Tuesday, November 30, 2010

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?

Monday, November 29, 2010

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

Sunday, November 28, 2010

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.

Saturday, November 27, 2010

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.

Friday, November 26, 2010

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

Thursday, November 25, 2010

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

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

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.

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

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.

Monday, November 22, 2010

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!

Sunday, November 21, 2010

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

Saturday, November 20, 2010

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

Friday, November 19, 2010

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.

Thursday, November 18, 2010

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

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

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!

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

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.

Monday, November 15, 2010

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

Sunday, November 14, 2010

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

Saturday, November 13, 2010

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

Friday, November 12, 2010

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.

Thursday, November 11, 2010

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

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Great great grandparents

So my mother just came back from Japan, and brought back two copies of these old photographs. I honestly don't know all that much about my family history. I'm sure I could find out more if I asked around, but I've never gotten around to it. Anyways, this is the first time I've seen my great great grandparents. This is just really fascinating on so many levels. It's really cool to see my ancestors from way back in the day. And it's also really cool to know that these photos must have originally been taken around 100 years ago. I recently watched this documentary about the history of the camera, and this just ties in really well.
It's easy to forget how photography started as a science, not an art form.

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Blades

A lot of things happen on a rainy day like today. Sure, it's pretty inconvenient when you want to get somewhere, and you get all soaked in the process. But on the other hand, you sometimes discover something absolutely beautiful in the process. You just gotta find it for yourself. And I think is true for a lot of things in life. Yeah, I know I'm sounding super cheesy at the moment, but hear me out. You'll sometimes meet those pessimists that complain about everything. And then you have your optimists that try to find the good side in everything. To me, it seems like there isn't always a good and/or bad side to everything in life. Some things in life just suck. Period. Other things are just plain awesome. But when you start thinking about the good and bad sides of everything, nothing is pure anymore. Everything just sorta becomes neutral.

I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with that, I'm just saying that I like a little more variety in life. When I step in doggy doo doo, I don't want to think about how that helps fertilize the soil. I want to get on and find a pot of gold later on. Just remember that that pot of gold isn't just going to appear. You have to find it. You have to want to find it. If you want something bad enough, you'll find your own way there. Just don't stare at the bottom of your shoe all day

Monday, November 8, 2010

Patterns

With this whole back and white thing going on, I'm finding myself looking for shapes and patterns a lot more. I can't just rely on pretty colours to do all the work lol. But yeah, I was out with my camera today, and I felt a few raindrops. I decided that I should probably head inside, for the sake of my camera gear. Then on my way back I saw these puddles and decided to try for a shot. I ended up taking about 20 photos there and sorted though them at home. On a side note, that's one thing I love about digital photography. Anyways, I'm just loving this whole b&w experience. It's a really neat way to rediscover the world

Sunday, November 7, 2010

It ain't pretty but...

Ever since I was a kid I've loved these Vietnamese sandwiches. They're just so irresistibly tasty. But I find a few inconveniences with them too. First off the bread portion tends to crumble a lot, so you better have a giant plate. Next up, they never really look all that pretty. Finally, they always leave a strange aftertaste in your mouth for the longest time. But I find that after years, I've just kinda grown accustomed to them lol.

Saturday, November 6, 2010

Time Change!

It's that time of year again, the end of daylight savings time. I remember being all excited as a child, knowing that I could sleep in an extra hour. But this year, I don't feel the excitement. It just seems like it's become so routine and logical. Is ignorance truly bliss? In some cases, yeah. The world always felt more interesting when I didn't understand it. Everything was just so fascinating and awesome. But now, anything we don't understand instills feelings of doubt and uncertainty, not wonder. Now just how did that happen?

Friday, November 5, 2010

Autumn Night

There's something very refreshing and magical about nights in the fall. I was out taking out the trash after some friends came over for a get together tonight, and I just noticed how beautiful the sky looked. Honestly I was thinking about writing about my friends tonight, but I got this feeling that this takes precedence.

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Beautiful

After quite some time, I finally got a decal for my Macbook. Well, maybe decal isn't the right word. I'm honestly not sure what is. It's called a wooden skin, which is an interesting concept. But yeah, it looks really neat, and that's about the only purpose it serves lol. I'm usually not the superficial type, but I think I can make an exception. I mean come on, look at it! Oh, and it feels/smells great too haha

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Aspect Ratio

Oh man, I'm feeling extra adventurous today. I decided to move away from my standard aspect ratio. It feels a little strange, but it seems to work for this photo. If I had framed this photo a little better in the first place, I probably wouldn't have had to do this. But hey, now I've experimented with a new technique because of a mistake I made. I guess I should also give the 1x1 thing a try too. Now that is going to be strange. Wish me luck lol

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Alternatives

I am not used to shooting without colour. I was out today with a friend, and it became very apparent, very quickly that I rely heavily on colour for composition. I really have to rethink how I compose my shots. Initially, I was afraid that I was going to "miss out" on some great shots because I'm shooting black and white. But I just see it as an opportunity and challenge. A challenge to convey the same message to the viewer that a colour photograph would. And damn, it's not easy lol.

Monday, November 1, 2010

No Colour November

Woot! I gots me an external flash! I can go out and become a paparazzi photographer now!

Lol just kidding. But in all seriousness, I am quite excited about this. It's going to take a hell of a lot of practice, patience, reading, learning, and batteries to get good with this thing. It's just a whole new world when it comes to flash photography. If things go well, I might try to get my hands on an umbrella and wireless transmitter. But that's a looooooooooong way away lol.

Also, I should probably address the tittle of this post. Basically, I have very little experience shooting black and white. I use it sometimes, randomly, if I feel like it. Point is I want to get better at black and white photography. So I figure I might as well force myself to learn over the course of the next month. I'll be shooting exclusively in black and white. No excuses. Let's see how this goes :D