Just gimmie a sec here...

Ok, so it's New Years eve, but I'm going out shortly. I'd like to write out a proper post with an awesome photo to wrap up the year, so I'll do that tomorrow. Until then, Happy New Year and stay safe peoples :)

Worn out

The year will be over in a number of hours now. But right now I'm just feeling really worn out and tired. I just feel like I need a reboot. It's strange, in previous years, New Years has always just been about having fun and changing the year when you write out the date. But this year, it feels like I'll notice the difference when the clock strikes 12am on January 1st. My biggest fear is what I'll feel if I expect change but find nothing. But hey, maybe I'm just being totally nonsensical due to sleep deprivation. Sure, let's go with that :)

Aw yeah, new (used) lens!

I am extremely excited right now. Today I finally met up with the man I bought this lens from. I just met him through Craigslist lol. But yeah, everything was fine. Just picked a place and time, and done. Anywho, I simply love this lens. Carl Zeiss lenses are known to be some of the best lenses available in the world. I've done some searching around Google, but I couldn't find out when exactly this lens went into production. Sometime between the 70s or 80s. But the image quality is just superb. And the lens itself is just a blast to use. It's all manual, meaning you gotta go a lot of twisting and turning to get a nice photo. I'm really looking forward to playing around with this lens a little more :D

It's me! Holding me!

Wow, this is just amazing! Since I've been busy the past week, a friend of mine couldn't drop off a gift in time for Christmas. But today I got it, and I think it's simply hilarious lol. Basically my friend printed off a photo of me from Facebook, and took it to an artist who draws caricatures. Anyways, I'm absolutely thrilled about this now. I wonder if I should go out and print off a copy of this photo.....then take a photo next to that photo...

Oh jeez, what was I thinking?

Since I got this 2TB external HD on boxing day, I thought now might be a good time to just clear out my entire computer and reinstall the OS. I was going through all of my documents and other files, trying to decide what to keep when I came across my photos in the Aperture library. Long story short, I found old photos I took that are just awful lol. Apparently I just could not compose photos for the life of me. It's quite interesting to see that computers can store memories just like a room in real life

Boxing Day ftw

Not trying to sound like your typical mindless, materialistic consumer, but I love boxing day lol. Today I got up at 4:00am and got to Futureshop with a friend by 4:50am. It's strange, I've gone to bed around that time a few times. So naturally by the time we started heading home around noon, it felt like 5 in the afternoon. But uh, hopefully my sleep cycle isn't too messed up

Family photo

Wow, it's Christmas. I know I've already mentioned this thing before, but I swear, Christmas just came out of nowhere this year. So yeah, I brought my camera and tripod with me today to get this shot. I'd say it turned out quite nice. Family photos are something that can be kinda tricky sometimes. Anyways, I've really gotta get to bed. Gotta get up bright and early for some epic boxing day shopping tomorrow :D

Unused

So this is a photo I took yesterday when I as out downtown with some friends. I thought I might use it for that alphabet thing, but I didn't in the end. So I thought I might as well edit and upload it for today's post. In case it's not obvious enough already, this was taken by the Vancouver Public Library. Honestly, I had never been there until this year. This fall actually. But yeah, it's all kinds of awesome. So many damn books!

Round two

There, done! After close to a month of shooting, I finally put together my holiday alphabet album. It's been nice to have a reason to shoot holiday themed photos. Last year I found myself a little disappointed that I didn't have many photos of the holidays. But this year I'm quite satisfied. Now it's getting late, and I need to get to bed asap for a 9:30-5:30 shift tomorrow. Oh boy, that's gunna be tons of fun!

Anyways, check out the album here.

Wait what?

It's the 22nd of December. How is this possible? Where did the month of December go? Did it just unexpectedly leave without telling anyone? I feel like this month just hasn't happened. It feels like it should be like early December or so. I guess it must have something to do with me not being in school/having winter break. Luckily all my shopping has been done for quite some time now, but I'm still bewildered by the fact that the 25th is 3 days away.

Grace

I am absolutely awful at dancing, so it always amazes me when I see skilled people doing it properly. These photos were taken at The Roundhouse Community Centre. Funny story, I was just going through Google to find something interesting to do Downtown when I found out that tonight was the 17th annual Winter Solstice Lantern Festival. I had no idea what it was, so I did some reading. Basically, it's just a huge celebration where people come together to make lanterns, and join in other various activities. I wasn't able to make it in time for the lanterns, but I saw some pretty neat stuff though.

Oh Christmas Tree

After taking photos of the ornaments yesterday, i thought I might take a photo of the entire tree today. To be honest, it's not exactly easy to get a nice photo of a Christmas tree. The most important thing you need to consider is how the tree itself is set up. If you live in a house where your tree has tons of room, that's a plus. In my case, our tree is almost hitting the ceiling lol. Next up, you'll want a nice simple background. And last but not least, you'll want your tree to be full of life and detail.

Now since I couldn't fulfill all of these little guidelines, I had to get a little creative lol

Ornaments

So our Christmas tree has been up for a while now, but I only started shooting it today. I think one of the most important thing to consider when shooting ornaments is lighting. Our tree happens to be right next to a large window, so one side of the tree has significantly better lighting. It was also quite cloudy out today, so the light was nice and even, not harsh or directional.I found myself moving ornaments back and forth between the two sides of the tree, just to get some nicer lighting :P

Notice Anything?

I'm hoping not lol. I picked up a cheap cord today to get my external flash off of my camera body. In all honesty, it's really a lot of fun to use. You could be holding the flash in your hand and it'll trigger at the same time as the camera. Anyways, I'm just trying out different positions to use the flash in, and I'm also hoping to find some human subjects to use it with too.

To infinity

So I had my camera hooked up to my computer today, trying to figure out what to take a photo of for today's blog post. And then that's when it happened: I broke the universe. Well, that's a gross exaggeration to say the least lol. But seriously, it was kinda cool to see this infinite loop of monitor in monitor. I guess it would've looked cooler in video eh? lol

Warp Speed!

So I was out taking care of some errands and had my camera with me. I thought I was going to take some photos around where I was, but I couldn't find anything that interested me, so I got what I needed and went for the bus stop. Once I got on the bus, I realized I had my camera with me, so I started taking some photos. After a couple of unsuccessful shots, I decided to just ram my camera against the window and hold it there with all my might. In the end, I'd say I got a decent shot out of it lol

Light it up

I love seeing all the colourful lights going up around this time of year. It's even cooler when you see them after it rains. I've walked past here every time I go to work, so I've wanted to take a photo here for quite some time. I'm thinking of going around to some other neighborhoods to get some photos. But I'm thinking it might be a little easier if I had a car lol

Hahaha

So I just found this image my friends and I made back in accounting class one day when we were bored. I really have no idea what's going on, or why we made it the way it is. Anyways, I just thought this was a hilarious find, but it also made me think about what I was like half a year ago. I was the kid who was trying to pass some academic courses in order to apply for some science courses. I guess the question is, if I could go back in time and tell myself what I know today, would I take that opportunity? Like I've said before, I am the result of a very specific series of events. If I were to change something, no matter how negative it seems at the time, the end result would create a whole different me.

Old favorites

At one point a few months back, I was absolutely crazy about hummus and pita bread. I would just sit in my room, watching TV while eating a whole 300g package of pita in one sitting. Those were some awesome times. But for whatever reason, I grew tired of them eventually, and I hadn't eaten it since. Well yesterday I went back, and it was just awesome! I went for it again today, and it was awesome! I'm just glad to know that even after I tire of something, I can go back in a bit and fall right back in love lol

Luncheon

I always loved the Christmas luncheons at church. There's just always this great sense of belonging and community. People just seem to get along really nicely and it's great. Also, the food is always awesome too haha. Anyways, I had a jolly good time there. It was also fun since I was shooting with two other people who had happened to bring their cameras too. I can never tire of geeky photo-related discussions lol

Getting better...ish

So today I was over at my friend's place, and I had my camera with me so I decided to take some photos. It was a little on the dark side, so I whipped out my external flash. I'm slowly getting more accustomed to it, but I still find some of my photos coming out too dark or bright. Ideally, I'd like to add enough light to avoid a blurry photo, without making my subjects look like pale ghosts lol

Reindeer

So I went downtown today on my day off to take care of some Christmas shopping and also took some photos too. I'm working on another photo project, and it's coming along, bit by bit. I'll be happy when it's all done and ready to go. In the meantime, I just gotta keep at it. Anyways, I hate to cut yet another blog post short, but today it's for good reason...kinda. I've gotta be up for work super early tomorrow, and I've been sleeping in almost everyday for the past few weeks lol. So yeah, let's see well that goes

Happiness

I don't know why, but this picture makes me so ridiculously happy. It's based off of the phrase "U jelly?" which in turn is short for "you jealous?" Lately I've been staying up late just reading comics based off of some very poorly drawn characters, and time seems to just slip by. I've got to be up by 7am on Saturday, so I don't know how well that's going to go lol.

Epic clock!

So today I got up and received a package in the mail. I was absolutely ecstatic. So I opened it up to find that my Secret Santa had made me an awesome clock. It's basically just a huge inside joke that won't make sense to most people lol. Anyways, the clock is currently just sitting on my desk next to my keyboard, so I'll have to figure out where to leave it. In the meantime, I've come to an interesting discovery: clocks make audible ticking sounds. I mean like, I've always known that, but I've never really experienced it for myself all too much. I'll just be listening to some music, and in that brief second between songs I'll hear it ticking. Now I'm wondering if I'll be able to sleep at night haha

Btw, you are now aware that you are breathing.

That's pretty much how I feel right now :P

Boom flowers!

I'm not sure why, but these flowers just really stood out to me today. It's not like it was the first time I saw them or anything though. I think it's just a matter of perceiving the world in different ways depending on how we feel. Some days you just walk past, while others you stop and look.

Waiting for lunch

So today I went down to Lonsdale Quay with a friend to get some food and to hang out. It's been a while since I was last there to actually spend some time and twas good. As long as stores don't get ridiculously busy, shop owners tend to be in good moods this time of year. I guess some would call that holiday spirit. I'm just happy to be able to enjoy a nice day off lol

Nothing

Well, I haven't got anything here today. My life's been absolutely full of work recently. Luckily I have the day off tomorrow so I'm looking forward to resting up a bit. It never really occurred to me that working (almost) full time would mean working for the majority of the time you have available in a week. It sounds pretty dumb, but I guess I'm just not used to it. I just always imagined that full time meant working 9-5 Mon-Fri, or something along those lines. Anyways, it's getting late, so I really should get to bed lol

Really?

So this evening after rushing home from a closing shift, I moved the TV from downstairs into my room. Yeah, that mess in the basement hasn't been cleared 0ut yet. I just went through my blog to find out that the original leak happened on the night of September 25th. Since then numerous people have been in and out, all promising to call or show up at some given time. Honestly, no offense to people in those professions, but get your shit together. We get that we need you more than you need us, that's a given. We get that this isn't something that we can fix ourselves. And we get that we're not in the absolutely most dire of situations. But I'll be damned if this isn't a major inconvenience in our day to day lives. The moving of this television isn't just a rearrangement of furniture, it's my acceptance that we've lost a room. A room I could once sit down to enjoy gaming without the distractions of others. I've lost too much hope to be disappointed anymore.

I'm not trying to be the douche here. On a superficial level, nothing seems to be wrong. I've moved something out of the way, and my room has become more enjoyable, right? So why should it matter to you? Is this what you wanted? Did you want us to accept that there's going to be a hole in the roof of the basement for an indefinite amount of time? Well then maybe I won't come to terms with it then. Maybe I'll just pretend that absolutely nothing is wrong. Unless, you purposly planned all of this to try to get me to question my own principals. Well in that case, you've won. I don't care anymore. Or do I? No. Yes. No. God damnit!

Hells Yeah Bowling!

So today I went out to the bowling alley with a bunch of people. I learned a few things tonight. First off, I am absolutely terrible at bowling. End of story. Secondly, taking photos during glow bowling is just about impossible. Without using flash it's ridiculously dark, and the flashing lights don't help. But if you use a flash, it just exposes your main subject, and kills the ambiance created by the disco balls and black lights. Oh well, maybe I'll be able to come up with a solution someday lol

Letters

Oh man, I haven't written a letter in ages. Actually, I'm not sure if I ever have, like ever. I'm also getting the feeling that I've talked about this before too lol. Well regardless, I wrote out a letter to a complete stranger to accompany a gift for a Secret Santa I'm doing this year. If there's one thing I've learned this year, it's that I take kindly to strangers more than others often do. I dunno, it's jsut kinda fun lol

Colours are back!

Ah, it's been a long month. I've definitely learned a lot about black and white photography throughout the last month. But I've also learned that sometimes you need to have colour is certain photos. Sometimes there just isn't a way around it. Anyways, I'm certainly looking forward to this holiday season, with colourful decorations everywhere lol. Should be good times :D

Smoke

So there it is, the final photo from No Colour November. I thought I might try experimenting with smoke, seeing as I now have access to an external flash unit. Mind you, I don't exactly have a perfect studio setup though. I manually triggered the flash with my arm fully extended, and used a couch as my backdrop lol. Anyways, it was quite a lot of fun. I'm hoping to get my hands on some wireless triggers, as well as a nice (cheap) backdrop too. Boxing Day anyone?

Brush brush

I think I'm going slightly insane again. I had a nice relaxing day today, despite working a closing shift at work. But I really gotta adjust my sleeping schedule. I was going to try sleeping at more, uhh, conventional hours, but that hasn't quite happened...yet. Just ask any teen and they'll tell you just how difficult it is to break out of an awkward sleep cycle lol

Tired

You know, I don't get it. Sometimes when you stay up long enough and get super tired, you get this sudden burst of energy. Had I payed more attention in biology, I might have a better idea as to what happens. But I digress. It's been another long day, and I just can't wait to get to bed lol.

A night out

Aw man, what a hell of a day. For starters, I got up at 7 in order to get to work for an 8-4 shift. It wasn't all too bad, considering that it's a Saturday. Anyways, i got home, showered, changed, and headed out. And after that point, everything was just perfect. The five of us went to the Top of Vancouver Revolving Restaurant for a nice dinner. It was my first time there, and I was damn impressed. The moment I sat down, I felt this total calmness overcome my entire body. The soft holiday music in the background combined with the spectacular view made for a feeling of bliss like none other. There weren't all that many people there, so it was nice and quiet.

During our time there, we enjoyed some wonderful food and great conversations. Our waiter was also very kind and hilarious. Honestly, I could just go on and on and on and on about tonight. However, I gotta get some sleep, so I'll try to wrap this up here. Long story short, I had the best night I've had in a long time. Grad was kinda neat, but this was just spectacular.

What to wear....?

So tomorrow night is going to be quite important. A few of us are going out to the Top of Vancouver Revolving Restaurant. I've actually never been before, so I'm quite excited. I've just about decided on what I'll be wearing, since I won't have much time tomorrow. For that matter, I need to be up in 6.5 hours lol

Get high

First off, this is a photo I took a few days ago, but never got the chance to put up. The only reason I say this is because it snowed a lot today lol. I mean, there must've been like 10cm of snow. Compared to the rest of Canada, that's no big deal at all. But for everyone in Vancouver, it pretty much means death. I saw this little comic somebody made and thought it was kinda funny lol.

Anyways, back to the photo here. I went out the other day with my camera, a wide lens, and a tripod. I basically just put the camera on the tripod, extended all the legs, and held the camera really really high above my head using the self timer. It was quite a lot of fun, but it was getting cold and dark so I had to end it short. I'm hoping to try it again sometime

Back to band

So today I visited Windsor and took some photos too. It's been a while since I've walked through those halls. I mean, I was there a few weeks back to see their concerts, but that was different. It's strange, I feel like I kinda miss Windsor, but at the same time, I could never go back. It's really amazing how much your views can change over the course of a few months.

Iced...to meet you

So it's been quite cold recently and the little fountain outside the Holiday Inn has frozen over for the most part. I honestly can't remember the last time this happened. Like I mentioned before, we're just so unprepared for cold weather, both physically and mentally lol.

Damnit...

So there are a few things I don't like about sleeping through winter nights. The most obvious point is that it gets cold. I mean, that's just plain inconvenient. The next is that damn annoying thumping sound coming from the ceiling. I think it has something to do with how materials expand in cold temperatures. But I don't care about the science right now. I'm just getting really annoyed. It's like having someone jump on your roof at varying intensities every few minutes. Leave me alone!

Ceiling Fan

I wonder what it would be like to walk on the ceiling for a day. I imagine it would be fun for the first 10 minutes of so, then it wold probably just become very inconvenient lol. I took me a while today to decide what to take a photo of. I'm trying to avoid just taking a photo of something lying around and talking about it. Honestly, I've done that so many times on this blog that it sickens me. It's an easy way out, but then what's the point? I might as well make the most of every given opportunity

How's it look outside?

If you haven't guessed already, I took this photo through a peephole. It took a bit to figure out the best way to do it, but I ended up with an interesting photo. On the technical side, this photo isn't all that outstanding, but I feel like that doesn't really matter right now. I think this photo is about capturing the essence of an everyday action in the form of a photo...lol

Snow!

Well would ya look at that, it's snowing! As a Vancouverite, this excites me greatly. The kid inside of me is just going nuts, thinking about making snowballs and going sledding. But then the realistic side of me can't help but worry about getting around tomorrow lol. Let's be real here, Vancouver is never prepared for any amount of snow. Everyone just freaks out and chaos ensues on the streets. Only the people who moved here from places like Saskatchewan can manage to find their way. For that matter, I'd honestly like to see what the rest of Canada looks like this time of year. I want to go somewhere where you can't take in a full breath without causing damage to your internal organs. I just think it would be a fascinating experience.

Gettin Cozy

It's starting to get pretty chilly outside. And with that, it just gets so much nicer indoors in the comfort of one's own home. When I was doing yesterday's shot, I had used my Macbook to compose the shot so I didn't have to move a candle, then look back up at the camera's screen to see what I had done. Well today I actually controlled this shot with my Macbook. There's a usb cable running from my computer to the camera, on a tripod. I could've done the whole self timer and run technique, but I want to be able to perfect the focus so this was the only way to do it. Anyways, it's just something fun to do when I'm sittin' at home lol

Epic Turtle

It's been a while since I've played with candles in photography. I guess I just hadn't gotten around to it. Anyways, I had a lot of fun trying to get today's shot. I ended up using 7 candles lol. Also shooting in black in white helped out quite a bit. If I was shooting colour, everything would've just turned out brown/orange. When I started this whole B&W thing, I thought I was going to miss having colour. But now it seems that I have just as many freedoms as restrictions. Awesome!

Ahh books

I love reading, but I've never done all that much reading. I've just always found it difficult to find books that I want to read. Honestly, I never minded it when teachers assigned books to read. For example, I loved How To Kill A Mocking Bird. Some of my classmates disliked it for whatever reason, but I thought it was excellent. But yeah, I decided a while back that I was going to start reading through all those classics that everyone's supposed to read lol. I'm almost done reading Ender's Game and I'm trying to decide what to read next. I'm finding that the internet can be an incredible resource when it comes to researching books.

Washed Out

Kinda spooky eh? Today I thought I might try messing around with the external flash. I haven't had many opportunities to try it out on other people yet, so I thought I'd just play around with it. The nice thing about black and white is that you can use either black or white as much as you like. In this case, I went with white. I got this feeling that I can do a lot better, but you gotta start somewhere lol

Six Fortuneeeeeeeee

This has got to be one of my favourite discoveries in drinks of all time. It all goes back to the summer of 2007 when I had finished one of my first shits at Superstore. A friend of mine was also working that day, so we both decided to get one of these cans of what seemed like juice. We were both instantly blown away. Ever since that day, Six Fortune has become an iconic part of our friendship. Yea, a can of juice lol. But seriously, this stuff is just awesome. I picked up a tray of 30 today so I'm super excited now :D

Single Source

So a while back I read about this technique where you light an entire room with only one light source. Now that isn't really all that hard to do. So long as you know how to work your camera's settings and you have a tripod, you're fine. The real challenge comes with trying to make the camera see as a human would. I find that in dark scenarios, cameras get confused quite easily. As a result you see a lot of blurry photos or photos with a huge burst of flash. Honestly, it doesn't matter how expensive your camera is if you don't know how to use it fully lol

Root Beer

I've been meaning to take this empty can downstairs, but just kinda forgot about it. So I did what I always do when I should be doing something, I took a photo. Only recently has that come to my attention. For the longest time, I just assumed that I should feel bad for not completing a task. But then I read through this article about effective procrastination. Long story short, you can get a lot done when doing action y when you're supposed to be doing action x. Ultimately action x is never completed, but action y is.

About Time

How long ago was it that I got this new desk? Well point is that I finally cleaned out my room. Yeah, I can't believe it took this long. I've been living in a huge mess of a room for what seems like forever. But yeah, it's lookin pretty decent now. I can see the whole floor, and I know where just about everything is. I've still got a few things to sort out, but it's alright for the most part. I just hope I can keep this up haha