March 2004 Archives

a relatively old photo, but posting it for alice (since it's pretty much her home she never leaves).

about the photo... i took this picture very early morning (~ 5am) as a lesson for light metering... since the majority of the picture was "dark", at least from the naked eye, the settings i would have normally gone for would have made the overhead lights and windows extremely bright... so, i metered for the window and pushed it up one stop. this is main entryway to duke's fuqua school of bidness.

for some reason, xanga all of a suddden has decided to recompress my photos into smaller files, which i think is the cause of the noticeable artifacting from bad jpeg compression. bah, does anyone know of an option to change it to straight uploads? no worries, though, i have more than enough room on my duke account to host the photos.

2:22am... i should really start posting at normal hours of the day.

about this photo... a pretty traumatizing thing to witness, two girls strapped into a wheel and twirled about for five minutes, with screams accompanying every half period (the one where they're upside down). "ahhHhHHh! ............. ahhHhHHh! ............. ahhHhHHh! ............." you get the picture. but apparently its fun!

i tried paul's tonal range thing he's been talking about in the comments for the past several photos. you gots the details in the blacks, the details in the whites, what more could you ask for?

*sigh* i wish i had time to go home this weekend...

about this photo... this is completely off from what i originally intended with this photo, but then again, most of my photos are... i really i wish i had focused on the girl better, cuz to me it's distracting not having a definitive focal point. stupid manual focusing!

i miss being four. and not studying.

about the photo... i've found that little kids make the best candid photos, probably because the concept of being self-conscious hasn't settled in their psyche yet. i, on the other hand, started to get worried as the out-of-focus younger sibling started to run progressively closer and closer to me, so i had to snap the photo and maneuver out of the way to avoid a potential duhon-like collision (fortunately, there were no broken ribs here). the photo was taken at springfest, main quad.

the chapel quad was filled with food vendors, live bands, and merchants from all over the city as the campus celebrated springternational 2004. i spent the afternoon w/alice (who has the coolest cell phone!) and emily (who decided to go as a bunny today) as they wooed and wowed at the transformed university. for a 7th year veteran of these events, they get a bit repetitive. but at least this time i had a camera in hand

about the photo... i'm getting a bit more comfortable with snapping pictures in public. for a while i felt like i stuck out like a sore thumb whenever i went out photographing. there's a bit of effort required to remain inconspicious, and although it was a bit easier to blend in among a huge crowd, it felt a bit more natural. this photo's of alice and emily trying on some hand-made jewelry at one of the stands.

i've been debating on whether or not to invest in another digital camera... something like a canon g5 or nikon 5400. not that I don't like shooting with my SLR, but it seems that sometimes i'd prefer a faster way to photograph, in terms of both composition and development. i wouldn't want to go as extreme as a dSLR (although the canon rebels are relatively cheap), but rather something more compact but still offers quite a bit functionality. simply put, my canon s200 is a much too restrictive digital photography solution. we'll see, though, as i have much more pressing matters at hand...

about the photo... this is one of the rare photos i've taken that turned out exactly how i intended it to be, with proper depth of field to keep the chair and muffler in focus, but the rest of the scene blurred out. none of my other photos end up being the way i thought they'd be. in fact, the photos that originally think would be the crappiest end up being the best. just goes to show you how much of a noob i am at this

after extensive research on photosig.com, i've come to the conclusion that perhaps 90% of people who own higher-end digital cameras and even digital SLRs (which would imply that the buyer knew a thing or two about photography) end up taking really awful pictures... shot poorly, edited poorly, leaving very little room to salvage the photo. i got to thinking that if this indeed the case, then perhaps the converse might be true. so i'm beginning my canon s200 project... how far can i really push this relatively inflexible compact camera? it's a lesson equivalent to using my fully-manual SLR with only a prime lens - work with what you have, and think before you shoot.

about the photo... having not gotten out of the "stuff in my room" series (mainly because i've been sick the past several days), this is an old-school wind-up metronome, with a 1960's retro look to it. there's nothing like keeping beat to simple first principles - a pendulum with a counterweight to click andante, allegro, etc... editorially-speaking, this was a first for me in experimenting mixing color in with b&w.

in the world of med students, there's the much anticipated "match day," a day when all prospective nail-biting doctors sit in front of their computers waiting for an e-mail that tells them whether or not they got accepted to their residency of choice. last week was such a day, which is only really relevant to me because my bros were on the list (both of them, apparently!) so, as of july, big bro no. 1 will be starting his residency in family medicine, and apparently, seemingly out of the blue, big bro no. 2 will be starting as well in internal medicine (at HSS?), even though he still has fourth year to complete! since apparently blogs are the only i seem to communicate w/big bro no. 2, congrats!

about the photo... i decided one day back in late january to walk around downtown durham, and somehow was drawn to start hitch-hiking along the railroad tracks... before i knew it, i found myself half way from my apartment to the end of the city when i snapped this pic. i bet you're imagining progressively taller buildings behind me, thinking, "man, he walked out far," but nope, pretty much all of durham is this flat.

the owners of this ninth street store constantly change up their little frog collection. some days they'll be reading to each other, other days they'll be smoking up on their pipes... i happened to catch them just hanging around, with no prejudice passed by their sapien cohabitants. compositionally speaking, the reflections on the windows bother me a bit; they're distracting. it would have come off better had i taken this at a different time of day. oh well.

i signed off to lease a new apartment where i can "discover the soul of urban living in the heart of durham뭩 ninth street district." the frog picture pretty much sums up what ninth street is all about, which makes me a bit worried about the kinds of neighbors i'm gonna have . actually, the apartments look pretty swank, and are still under construction as we speak... this would make my 7th apartment in 3 years!

borders on photographs make a huge difference. if you go to my photoblog and check out this same picture, you'll notice that it'll seem to come off as much "lighter". extend this to background color, and it'll make an even bigger difference. i took this picture early morning during spring break. it was somewhat cloudy so the lighting was diffuse, which managed to help with the contrast of the concrete and wooden doors (the sunlight would have probably washed it out). anyway, this is probably my best picture i've taken in the past month, which is why i'm posting it... i need to fill up this site!