Italy is our favorite destination in Europe. There is Rome, Venice and Florence as our top cities to visit. The food, the people, the city and its architecture and sculptures are so interesting and fun to see and enjoy. I haven't found my many photos of Italy but I will get to them someday.
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Friday, February 16, 2007
My first 'adventure trip out of Saudi Arabia was to India. Flew to Bombay and then to Srinigar and from there to Leh, Ladakh, India. We then drove down the mountain back to Srinigar and then flew back to New Delphi and then home. Leh, Ladakh is Katmandhu-like as I believe they are from the same people who migrated down from China. The monastery tour was interesting and so Brad Pitt-like but the welcome procession for the Head Llama was the most memorable. The local people all donned their traditional garb and lined up on the streets to meet the llama. The sight was incredible. The trip down the mountain was quite exciting. Since we were above the clouds we were literally 'On Top of the World". We rode down the mountain on Indian-made taxis on narrow roads and in one spot at cloud level were dirt roads that literally were carved out of the side of the mountains as the other side crumbled down due to the wet conditions. Another stretch of road were one way and we waited for hours for the other side to cross. We were met with torrential rains once we got to ground level and the roads were flooded at some points whereupon our Indian drivers turned the car around and backed up instead of driving forward this avoiding the engines from flooding.
Monday, February 12, 2007
Bagan (Pagan in the old days) is one of those magical places to visit. This was from some old slides that I scanned from my trip there in the late 80s I believe. It was a magical place and this town was particularly enchanting. I spent the afternoon chatting with a Buddhist monk about nothing and everything. I hope to come back here someday although I think some of the magic may have disappeared with the passage of time.
I saw Vigan photos in one of the photostreams and so I had to go back to the archives for this old one I had. It brings back memories of how I bussed it all the way to Vigan to visit Jean (and her sister). It was very nice to see the change in landscape as we travelled from Manila to Vigan. La Union I remember was particularly nice with all the beaches. Vigan with the old houses and old town look was very quaint. We also went around some of the historical places and visited Marcos country.
I took this photo at Hyde Creek Park in Port Coquitlam. Alyssa had a game in Port Coquitlam at the Terry Fox Secondary School but I failed to take a picture there. I looked up the closest park and when I saw creek thought this would be a good place to go. I walked around for about an hour. The weather was nice and cool and there was a slight drizzle. With the D200 I didn't have to worry except when I was changing lens. The D200 is weather-proofed which is part of its appeal specially as Vancouver is drizzling frequently. At the end of the walk I ran into a Filipina who chatted about how she also liked living here. I said we were blessed to live in such a beautiful area.
Sunday, February 11, 2007
This all started with trying to perfect my B&W conversion technique and I am not there yet. Along the way I ran into the 'Hollywood' technique where I used the VIrtual Photographer photoshop plug-in. At the same time I was experimenting with the PhotoKit b&w and color Photoshop plug-ins. I am still not sure if I want to purchase them. A lot of the color techniques are what I think are 1 time tricks. The B&W works quite well but I have found a gradient technique that works just as well. I guess I need to keep experimenting with the alternatives...sigh...
Thursday, February 08, 2007
rock of ages
The enormity of it all hit me this morning. I post-processed some of the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Garden photos again. I used the Photokit Photoshop plug-ins to first convert the shots to black and white and then sharpen the images. Along the way I learned that the D200 b&w images when shot in RAW stores color information so that conversion to color is a click away. I have just started to look seriously into B&W and I now realized that there is a lot of work ahead for me. Besides requiring a new set of software, I need to look at B&W images in a different way and at this point analyzing an image is not a simple matter.
I took this shot last June at the Arts Umbrella rehearsals for the annual year end dance performance. I really like this and it is one of those more creative shots I've done. The start of the year (2006) was a learning period and I think I shot the worst, unimaginative photos during that period when I was trying to my shooting style. I also included this shot in the 10 Things Challenge "task" for the Vancouver Photography Meetup Group.
It's raining again...
Yep. So it's back to still life shots inside the house. I recently joined a meet-up group (http://photo.meetup.com/475/?gj=sj17 ) and one of the things they had was a list of 10 things to shoot for the month ( http://photo.meetup.com/475/boards/view/viewthread?thread=2492998 ). I shot a few at Ashley's game and took some from the archives. The toast was something I did for the toast subject. This is the second group that I have joined locally with Vandigicam ( http://flickr.com/groups/vandigicam/ ) being the first one I joined. My attendance is very unpredictable what with all the driving I have to do for the 3 girls.
Sunday, February 04, 2007
My first visit to this garden was about 2 years ago and I have gone back 2 to 3 times since, I have always found it difficult to capture. The problem was I was still in the tack-sharp from foreground to background mode until I started to work on dof last year. I guess this series of images are evidence of my progress since last year. I found it a lot easier to find a capture and I am a lot more pleased with the results this time. And inspite of that I still learned a few more things. Like other shooting compositions (tree shapes) that I missed and that the dof does not necessarily have to be F16 or F1.4 but can also be in-berween so that there is a hint of the background. I am looking forward to going back.
Vancouver in the Fog
We started getting a lot of fog this week. And I had a few minutes before taking Ashley to school. This was at the Family YMCA field that I've noticed as I passed by everyday. The light in the morning and in the late afternoon has been specially beautiful but I haven't been able to stop and take a few photos. This morning was cold...my hands were freezing after the 10 minutes I spent here. I kind of messed up on this shot as I had the focus on manual from the previous night and I forgot all about it. However the resulting out of focus effect I think made for a better image.
Device to Root Out Evil
There was a Vandigicam photowalk on this night but with the dinner and coffee after I couldn't fit it in. I dropped off Yolly at her night class and went here an hour before everyone did. It was cold and it was so dark I could barely see through the viewfinder but I managed to come out with some photos. The best was of this sculpture. The other 2 sculptures didn't come out the way I wanted them to come out. I used off camera flash on the others but I wasn't able to set up the light the way I wanted to. Well at least I can get the flash to work properly using a wireless setup.
This was one of the first nights where the rain and/or wind was blowing like mad. I just had to go and try out my SB-800 flash techniques. I set up the flash on a stand and fired it remotely from my camera which was on a tripod so I could use a slow shutter speed and bring in the background into the image. I think I am finally starting to get close to where I have a handle on the technical and now just have to work on the composition side.
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