Sao’s sons. For the most part, no one spoke and we just fished. It’s only because of weird conditions in recent years that I have stopped going. The penultimate time I went, it was actually freezing on the 4th of July (but only over the water). I had to borrow a sweater and I was still freezing. The water was also very choppy and it was the first time I got seasick. The last time I went, the water was so choppy that even Duc started getting seasick. So I skipped a year or two and then he sold the boat, so I haven’t been fishing in a few years. This photo is a panorama of the area where he docked his boat. It was near a movie theatre, Jodan’s Lobster Dock, and a TGIF.
While I worked in P&G they sent all the college seniors to Cincinnati to see the corporate headquarters. One afternoon while the rest of the seniors went out drinking, I went walking around Cincinnati taking photos. This one stood out to me because the idea of anything involving tons of brides or the bridal industry seemed terrifying. I had been primed to think this because of the show Bridezilla.
I’ve already spoken about Slope Day in a previous post. We have one other huge tradition at Cornell - Dragon Day. I’m not sure if there will be more Dragon Day photos (I’ve only captured up to photo #121 at this time), but I have a bunch up on my Cornell set.
I’d never seen a whale in the wild before, so I knew we HAD to take advantage of the humpback whales who come to Hawaii for the winter. We went out on a lunch cruise to go see some whales. The only disappointing thing (which is not mentioned in the brochures) is that you can only get within 100 yards of the whales. That’s a whole football field away! And I didn’t have my Sigma 120-400 (link to B&H) yet, so this is the closest I could get to the whale. At least we got lucky and this mother jumped out. She was teaching her kid how to slap the water and other things and at first I thought we’d just see fins and tails.
I was practicing my macro photography and I chose to try and photograph myself. And I decided to focus on my stubble because that seems to be a perpetual feature of mine. I was very happy with the comments I ended up getting.
Another photo from Otakon. I was especially happy to see these guys at Otakon. Ranma ½ was the first anime I ever saw. It was my entry into the whole genre. I remember discovering it at a video rental store in Tualatin, OR. They had some VHS tapes of Seasons 2 and 3. I remember being so psyched that there were cartoons that weren’t for kids. I couldn’t wait for them to get the next tape. I spent all my time in the library at school researching Ranma and learning about the story and getting into fan fiction for the first time. If I’d been born about a decade later I probably would have really gotten into the whole fan-sub scene. Bandwidth was just too small back in those days.
I was just walking back to my apartment when I passed by this mail truck. I’d never seen the inside of a mail truck before, so I took the shot. I also remember thinking it was neat how the back of the truck framed the inside which framed the windshield which framed a view of the outside. (If only it were more scenic out there)
Back to Cornell for today’s entry in Top 200 Photos.
photo #154 is:
One day we were just walking around campus and just pulled into the stadium to watch some lacrosse. Unlike hockey, there was no fee and there wasn’t really anyone in the stands. So I practiced my sports photography with the team. I was into photo editing back them and I decided that this shot would be perfect for a cutout (selective colouring) because we were The Big Red and red is so vivid. I think it work perfectly with this photo. I think it’d look great in a book of Cornell sports photography (without my byline/watermark, of course)
Ever since I moved to Baltimore, I’ve been in the city during Otakon, the annual anime convention. The first couple of times it was a complete accident. For the the past two years I’ve looked up the dates ahead of time and made sure to be there to take some photos. I haven’t yet bought a ticket, but almost all of them tend to spend some time outside and everyone’s amenable to photos. After all, they’ve spent as much as the entire last year working on their costumes in some. I usually have a great time enjoying all the awesome costumes and they usually do pretty well views-wise on flickr. So I know there are at least two more Otakon photos on the Top 200 Photos.
Which is weird because, at the time, it was my favorite photo of Danielle and she hated it. And the weird thing is that, looking at it nearly 4 years later, I’m not as keen on it as I once was. I can’t figure out what I loved so much then. It’s so weird to have feelings associated with a photo change that much in just a few years.
There will not be a #158 because it is a photo that was already covered. (Moved up quite a few ranks much faster than I thought it would)
photo #157 is:
This is a photo from the only time I was the paid photographer at a wedding. The bride was the sister of one of Danielle’s coworkers and needed to work on a budget. Working that wedding taught me that I enjoy photographing weddings a lot more when I’m not the official photographer.
And now for a completely different climate in today’s Top 200 Photos.
photo #159 is:
This is from my Honeymoon outside of Cancun, Mexico. I love finding examples of American companies in other countries so I had to take a photo of this McDonald’s in Playa del Carmen. While we always make sure to eat local cuisine in whatever country we’re in, we also sometimes try out the American chains to see how they differ. McDonalds in England, for example, out-mayonaises the USA. And TGIF in England has ham rather than bacon on their potato strips. And the Pizza Hut sauce over there tastes weird. We did not eat at this McDonald’s in Mexico.
We stay at Cornell for this entry in the Top 200 Photos.
photo #160 is:
This has to be in the top 3 most depressing photos I took at Cornell. There’s a certain beauty in the photo, especially now that I don’t have to deal with that weather anymore, but just remembering trudging up that hill in that unforgiving weather is enough to make me happy to have graduated.
Ah, the Cornell Arts Quad. It’s where everyone plays frisbee. It’s where a large portion of Cornellians go to class. I was really into panoramas at Cornell. If I had the technology in today’s software back then, I probably would have done even more of them.
Once again, it’s a heavy focus on my 365 project. Photojojo is a photo time capsule that sends you your most interesting photos (according to flickr) from the previous year so you can enjoy them again
Another Photojojo photographic time capsule. See it online here and get your own if you want. This shows you your most interesting photos (according to flickrs algorithms) from 1 year ago. Mine this time focus largely on my 365 Project.
To a hacker conference in NYC for today’s Top 200 Photos.
photo #163 is:
Adrian Lamo is an ex-cracker (criminal hacker). He gained notoriety in 2010 for outing soldier Manning as the guy who’d leaked a bunch of info to Wikipedia. The funny thing is that, even though Manning mentioned leaking the State Department cables, it was just noted as a footnote at the time. Everyone was focused on the Afghanistan and Iraq leaks. Little did they know what a huge leak the cables would be towards the end of 2010. Apparently he saw Lamo as a fellow hacker and confessed the entire thing to him.
Just like the reflection of love photos, this was born of a boring weekend in Maryland. Danielle wanted to try some photographic ideas. She was partially inspired by a photo shoot she’d recently seen with Quentin Tarantino, but when those photos didn’t really come through, we went for some herion chic photos. The effect from the blinds started off as an accident, but ended up being something we really liked and tweaked to get just right.
Brooklyn and our nation’s birthday for today’s Top 200 Photos.
photo #165 is:
For a few years, until the younger batch of the next generation was born, Megan was the only kid to take photos of. The funny thing is that she was really scared of me so I usually had to sneak a shot. This is when she was getting old enough not to be scared of me. I wonder what used to scared her?
From NYC to our nation’s Capital for today’s Top 200 Photo.
photo #166 is:
As I mentioned before, we loved to go to the National Zoo to go see the Pandas. Well, thanks to Tai Shan, the zoo got a huge injection of donations which it used to revitalize its Asian section of the zoo. Eventually they got a pair of fire foxes. The fire fox is also known as the red panda. Back when we were in college I was visiting Danielle during summer classes and we took a trip to Syracuse. While there we went to the zoo. I saw they had a sign for a red panda. Whoa! I only knew about the black and white ones! I was quite annoyed that it was just some raccoon-looking thing.
Since I have family (in-laws) in NYC, I’ve tried, on occasion, to take my brothers to experience parts of NYC that we never got to see in the brief time my family rolled through before. On this trip, Dave got to ride a NYC subway for the first time.
This is one of my best bird photos both from a subject standpoint and a technical standpoint. Birds are exceptionally hard to photograph. All animals are hard as they’re more unpredictable than humans, but birds are exceptionally frantic. It’s probably partly because they have a few predators and partly because they need to constantly eat because of their high metabolisms. So it’s hard to capture a bird tack sharp like this one. It’s made a little harder by the fact that my camera’s old so I can’t boost the ISO high enough to get a nice, fast shutter speed.
Alex would, at least in 2009, try and get right up in front of the camera if he noticed you taking a photo. It could spoil the photo you were trying to get a candid shot of, but it certainly made for a dynamic spontaneity that’s harder to capture as kids get older and self-conscious of their image.
In 2008 Danielle was going to take a business trip and wanted a light laptop. Well, she was in luck because netbooks had just recently come out and we were able to get the EEE PC for around $300. We’ve been able to use it a lot for trips so we could watch different things or if we didn’t want the weight of my laptop. I’m not 100% sure it was worth all the money given how quickly the netbooks gained beefier hardware, but it was certainly fun to be part of the revolution in computing.
In the summer of 2006 Israel and Lebanon were engaged in an ever-escalating war. For the most part, I feel that violence is often not the best answer to violence. Especially wide-scale violence. It may be the case that some individuals deserve death for their actions - killing others, especially on a large scale - but retaliations on the country level tend to cause both sides to escalate. This photo/art piece is just meant to showcase how violence quickly gets out of hand.
Slope Day is an annual day of debauchery at Cornell, taking place on the last day of classes. Slope Day has gone through quite a few evolutions. This photo was taken in 2002, my freshman year, which was the last year in which Slope Day was a free-for-all day of drinking. I’m not sure why Cornell went back to a structured festival the following year (as it apparently had done way back in the day), but I think it probably had to do with the emergence of digital cameras and nascent social networking sites that were giving the University a bad reputation. Additionally, a few Ithaca High School kids died of alcohol poisoning. While I feel this wasn’t Cornell’s responsibility since Slope Day was not an official school function, apparently they felt differently. I had mixed feelings about what it evolved to. On the one hand, they started inviting bands to come perform and they had carnival games and food. On the other hand, in order to keep non-College students from getting any alcohol, they fenced off the area which made it really annoying for those of us who had to get to class or lab on that day.
What’s black and white and #173? Today’s Top 200 Photos entry.
photo #173 is:
For about a year, we were obsessed with Tai Shan, the baby panda at The National Zoo. We went at least once a month to go photograph him and watch him act all cute. This triptych is from his first birthday. The giant pink Popsicle is his birthday “cake”.
A still life photo makes it for today’s Top 200 photos entry.
photo #175 is:
Danielle likes to create decorations that add to the ambiance of the house. This involves taking elements from different places and creating something that’s her own. Here she’s taken candles from a bunch of different stores and combined them with seashells we found on a trip to Florida. Some of her other creations might appear later as well.
John Cleese is a comedic genius. I think that history will eventually give him and his Monty Python collaborators a place equivalent to Charlie Chaplin. They helped transform not only British comedy, but American comedy. Many in the US, most notably the creators of South Park, were inspired by this strange brand of humor and created a special blend of American and British humor.
For a while I was doing yoga at our local gym at work. It was quite a revelation. Media usually portrays it as a girly exercise that’s just a bunch of weird stretching poses. Yoga actually requires quite a bit of strength - especially in the “core” muscles. A lot of the poses left me feeling as tired as a weight training workout. I enjoyed it a lot and I only stopped going because my schedule changed and made it hard for me to attend. I’d definitely try it again if I could.
No #180 because that photo was already covered and it ended up moving up the rankings before I could get to #180.
photo #179 is:
From the date, I must have been at my parents’ house for my dad’s birthday. Anyway, as I’ve mentioned before, whenever I get a little bored I start taking candid photos. So I ended up with this good one of Dave working on a puzzle. This photo actually ended up inspiring a flickr friend of mine to do a painting of the photo.
This is Sandy, a jackass penguin. They are originally from South Africa, but her parents are at the Baltimore Zoo. Click on the desktop you want and then right-click and select “set as desktop background”. If you don’t have that option, save-as to your computer and then set it manually.
Back to NYC in this installment of the Top 200 Photos.
photo #183 is:
In March 2002 I went to NYC for the second time in my life. It was exciting for so many reasons. I was meeting my girlfriend’s parents for the first time and I was going to one of the biggest cities in the world. I’d been to NYC once before as part of a college trip up the east coast, but we only got to spend one day there.
This photo was taken when I was taking one photo a day, but before I’d heard of the 365 project. So sometimes I’d be the subject and sometimes it would be squirrels, inanimate objects, or insects. I was going for the look and feel of something out of a movie.
This arch is part of some of the oldest dorms on Cornell’s campus as well as being an arched entryway to West Campus. In 2001 when I started at Cornell, they made the change that all Freshmen would be on North Campus and all the Upperclassmen would be on West Campus. During most of my four years, West Campus consisted of a mix of old, gothic dorms and “temporary” dorms built to accomodate GI Bill students in the late 1940s. In my Junior year they began demolishing the old dorms (all named after graduating classes) and building new, modern dorms. This photo was taken in my Senior year when I used to walk around with my Fuji almost everywhere I went. From the date/time stamp, I was probably walking back to my apartment after getting lunch at The Ivy Room.
Sometimes when I was at functions with Danielle’s family (especially before Dina and Daniel started dating (others, not each other)), I’d get bored because everyone was speaking all Vietnamese, so I’d just grab my camera and wander around taking candid shots. And I’d often get gems like this one. After all, most people look better when they aren’t posed. By the way, this is Danielle’s cousin, Mai, and she’ll be featured a couple more times, I’m pretty sure.
What I love about this photo is that it captures two things that were key to the Cornell experience - passing out quarter cards (known as carding) and attending a Capella performances. It’s not far-fetched that the Andy character from The Office was in an a Capella group at Cornell. There were about six of them when I was there. Some were all male or all female and some were unisex. Pretty much every semester each of them had at least one concert. This group was called The Hangovers. Here are some other ways they advertised on campus:
I got my first digital camera over Christmas of my freshman year. It changed my photography forever. Since the photos were essentially free, I took my camera EVERYWHERE on campus. A lot of my photos, especially one of my favorite ones from my top 10, came from this impulse. I am able to look back fondly on nearly every single one of my Cornell memories because if something was going on, I probably had my camera there.
This photo is from of the earliest batch of photos I uploaded to flickr. I had just discovered Photoshop and was using what I learned from a book to create paintings from my photos. After spending a good semester doing stuff like this, I realized I preferred straight photos much better than these bits of art. It doesn’t mean I’ll never do it again, but I prefer for my photos to be photos.
This is from my 365 project where I had to take one self-portrait a day. In my quest to think of creative subject matter, I went with modern versions of scenes from the Bible. Here I am Adam, eating the fruit that Eve gave me. Nowhere in the Bible does it say it was an apple, so I went with grapes to be creative.
Bork, Bork, Bork! It’s time for another Top 200 Photos.
photo #191 is:
For the most part I was too young to catch the muppets on their first run. But Kermit was a reporter on Sesame Street when I was a kid and that resulted in my recognizing him when muppet movies were shown on TV. Eventually between reruns on TV and the web, I saw large portions of The Muppet Show and their various movies. The Swedish Chef was not my favorite character, but he was in my top 10. This photo was taken at the Smithsonian when they were having a pretty big exhibit of Jim Henson stuff. I usually consider it pretty dumb to take photos of stuff in museums (especially paintings), but I made an exception in this case.
Danielle’s best friend was going to college in Chicago. We’d never been to Chicago before, so we figured we could visit and see a new place and took off for a mini-vacation. When we first got to Chicago, she had class or was otherwise occupied, so we went for a walk around the city. We ended up at The Bean in Millenium Park. (Official name: Cloud Gate) That’s why our luggage is in the shot. Since the entire surface of The Bean is reflective, it makes for really awesome photos. This is not one of those awesome ones. I’m sure one of those will appear later in the list.
It was Halloween 2009 and I was in town to see the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade for the first time. We were waiting for everyone to arrive and I was getting all my photo equipment ready to go. Someone knocked at the door and Danielle’s cousin, Diane, went to answer the door. Since she was dressed as a maid for Halloween, I figured I couldn’t pass the opportunity up and took the shot. There’ll be more from the parade later, I’m sure.
The flower and garter tosses are when weddings really get wild and fun. The person throwing usually fakes the first throw. There are usually shenanigans going on in the receiving crowd. But, as a photographer, my favorite part is when the guy puts the garter on the woman who caught the bouquet. There’s a tension, ENCOURAGED by a good DJ, between pushing the boundaries of modesty and making the girl nervous. The rest of the guests usually help things out by cheering the man on. Sure, as I write this, I realize it’s pretty sexist, but at least it’s voluntary in that the women who get in line to catch the bouquet know exactly what’ll happen if they catch it.
No #196 because it was occupied by a photo I already featured. I didn’t capture all the top 200 photos on the first day, so there is some movement in the photo rankings. Starting with this one, I decided to capture 20 at a time to minimize the issues.
And I continue to through my Top 200 most viewed photos on flickr.
Photo #197 is:
Brighton Beach in Brooklyn is one of my homes-away-from-home. I’ve been going there to visit the family that became my in-laws for about 10 years. It was so exciting to find out that they lived so close to the famous Coney Island. I’m certain there will be more photos of Coney Island as this project goes on. It’s one of the easiest places for me to shoot because it’s only a 10 to 15 minute walk if I’m in a hurry vs a 45+ minute ride to Manhattan. Although I’ve never ridden the Wonder Wheel, I’ve always had a fascination with it because every time the fair came to Florida, I’d ride the Ferris Wheel. I am not sure if I’m forgetting some memory, but I don’t think I’ve ever done the cliche riding of the wheel with a date, but maybe I can somewhat buck that by riding the Wonder Wheel with the wife. Along with the Cyclone roller coaster, the Wonder Wheel is one of the oldest and most iconic structures at Coney Island.
When people find out that I’m from Florida ask me how I’m dealing with winters in Maryland, I just smile and tell them that I went to university in Ithaca, so no Maryland winter can compare with what I’ve seen. Cornell tends to be in perpetual winter from December until March. I think the lack of sun is part of what contributes to the low spirits of so many students. I didn’t mind the snow in January and February so much - after all, that’s winter. But when it snowed in March or April, it just made me feel as though this would be the year where winter never ended.
I love dramatic sunsets and it was complete luck that I was able to capture this one. I had been carrying around my Fujifilm Finepix S7000 all over campus everywhere I went, but I usually didn’t take it with me in my car. I just so happened to have it in my car when we went out to eat at Chilis in Ithaca, NY. By chance, we looked out the window and saw the sunset. I ran out to my car to capture it. Afterall, sunsets can go from amazing to ho-hum in an instant. The luck involved helps this photo to be one of my favorite sunset photos.
One thing I really love about the Photojojo photo time capsule service is that I get to rediscover my photos from a year ago. Although this year is off to a slow start, I usually take so many photos throughout the year that it’s really hard to remember all the photos I’ve taken. Sometimes getting the time capsule reminds me of a place I really enjoyed visiting or a good time with friends of family.
Once again I have received my Photojojo time capsule. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on your point of view) , it’s all 365 Project photos as that’s the most interesting thing that was going on at the time photographically.
Here’s the background for February. A little shoutout to my alma mater. Click on the image and then right click to set as your desktop or save to your computer to manually set to the desktop.
[caption id=“attachment_4050” align=“aligncenter” width=“400” caption=“Feb 2011 desktop for more square monitors (1024x768)”] [/caption]
I’ve had a few changes. My photo of professor Delchamps continues to fall from #1 and we have the Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum photo enter the top 10 for the first time.
Here’s your calendar for January 2011. It’s a goose getting dry on top of a shelf of ice on a lake that was partially frozen over. Click on the image you want then right-click to set it as your background or save it to your computer and then set it that way.
Here’s the desktop background for December. I know it’s Western-centric - perhaps next year will be more neutral. To use as your background just left-click on the appropriate image for your monitor size. Then right-click on the image and your browser will probably have an option called “set as desktop background”. If it doesn’t, you can save it to your computer and manually set it.
Here’s the calendar for November - I hope it doesn’t keep you drooling all month! Click on the image to load it into your desktop. Then right-click and you should be able to set it as the desktop background. Alternatively, save it and then manually set it as your desktop.
[caption id=“attachment_3791” align=“aligncenter” width=“400” caption=“Nov 2010 - 1024x768 - For More Squarish Monitors”] [/caption]
For the past week I’ve had a huge surge in people viewing the image above. I saw that it was mostly from Google and not flickr. I was wondering why and then I realized I could see the search terms brining people to the image. Here are the search terms bringing people over:
1 tweedle dee and tweedle dum costumes 19
2 tweedle dee and tweedle dum 10
3 tweedle dee and tweedle dum costume 6
4 tweedledee and tweedledum 6
5 tweedle dee hats 2
6 tweedledee and tweedledum costumes 2
7 tweedle dee 2
8 image of tweedledee and tweedledum 2
9 tweedledee tweedledum costume women 2
10 tweedle dum and tweedle dee costumes 2
11 tweedle dee and tweedle dum women costumes 1
12 tweedle dee tweedle dum costume 1
13 woman tweedle dee and tweedle dum costumes 1
14 tweedle dum tweedle dee outfits 1
15 womens tweedle dee costume 1
16 what do tweedle dee and tweedle dum say in… 1
17 “tweedle dee and tweedle dum” 1
18 tweedle dee and tweedle dumb costumes 1
19 tweddle dee and tweedle dum costumes 1
Apparently I always go to National Parks in Oct, because last Oct I went to Shenandoah National Park. So all but one of the photos are from that trip. The time capsule is available online here if you want to see how to setup your own.
Once again, here are the most interesting photos as selected by the Photojojo folks and flickr’s interesting algorithms from one year ago. ( View on their site)
I’ve been slacking a bit with these, so here are two photojojo entries. The first one is from 25 Aug to 8 Sept. Apparently only my 365 was interesting at the time:
[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“Love the folksy Trail Name”] [/caption]
I’m not traditionally a nature-as-scenery photographer. I prefer animals and humans. But on a recent hike through a trail in Papatsco State Park, I took my camera along and captured some of the lightly forested trail.
[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“333” caption=“People love to mess up trees just to leave their mark”] [/caption]
I haven’t done one of these since last October. At lot of the same photos are there, but there are a few less panda shots. A few of the photos have switched spots with each other. And there’s the relatively new photo of Dina and Brian. Interestingly (no pun intended), my most viewed photo is not in the top 20 most interesting. (So people on flickr like uninteresting shots?)
Last time I mentioned my Franka Solida III, I had just had my first roll in my Yashica developed. I mentioned being a bit worried about the fact that I couldn’t tell what was in focus by looking through the viewfinder. Turns out that my fear was founded as I originally thought the units on the lens were ft when they were in fact meters. The results show:
Found online here. Mostly involves my 365 project. But the first photo is from a BBQ with a bunch of our friends. That was an exciting day in both good and bad ways.
Just like last year, I went to Otakon, but didn’t pay to get in. Perhaps next year. So, like last year, I mostly photographed people under the the awning of the convention center. Unlike last year, I asked lots of people if I could photograph them. It paid off as I was able to get lots of shots I would have otherwise missed. It also yielded me a lot more single person portraits rather than just massive group shots that everyone else happened to be shooting. So, here are some of my favorite shots.
It’s August - the last month to get to the beach, so I went with this image from Coney Island. Click on the image below and, when it loads, right-click to set it as your desktop background.
As always you can view it on their site here. (and sign up for your own) Here are the photos from the late July Photojojo time capsule. It’s mostly my 365 with a little bit of Otakon thrown in.
View it online here. For those new to this blog, Photojojo is a time capsule that emails me my most interesting photos from a year ago. This time it’s mostly involving our trip to Florida for my grandfather’s birthday.
On my Father’s Day Weekend visit to NYC I finally got to see some MoMA exhibits I’d wanted to see for months. First off was a Picasso exhibit called “Variations”. Ever since my parents took me to the Dali Museum in St Petersburg, FL six years ago, I’ve been very interested in painters – especially artists from the 1930s-1950s and the surrealist and associated movements. Also, as a person of Spanish heritage, I’ve had a special interest in artists from the region. So I was very excited to see this Picasso exhibit.
[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“Luna Park, the new section of Coney Island”] [/caption]
As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I went to NYC over Father’s Day weekend to see the Mermaid Parade. Well, as if that wasn’t crazy enough, I went BACK to Coney Island that night to photograph the new Luna Park. I have been documenting the changes to Coney Islan d and so I wanted to document the aftermath. I took both of the digital cameras I had used that afternoon and proceeded to take some low light photos. I would have preferred to have gone a little earlier in the evening to take the photos, but we thought it might have been a little crowded. By the time we went, it wasn’t too crowded, but there were still plenty of people still in their mermaid costumes hanging around.
In reading the New York Daily Photo Blog, I happened to come across a post about the Coney Island Mermaid Parade. I mentioned to my wife that I wanted to try and attend next time it happened. Being the awesome wife that she is, she kept her eye out for the date and let me know it would coincide with Father’s Day weekend this year. So we decided to get a two-for-one deal and go to NYC to see the parade.
I was recently reading issue 15 of 125 Magazine and came across the following quote by Albert Watson.
[Americans] seemed to want fasion to be more of the people, more of the mass. Chairman Mao had all the Chinese dressing the same, and from a different base in America they arrived at something not to dissimilar. And you can take it on to looking at the success of companies like The Gap and others, where in the headquarters they make a decision that then rolls out across the country. Someone decides ’let’s do cargo pants again, we haven’t done it for a couple years….so this year we will put two buttons on every pocket.’ Then they proceed to make 16 million pairs of these … and they go all over the USA and all over the world. All the same but you can choose from six colours. there is a certain sense of Chairman Mao and his style for the masses in the American philosophy around fashion, if arrived at through capitalism rather than communism.
I’m writing this post two days before my 365 project ends. It will be published morning upon which I will take my last photo. I decided to end it with an eight-part story. You can start here and follow the photos in the set “The Dark Assignment” which should be open on the right. (Better than going directly to the set where you might end up seeing the end instead of following along) I’m not going to post my 365 retrospective now, that will come after I’m completely done. But I haven’t blogged about my 365 project since last October. So I wanted to share some of my favorite photos since then.
The title of the blog post comes from an interview with Paul Graham featured in the Summer issue of Aperture magazine, concerning the Henri Cartier-Bresson exhibit I’ve been dying to see at the MoMA in NYC. The full quote was “Someone I know, who is working on the … Henri … [exhibit] … and has seen his contact sheets, said to me: ‘The “decisive moment” is bullshit.’ There are ten pictures before and ten pictures after every one of them;” Anyone who has studied photography for any length of time has been told that they will, with time, develop an eye for when something’s about to happen and then take the photo exactly the right moment. It’s an anachronistic bit of advice stemming from the days when each frame was expensive and you didn’t want people to shoot ten shots to get one. But, in the digital age, there’s no reason to be so stingy with your photographs. And, apparently, it’s a lie. Henri Cartier-Bresson is one of the masters - he’s featured in every photographic compilation I own. And he took dozens of photos just to get the one that touches people. That’s really the big secret that most people don’t know. For every photograph that you see out there by a professional, there are tens or even dozens of photographs he didn’t put out there. Even I (and I’m nowhere near the league of such people) upload only a fraction of the photographs I take. Every photo can’t be a gem. Sometimes it just doesn’t look as good as you thought it would. Sometimes you just missed that moment of pure emotion on the face.
Last time I wrote about my dabbling in the film world I had had 3 Holga rolls developed. My Yashica and Franka Solida III had arrived after my trip to NYC so I had yet to run any film through them. I shot a few frames with each camera when Danny and Dina came to visit in April and then let the cameras lay dormant. As I explained in a previous post, with the cost of film and development so high, these cameras were somewhat for special occasions. I took the cameras with me to Delaware (a trip I have yet to blog about), and shot with the Holga and Yashica.
The summer issue of Aperture magazine arrived at my door a couple days ago. It came with a supplement titled “Made in Polaroid”. Apparently, Ansel Adams was heavily involved in Polaroid’s early days, helping them research how to make it relevant to artists. Since he was a founder of Aperture magazine, the two organizations have always had a close relationship. As I recently read on Wikipedia, Polaroid stopped making cameras and film. The point of this supplement was to communicate what the company that bought the rights to the Polaroid name will be doing with it. The guys over at The Impossible Project will be creating instant film for the new line of Polaroid cameras. The supplement also functioned as a showcase of what various famous artists are doing with Polaroid. One artist in particular caught my eye: Maurizio Galimberti. He does Polaroid collages landscapes and portraits such as the following collage of Benicio del Toro.
Thursday (22 Apr) as I drove into work, I knew the first few hours would be unbearable. My photos were waiting to be picked up from L’Imagerie, but they weren’t open until 1000. So I had to wait until my lunch break to go pick them up. The whole day I didn’t know what to expect. I’d never had medium format film developed and, while I’d had contact sheets with my APS film, it was not a true contact sheet.
At the time that I write this (about two weeks ago), I have run three rolls of film through my Holga, my Yashica A has arrived (unfortunately, too late for the wedding), and I have taken my film to L’Imagerie in Bethesda, MD to be developed. I used the Holga, along with my DSLRs, at Ho and Lauren’s wedding and I took some photos on the Brighton Beach/Coney Island Boardwalk. I also took some outdoor candids of Danielle’s family. One question was asked constantly: why are you using film?
As I researched medium format photography in deciding whether or not to participate , I came face-to-face with a trend I’ve seen in other fields. As the technology has “progressed”, users have actually found themselves with worse and worse results. And, just as in other technologies, it is a tale of choosing convenience or cost in favor of quality.
As I write this I have shot 3 frames on my Holga 120N . It’s been a long time since I had to wait to see the results of a photo. One of my favorite aspects of film photography in the olden days was to get my roll(s) of film back from the drug store and being surprised at all the photos I had forgotten taking. But now I really want to see what’s on the rolls! Digital has spoiled me! Also, I’m curious to see the Holga work its magic!
It’s my photojojo time capsule from early to mid-April. Interestingly, the Tampa Bay Rays were playing Baltimore early in April and they did that again this year. Do they always play the same teams in the same schedule? Also, the first photo from my 365 was in the capsule.
Boy have we become spoiled in the digital age. I’m not sure when this will be posted, but at the time of writing this, I have a Holga 120N and a bunch of film at my desk. I bought a couple rolls each of colour and black and white film in ISO speeds of 160 and 400. I have no idea what to load into my Holga! With my digital camera I can change ISO on the fly. Dark outside? Increase the ISO. Want a slower shutter speed when it’s bright outside? Decrease the ISO. But with film I’m stuck for 12 frames with whatever I put in there!
In the beginning was the kit lens. And it was OK. With it I learned how to use my DSLR. I had never even had a film SLR before, so there was a lot to learn. Eventually I wanted my lenses to reach further so I invested in the Tamron 55-200mm. I was ecstatic at all the subjects I would now capture which were previously beyond my grasp. Birds and squirrels were no longer just small blips in my images. But, there were some issues with the lens. It was very loud when it focused and it was slow to autofocus. I would often lose the shot I was looking for by the time it finished focusing.
The beach was covered with snow, but that didn’t seem to bother the seagulls. As I approached, they let me get really close and if I got closer they preferred to run rather than fly.
The Brooklyn Bridge. It was completed in 1883 and it links Brooklyn to Manhattan. It’s also possible to take the Manhattan Bridge from Brooklyn, but it’s far less picturesque. I’ve been to the Brooklyn Bridge a few times to take pictures with the first time being when I bought my Fujifilm Finepix S7000. This was the first time I took photos from Brooklyn Bridge Park; every other time had been from on the bridge itself.
What can I say about visiting the Lomography store that hasn’t already been said? It provides a very interesting contrast with B&H Photo Video. B&H is a photographer’s sex dream. There are cameras and lenses of all kinds everywhere (on the second floor, nowadays). A conveyor belt system brings your order to the guy taking your order and then over to where you pay. It is massive (taking up a good chunk of 9th and 34th) and it feels chaotic on a Sunday afternoon. You instantly feel as though you need to win the lotto so you can posses it all. It feels like a microcosm of NY with people trying to get every which way and pushing around.
If you read anywhere on the web, you’ll see people talking about how Photoshop (and digital photo manipulation) is ruining the purity of photography. People argue endlessly about this as if they could get everyone on their side. Guess what? This controversy is older than radio. Recently I’ve been reading the great photography history, How To Read a Photograph. It turns out that as early as 1898, people were purposely publishing their photographs straight as they happened to develop. In the 1920s there emerged a division between photographers over whether it was more proper for photographers to alter their negatives (and therefore become an interpretive art form like painting) or if they had to be developed as is. People had already been experimenting throughout the 1900s with the usage of different chemicals to affect their prints in different ways. Photographers even used different films from different manufacturers because they were known to give darker greens or more saturated colors or better grain. Digital photography is no different - it’s just that dark rooms took years to master while anyone can get the basics of the Canon RAW (or Lightroom RAW) editor. But, having seen that this division has existed within photography for the past 100 years, I don’t think it will be going away any time soon.
It was busy at the bird feeders with all the new birds. This little guy was unable to find a spot to land. I don’t know what he didn’t like about the bottom peg.
This is one of our neighbors clearing the snow out in his yard. Not sure what he was making a path to. Perhaps for his dog to be able to get to where he goes to relieve himself?
In case you’ve been under a rock lately, Maryland, DC, and Virginia got rocked by a huge El Niño system over the weekend. It dumped over three feet of snow in my neighborhood and nearly three feet everywhere else. The birds weathered it pretty well. Well, it helps that I felt bad for them and kept refilling the bird feeders. They were especially aggressive on the feeders this weekend for two reasons. 1) It was cold and they needed food to heat themselves by moving and 2) We had a bunch of new, large birds join the crowds in my backyard. The new birds included Red-Winged Blackbirds, Common Grackles, and European Starlings. Neither of these birds like Sunflower seeds, so they all kept going after the bird feed mix feeders. When I ran out of bird feed mix (a few days later) and was unable to buy any because of the snow conditions, I filled the feeders with sunflower seeds and they remained untouched for most of the day until the birds figured out that’s all they were going to get. Then they finished that off. I’ll be interested to see if they stick around after conditions improve.
Sometimes the simplest things in life give the best pleasure. I love watching animals do the things they do. I pass by this lake chock-full of geese every day on my way to work. They’re only there in the morning before they go out in search of food and whatever it is geese do during the day. I wanted to catch them when the lake was frozen over to see how they dealt with it. Basically, they mostly treated it as though the shore extended out onto the lake. I shot at least a hundred frames and put up my best few onto flickr. This one became my favorite shot of the day.
In this post I decided to take you through my thought process in lighting the photo. Because I wanted the knife as close to the camera as possible (while still being in focus), I had to lower the intensity of the flash on the camera. But that meant I would end up too dark, so I had use another flash to light me. I wanted to make sure that the flash lit only me and did not add any extra light to the knife, so I put a snoot on my flash. As we covered before, the snoot directs light forward with a very quick drop-off to darkness from the projected circle of light.
This one’s another subtle one because it’s so obvious, but if, like me a few months ago, you’ve only shot with available light, on camera flash, or bounced your light because you were told to - you probably haven’t thought about how light affects your portraits. And so you have always taken portraits where they came out good enough if the people were photogenic and not so good if they were average. Well, the key is creating realistic, but soft shadows. (Although, in fashion photography and other styles you may eliminate all shadows) The problem with on camera flash is that you end up with super harsh shadows. (Also, the behind-the-head ugly shadows that make the person look like they grew an afro) What you want to do is to soften up the shadows and move them to the side. Just remember this thing you learned as a child - shadows appear where light is blocked.
You may have seen a photo like the one above where the light fades away as if it were a flashlight. How do photographers do that? It’s pretty easy, they snoot their flashes. A snoot is basically a light tunnel and professional snoots have a honeycomb grid at the end. The snoot directs the light and keeps it from spilling out to the sides so it all goes forward. The grid pattern at the end affects how wide the beam appears.
Here’s a non-obvious problem that photographers come up against all the time - I bought a white background so why doesn’t it look white in my portraits? The reason that it’s a non-obvious problem is that you have to remember that the camera doesn’t see the world the same way you do. The internal circuitry of the camera wants to meter for neutral grey. So the cure is simple as long as you have an extra flash unit - you have to use it to light up the background. One important thing to remember if you’re using a small flash (speedlite or speedlight), you need to pop a diffuser cap on that lens to spread out the light over the whole background. In fact, if the background is wide enough you might need two or more strobes. Another tip is that it may help to put your flash unit into manual mode so the flash itself doesn’t try to make the background neutral grey.
Here’s the calendar for February. Click on it to get the full size so you can make it your background. ( edit: I noticed a bug in the way the calendar appeared and fixed it on 31 Jan 2010 so just download a new version, thanks!)
This Northern Mockingbird is one of the many birds in my yard. I can’t quite pinpoint what it is about birds that fascinate Danielle and I, but we love to watch them cavorting around the yard and interacting with each other.
It’s been a very snow-filled winter this 2009-2010 winter season compared to the last five or so years I’ve lived here. I think I’m over it. Spring couldn’t come quickly enough.
This fox likes to sleep on a pile of grass in the back yard. This grass came from the first time I cut the grass after buying the house. The grass was so tall that it filled the compost unit and there was still too much grass. I didn’t know at the time we had yard pickup in the neighborhood, so I put it on the edge of my property for nature to do its thing and decompose it. At first I thought it was working because some mushrooms grew there. But they were eaten or somehow destroyed after a few days. Since then I haven’t seen any more mushrooms on there. It MUST be decaying, but it seems to always be the same size. A few months ago we first spotted the fox sleeping there. On the day I took this photo, my wife was home sick and she saw and it called me at work saying it was just lying there. Hours later it was still resting and I was able to get this photo. I’m not sure what attracts the fox to the grass. Is it warm because of decomposition? Is it just softer than the ground? Both? Either way, it’s always a special treat for the fox to show up.
I was curious how they stacked up and I wanted to see if I could detect any patterns. Except for a few outliers, they’re mostly below 50 views per photo. I also expected to see more views after I started adding my photos to more 365 photo groups, but this is not the case. There do appear to be clusters of views. In other words, one highly viewed photo seemed to lift the ones by it. That one huge outlier is my photo making fun of causes of the swine flu. The other big one is my Heroin Chic photo, no surprises there. It was fun to create this and I learned a new python module. Also, even though it probably took me a bit more time to program than to do it manually, it will now automatically generate whenever I want, and that’s worth the time it took.
Kids at Christmas are awesome! Nearly every present that Anthony, Alex, and Lizzie got received a loud, “This is the best present ever! This is all I ever wanted!”
My mom usually sets this up under the tree (although never this elaborately). By moving it to a table in the living room she was able to do a really amazing job. Also kudos to Denny who helped her with the landscaping.
What is it that intrigues us about rusty cars? On flickr there are hundreds, if not thousands, of such photos. I also see them in books. I think it’s partly because of the colours, partly because it reminds us of our own mortality, and perhaps partly leftover cultural hatred of machines.
Another hard bird to photograph. The blue jays are in my yard even less often than the cardinals. And they run away at the slightest move by me. But, once again, patience paid off.
Ever since I put up the bird feeders (and even before that) I’ve been trying to get good shots of the cardinal. With my Sigma 120-400mm and some patience I was finally able to succeed. These guys are really skittish. If I come outside when I see them, they run away. So I need to already be standing out there for them to ignore me and come out and let me take their photo. This photo has been increasing in views rather quickly. I’m a pretty big fan of it myself.
Rather than pile up my daily photos whenever I forget to post them, I’ll just post them one at a time and build up a stream of photos. I haven’t been in much a textual blogging mood recently. Perhaps that’ll return eventually.
Whenever I’m in Oahu, I love eating at this ramen joint. If your only experience of ramen is cup o’ noodles, you haven’t had real ramen. Check it out next time you’re in a heavy Japanese neighborhood. This place has good price and service and the food is pretty filling - especially if you get the rice and dumplings.
I was looking at my flickr 20 most interesting photos and I realized that a healthy portion of them were taken this year. Six of the top 20, in fact, were taken in 2009. Here they are:
[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“375” caption=“La Palma Latin Cafe in Hialeah, Fl”] [/caption]
I took this photo with my cell phone while I was in South Florida for my cousin’s wedding. It was just on a whim because I wanted to show some of my family what had changed when I wasn’t looking. Below is what I wrote on the description on flickr along with a little more exposition:
[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“333” caption=“This is a very creepy way to sell cigars.”] [/caption]
When I saw this guy in a Georgetown cigar store I knew I had to photograph it before the day was over. On the way back to the train, I captured this shot. It creeps me out, but I had to capture it.
[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“The lens is so heavy it tips my camera forward a bit.”] [/caption]
For my cousin’s wedding I wanted to have a f/2.8 lens. I had had bad luck with my current lenses at Richard’s wedding because I couldn’t get good enough low light performance. So I decided to rent a Canon EF 24-70mm L f/2.8 lens. So not only will it be an f/2.8, but it will also be an L lens so this should be the best quality photos I have ever taken. After a lot of looking around, I ended up choosing Pro Photo Rental.
[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“333” caption=“Who knew Inuyasha was that popular?”] [/caption]
This photos is my most viewed photo on flickr and today it reached 10,000 views! The pace of views has been insanely quick. (for one of my photos) It only had 5,000 views 18 months ago and ever since then I’ve been wondering when it would reach 10,000 views. Now the next milestone on the flickr views groups is 25,000 views. It’ll probably take a while to get there. I know there are some who get 25,000 views in one day, but I’m not one of those, so this is pretty exciting for me. 10,000 pairs of eyeballs have seen this photo and that’s awesome.
[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“333” caption=“All of us in our costumes, ready to head out to The Village”] [/caption]
Last year after Dina and Brian went to The Village for Halloween, I did some research on this tradition and decided we would go whenever things worked out. Well, this year was that year so we decided to spend Halloween night in Greenwich Village in NYC’s Manhattan. But, first, we rewind once again to last year. Danielle’s mother made an awesome Chun-Li costume for Dina that rivals anything you can find in a US costume store. Brian was Ryu and both got lots of accolades for their costumes. Fast forward to this summer. We decided to also have Danielle’s mom make our costumes this year.
Due to missing some photos on the weekend or extremely busy weeks, I’ve now completed 155 days as of the time this is being written. Here are some of my favorite photos since my last update in August. To see the entire project, visit my 365 Set on flickr.
This photo has suddenly become my daily most viewed photo for the past 10 days or so.
[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“Pope John Mole IV is becoming somewhat of an internet celebrity”] [/caption]
Yesterday it had 32 views. It had 30 a couple of days before that. As of 2100 on 21 Oct, it has 22 views. [Almost] All of the views have been coming from Google and Yahoo image searches. I wish flickr told me what search terms were leading to this little guy. I’d try a few really quick. “Pope John Paul” (no quotes) does not bring it up on the first page. “Pope John Mole” and “Pope Mole” (again, both without quotes) do bring it up as the first search result. But why would someone be searching with those terms? It just doesn’t make any sense. The image already has 1814 views for all time.
[caption id=“attachment_2818” align=“aligncenter” width=“1036”] Apparently I mostly shoot wide[/caption]
Nearly 60% of my photos are in the wide to short telephoto range and nearly 40% is exclusively wide. Now, I do have SOME photos from others in my Lightroom catalog, but not enough to skew the results. I would say the reason for the huge concentration of photos in the 33-82mm range comes from the kit lens and its equivalent focal length USM version that I shoot a lot of photos with. The large concentration around the 308-330mm range comes from the 1.6x crop factor of my XT and XTi on the Tamron 55-200mm I use for wildlife photography.
Three years ago I was discussing photography with a fellow photographer, pictured below. We were discussing places for good photography in the DC-Baltimore vicinity and he mentioned Shenandoah Valley. He also showed me some photos of deer he had gotten there. He was pretty impressed with how close he got to the deer (although - spoiler - I eventually got closer). I was impressed with the deer photos and his description of Shenandoah Valley. I resolved to visit it.
It’s been nearly a month since I put up the bird feeders in our house and I have been enjoying them nearly every day since then. In fact, the only negative has been the cost of bird food. But, as my mother-in-law put it, I get the benefits of having birds without the hassle of having them as pets. At first we had a few birds visiting the feeders each day. Now, during the busy bird breakfast hours, we get multiple birds at once. Interestingly, on the whole, the birds to not fight with each other. Rather, if there are more birds than spots at the feeder, they will queue up on nearby branches. I was very surprised by this behaviour because I thought they would surely fight over this nearly infinite food source.
[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“What emotion does this photo invoke in you?”] [/caption]
A few days ago, Mai told me that photos of landscapes make her feel lonely. That really caught me by surprise. The usual response to photos such as the one above is one of awe. People usually feel a new appreciation for nature and/or that spot. And, sometimes, people express a desire to visit that place too in order to experience it themselves. But I never thought someone could look at a landscape and feel a sense of loneliness. (Unless, of course, the photographer meant to invoke loneliness by selecting a certain type of photo or white balance)
[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“I took this first one while I was waiting for my wife to finish up at work so we could go see some houses.”] [/caption]
[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“After putting it off for a few years, we went to a Corn Field Maze. It was fun for a little bit until we couldn’t find our way back out.”] [/caption]
[caption id="" align=“alignright” width=“160” caption=“Katy Ho, a fellow Cornellian from C/O 2005 on the same bus in Brooklyn that I happened to be on.”] [/caption]
One in 1,600,000. That’s odds of randomly meeting someone I know in NYC excluding my wife’s family. And yet, due to construction on the Q line, Danielle and I found ourselves on the bus with Katy Ho, who we hadn’t seen since graduation.
[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“My two Canon DSLRs”] [/caption]
Recently I’ve been seeing and hearing a lot of people repeating some version of the mantra, “a great photographer can make a great photograph with any camera.” They’ve then been following this up with, “therefore, why not just use an iPhone or point and shoot. There’s no reason to buy an SLR anymore.” Like everything else in life, the truth is gray rather than black and white.
[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“375” caption=“Just barely beat the sun getting our bird feeders up on the first day”] [/caption]
Almost since we moved into our house we’ve been fascinated by the birds we have seen in our front and back yards. Both the wife and I love birding in general and I love photographing birds. So, after a bit of discussion we decided to get a bird feeder. We ended up getting two of them to accommodate different birds and different seed types. Then I dug a hole and attached the bird feeders to a stick we had in the garage. I read a few books on birds and expected it might take a while for the birds to discover the feeder. I was extremely delighted the following day to find birds at the feeder when I got home from work! These little guys would flit out of the woods, peck a bite, and fly right back out. So it was very hard to get a photo, especially with the sun beginning to set. At the end of this post is the best shot I got.
[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“All the men in the wedding court”] [/caption]
Here are some of my favorite photos from the group portraits session. Some of these (mostly when it’s a group photo) were me “stealing” a setup that the official photographer had already set up. Many of the shots with one or two people are quick shots I grabbed while others were being shot by the official photographer. This is one of the reasons why people who have photographer friends are so lucky. I was able to capture tons of shots that the photographer couldn’t because she just couldn’t be in two places at once.
[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“333” caption=“This happens later, but it was a great photo to open with”] [/caption]
And so the ceremony began, starting with the couples approaching the aisle. I was able to get some great shots because I was using both my Rebel XT and Rebel XTi with the EF 28-105mm (and the lens hood to help mitigate lens flare) on one camera and the Tamron 55-200mm on the other. This allowed me to get close up shots no mater where the subjects happened to be standing.
This month finds me with getting two asian photos in my inbox from Photojojo. Either an amazing coincidence or they have some great code going on the in background. Interesting, the first one is a product of racism while the other is a product of love.
[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“Yeah….racism….it’s great for selling stuff.”] [/caption]
[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“From Lisa and Pawel’s Wedding”] [/caption]
[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“Jen appears from across the lake”] [/caption]
Jen was no where to be found at the wedding location because she was actually across the lake for her grand entrance. None of the guests at the wedding knew about this so everyone was very excited. I went on to the docks to photograph her entrance.
Just signed up for this neat flickr-related service, Photojojo’s Time Capsule. Twice a month they send you some photos that you took a year ago. Here are the photos from my first email from them, it’s pretty neat. If you want to see what it looks like in the email, go here.
[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“I *love* this photo because it expresses in a photo a lot about being a child.”] [/caption]
[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“333” caption=“Need me to dig a hole for you?”] [/caption]
Going over photos that were moving from one views group to another on flickr, I discovered this photo that I really love. I love how his head is cocked, I love the idea of a bird with a built-in shovel, and I love how sharp the photo came out.
[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“The Entrance to the Wedding Location”] [/caption]
Our good friend Jennifer Bonass got married a couple weekends ago. The wedding was out in Chestertown, Maryland - out near Ocean City. Since there’s only one bridge to get there, we left early to make sure we’d get there on time. We got there insanely early (1-1.5 hours early) so I decided to take some photos of the setup to pass the time. Turned out to be a great thing I was there early because the official photographer was with Jen and they were at another location so I was the only one to get these shots. Here are some of my favourites.
A while back I unveiled a web utility for telling when it was time to move a photo from one flickr views group to another. It got tons of hits. Then I switched my server and it all stopped working. Beej had gone to a new framework for traversing the XML and had some problems porting it over. Finally got everything fixed up over the weekend and I can come out with version 0.3!
I first mentioned my participation in the 365 project back in May. Ever since then I’ve gone back and forth between filler photos and some of my best creative work. I’ve been trying as much as possible to explore different techniques and try to be as creative as possible. Here are my best shots since May.
Just like Dina, Daniel has a great smile. This is pretty easy to capture because he’s almost always laughing. He has a great attitude towards life and you can’t help but smile when you’re around Daniel.
While finishing up my photographic bio, I was copying and adapting my introduction from my flickr Top 40 book. So I decided to see how the top ten photos in my flickr Top 40 have changed in the past three years.
2006
Original Rank: 1
Current Rank: 5
Original Views: 455
Current Views: 1881
Camera: Kodak DX3600
And my most interesting photos continue to shuffle around! Here’s the latest top 10. You’ll see that this photo, which had become my 2nd most interesting photo at one time, is now off the top 10.
[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“Dina on the DC Train”] [/caption]
Danielle’s family came to visit so we did what we always do when company comes, we went to Washington, DC. Seriously, I don’t really know what else to do. If it were Florida I would have taken them to the beach. In NYC I’d take them to Manhattan and either just walk around or go to a show. But around here I don’t really know what to do with visitors. Inner Harbor is really too small for just an hour or so. And not everyone likes the museums from DC. So if you know something to do around here, let me know.
[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“Which 50mm lens is the best? The Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II or the Canon EF 50mm f/2.5 Compact Macro?”] [/caption]
I wanted to compare them to see if one is clearly better for another. After all, if I’m going to use a prime lens, why not use the best one? Before we get to the photo comparisons, let’s take a look at the other factors.
I wanted to see how I’ve changed as a photographer so I went to my first ten photos uploaded to flickr. The two biggest changes are that I am now really into portrait photography (although mostly natural portraits) and not quite as much into photoshop. My first two pages are mostly photoshop-manipulated photos. The next ten or so pages are photos documenting my life. I got to do some exciting stuff like going to NYC for the second time (but with a lot more time to look around) and also was busy documenting my life as a college student. I’m still into documenting my life and activities I participate in, but I’ve become more sophisticated in my techniques. I now know about shutter speed, aperture, and ISO and I strive to use them to get the best photos I can. I came to appreciate light and how it can work for and against the composition. I also learned when to use flash and when it’s useless. Before I thought no one would want to see an unaltered photo, hence the focus on the photoshopped photos. Then I looked through photography books and learned about street photography and documentary photography. I’ve grown quite a bit from the old days and here’s the proof.
[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“People came to Otakon from all around the USA”] [/caption]
For the first time since moving here, I found out about Otakon ahead of time. Unfortunately, the economics didn’t work out we didn’t buy tickets. But I did go to hang out outside Otakon on Saturday to get some photos. Lessons learned:
Remember what you learned in Hawaii and don’t be afraid to approach people. This is especially the case with Otakon. The cosplayers have spent a long time working on their costumes, sometimes up to a whole year. They want to show off their costumes. So go up to them and ask to photograph them.
With a 1.6x crop factor camera like the Canon 400D, 28mm is not wide enough. It’s very, very crowded at Otakon. They had something like 19 000 preregistered attendees. I missed out on getting some awesome shots of costumes such as this one where the girl on the left had an amazing bottom part to her costume, but I couldn’t fit her and her friend in without backing up a lot more
Buy tickets to Otakon! I missed out on a bunch of costumes because they were walking into the conference too quickly for me to intercept them at the door. So attend so you can see all the costumes
[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“Yankee Stadium from the Train Station”] [/caption]
Ever since I’ve known my wife I wanted to go to a Yankees Game. But we were often busy during the baseball season and neither of us are big ball fans. In fact, this was also my wife’s first Yankee game despite having grown up in NYC and rooted for the Yankees her whole life. So it was to my great dismay that I found out I would never get to see a Yankees game in the original stadium that housed Babe Ruth. However, I finally did make it to a Yankee game after nearly a decade. It was a bit of a taunt to see the old stadium right next to the new one as demolition has not yet taken place.
This is my new favorite photo. It captures everything I’ve always loved in non-formal portrait photography and everything I’ve aspired to. The emotions on display, the proper photographic technique, you just feel when you see this photo, especially with Christine’s huge laugh. It’s also why I love non-formal portrait photography rather than the usual stand there and be photographic with a stupid, fake smile. I’ve often seen photos that had this same vibe and felt jealous that I couldn’t capture it. My time just hadn’t yet arrived.
Just four days ago, this photo was my 11th most interesting photo. Now it’s my second most interesting photo! Wow! I wonder what factors contributed to this? Surely the fact that it has risen quickly to already have 200+ views?
editor’s note: I’m writing this blog in real-time on Friday, 10 July, when I got the card from B&H. The post will appear on a later date
Today I got my Lexar 4GB UDMA 300x CompactFlash Card from B&H. I don’t yet have a UDMA capable camera, but I decided if I am going to buy memory cards, they should have features that I can take advantage of when I finally upgrade my camera (hopefully in 1-2 years). This is my first Lexar card; until now I’ve been exclusively in the Sandisk camp. However, lots of people online love to rave about their Lexar cards and they had a much bigger rebate than Sandisk for similar size and speed. The first thing I noticed is that Lexar apparently doesn’t use those really annoying plastic pakagign cases that Sandisk tends to. You know, the ones that you need scissors to open. However, I also quickly learn that I’m not a huge fan of the case holding the memory card. While it probably has less of a chance of breaking than the Sandisk cases with their (Sandisk’s) latches, I find it a lot harder to open the Lexar case quickly. I pop the card into my Rebel XTi (400D). The camera claims 382 photos. I was expecting a number slightly closer to 400 since my 2 GB cards get 197, but I guess the “missing GB” problem that plagues hard drives is at work here too.
After Dan joined the Amazon.com affiliate program I wondered if B&H Photo and Video had an affiliate program as well. After all, I exclusive buy all of my photography equipment from them. They almost always have the lowest price and their customer service rocks! Plus, since I live in Maryland, I can choose UPS ground delivery (the cheapest option) and get my items within 3 days! Beat that Amazon! So I’ve joined the B&H affiliate program. You can see the link on the left sidebar (as of my current theme) and I’ll be sprinkling links throughout future photography posts. I thought the best policy for you, my loyal readers, was to be forthright in mentioning this new partnership. I promise not to make it annoying. And, if you’re going to buy something from B&H anyway after reading my review, if you do it through the affiliate link, you can help to support this blog. Thanks!.
[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“Trying to do a candid shot, you can sometimes get spotted”] [/caption]
In yesterday’s post I mentioned how I overcame my shyness and it led to a good picture. That doesn’t mean I stopped taking candid photos. I wonder what she thought when she saw the camera pointed her way. Afterwards I shot some photos of the guy with a million balloons who happened to be passing by in the photo above. Did she think I was aiming for him? Because that was my intention - for her to think that. Although, I did want a photo of him too. I ended up taking about four and this was the best one.
[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“Newspaper Guy Reading the Newspaper, but ready to take photos with tourists”] [/caption]
[caption id="" align=“alignleft” width=“180” caption=“This guy was just a block over from newspaper guy. He was also ready to take photos with tourists”] [/caption]
I think everyone has seen a street performer painted in metal and dressed in clothes with a metallic-looking surface. I’ve seen them in Miami, Vegas, and Fort Lauderdale. But only in Honolulu have I seen three of them on the same street only a block from each other. At first when I saw the guy in the newspaper clothing I thought that was pretty creative. But then I saw the metallic guy just a block over. And after that I saw the guy in the “ska” checker board suit. Definitely some points are due for them not all looking the same. But are there really that many people who want a photo with a metallic man that they will take three such photos?
[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“The Quintessential Hawaii Scene: palm trees, the ocean, and surf boards”] [/caption]
[caption id="" align=“alignleft” width=“240” caption=“Diamond Head from in the Ocean.”] [/caption]
I forgot to mention, in my first post, that since I took all of my camera bodies and my GPS unit, I didn’t want to have to worry about setting it back to EST when I got back home, so I left everything in EST. So I decided to divide my days (for the purpose of these posts) as if it were in EST. So, on Day 2 I continued to take pictures as I walked about. But I also tried out the new underwater housing I bought for Danielle’s camera. It was pretty awesome being able to have the camera with me in the water. I was able to get some photos underwater and, if Danielle had been with me, we could have taken portraits of each other in the water. Nearly all of my photos from that day were with the underwater housing and here is a sampling of those photos.
[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“On the flight to Chicago, I traveled with many LPGA pros”] [/caption]
Last week I boarded a plane on a business trip to Hawaii. This time my wife couldn’t come along so all I had to do after work was attend to my photography.
[caption id="" align=“alignleft” width=“160” caption=“The view somewhere between BWI and O’Hare”] [/caption]
Unfortunately, the flickr map page for my account only shows the last 30 or so photos on the map. So it’s pretty rare to get it zoomed out this far to show your GPS shots. I keep wishing they’d show all the GPS tagged photos (using some algorithm to combine them into one dot if you’re zoomed out far enough) so you can get an idea of where around the world the users have been. So after uploading a few Hawaii photos, it looked like this:
[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“Dina, Daniel, Ho, Beo, and Lauren put a lot of work into the decorations”] [/caption]
Last weekend I went to a graduation party Dina and Daniel organized to celebrate Dina, Ho, and Lauren’s graduation this year. It was a great BBQ event and I had a lot of fun. I only knew about 1/10th of all the people there, so I kept entertained mainly by ecording the events of the night with my cameras. I did end up speaking at length with some interesting people.
[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“Lovers on the Boardwalk”] [/caption]
A few weeks ago I took yet another stroll on Brighton Beach’s Boardwalk. This famous boardwalk goes from Brighton Beach past Coney Island all the way to Seagate. This time around I took some iconic photos from the area. In other words, these are exactly the types of photos you would see included in any survey of boardwalk photos. Here’s the GPS track of where I went in a static PNG and then as a Google Map so you can zoom in and scroll around.
I recently posted the photos I took during Dina’s Graduation Party. I then posted the link to Dina’s wall on Facebook. Check out the spike in my views:
[caption id=“attachment_2307” align=“alignnone” width=“416” caption=“My Daily Views on Flickr”] [/caption]
[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“Dina, a new graduate!”] [/caption]
A few weeks ago I attended Dina’s Bachelor’s Graduation. After having attended my own as well as Daniel’s, I had some idea of what to expect, but this was the first college graduation I had attended outside of Cornell. (Not counting my dad’s graduation when I was young) I have have come to believe that all college graduations are the same everywhere. It is a bit odd that Stony Brook used red gowns instead of black ones. The was also my first long outing with my GPS unit. Here’s where I ran around that day. First as a static PNG:
[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II Box”] [/caption]
[caption id="" align=“alignleft” width=“240” caption=“Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II lens on its box”] [/caption]
Recently I got my fifth lens, the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II, Canon’s entry-level nifty fifty lens. This is the cheapest lens Canon makes and, build-wise, it shows. Unlike the other lenses I own (even the kit lens), the 50mm is very plastic-looking and plastic-feeling.
Danielle and I bought our first home near the end of February. We’ve moved many times before - between semesters at Cornell, from Cornell to Tampa, and from Tampa to Baltimore. Now we were finally moving into our own home. And so, for the first time, I decided to thoroughly document our move. I was partly inspired by photo blogs I’ve been reading recently, such as Jeffry Friedl’s blog. I decided to put together a photo essay. So I whipped out my cameras and started shooting.
[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“Some of the equipment you need to geo-tag your photos.”] [/caption]
Recently I was listening to The Command Line Podcast and the host mentioned one way to help others is to write up a tutorial on your blog whenever you learn a new skill or task. Since the information I needed for geo-tagging my photos was fragmented, I decided to write up a tutorial following my workflow. I’ll break this up into the different phases involved.
[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“My first ever Geo-tagged Photo”] [/caption]
(I originally wrote most of this on Thursday, 21 May)
I can’t explain to you the thrill and excitement I get from geo-tagging my photos. I don’t mean that the thrill is so large as to defy explanation; rather that I can’t articulate what it is about geo-tagging my photos that excites me so much. Perhaps it’s the fascination of two different technologies coming together. Maybe it’s the age-old excitement of being able to point to a map and say “I was there!”, only this time you have the EXACT coordinates and you have photographic proof. All I know is that ever since I resolved to get a GPS device to work with my cameras, I’ve been anxious to get my hands on the device. Officially, it’s an anniversary gift from my wife, and I think it will be one of the ones I enjoy the most.
[caption id="" align=“alignleft” width=“240” caption=“Day Fourteen: “You Told Me You Were Clean””] [/caption]
It’s been 16 days now since I started taking part in flickr’s famous 365 Project. Well, flickr has many of them, but the most famous one most people partake in is the one where the photographer takes 1 self-portrait per day for 365 days. The reason for the popularity in the self-portrait 365 project is probably due to two properties of said project. First of all, by forcing the photographer to take self-portraits you remove the photographer’s block that can come from thinking of a subject every day. Since you know it’s always going to be you, you don’t need to worry about what to photograph. On the other hand, self-portraits contain a challenge in that you have to pre-frame your shot and then get in it. At the moment the shutter clicks you are no looking through the viewfinder. I’ve found it to be a great exercise in creativity because it wouldn’t be fun for myself or my viewers if they were all just shots of me sitting or standing in front of a wall. I’ve only begun to scratch away at the limits of my creativity, but the house has gotten in the way; more on that shortly. I think my most creative shot thus far was on Day 14 and has to do with Swine Flu. Depending upon whether you are reading this shortly after posting or years later - the Swine Flu [near] Pandemic of 2009 was one of the biggest stories of the second quarter in 2009. It’s been on the news almost nonstop for the past week and so I had to try and do a topical 365 shot. I’m pretty happy with the result. Follow my progress in the 365 project by visitng my 365 se t.
[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“B&H Event Space - Where B&H holds classes on various topics”] [/caption]
[caption id="" align=“alignleft” width=“240” caption=“Rudy Winston of Canon”] [/caption]
So the first B&H Event Space lecture I ever went to was earlier this April in a class about Travel Photography taught by Rudy Winston, an employee of Canon. His lecture was about taking a vacation specifically to get certain photos. In other words this was not about improving your photography while on vacation with the rest of the family. However, I found that a lot of the tips worked equally well for either kind of trip. Another key part of his lecture was taking pictures with the intention of loading them into a slideshow program as a means of sharing it with others. Before beginning the lecture, Rudy showed his slideshow and here’s what I picked up from that.
So I’m looking over yesterday’s most viewed photos and I am seeing pictures that make sense - the baseball pictures I’ve been uploading for the past 3-4 days.
[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“Yeah, I’m reusing this image. Hey, it works!”] [/caption]
Wednesday I wrote about choosing the right camera. Today I wanted to write about choosing lenses for your dSLR. Just looking at the entire range of lenses available for a Canon EOS camera there are lenses from $89 all the way up to $8,000. You might see two lenses that go from 28-105mm, but one is $200 and one is $1,200. What’s the reason for the difference? I hope to demystify all of this with some knowledge I wish I’d posessed when I first entered the world of dSLRs.
I often see many people asking online how to choose the right camera. They are bombarded with all the megapixels and various features on offer and they have no idea what to get. And usually the retailers (Best Buy, Frys, etc) try and get you to buy more camera than you need. So what should you buy? I’ll try and guide you with this blog post.
The more I’ve been learning about Lightroom 2 (technically now at 2.3), the more I’ve been liking it! First of all, I learned that - thanks to new camera profiles (also available in the latest camera raw software) - I can get my photos to start from where Canon’s own RAW software would have started. I never realized it was a better choice than photoshop because I liked the photoshop workflow so much. But now that I’ve played with the camera profiles in Lightroom, I realize that I’ve been selling my images short.
There’s something about this little, brown, cube monster that people love. I first came across Domo when chatting on AIM with my high school friend, Lawrence Kwan. He had it as his buddy icon. I asked him what the brown square with the mouth was and he directed me to a website with an animation. I didn’t really get it. But there was something neat about the little guy. Then, all of a sudden, I see him all over the place for Target’s Halloween in-store decorations. (I wish I’d taken a photo) There’s something people love about the little guy. On flickr there are, as of this writing, nine groups featuring Domo.
I just wanted to really elaborate on why I think Adobe Lightroom is a program any enthusiast to pro user should own. Although, as I related here, LR has grown on me, going through the photos I shot at my cousin’s wedding has really cemented my love for Adobe’s product. Here are my two favorite features. You may want to open up the images in a new tab at full size so you can follow along.
Once again I’ve had one of my photos published by an outside source. I always had an image used by WNYC, which you may remember. This time it was the above photo in a blog post about Social Enterprenuership in Minnesota. As I said before, if the most important thing to you is getting your artwork out there, use the Creative Commons. At any rate, most artists (Van Gogh, etc) die poor. So why not at least know others are seeing your photographs - the more eyeballs the better. Plus, it might get you famous enough to get paid commissions.
Recently I’ve been going through my old analog photos and scanning them in. This is the oldest picture I have that I took. I took some pictures earlier in our first vacation to the Smokey Mountains. But those prints and negatives were lost by the time I started putting together photo albums. I’ve been remembering so much about my childhood and it’s been so much fun. I’m still deciding which photos to upload to flickr, but keep up on my Analog Set which covers up until the middle of my Freshman year in college.
So I did a test and found that as long as I save the metadata to the file, Adobe Bridge (even with CS2) can correctly read the changes. So I decided to work in Lightroom to see if it was worth buying. I can say that I am really loving it! I’ve been able to adopt my usual RAW workflow with only some small changes. Now I can’t see how I could ever work without LR!! (It’s no wonder why Adobe gives a 30 day free trial!)
During inaugural week I was in Hawaii. Given how cold it was in the Balitmore/DC area that week, I can’t say I wasn’t happy to be there. I stayed at the Embassy Suites Beach Walk in Waikiki and I cannot say enough good things about the hotel. When we first checked in we were offered some tropical drinks both alcoholic and non-alcoholic. The rooms were suite style and very well kept. Every morning they had a whole bunch of complimentary breakfast food - including omlets made to order. They also had a happy hour every night with free drinks and cheap snacks.
Of course, I took my Canon 400D and Fujifilm A 345. Overall I did pretty well. Out of 800+ pictures only 63 were out of focus. Also, for sake of mentioning it, 61 were of my wife. That’s a new thing for me as we usually don’t take the usual tourist-y pictures. Our first day were were still on Eastern Time so we got up at 0400 and went to watch the sun rise.
For quite some time I’ve been been struggling with the point of Adobe’s Lightroom. Other than competing with Apple’s Aperture, it appears not to have a purpose. Of course, right around the time Lightroom (LR) was hitting its stride, I stopped reading photography magazines. The zine I loved the most was a British one published by the same company that puts out Linux Format Magazine. Unfortunately, even with an exchange rate of $1:1 Britsh Pound (which isn’t the case), it’s still $90 per year. So I may have missed lots of tutorial and explainer articles talking about why LR is such a great program. My impression of it was of a Adobe Bridge and Camera Raw. So I didn’t really see the point of paying $200 for that when those programs work just fine for me. It also seemed to straddle some Photoshop territory and I just couldn’t figure it out.
The first word that comes to my head when I see this photo is heaviness. A huge heaviness that can’t be overcome. Even though it’s only 10 lbs, from the angle that I shot this, it seems to convey a strong sense of weight.
The top ten are mostly the same photos they’ve been for a while now, but the bottom ten have changed a bit. It’s very, very intersting (to me, at least) that every digital camera I’ve ever used is represented in the Top 20.
Flickr has a secret algorithm for producing a list of the most interesting pictures. So here are what Flickr thinks are my 10 most interesting pictures. Do you agree?
I think that nearly everyone who has ever learned about the Fibonacci Sequence is fascinated by how quickly it grows. I wanted to illustrate that, so I created this collage with some modifications to J im’s makeCollage.pl script. The rules were that each picture takes the place of a number on the Fibonacci Sequence and is displayed that many times. Of course, I skipped Fibonacci number 1, which is 0. No point in having a picture show up 0 times. So the first picture is shown once, as is the second. Then two times, then three, then…..
That collage was created by a program. I certainly don’t have the patience to arrange all of those photos one-by-one!I told the program to download all of my pictures tagged with Eric Danny David and Danielle and create this collage.
But does that make this any less of a work of art? I think the answer is no. The artwork was just created procedurally instead of visually. To argue that this is less artful is to say that the The Lion King isn’t art because the wildebeast scene was created procedurally. Of course, in this situation I don’t see myself as the artist, but the guy who wrote the program is the collage artist. It’s his procedures which created the art. His name is Jim Bumgardner and he’s a really nice guy who helped me fix up the script. I copied it from his book, Flickr Hacks, but unfortunately, as the code he relied on has changed, it didn’t work as posted. In fact, here is the fix you need in his program, makeCollage.pl :
Over the last two days, between playing Portal and Age of Empires III (both of which are…awesome!), I’ve been doing a little more flickr hacking. This is very closely related to my previous Flickr program where I checked if my pictures were ready to be moved into the next views groups.
This time I wanted to see which of my photos were not in any groups. So in the case that I’ve missed putting a photo into the 25 views groups because it’s a few pages back and I really don’t have time to go back through all of my photos to find the pictures to put into the groups. I tried that once and it was excrutiatingly slow - even slower than figuring out if it was time to graduate my pictures out of the views groups. So here’s the output of my current program:
I forgot to post this about 1 or so weeks ago when I finsihed up the script. So here’s how the output looks on my flickr views program:
Now my next step is to put it on the web. However, the Python API I’m using doesn’t do web-based program authentication. It also doesn’t handle multiple user authentication, which I’d eventually like to do. Right now I’m thinking of porting it to Perl or PHP. I’ll keep you posted.
Last time I checked on that picture it had 25 Views. As of this writing it has 230 Views. That’s not a very high number of views, but for the amount of time it’s been up (about 5 months), the subject matter (a plain view of The White House), and lack of groups (when I wrote this it was in just three groups - although I’ll be adding it into more now) it IS indeed a high number of views. Which just goes to show that you don’t need pictures of naked women to get views on Flickr (as some have argued).
So I’m using Flock daily now for my web browsing to see how I like it. Since I don’t usually go to Facebook on my own, it’s nice to see the notifications within Flock. Thus, I’ve been more responsive to my Facebook private messages, a good thing since my second-cousin recently caught up with me on Facebook. So I’m liking the Facebook integration even more than I thought I would since I’m not a Facebook-heavy person.
Visited this National Park last Sunday. It is pretty beautiful scenery. I’d probably rank it a 7 out of 10. It’s a very nice walking trail. Here are some of the pictures I took last week.
All I know is that this guy has a really high electric bill. I really love stuff like this. I used to have a blue light similar to one of the ones in this room, but it burned out.
And this guy……has my dream setup in terms of monitors.
On 2 Sept I mentioned getting up at 0500 to get some pictures at sunrise. I’d been wanting to get this pictures all summer, but I kept forgetting to take them. Here are the first ones I’ve uploaded to flickr:
Got up at 0500 today to take some sunrise pictures. (I’ll have pictures up later today or tomorrow) I cannot believe how many people were up and awake on a Sunday morning at that time of day! It’s not as if it were as many people as it will be later today, but I’d have to say it was probably thirty times more than the number of people I expected to be awake, namely just me.
I’ve spent a pretty good amount of my free time to try and finish Jose’s Dinner. Now that I’m done, I am taking a bit of a break from animation to do some of the other things I like to do, such as play civ4. The new expansion pack is coming out and I’m extremely excited. It has all kinds of great improvements like colonies, popes, and corporations. So I wanted to play one last game, Eric XI of the Chinese is probably going to be my last game before the expansion pack comes out.
I got to engage in one of my favorite activities this week - building computers! My father-in-law’s Windows Vista laptop was going so slow, he often thought it was about to kernel panic. So I saw the computer he wanted at dell and spec’d it and found out I could do it for $400 cheaper than dell and it’d have Windows XP so he would have a nice fast computer.
I was the photographer for a wedding this weekend (that’s the reason behind the lack of any posts recently). Here are some of my favorite shots so far.
We’ve been asking for it forever and finally flickr has delivered! We wanted sets that contain sets - it makes for better organization - and now they’ve delivered in the form of collections.
My flickr photos rated by # of views - #20, #40, etc….
The majority of my photos appear to be clustered together in the 100-200 view range because you will notice the decrease in the difference across twenty rankings. In other words #20 - #40 is a roughly 150 view difference while #40 to #60 is roughly a 50 view difference.
Since about my Senior Year at Cornell I’ve been shooting in RAW. When I got Photoshop CS 2 I was so happy with all the new features they added to make the workflow so efficient. It really eliminates the “raw is more work” complain that most people have. Recently, as I was reading a book on raw workflows, I realized that, ever since getting CS2, I’ve still been doing things horribly inefficiently!
I just want to share some shots that call out to me. I’ve been so busy with so many things from jump-starting a photography side business to trying to realize all of the Blender Computer animation ideas in my head. So, I may or may not have time to blog. Here are some great shots:
Here’s another shot someone has asked to publish:
As I mentioned before, getting published (as wish my other shot on NPR or the beach shots in the Tampa guide) is a photographer’s dream come true. It’s an acknowledgment that one has pictures worthy of others adding to their reports, websites, brochures, etc.
Here’s the email for this photo:
That picture is an awesome shot. I would like to know if you would give me permission to use this shot on a college report on the cultural aspect of the Brighton Beach community.
I’m working my way towards making money from my photography. I really enjoy the trade craft a lot and if I get to do it as a job on the weekends, all the better. So I’ve bought some books to shore up my technique since I’m pretty much a self-taught photographer. One thing my latest book has driven home is something I’ve noticed countless times in magazines, books, and my own work. I need to relax and take my time. I know enough, and have slowed down enough, to think about the aperture and shutter speed in relation to the effect I wish to achieve. I also know to frame my shot correctly and double-check my ISO settings.
Picture of the Day is back, starting with today. But I will do it semi-regularly instead of running around at 2330 trying to find something to photograph because I’ve been busy all day.
I’ve got a ton of projects going right now, so I’m taking a break from photography until I get a bit more free time. I began to realize that when I was just taking a picture right before going to bed of just about anything, just to fulfill my picture of the day, I was just ending up with mediocre pictures and mediocrity was beginning to creep into my other projects. I’ll come back to it soon enough.
Although it may seem like a philosophical or silly question, it is indeed a practical question for me. You see, we have a tradition at Christmas-time in my family where we play dominoes on the days before Christmas and whoever wins gets to open a gift. I’m sure I mentioned this around this time last year. Well, a couple of days ago I won and my prize was a Canon 50 mm f/2.5 Macro lens from my wife! It’s a fine lens - I’ve been taking some awesome pictures which I will be uploading once the Christmas Season is over.
I couldn’t help it. Once I saw the scale of these two, I just had to make one more tonight. Again, if you happen to like bizarre things like this on your desktop, a click will direct you to a larger size.
Yesterday was nuts. I took my photo of the day, but I wasn’t able to upload it as someone smashed my side mirror on my Civic and I had to call the cops, insurance company, etc Expect it later today!
Found my self at Rockefeller Center in NYC to see the giant Christmas Tree. Here are some shots from that day. I’ll probably have some commentary along with more shots in tomorrow’s post.
A brief holiday on “Today’s Shot”. I am spending time with my wife - pictures for each day will be posted Sunday or Monday. (Just as I did during Thanksgiving)
It’s been really pushing my creative limits to try and come up with a different shot each day. I will continue taking one picture a day, but for the next few days, I really want to take the Holiday to spend time with my family instead of messing with photos on the computer, so I’ll upload them after the holiday. So look for them then.
Looks like flickr’s been listening to me. I kept asking them for ability to search by camera. Others kept rebuffing me, but I guess others shared my passion as well, because they now have Camera Finder. As you can see on the current graph of most popular camera, my camera, the Canon Digital Rebel XT, is the most popular. This is no surprise to me as I see it EVERYWHERE I go! In fact, checking out the Canon stats page I found that, as far as they can tell, there are 8 MILLION photos taken with that Camera and 2300 daily users on average!
All I need now (and it may be there, waiting for me to discover it) is to be able to search my own photos by camera instead of EVERYONE’S.
The same way that aspiring writers are told to write at least one thing per day and it will improve their writing over time, I have decided to take one picture a day. So join me as I post 1 A Day…
If you want to know what the glue is that binds our family together, it’s my mother. She has worked tirelessly to ensure that we have built up the relationships we need in our family. Always working, it’s pretty rare to see her just slacking off. But then again, that’s what’s made her the amazing mother she is and the great wife to my father she is. When others were giving up, she was just getting started. She’s the strongest, hardest working person I know. The only person who works as hard as her is my father and that’s why they’ve pulled themselves out from being poor when they first got married to now nearly being business owners!
But at least I continue to surprise myself with the amount of pictures I have, not only of my grandmother, but of my grandmother with my brothers and I. I have spent months dispairing that I had not taken enough pictures of her before she left us, but as I’ve gone through my old photos looking for pictures that should be on flickr, I have found so many of them. They bring me so much happiness and sadness at once that they cancel each other out and all I can do is stare at them and thank God that I took them.
Ever since I can remember, I always thought my mom looked more beautiful on a day to day basis than when she dressed up for a special event. Perhaps it was the strangeness of the hairdo she would pick or something else. I just feel a stronger connection to the “real” person rather than a made-up idealization.
This view of the world has always extended to my photography. Sure, I took posed pictures, but by-and-large my favorite shots were those candid shots of my friends and family members. Yes, they always complained that they didn’t look their best, but what they didn’t know is that to me, they looked infinitely better than when they stood their with their fake smiles. In fact, you could always hear people afterwards saying, “so and so is obviously faking their smile.” Of course! There’s nothing to naturally smile about when there’s a camera pointed at you. The best smiles are the ones caused by the things we smile about: our children, friends, and family. This has inpsired my latest portrait trend, consisting mostly of candid portraits. I love this work more than almost any other work I’ve done recently with my photography. The only work I love more is the work where I push myself to my creative limits - whether that involves a creative composition or being creative in Photoshop (or, less frequently, in The GIMP).
But recently, as I’ve seen the work of other famous and important photographers, I’ve come to realize that some of the other shots I’ve been taking can also be great photographs. So I’ve been trawling through my archives to look for photos I could share with my fans and friends on flickr. Some of these pictures are even 5 years old already! In fact, searching for these new gems has taken me down memory lane and allowed me to relive some of my favorite memories. These are the reasons why we photograph. It’s not just a process for creating art, but it’s also a process for documenting the world around us and our own lives. Especially precious to me has been the rediscovery of some of my photos of my grandmother Aida who has almost been gone two years.
That’s why you’ve seen a lot of my older work on here recently as well as on flickr. Here are some more of my newly rediscovered favorites.
Just before going to NY for my father-in-law’s surgery, I heard about a group on flickr called “Stick Figures in Peril”. I looked at the group and thought it was a pretty interesting concept - take pictures of warning lables where it looks as though the stick figures are in trouble. When I saw this picture at the hospital as part of a larger sign of what to do in the case of a fire, I snapped a picture on my cell phone. Just by itself there isn’t anything particularly funny about the picture. But if you click on it (above) and see what other people have interpreted the picture to mean, be prepared to laugh, or at least ti chuckle.
I miss you Dan. You’re my only kin for at least a thousand miles. Can’t wait until next summer! We need to hang out a lot more next time. Danielle will make some pho. q;o)
As I went though my top 200 photos, this was had 121 views and I clicked on it. It gives me great memories of friends, but it reminds me of how happy I am to have graduated. School was stressful and I always felt like I was just one step away from failing out of Cornell. In the end I did alright and graduated with a B average, but while I was there, going to school, it just felt so hard. I sympathize with all the freshman who are just starting to deal with their first exams right about now.
Here’s a comparison of my Fujifilm Finepix S7000 vs my Canon Digital Rebel XT with a Tamron DI 200mm lens on. I love how much closer I can get to squirrels with this lens!
Sometime the best things are imperfect. For example, there’s something I just love about this photo even though I wasn’t able to capture his whole face since I was zoomed at 200mm and he was moving very fast. Yet I got it in focus and it is such a beautiful black and white picture. Not only that, but his smile and his energy come through so clearly. I just love it, even though it’s far from perfect.
This darned pigeon and his brethren in the parking garage at work have put more bird feces on my car in one day than I have had on the car in its entire 11 year lifetime. “Of course you know, this means war!”
I really respect and admire my parents for what they are doing now. At a time when they should be relaxing after 24 years of parenting, they have taken on 3 foster kids - 2 of them at the last minute last week. It’s not as though my parents are trying to replace the void of their two college and one college graduate children. Originally, they just wanted to help out the world by taking care of children who needed foster parents. The system is so backed up that there are currently about 16 children with no home who spend their days at the office with the social worker. Until these children are placed into a home they cannot have normal lives. They cannot be loved, go to school, and be carefree as children should be. So my mother and father just meant to be a point of normalcy in a life thus far full of chaos. Then the child could be placed into the home of people who were unable to have kids of their own while my parents took on another child.
This whole time, flickr has been technically beta software. Well, as they went gamma, they have decided to add a great new feature based on mashups that people were already doing using Google Maps API - they are providing a map of the world where users can drag their pictures to the spot it was taken. It then gets geotagged with that spot. So for those of us who don’t have some GPS method of figuring things out, flickr has made it easy for us. And, any photos you have previously geotagged with long/lat will automatically be mapped. So far people are complaining that there’s only good coverage in the USA map whereas Google has good coverage world-wide. I expect this to be fixed soon, though, as more and more people complain. I know that a good portion of the pictures I like to visit are created by non-US nationals.
This little guy stayed alive and stayed still long enough for me to photograph him. Then Danielle squished the life out of him. Hopefully he doesn’t go Agrajag on her. (Hitchhiker’s reference)
As I shot my cousin’s Sweet 16 as the official photographer, I realized that I didn’t need the box of AA alkalines I had taken with me to the event. It turned out that my two canon batteries and the NiMH batteries in the flash gun and battery belt were more than enough for nearly continuous shooting from 1730 - 2330. Instead it was my 4 GB of memory which was not quite enough for the event. Even though this allowed me to take 460+ pictures, I ran out prematurely - sometime around 2245, after which I had to try and delete any photos which appeared not to have come out right. Yes, I know, a typical wedding only has 300 shots or so, but I wanted to capture candids as well as all of the official photos. For the posed pictures I also shot a few too many, I think. I’m currently loading the pictures onto my computer, but I would estimate taking 3 pictures of each pose. This was mostly due to my inexperience. I didn’t want to just have one photo of each and then end up that it was over or under exposed or someone was blinking or something. We’ll see how it all came out soon enough.
Cosplay, for the uninitiated, is dressing up as a fictional character; in the US it tends to specifically mean dressing up as anime or video game characters. Anime Conventions are known for the fans cosplaying and coming up with elaborate costumes which can sometimes take months to develop. I missed Otakon (Baltimore Anime Convention) for the second year in a row. I know it’s my fault for no longer having my finger on the pulse of anime culture in the US, but I was hoping to catch it this year to get some great cosplay pics. Instead I had to just linger in the lobby of the convention center and take some snaps. I took about ten shots and here are two of my better ones.
I’ve been accused by some of having an asian fetish, but I don’t. I think I just have an asian preference. Mere mincing of words? I don’t think so. To me a fetish implies a desire for asian things (culture, people, etc) that accepts all things asian and rejects most things non-asian. Let’s start with culture, for example. There are a lot of things I like about the asian culture, especially the respect for elders and strong family ties. I also like the fact that, at least in Japan, people take a much more lax attitude towards things like nudity. As long as it’s not porn, what’s wrong with the female (or male) nude? I mean, here in the US, people got mad when a magazine printed a cover with a baby being breastfed. What’s more innocent than a baby being breastfed? Yet, American (puritan-based) culture finds it so offensive.
Two more of my photos, pictured here, have been selected for publication by an outside party. Schmap.com, which provides electronic guides to different cities has selected my pictures as representative of some beaches in Tampa, Fl. (USA) As you can imagine, this is once again exciting for me both as a chance to become well-known as well as a recognition by others as a good photographer! I’m so excited!
Today I received my copy of the photography book I’ve published, Eric Mesa’s Top 40 flickr Images. It’s a great feeling to finally have the book published after having worked on it since April. There were a few false starts with the publishing process as I figured out how to make sure my final PDF could be printed on Lulu.com’s printers. But the journey is finally over and I was able to make the book available to the public today.
The most important thing for me when it comes to sharing my photos is getting them seen. After all, there’s no point in publishing my photos if I didn’t intend for others to see them. I could have kept them on my computer for that purpose. The desire for others to see my work intensifies with photos I’ve put any kind of significant work into. Whether I’ve converted it to black and white and then spent some time burning and dodging or have created a complex composite work of art, I really desire for others to see the outcome of my labors.
As I have often claimed, Creative Commons is of most benefit to unknown artists. Bands, photographers, and painters (to name a few) will remain unknown if they charge for their work. Why? Because human nature is not to purchase something if you are unsure if you will like it. When an artist places their work under the CC license, they allow others to experience and use their work and share with others without financial risk. Later, the happy customers will very likely donate money or pay for that which they receieved and enjoyed. (Just ask Magnatunes)
flickr unleashed a new version of their website today. I am completely lost! Darn these UI upgrades! Why do they do these things? Hopefully things are better now.
When I found out a baby panda had been born at the National Zoo, I wanted to see him as soon as he was available. Unfortunately, the tickets to see him sold out right away. Now, nine months later, the tickets are largely an unnecessary formality. However, I didn’t know that when Danielle and I woke up at 5 am last Sunday to get a glimpse of Tai Shan. I had read that before 0830 tickets were not necessary to see the Giant Pandas, so I got all my gear ready on Saturday night and set my alarm for 0500. Then we went to go see Tai Shan. I found a group of photographers who all visit at least once a week (some every other day) to see what antics little Tai Shan was up to. He’s currently weaning, so he’s learned that bamboo goes in his mouth, but he still doesn’t eat it as voraciously as his parents. I had no idea I would find him so amusing! I ended up taken nearly 150 pictures of him. In raw mode, that cost me nearly 1.5 GB of space! Below are some of my favorite pictures from that day and I’ll be adding more soon.
In the sciences a pupil is taught formulas and learns to aply and adopt these to whichever situations present themselves. By contrast, artistic learning requires studying the masters and learning to imitate their techniques before being able to create a new one. By knowing the rules and how those great artists adhered to them or broke them, the student gains a greater understanding.
My own learning by imitation began with the internet and the homepage. I would navigate to one which looke dneat, view the source, consult my OReilly HTML book, and figure out how to do it myself. Flickr has had a similar effect on opening my mind to new possibilities.
Some people might look at my pictures, particularly those who are in the 400 views group and say, “so! Anyone can get to 400 views by climbing the Views bracket groups.” For the uninitiated, these are pools of pictures that start with 25 then go to 50, 100, and every hundred after that. The point of the group is that a photo with at least 25 views is placed in the 25 group and when it outgrows that group, it moves on to 50 and so on and so forth.
flickr has a top-secret formula, on par with Google’s PageRank, that ranks how interesting your pictures are. Since the top 500 appear each day on flickr.com/Explor e, they don’t want people to know the secret or they may game the system. Here are my top 10 most “interesting” pictures in suspense (reverse) order. See if you agree with flickr.
#10
Webmonkey has run a special on the ten best flickr mashups. What is a mashup with respect to flickr? I only know of mashups as songs where different groups put their songs together to create something new such as Jay-Z and Linkin Park. Basically, since flickr has opened up their API (as has Google with most of their web stuff), users can create all kinds of neat applications based on flickr without needed permission. You may have seen on some of my Linux screenshots where I have one such application that runs through my photostream. Well, these people have all kinds really neat website they have strung up. My favorite one is the sudoku one where instead of numbers, one has to play sudoku with pictures. Putting in djotaku for the username will allow you to play as me. I will be linking to my favorites on my links on the right over the next few days. Enjoy!
#6 this photo has been wonderful for me because not only is it one of my most favorite of my recent photos, but others have agreed! In just one week it went from #99 to #6. In fact, it was originally #8 when I was writing the list of #1-5.
#7 - taking this picture gave me the creeps. What if the glass broke?
It’s amazing how much of a difference there is between the number of views of my #1 viewed photo and my #2. They then follow in groups close to each other in number. (#5-10 to follow tomorrow)
#1 with 352 Views is
Months ago, I discovered one of the more creative photographers on flickr. Zannah takes pictures of her anime figurines in various locations as if they were real. (Think the “roaming gnome” from travelocity) Here are some of my favorites:
When I was browsing through techn0manc3r’s page, I clicked on usr-bin-girl and saw that the author was Zannah. I wondered if it was the same one because the picture looked familier. When I scrolled down the page, I saw that it was the same person! Now THAT is a small world if I ever saw one!
Here is the abbreviated commentary on my building of my new computer.Above are the new computer parts I used. In addition to these, I scavanged my DVD-ROM, DVD+-R, and hard drive from my old computer. I actually didn’t use the firewire ports as my motherboard has one in back and a connection for one in the front. I only use firewire for my video camera, so that was enough for my needs. I’m hanging on the to the firewire card for future potential projects.
My Kodak 3600 DX served me well. That 2.2 Megapixel camera was my first digital camera and I took many great shots with it. Some of my favorites are:
But it was time for me to finally upgrade to a camera with sufficient resolution, but which I could carry in my pocket. My Fujifilm Finepix S7000 is a great camera, but extremely bulky. It was a little annoying at Disney to have that huge thing with me. So today I bought a Fujifilm Finepix A345. It’s a 4.0 Megapixel camera. Yes, they have 5 Megapixel point and shoot cameras, but as I tell everyone, unless you plan to blow the pictures up to 16 x 20, a 3 MP camera is enough. So I wanted to give myself the lattitude to be able to do creative things with this camera, but without going overboard. My S7000 is now for planned shots that I want at the best quality. The camera is a little heavy to walk around with everywhere and since 11 Sept 2001, police don’t like people coming into places with bags. So I will have the A345 in my pocket for any shot that comes up and for those fun little shots that you can’t capture on the big boys. I’ll miss my Kodak, as it ushered me into this era, but I think I will really love the A345. And today, being the end of the year, seemed to be the perfect time to get the new guy.
I am extremely happy to announce that I have been approached by the author of The Cognoscenti for use of one of my pictures of Congress on his political blog as part of the header. I have just replied to give him permission to use the picture so I don’t know how long it will be until it is up. With the role that blogs have been playing recently in press and with their popularity soaring, this could be a boon for my photography.
Today would have been my grandmother’s birthday. She died this past March during my Spring Break and I loved her very much. I know that she’s up in Heaven now having a heckuva time with her husband who was taken from her more than twenty years ago. She remained faithful to him to the last day and never remarried. I miss her so much whenever I open up my phone and think of someone to call. I would always call her when I had a free minute. I always get so mad that she didn’t get to see the wedding or my graduation. I mean, I’d like to believe that she was able to see it from Heaven, but she didn’t get to hug me that day. I didn’t get to see the smile on her face. The best way I know to remember her is to use my talents and remember her through my photography. Here is a tribute to her on her bithday:
f-spot is a new program for organizing photos in Linux and is currently in early development. It looks really nice! It seems to rival most picture organizing software out there for any platform. The thing that really got my attention, however, was that the developers are asking people to send in RAW photo files so that they could build in support for that. If they successfully do that, I’ll never turn on my Windows computer again. The only thing I use Windows for nowadays is Photoshop. I have games like Sims 2, but I never have time to play them. Right now I’m too busy planning for the wedding and afterwards I’ll be too busy being married. Therefore, all I need to do is Office stuff and Internet which Linux does amazingly well. I hope the f-spot comes out soon.
Flickr just did the best and worst thing to me it could possibly do. As a Thank You for my going pro while they were still Beta, I got my subscription doubled to TWO years! Not only that, but they doubled my bandwidth to 2 GB. They may as well have made it unlimited because I’ve been having a hard enough time filling up my 1 GB limit! They also gave me the ability to freely upgrade two people to pro. I upgraded my mom. I’ll upgrade someone else later.
Last Monday I joined the Order of the Engineer. Although it has a title like the Loyal Order of Water Buffalo of the Flintstones, it is nothing at all like that. It is based off of a similar, but much older Canadian process known as The Ritual of the Calling of the Engineer. The American version was founded in 1970 by engineers at Cleveland State University. We will never had a meeting or pay dues again. The whole point of the order is to function as yet another institution I belong to which does not tolerate unethical behaviour. Unlike the IEEE, I have a ring to wear which symbolizes to all my commitment to the ethical practice of engineering. Official Order of the Engineer literature has this to say about the ring:
My first stop on this tour of the world was in Japan. gori-jp takes magnificent photos of his country and this is no exception. When I first saw the thumbnail for this image I thought it was a stack of mattresses. It turned out to be a very colorful building! We will surely see more of gori’s pictures in the future.
I’ve been traveling all over the world for the past month. No I didn’t suddenly win the lotto, I’m still a poor college student. But, through flickr, I have been traveling around the world through the photos of others. I really love doing this because it will be quite a few years before I can actually afford to travel all around the world, so the cheapest way is to enjoy the pictures of people who live in these areas. It has been amazing seeing the world through the lenses of these photographers, some of them have amazing quality work. This last week alone I have been to Malaysia, Iraq, and Japan. Over the next few days I will be blogging about some of my favorite pictures from around the world. This may be in addition to other posts if other exciting things happen around the world this week.
Architects ran through the engineering quad and in and out of bulidings screaming
Today is Dragon Day. As you probably know from my earlier posts, this is a huge tradition at Cornell. It was started back in the 1800s as a Spring Prank by the greatest Cornell prankster of them all, Willard Straight, and continues to this day as a rivalry between the Architects and Engineers. Yesterday they ran through all of the buildings decked in green paint and, althought you can’t tell because the picture is so small, skimpy clothes. However, if you look at the next picture, it’s quite clear. Yes, it was 30 degrees F outside and the freshman architects were running around in panties, bras, and boxers. But at least they were running, so that may have helped a bit. In this second picture I love the pair in the center of the shot, jumping for joy as though they were about to win a race.
For a while I had taken a break from photography. There were two basic reasons for this - first of all, it had become very cold and that disuaded me from taking my camera around. I was afraid of breaking it with the temperature difference between the outside air and the buildings. I was afraid of falling and breaking the camera or hurting myself trying to protect it. But, most importantly, with all my jackets and sweaters it was a bit of a hassle to carry my camera in its protective case. Second, I really like editing my pictures and making them a little closer to perfect. This was very time consuming and I didn’t have the time for it.
I didn’t take this picture, rather I found it on flickr.com, a cool new online community for hosting pictures. It’s based completely on open source software, which is pretty neat. But it’s a little hard to explain exactly how it works. Basically it links people’s pictures together in a complex network similar to facebook.com does for college students.
They have a neat little feature where I can blog from their site about any picture I find. This saves me the hassle of linking to the picture, loading up my blog, and making a post. It does, however, limit my abilities. For example, I can’t choose when the post will be up on my site or anything like that.
It’s once again time for my latest Photojojo post. For those of you who haven’t been following my blog for a long time, Photojojo is a digital time capsule service. Every two weeks they send me an email that has my most interesting photos posted to flickr from one year ago.
Noah’s Chaos
Stella’s Chaos
Tight Formations
Scarlett Spells Something
Noah’s Expansion Spell
Noah’s Magic Hands
Audrey’s Shapes
Firework Fun
Audrey’s Circle
I love the idea of having art on the gates that come down when the the restaurant is closed. Rather than the ugly grey, possibly tagged with grafitti, we get this amazing art.
Not sure what the story behind this setup, but Scarlett set it up one day. Also, she made some of the clothes the dolls are wearing.
You Know It
Annual Self-Portrait (2020)
Scarlett (March 2020)
Sam and Stella at the Park - taken by Danielle
Sam at the Bronx Zoo
I’m on a motorcycle!
I see you!
Yeah, I know how to use this
Something seems a bit off here
Sam’s duck
Haven’t seen one of these in a while
Baby birds in BBQ prep station - the mom thought it was the best place to make a nest
One day the forest outside my house just looked all ominous
Sam in the leaves
Sam’s First Carousel Ride[/caption]
Up in the jungle gym at Centennial[/caption]
It’s interesting that, at least to my eyes, it’s easier to see the second rainbow on the left and I don’t even see it on the right. Also, this What If is particularly relevant and I’d read it just before going to the party.
I didn’t plan it, but I did have to wait for the right pose to present itself. It would be a tighter story without Scarlett, but I think it still conveys a coherent message: kids enjoying ice cream and conversing. A kiddie version of going to the bar, essentially.
On my way out of the house in the morning, and this great bit of art just happens due to the sun being in just the right place. I’ve never seen this in the half dozen years I’ve lived here. But this morning, it was there to give me a little mood lift.
I know that Scarlett is just 4 and she’s still learning things like putting in pupils and giving people proper heads and bodies. But sometimes I wonder if I have the next Tim Burton living under my roof. Plus I think the thick, black marker adds to the effect.
Baltimore Comic-Con - Black Cat and Spider-Man[/caption]
Aida at the Park back before digital[/caption]
Scarlett’s Natural Curls[/caption]
Tony Hangs On[/caption]
Scarlett’s First Easter[/caption]
now it’s:
now it’s:
which has actually moved up since I did my Top 200!
As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, I’ve been into photography since I was five years old. That’s when I got my first Kodak Instamatic camera and started shooting photos and creating photo albums. I have about ten photo albums, with most of them coming from when I got to high school and could really afford film and developing. Ever since I got my first digital camera in my second semester of college, the number of photos I’ve taken yearly has increased nearly exponentially. Because I’m an organized person, I started off putting my photos into event-based folders. Once I realized that’d quickly get unwieldy, I decided to put them in folders by date. Eventually, software like Picassa, Lightroom, and digiKam came out which would have allowed me to continue to to organized my photos by event because they could read the metadata and reorganize them by date. However, I’ve found that my system has two main benefits 1)my photos remain organized even if my descendants don’t have access to programs that can read the metadata on the photos. 2) it’s very easy for me to very quickly find a photo. It would be somewhere like 2010->Jan 10->So and So’s Wedding.
now it is:
and now it’s:
and now it’s:
which was not in the top 20 before, so it has really gained a lot of views. That comes from the fact that it’s on Pixel-Peer as an example of that lens’ abilities.
and now it’s:
and now the #13 photo is:
and now it’s:
which has fallen just one position from #15. Pretty funny that they’re both fireworks - although on very different scales!
and the current #18 photos is:
this photo has been on the rise ever since Bradley Manning’s trial started up.
With 1194 views
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triscadecaphobia (also spelt Triskaidekaphobia) is the fear of the number 13. I don’t have triskaidekaphobia - I am not paralyzed on Friday the 13th. However, I do get bad vibes from the number whenever I see it. On the other hand, 2, for me, is a conforting number. But I like it in script better than printed.
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Last time I wrote about my dabbling in the film world I had had 3 Holga rolls developed. My Yashica and Franka Solida III had arrived after my trip to NYC so I had yet to run any film through them. I shot a few frames with each camera when Danny and Dina came to visit in April and then let the cameras lay dormant. As I explained in a previous post, with the cost of film and development so high, these cameras were somewhat for special occasions. I took the cameras with me to Delaware (a trip I have yet to blog about), and shot with the Holga and Yashica.
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The Huge Mess
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What should I buy?
Of course, I took my Canon 400D and Fujifilm A 345. Overall I did pretty well. Out of 800+ pictures only 63 were out of focus. Also, for sake of mentioning it, 61 were of my wife. That’s a new thing for me as we usually don’t take the usual tourist-y pictures. Our first day were were still on Eastern Time so we got up at 0400 and went to watch the sun rise.
Check out the story behind this image by following the link.
And this guy……has my dream setup in terms of monitors.
#40 - 274 Views 
#60 - 223 Views 
#80 - 189 Views 
#100 - 175 Views 
#120 - 165 Views 
#140 - 156 Views 
#160 - 148 Views 
#180 - 141 Views 
#200 - 133 Views 
But it was time for me to finally upgrade to a camera with sufficient resolution, but which I could carry in my pocket. My Fujifilm Finepix S7000 is a great camera, but extremely bulky. It was a little annoying at Disney to have that huge thing with me. So today I bought a Fujifilm Finepix A345. It’s a 4.0 Megapixel camera. Yes, they have 5 Megapixel point and shoot cameras, but as I tell everyone, unless you plan to blow the pictures up to 16 x 20, a 3 MP camera is enough. So I wanted to give myself the lattitude to be able to do creative things with this camera, but without going overboard. My S7000 is now for planned shots that I want at the best quality. The camera is a little heavy to walk around with everywhere and since 11 Sept 2001, police don’t like people coming into places with bags. So I will have the A345 in my pocket for any shot that comes up and for those fun little shots that you can’t capture on the big boys. I’ll miss my Kodak, as it ushered me into this era, but I think I will really love the A345. And today, being the end of the year, seemed to be the perfect time to get the new guy.
Architects ran through the engineering quad and in and out of bulidings screaming
