Saturday, February 12, 2011 Posted in Things
I knew my extension tubes would come in handy one day. I bought a set of Kenko extension tubes about a month before I went to the Royal Botanical Gardens last year. I found out that the tubes required a little more work than I expected, but got me nice and close to my subjects. I sold the extension tubes about 2 months later after I decided that fiddling around with 3 tubes to get a shot was just silly.
Shortly after I arrived at the RBG, rain started to come down steadily, then heavily. I think I spent about 15 minutes in the garden before I called it quits. Hello flower…purdy.
Geekery: ISO 400, F/14, 1/60sec
Saturday, February 12, 2011 Posted in Animals
In May 2009, I was still experimenting with my newly bought D90 and 50mm f/1.8 Nikkor lens. Ever since I put that lens on my camera, I’ve been a fan of fast primes. I sold my 18-105mm kit lens shortly about a month after I bought my camera to fund my 50mm 1.8. I later sold that lens and bought myself a 50mm 1.4. I can’t remember where I shot these birds, but it was at a conservatory of some sort. The birds were placed in the shade on a chilly May afternoon. I shot a few feet away from the birds at ISO 200, f/2.2, 1/400 sec. Bokehlicious!
Monday, January 31, 2011 Posted in Travel
Undrinkable tap water, fake eggs, and fearless bus drivers just about sums up things that I learned to deal with while I lived in Beijing. You might think that I’m bad mouthing the city, but I’m not. If you try to drink the water out the tap, locals will chop off your hand before you could take a sip. Fake eggs, well, that story floated around, but whether or not I’ve actually ingested one remains a question that I have to this day. And finally, I’ve been on a bus when the driver was driving on the wrong side of the street for about 10 minutes.
I think my owned 7 bicycles while I was there of which 5 were stolen. Buying a bike in China is very logical: buy a $15 bike and a $100 lock. I loved my daily dose of smog while my bike was being stolen from me while I biked to work…loved it! Picture that, a bike-jacking-free-for-all.
Would I go back? In a heartbeat. I have a lot of great memories in the “Jing” that make it seem like a second home to me. Although I’m quite certain that the Beijing I once knew is no longer there, I’m still willing to bet that cheap Polo’s and fake Armani Jackets will keep me happy….at least for at little while.
Sunday, January 30, 2011 Posted in Travel
Delicious food, awesome transit, a geek’s paradise…why wouldn’t I love Hong Kong? Before I bought my Sony P200, I was using the almighty Canon Powershot A300. Pure 3.2 megapixel digital zoom awesomeness. Unfortunately I had to part with it after a young Cambodian boy decided he thought it was his. My mistake. I didn’t really care much for the camera to be honest – I just wanted the footage of me firing an AK-47. Anyways, Hong Kong. Most Hong Kongers are tech nerds. Back when I was there in 2004, every other person on the subway was holding a Sony PSP or Nintendo DS. Everyone including great grandma’s had an iPod. I was rockin a Sony MD player, then bought a iPod shuffle when I was there for no other reason than I could hand it around my neck. Sad I know, but it’s true. I mean, my MD player was still quite awesome, just not hang around your neck awesome.
Days after I put up my first post on my site, I found out that the colors were completely off when I viewed them on other computers. I thought it was just a monitor calibration problem on the computer I was viewing them on, but when I pulled my site up on my phone, the same thing happened. So after a few hours of trouble shooting, I finally figured out the problem. I was resizing the pictures in Photoshop to 72 pixels/inch, saving them to Lightroom, then exporting them at 300 pixels/inch. I guess the resampling caused problems for other computers, just not mine! So I’m happy that the issue was caused by user error. So yes, I’m an idiot.
News: I shot my first engagement shoot 2 weeks ago in -20 temperatures. I’ll be working on them for the next days and hopefully will be posting some soon. I hate to give estimations because the past few weeks have been horrid for me. I came down with a nasty superbug of a flu. I battled with that for the first 2 weeks and have been trying to shake off the coughs since. I’m almost fully recovered.
I had my 2nd E-Session yesterday. I’m happy to say that didn’t want to play hero and shoot in -20 degree weather again. The weather was quite pleasant actually. What wasn’t pleasant was finding out that the location we were shooting at required a $200 permit. Opps!
I’ll be posting some of my personal work on this site soon. My next project, aside from editing the e-sessions, is to take a few self portraits to go on my “About” page which desperately needs some attention.
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