Entries with tag "photography"

For Christmas, Andrés, Amy, and I flew to Phoenix to spend the holiday with my extended family. One of the highlights of the trip was when we drove up to Sedona, rented ATVs, and went offroading amidst a Grand Canyon-like landscape.

I took the opportunity to strap on all of my bulky large-format camera equipment and take some 4x5" Velvia slides in the environment that was practically made for them. And I had a realization. I've had the large format camera for a few years, but I've barely ever used it, mostly because it's so big and heavy that I've been pretty much limited to the kinds of places I can reach with a car, which are seldom worth photographing. I'm not trying to make undue comparisons, but I remember reading Ansel Adams talking about having the same problem. He had a platform on the roof of his car from which he did a lot of his photography — for his longer jaunts into the wilderness, he packed most of his gear on a burro.

I realized that an ATV can be my version of a burro. I've always been interested in offroading, but when I realized that an ATV would both let me enjoy crawling over rough terrain plus let me strap down all my bulky large-format camera equipment and take pictures from places that I couldn't otherwise reach, it did me in — I had to have an ATV.

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My decorating style has always tended towards posters (and the occasional alien head and pretty rainbow-shaped rug). I have occasionally had friends create original works of art for me, such as "Pop-Tart Mural" by Amy or "Wax Sculpture Soaking Into The Carpet" by Anonymous (come to think of it, that was probably Amy too. What the hell, Amy?). But on the whole, my walls have generally been decorated by relatively "low-class" things.

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Ever since I started developing my own film in early 2006 (and really, for years before that) I've wanted to buy an enlarger and learn to make my own prints. Developing film is fine, and you do have a degree of control in that process, but it's really in the printing process that the fun really starts. Or so I'd always heard.

Finally I get to find out for myself; for the last few months I've been working on setting up a darkroom, and two days ago I made my first black and white print. And it's just as fun as I'd always heard.

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Tonight I met up with Andrea and some friends of hers at Starbucks. Andrea is flying to Spain tomorrow for a semester abroad, so I wanted to spend some more time with her before she left. We had a good time. She seems to be one of those rare people with whom I always seem to have things to talk about, so we don't need to have something to do — just sitting around and conversing is always pleasant.

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When I was at Jeff and Amy's mom's house in Aiken for Thanksgiving, I came across an old Super 8 silent film camera in the room where I was staying. I asked their mom about it, and she said she couldn't imagine why she'd ever need it again, and that I could have it. That was an unexpected turn — I've been wanting to buy an old film camera on eBay for a while now, but could never bring myself to spend the money on it.

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On Monday I returned from a week in South Carolina — I drove to Clemson on Friday, hung out there until Wednesday, then drove with Jeff to his parents' house in Aiken for Thanksgiving. Andrés and Amy also flew down from Boston for the holiday. It was really cool getting to see so many of my favorite people, although most of my friends in Clemson were busy with schoolwork and so I actually didn't get to spend very much time with anyone. Still, it was a satisfying trip.

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Now that I've got my scanner set up, I'm finally able to start scanning some of the Polaroids and film from my visit to Clemson a few weeks ago. The first ones up are the 4x5" Polaroids I shot with Jenn and Alia with the Pink Cow. I'm pretty happy with how they came out — I think I'll this Polaroid back will be the primary way I use the camera. It really doesn't make much sense to use a handheld 4x5" camera for regular film — if I'm just taking snapshots, I may as well use a smaller, less unwieldy camera, and if I want high-quality images, then I'll use the real view camera mounted on a tripod. The Polaroid back turns the handheld camera into a fun way to take nice-looking pictures and see them right away.

Yesterday as I was driving down my street on the way home from work, I was surprised to see a large green iguana waddle across the road in front of my car. "Weird," I thought.

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I've finally started working on processing those 30 sheets of large format film I shot with the Pink Cow back when Andrés and Amy were here last month. Enough time has passed that I've forgotten what I took pictures of, so it's like a sense of discovery to pull them out of the tank and go, "Oh, yeah! Awesome!"

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I took Andrés and Amy to the airport today. I was sad to see them go, but we made the best of this past week, and had a great time, so at least it doesn't feel like, "WTF, you're leaving already?" On past visits, we've had a tendency to waste the time by sitting around watching TV and movies. And that's certainly fun, but there's enough cool things to do out on the island that it's a shame to let those opportunities go to waste.

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Indeed, it has been three quarter score days since my last post, and for that I apologize, an accusatory finger pointed towards work. With three or four projects to juggle, I've had none of the little relaxing interludes I've come to cherish so much.

I think I will make a series of smaller, themed posts, rather than one gigantic pile of talking. It's no less work to write or read, but it feels like it. This one will be photographic in nature.

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The camera I've been building for a month and a half is finally done. There's still a few cosmetic things left to do, but functionally, it's complete. In honor of the original, named the Pink Panther, I hereby christen mine the Pink Cow. I'll need to paint a little logo on it somewhere :)

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Inspired by some conversations on the photo.net forums, I decided to try to hack together a handheld 4x5 large format camera using parts from various old Polaroid Land cameras from the 1960s. Polaroid long ago discontinued the film for these cameras, so they're available really cheap on eBay. To most people, they're pretty much worthless except as a collectors' item, but with a little fearless application of a Dremel tool, they should quickly find themselves back in useful service. The resulting camera will not be a beauty queen — the main ingredient will be glue — but it should result in something only slightly less portable than the Holga, but with much higher quality results, and for roughly the same total investment (about $20).

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I just learned a fun fact: the lightsaber props in Star Wars were made from the flash guns for Crown Graphic cameras like mine. To make it look more high-tech, they slid the LED display from a pocket calculator into the mounting bracket on the flash gun. Apparently large format photography enthusiasts are bitter because the flash guns have become rare and expensive these days, since all the nerds have cut them all up to make replica lightsabers. Hee.

When I got my view camera, I worried about feeling ridiculous to stand out there adjusting a camera that looked like it came out of a cartoon. In fact, toady when I got out of work I took the camera to the park across the street to try out the large format Polaroid film that arrived yesterday, and the only attention I got was when one pretty cute girl came over and asked, "Is that a camera? I saw you standing there concentrating so intently." I said yes and showed her the image on the ground glass. She asked if I was doing it for a class and I said no, just as a hobby. We talked briefly and then she headed off. That wasn't so bad. Somehow I just can't imagine my next encounter will be equally pleasant.

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Michael David Murphy has a good solution to the problem of missed photographic opportunities. His descriptions are eloquent and beautiful, and you can reallyvisualize what he saw. I wonder if it would seem derivative if I started doing the same when I see something I'd love to photograph but can't. I think it would, but I might do it anyway.

Ever since I first got into Dream Theater back in 1992, I've longed for them to play a concert in Puerto Rico. I remember writing a letter to the band when I was 14 begging them to come down. Finally last night they granted my wish. I guess maybe my letter fell victim to Puerto Rico's notoriosly slow postal service.

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Almost every day as I'm going about my day I see settings and situations that appeal to me, and I'd love to stop and take a photo. Often it's just a shared expression between strangers or a chance alignment of unrelated objects, and since I'm usually in my car at the time, it goes unrecorded.

But occasionally I'll see something that I really want to capture, and I'm not in a hurry so I could easily stop to take it, but it's in an area I don't trust. Partly I'm concerned for my wellbeing of course, but it's mostly the expense of my equipment that tends to make me wary of wandering around in such places, which means that I end up missing lots of shots I'd have loved to get.

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Today I shot and developed my first large format photo. It's not a terribly interesting image — just a shot of the backyard — but I was pretty sure the film was ruined, so I didn't want to put too much effort into it. Surprisingly, it's actually quite decent.

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Back around the beginning of January, I was at the local photo lab/camera store, and I asked if they had any used large format cameras. They actually had several, although most were in the $3-4000 range. One, however, was an old Graphlex Crown Graphic, which was closer to my price range. It wasn't exactly what I was looking for (this camera was designed for newspapermen back in the '40s, so it's oriented more towards being used quickly rather than creatively), but they only wanted $300 for it, whereas the one I really want, a Shen-Hao, would cost around $1000 to get started with. The Crown Graphic had a cracked ground glass (the viewing screen you use to focus the image), which costs about $50 to replace, but they said they'd include that in the price. Still, in the end I decided I wasn't ready to spend even $300, so I put it from my mind.

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Last night I was driving to work when I felt something on my right index finger. I tried to brush it off with my thumb, but it didn't immediately come off. I could feel it moving around, so I realized it must be some sort of insect. I started to do one of those reflexive limb shakes you do when you realize there's an insect crawling on you. The quick motion must have frightened it, though, and I felt a sting. As I realized my visitor was in fact something hostile like a bee or a wasp, my shake evolved into flailing my hand around in a combination of panic and pain.

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I discovered a really interesting photographic process last week called Bromoil. It's a process applied to a black & white photographic print wherein you bleach out the silver (which is what the black parts of a print are composed of) and then treat the paper in a chemical that tans it and causes it to harden in varying degrees, depending on how much silver was originally deposited in that particular spot. In places where the paper is harder, it's less receptive to oil-based ink, so when you apply ink to the paper, the parts of the paper that were dark when you started absorb more of the ink, whereas the parts that were lighter reject it, and it gets wiped away. So you end up with a sort of painting of your photograph, and the result looks awesome (some examples I like by Gene Laughter, Rene Smets, and Jurek Karwowski). The technique was most popular around the turn of the century, but has been kept alive by a small group of artists.

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I've noticed an interesting psychological phenomenon. You know how, when you step into a dark room from a brighter-lit area, it takes a minute or two for your eyes to adjust so you can see? I've found a similar thing occurs when I go out looking for small things to take pictures of.

At first, I'm looking around intently and I don't see any bugs or crawly things, and I think the outing is a waste. But if I sit quietly and look around for a few minutes, I start noticing them and I realize there's actually lots of them flying around among the plants. It seems the mind is just used to tuning out things on that scale, and it takes a few minutes for it to adjust and start recognizing them. I don't think they're hiding when I come out and then taking wing again once I stop moving. It's a definite feeling of seeing nothing and then suddenly realizing, "Oh, wait, they're actually everywhere."

Hey, the lost lens turned up. I searched again in daylight and found it under the passenger seat of my car. I looked there though...

It's good to have it back, but it's a bittersweet reunion. I had just about resigned myself to its loss, and had started eyeing the Sigma 10-20mm as a replacement... Now it feels like I'm stuck with this crap lens again :)

I think maybe I wouldn't make a good father.

Today I finally developed my first roll of film. It took much longer than I expected; based on what I'd read, I was expecting to spend about 30-45 minutes. Actually, I started around noon and finished at 6:30pm. Of course, about four of those hours were spent mixing the chemicals from their initial powder form, which only has to be done once every few months. Also, I took my time with every step, carefully washing every container and funnel between each use to avoid contamination, and rereading instructions repeatedly to avoid mistakes. I guess it's similar to the way my first engine swap took me three weeks to complete, but the second one was done in a weekend. I imagine the next roll of film I develop will go much faster.

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I think I managed to lose another lens today. This time it's the small 18-55mm lens that came with the camera. But I wasn't hiking through foreign countries this time. I was walking from my car to my house. Somehow, between those two points, I managed to lose track of it. My camera bag was partly open, and apparently it took the opportunity to make its leap for freedom. I searched the front yard extensively, of course, but somehow, it's nowhere to be found.

If I had to lose one, I'm glad it was my cheapest, crappiest lens this time, but it was a useful lens too. Now my only choice is to carry around the behemoth. Awesome.

Ever since high school I've always wanted to learn to develop my own film, but the interest was always relegated to the back of my consciousness. But a few months ago, on a trip to Charleston to visit Jessie, I spent some time talking with her friend Kevin who's got a darkroom in his house, and he really revived my enthusiasm about processing my own film. Now that the construction at home is nearing the end, and the use of my bedroom (and, more importantly, bathroom) are restored to me, I'm revisiting the idea.

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When I got out of work on Saturday morning, I headed out to CompUSA in Carolina to try and find some computer parts. The drive turned out to be longer than I remembered, and when I finally got to the store I realized that I was already at least half of the way to El Yunque. So when I couldn't find any of the parts I was looking for, I said what the hell, and continued on to El Yunque to take pictures.

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I realized today that my photography has been exhibiting a definite trend towards more experimentation — first long-exposure night photography, followed by the opposite, high-speed photography, then astrophotography, camera tossing, the Holga, and stitching panoramas. I'm about to start experimenting with infrared photography, and eventually I still really want to get a large format view camera.

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The pictures I took at the Botanical Gardens with Andrés and Amy were among the files that were lost when my external hard drive was stolen during a party at The Compound. I've still got the web-sized versions here on BinRock, of course, but those are no good for printing. I've always mourned the loss of those photos; even moreso now that I have a nice photo printer. But then yesterday I realized — those were scanned from film. The original negatives and prints should still be around somewhere; most likely in one of the many boxes I shipped down here when I moved back to PR.

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The trip continues to be an incredible experience. On Thursday evening we flew to Dublin, spent the night at a hotel there, and then in the morning took another short flight across Ireland to Shannon, where we rented a car. From there we visited the nearby Bunratty Castle and then drove southwest to Killarney, the starting point of the road that circles the peninsula, known as the "Ring of Kerry". We stopped along the way and ate at a small, family-owned restaurant named O'Flynn's, which I loved. The people were so nice and friendly, and the food was great. I had my first pint of Guinness in Ireland (on draught, of course).

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Yesterday Andrés got up and went to class while I worked on processing the pictures from the roadtrip on Sunday. At 3pm he had a one-hour break between classes, so I headed out to meet him at a park on campus. We had some coffee and I went with him to his Scottish Ethnology lecture, where they had a guest speaker giving a demonstration of Appalachian folk songs, showing how they had evolved from European folk songs as they were carried across the sea by immigrants. She accompanied her songs with a dulcimer, which sounded incredible. The sound was reminiscent of one I've enjoyed in some of Joe Satriani's songs, and I always wondered how he got his guitar to sound so soft and melodic. I know he experiments with different instruments, and has a banjo/guitar hybrid, so it wouldn't surprise me if he used a dulcimer or similar instrument on those songs.

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Yesterday was incredible. Gary (Irish), Greg (German), Andrés, and I rented a car and took a roadtrip up to the highlands. It couldn't have gone better, especially considering it was relatively unplanned. The weather even cooperated — yesterday was the only clear, blue, sunny day I've seen since I arrived.

We had planned to spend Saturday, the day before our excursion, making the preparations for the trip; determining a route, making the reservation for the car, etc. We did decide on a basic, flexible game plan, but the car reservation part kind of evolved into "making one phone call that didn't accomplish much."

Update: Greg prepared a map indicating the route we took, and marked all of our stops sequentially with numbers. Very cool of him. Here's the map.

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Although the medium format film I brought along for the Holga is ASA 400, I've been requesting that they inspect it by hand just to be sure it wouldn't be fogged by the X-ray machines. I've read people mention that they'd had film damaged despite the airlines' assurance that anything below ASA 800 is safe. If it were just one or two rolls, I'd have taken the risk, but this is 15 rolls — something like $35 worth of film, so I figured that just to be safe, I'd ask them to inspect it by hand.

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So hectic. I'm finishing up packing and getting ready to leave for the airport for Scotland. I head off around 2pm, and my flight leaves at 4:14pm.

We had a bit of a complication as far as the trip — as my parents were getting their things together a few days ago, they realized that my mom's and my sister's passports were expired. Ouch.

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Friday morning when I walked down the street to get breakfast, I took the Holga with me, this time loaded with a roll of color film. After only a few pictures, though, the shutter stopped working. It happened just as I was about to take a picture I thought would come out pretty cool, too. It was a yellow hard hat in a red pickup truck bed at a construction site.

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I'd just like to say that I love polarizing filters and I don't know how I ever got along without one.

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Yesterday morning I dropped off my first roll of medium format film for processing. I took the Holga with me when I walked down the street to the panadería for breakfast, and managed to fill a whole roll (which, in 6x6cm format, is only 12 photos, but still). It's so nice to have a fresh point of view for photography — things don't feel cliche or pointless anymore.

I actually think the biggest difference was just the fact that I could take it with me wherever I went — I never feel comfortable walking around with the 300D because it's so big and noticeable. Whenever I pull it out people say "Wow, that's a nice camera." And I know it's a compliment, but I'd much rather people didn't notice the camera at all. I don't want their attention to be on it; I want them to carry on as if it wasn't there.

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When I went to Charleston a few weeks ago to visit Jessie, I met a friend of hers who offered to send me a copy of his band's CD. I said sure and, true to my heritage, promptly forgot all about it.

I was quite surprised, then, to receive a semi-anonymous packag in the mail yesterday.

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Camera Tossing may be the big fad nowadays, but Bryan has been doing it since before it was cool.

On the subject of camera tossing though, I discovered the other day that Ryan Gallagher, the guy who started the whole cameratoss thing on Flickr, posted one of my images on his CameraToss Blog. That's pretty cool. But man, those parallel lines in some of the other images posted are awesome. I still need to pick up some rope lights :)

After yesterday's outburst about my photographic desires, I realized that my upcoming trip to Scotland would be a perfect opportunity to play with new toys.

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• A Holga (a $15 toy camera that shoots medium format film and takes wonderfully imprecise pictures)
• A simple home darkroom (which will be especially useful once I start shooting medium format film and have to figure out how to get it processed)
• A large format view camera (don't tell me a 4x5" viewfinder isn't awesome)

Need a quick way to build adrenaline? Try going out in the street in near darkness and tossing your $1300 camera in the air as many times in 30 seconds as you can. Sure gets the blood flowing. Apparently it also attracts the attention of security guards. Two of the pickup trucks that patrol the neighborhood stopped to ask what I was doing. When I showed them the pictures, they seemed satisfied, but I noticed that one of them parked down the street and kept watching until I left. Maybe I should have just explained that I have a learning disability.

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This was a weekend of failed attempts. The plan was to go fly the helicopter on Saturday. On Sunday I planned to take the ferry to Culebra and rent a Jeep and then drive around, explore, and take pictures.

Saturday when I woke up it was raining. It wasn't a heavy rain, and the airfield is a 45 minute drive away so it's possible it wasn't raining there, but it's hard to drag yourself out of bed with four hours of sleep when there's heavy rain falling outside your window.

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Last Saturday I finally got back out to the airfield to fly my RC helicopter. It was the first time I'd flown it since December 2004, and I was quite rusty. I only managed to get one flight in before everyone headed home, and the entire flight was spent just getting reacquainted with the controls. I was still able to fly it alone with no problem, but I was very unstable. All I could do was take off, hover, and land again, none of it cleanly; I couldn't hold it in one spot while hovering, and when I tried to land in the X I ended up getting it down about 10-15 feet outside the circle. Still, it was fun and I'm glad I finally got out there again. I plan to go tomorrow afternoon as well.

On Sunday, I really wanted to go out taking pictures. I'm tired of all the typical spots like Old San Juan, so what I really wanted to do was get out into the island and explore. I don't know my way around anywhere outside of the metropolitan area, but I figured if I could find the software for my GPS in my vast collection of boxes, I could install the Puerto Rico maps and just go get lost. Unfortunately, I seem to have more boxes than patience, and the software didn't turn up.

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Lately I've had a growing interest in experimenting with filmmaking. I'm familiar with the basic editing techniques, so I think I should be able to figure that part out with little trouble. The part that sounds more fun is the shooting itself. The problem, of course, is that unlike photography, filmmaking is more often fictional. You come up with a story and then interpret it for the camera. Photography can more often be about capturing what already exists.

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Last weekend I went to Charleston to visit Jessie. She was having a "Periodic Table Of The Elements" party. The idea for the party is genius, and I had an idea for a fun costume (the excitingly historied-Seaborgium", interpreted as a robotic sea monster) but I ended up not having time to put it together. Jessie took me to Party City and we settled on a Noble Gas. The day was saved.

Originally the plan was for Meg and Meej to make the drive from Clemson for the party, but Meej ended up having schoolwork to do, so they couldn't make it.

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I can't tell what the guy's name is, but there's some really cool photography on this website. In particular, his high speed photography section is really interesting (be sure to check out the Water Figures). Some of the pages haven't been translated from German, but even on those pages you can appreciate the pictures. I like that on most pages he talks about the setup he uses to obtain his results.

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Yesterday I received an unexpected call from Mairym; she was on the island for a week and wanted to hang out. Awesome. Today I woke up, showered, and headed over there. I got lost in the mountains trying to find her house (as usual), but it was pretty, so I figured as long as I'm here I might as well stop and take some pictures.

Finally I found her house and picked her up. We got food and headed to El Morro to eat lunch on the wall of the fort overlooking the old cemetery. Then it was time to return to her house because she needed to babysit some cute kids. We watched The Lion King and I got high fives from the kids (well, one of them would only give me high-fives with her foot).

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I came across the Delete Me! group on Flickr, where you post a photo to the group and the other group members criticize every aspect of it. Members vote either deleteme or saveme, and if you accumulate 10 deleteme votes, your photo is deleted from the group. If you accumulate 10 saveme votes (very rare), your photo gets to stay forever.

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A week or two ago, I mentioned to Jing-Ta that I had been thinking about how it'd be kind of cool to get compensated for my photography in some way, like doing weddings or something. He suggested I try submitting photos to a stock photography site like iStockPhoto as a way to start out. They sell photos for $1-3 each, and you get 20% of that, so it's definitely not a way to get rich quick. In fact, since they don't send out a check until you accumulate $100, I kind of doubt I'd ever see any money at all. But it seemed kind of fun, so I filled out the application and submitted some sample photos for consideration.

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Sigh, it turns out I left my $700 EF 70-200mm f/4L lens on a park bench by the side of the road in St. Thomas where we stopped to take pictures on the way to the airport. I'm still paying off the credit card debt I incurred when buying it, and already it's gone. Bah. My clumsy absentmindedness is amusing when I accidentally sit on things, but less so when I lose expensive things.

The weekend in St. Thomas turned out to be awesome. I worked all night Saturday night (10pm-11am), then headed straight to the airport from work on Sunday morning. The plane was a small Cessna 402 which seats about seven. I was hoping I'd get to sit in the copilot seat, but that spot was given to an attractive blonde girl (go figure). I did end up sitting just behind her though, so I got to check out all the instrumentation and everything.

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Tonight's excursion ran the gamut from relaxing to exciting. Inspired by a photographer I came across on Flickr, I set out tonight to find a dark beach to take photos illuminated by the nearly full moon. The problem is that on this crime-infested island, the adjectives 'dark' and 'desolate' pretty much by definition bring 'dangerous' in tow. I debated with myself whether someplace deserted far away from the city would be more or less safe than a beach in a more populated area ("Why would anyone with ill intent waste their time walking around on a beach far away from civilization," I reasoned). In the end, I opted for the former, and headed out to the long, dark road that runs along the beach on the way to Dorado.

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With the resolutions of my last post in mind, I stopped and took pictures a few places on my way home from work this morning. Even though neither of them was particularly breathtaking, I figured, why not stop? I wasn't in any particular rush to get home. The first was some construction equipment across the street from the gas station where I stopped to get gas, and the second was clouds of flowers falling from the trees in my neighborhood as I drove past. It's much more feasible to stop and take a few pictures when I'm coming home at 8:30am. Back when I was getting off of work at 6am, my drive home took place mostly in darkness, which presents a twofold obstacle to picture-taking diversions; nothing to take pictures of, and interesting people to encounter.

I really need to pick up this book. Based on the excerpts on that page, it seems like the book speaks precisely about the hangups I've been having lately with wanting to produce music or photography but feeling like I just can't.

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Hehe, unlike Ft. Lauderdale, at the Ohio airport the wireless access costs $8 for 24 hours (though of course it's more like $8 for however long you're actually going to be at the airport). I didn't remember how long I had to wait for Bryan and Cat, but I thought it was about 2 hours, so I figured it was worth $4/hour to be entertained. But seconds after I clicked the submit button on my payment, my cell phone rang and Bryan announced they had just landed. I quickly checked my email and shut down the computer to go meet them. $8 for 45 seconds or so... Not as good a deal as I had thought :)

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I'm currently enjoying the free wireless internet access available in the Ft. Lauderdale airport on my way up to Cedar Point in Cleveland, OH to ride insanely fast roller coasters with Cat and Bryan. On the plane today I was pondering filmmaking, and considering experimenting with it. I have the equipment and software needed and know how to do basic editing. When I started considering what I might make, I realized a big difference between filmmaking and photography that's probably obvious to everyone else; filmmaking is often fictional, where you create a story and have the actors interpretit. In contrast, photography (or at least, the kind that I tend to engage in) tends to be nonfiction; finding pretty things and capturing them. I might pose the person I'm shooting with, but the photo is still meant to be a photo of the person, not a character. One of the few times I actually came up with a concept and asked people to act it out was the My Arms, Your Hearse shoot. And those are some of the few photos of mine that I actually really like.

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Hal Bergman lives in LA and updages his PhotoBlog daily. He's incredibly talented — it's another one of those sites that makes me wistful to see, because every photo makes me yearn for the ability to produce such work.

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Wow. Apparently for the past month or so my mom has been going through my photo gallery and downloading the photos she liked best, and compiling a coffee table book with them. She just got them in yesterday, and showed me when I got home from work. It was a really pleasant surprise. I feel a bit awkward having a book of my photos though, especially since she ordered a few extras so I could give them to friends. Hehe, offering someone a book of your photography feels so egotistical. Kind of like handing them a promo headshot of yourself as a christmas present or something. Fortunately, I have the excuse that my mom made it, so I don't have to take responsibility for it and can just enjoy having it. :)

Today I hung out with Michelle, and went with her to pick up an old friend of hers named David Hernandez from the airport. He is a guy she sort of dated back in 6th grade, at which point he moved to Arizona, and they hadn't seen each other since. He was actually really cool, and I got along great with him. I was sold when we were discussing musical tastes and he asked Michelle, "Have you heard of Dream Theater?" and she smiled and pointed at me. He's a drummer, so he was surprised and impressed when I mentioned that Mike Portnoy did a drum clinic here a few years ago.

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Recently I learned about a whole aspect of photography I'd never even heard of before: movements. I'd seen the various Canon TS-E tilt/shift lenses (such as the TS-E 45mm f/2.8) but never understood what the hell the tilt/shift meant. I finally found a page that explains it very well: Understanding Camera Movements at Luminous Landscape.

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Last month a guy from England named Chris Rustage sent me an email saying he liked my photo gallery software and would like a copy to use on his own site. I haven't really prepared it for public distribution, and told him so, but he still felt it was his best option, so I cleaned it up a bit and sent it to him.

Anyway, we were talking about photography yesterday and he mentioned he's got the Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L lens I've been longing for since I got my first Canon (although of course what I really want is the