Whine & Cheese

Photo Friday: Garden

Practically go through the entire day before remembering it was Photo Friday!   It's been a month since my last entry, the last 4 weeks have been kind of too vague for me ("I'm Feeling..." and "I Love...") or else just nothing came to mind ("Athletic" and "Freeze Frame").

When I remembered, I thought for sure it was going to be a Halloween-ish challenge... but alas it was not... and as you probably have already guessed, it was... Garden.

My mind initially went to a couple of shots I took in London (at Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park), but ultimately I submitted this shot of Louise Bourgeois spider sculpture in Jardin des Tuileries as we were approaching the Louvre during our stay in Paris this past May.

I thought this one definitely had a bit more of a "pop" than just some straight flowers or a typical garden scene... and the spider does give it a Halloween-ish aspect to it (ignoring the fact that it was a gorgeous spring day with the irises blooming in Paris)

Most Viewed

If you have been around here for awhile, you know that I love stats (despite the fact that a big portion of my real-life job is stat-oriented)...

A little while back, I decided to create a Flickr set of my most popular pictures, or more specifically, those viewed most often.  Fortunately Flickr introduced a new stat feature (not sure how long ago), so it was pretty easy to pull 'em together.  I decided 300+ views was a good inclusion number for this "exclusive" group as (at this very moment) it is only 18 of 946 of my Flickr photos.

Here they are... the most viewed pic is the one on the upper left hand corner... and proceeding from the left to right and down... 

It is pretty interesting to see what has proven to be popular... while 18 pix, only 4 subjects: MINI Cooper (6 pix), Sopranos-related (5 pix), Olympics (5 pix), pets (2 pix).

It was particularly nice to see my Olympics pix rocket up the rankings so quickly... pretty much in the first two weeks they were uploaded... while other photos in this "club" have taken years to reach that number of hits.  Still I think it is a tad odd that 4 of the 5 Olympic pix are judo-related... so I must have filled a serious need/demand.

And I guess our decision to try and find different Sopranos landmarks that last time we were in NJ was a pretty good idea... again, there seems to be a demand... particularly of the Sopranos house, with both pix of it making the Top 5.

Other trivia: 

The first 3 pix have over 1,000 views. 

The 2nd most viewed pic was one I personally did not take!  I didn't want to lose/misplace Rocky's baby pictures... so figured the best way to do that was to upload it to Flickr.  That picture (with his sister in the back) was one of from the classified ad that pretty much cemented the deal that we wanted one of them!   The other pet pic of Rocky and feline Lola makes me wonder what the heck happened between the two... as these days they would never get that close to each other (well, Lola's choice - and I don't blame her).

If you are interested in checking out these popular pix, here's a link: 300+ Views Club.

Also kind of interesting, of those 946 photos... according to the stat page, there is 1 picture that has never been viewed (stats do not include views "by me")... I would share which one it is, but I don't want to ruin the "no hitter."  And while there are certainly pix, I don't consider to be anything special ... I do think this one is pretty good.

Photo Friday: Spontaneous

Hey, it's Photo Friday again!

As you see  this week's theme is "Spontaneous."  I will admit that threw me for a loop... and browsing through some of this week's submissions didn't help much.  I think some folks just "spontaneously" submitted any 'ole pic... ha!

At first, I was trying to think of a picture where I captured something "spontaneous"... my other half would likely say that these don't exist in my world... as each shot takes for freakin' ever to get shot is carefully and thoughtfully composed. 

But when browsing through my pix, the thumbnail of this picture popped right out and I thought it was perfect for this week's challenge:

After reviewing pictures of the Eiffel Tower from earlier in the trip... as well as looking through my viewfinder at pics taken earlier this ight... it seemed like nearly every photo I took of the Tower was just a bit off/crooked.  While I knew Photoshop could fix it, it was still very frustrating...

Sooooo frustrating, that I am pretty sure I growled and scoffed "SCREW IT!" under my breath and took this pic that was totally askew.  Funny enough, it came out pretty darn good... haha!

Given the spirit of which this picture was taken, "spontaneous" seems to sum it up pretty well!

Photo Friday: The Extraordinary

Though it may not seem like it, I have skipped the last two Photo Fridays. 

Last week, the topic was "Relationship" and while I was tempted to submit my photo of two cuddling (or, more likely, just incredibly just lazy) camels from the San Diego Zoo, but I just didn't feel strongly enough about it to do it ... though it certainly would have been an alternative to all the saccharine-y "in love" or child/parent submissions. 

The week before the topic was "The Ordinary" ... and while I could have probably found something, I haven't been photographically experimenting enough with "ordinary" things to again find a suitable submission.  Of course, the "noteworthy" winners from that week are - ironically enough - quite extraordinary pictures!

So as the Photo Friday creators often do, they did a 180-degree on a previous topic and I am sure you have figured out by now that this week's topic was... The Extraordinary.

Now, this is something that I, in my humble opinion, I have in abundance... taking pictures of the "ordinary" is pretty tricky, but the "extraordinary" is pretty much a no-brainer... whether it's man-made or just Mother Nature. 

My submission was a combination of the two, though more extraordinary on the man-made front:

Big surprise, huh? 

But the Great Wall has set the bar very high in the extraordinary department... and I will gladly take on the task of finding something equally or more extraordinary in the days, weeks, months, years ahead!

P.S. This selection was also a no-brainer since it is the desktop/background image on my new PC!

Photo Friday: Exercise

I have to say I get kind of excited when I realize it's Friday and remember that I have to check out the latest Photo Friday challenge... and it is always a little disappointing when there is a theme that I can't find a picture for (like last week's "Old Fashioned")... and this week my initial reaction to "Exercise" was that it was going to be another submission-less week. 

Fortunately it didn't take me too long to remember (more than likely after a few swigs of coffee) that I did have a good candidate, actually a few pictures of Beijing-ers doing their morning exercises at the Temple of Heaven park.  I submitted this one:

While we have a lot of memories of incredible things, I dare say that smaller moments like this one will very likely stay in our memories just as much as the Forbidden City or the Great Wall. 

When we learned we were going to the Temple of Heaven park, my expectation didn't go far beyond seeing some architecture (pretty much the hall/temple that was in all the guide books) and/or learning a bit of history.   So it was quite the surprise when we walked through the entrance and we greeted by the blare of music and people doing all kinds of morning exercises - and all in groups.   There were women whirling colorful ribbons on sticks (that whole rhythmic gymnastics "apparatus"), men and women moving this ball around a racket (as seen above) - and even a couple pretty much doing a dance to it, passing the ball quite elegantly from one to another - and folks doing what I can only call some Chinese version of hackey-sack (it was more like a badminton "birdie).

At the time, I was worried that I may have not been able to capture photographs of it, as my camera lens immediately fogged up when I took off the lens at the park, but fortunately - after a quick wipe with lens tissue - it adjusted to humid conditions.  I can almost feel the sweat dripping down by back and legs, just thinking about it. 

It was really a wonderful sight.  I am finding that some of the best moments, particularly on these trips to foreign countries, is when you stumble onto something authentic and/or just everyday life.   While I found Beijing to be just as crazy (okay, maybe crazier) than other big cities I have visited, how nice it was to experience, albeit very briefly, this "locals" escape from city life. 

Photo Friday: Beauty

It's been a few weeks since my first (and only) submission to the Photo Friday Challenge.   My excuses are that either I was away or didn't feel as if I had a photo that fit the challenge topic.   

The challenges I missed/skipped were: Spiral, The Office, Flight, and Awful.  All pretty intriguing concepts and it is always interesting to see how people interpret them.

If you can read, which I assume is the case if you are at this point... this week's challenge is BEAUTY. 

As with my first submission, I went with my gut instinct despite having some doubts that it was too obvious.  Ok, I'll admit that I peaked at few other of the submissions before submitting my own...there were a lot of close-up pix of flowers and shit like that, so I figured obvious was just fine.   

If I had it in my collection, I maybe would have with something more contrary... say a shriveled up old woman... which I find to be very beautiful in that whole wise, lived a long life, experienced, inner beauty thing... but alas I came up short on wise/old/shriveled... not counting that previously mentioned, but unseen on here, recent self-portrait pic of myself... ha!

So anyhow, here is my submission:

A Moorea sunset from our trip to French Polynesia ("Tahiti") in May 2005.

This had to be one of the most spectacular sunsets that I have ever seen... and surely the most spectacular one that I have ever captured on film (well, captured on a memory card... but that sounds considerably less romantic).   

Given my fairly new schmancy SLR camera and all the "bells and whistles" that I tend to now employ via post-processing software... it is pretty funny to think that this was taken with a pretty basic point-and-shoot camera... likely a few years old at the time of this trip... megapixels so low that I doubt you can even find a camera with that low a count these days (I maybe had a 64k memory card)... and likely nothing done after the fact, except a resize.  It boggles my present-day mind!  BTW, this has been the desktop background picture on my PC for 3+ years now!

Then again, this picture falls into that un-screw-up-able category... while I'll take some credit for the composition... mother nature puts on the very best shows... and this one was certainly a... wait for it... BEAUTY! 

Splitting My Time

The online world can certainly stretch one thin.   

While getting my work done during the day -- though I am sure that may come as a surprise to some of my online friends -- there seems to be a lot of flipping around.  Of course, there's this blog -- which has become the old warhorse of sorts -- but otherwise it's Twitter, Facebook, Plurk, and Flickr that are competing for my attention... or at times, trying to breakdown my very breakdown-able self-discipline.  (Sidenote: there is a whole discussion whether all this is leading to the death of blogging, but that's best saved for another post.)

While it certainly can (and occasionally does!) get all out of hand, for the most part I manage to keep a pretty good balance.  The ping.fm site/service allows me to post my little status updates to all three (or any combination) of the "social" networks (Twitter, Facebook, and Plurk)... and all these things have really helped to keep me sane (though admittedly driven me crazy on occasion!) as it fills the vacuum of lack of human interaction that results from working from home.

Each site has my own sub-group of people, but pity the poor folks that have to deal with me on all fronts -- though I think that may be just Jeff (that made me think of "Just Jack!" from Will & Grace) -- though Jen gets a healthy dose of "Ed overload" as well!  But it has been fun and these days there seems to be a sudden Facebook resurgence with a lot of a game playing (particularly word games, which I love), group joing (joining!  Thanks Jeff for noticing and having fun with my Freudian typo!), and general sharing. 

With my rejuvenated return to photography, have been doing a lot more stuff on Flickr as well... joining and submitting my photos to different groups. Flickr is my one online activity that I share with my family... thus it is the one place where I find myself doing some self-censorship... not that I am shooting racy stuff, but let's just say something like the photo of the Cockring bar in Amsterdam was something that didn't make an appearance on my Flickr.

In general, I have just been taking more pictures... slowly but surely, I would like my Flickr to be a bit more than just vacation pictures.  In further proof that I am the oddball of my family (who don't read for pleasure or eat spicy food or like to travel, etc. etc.), I was amused when my Mom asked "Why did you take a picture of that?" upon stumbling on to a few photos I took of our local TGIFridays restaurant that recently burned down to the ground.  So I just warned her that I was further exploring this photography hobby and to expect more experimenting and "slice of life" stuff.  Not sure she got it, but such is life!

So that's what I am splitting some of my time with these days... whether some of these things will ultimately fall to the wayside, we shall see... so if I am not here at W&C, I am there (or there or there) doing something else... and for right now I am enjoying each of them!

Self Portrait

Be prepared for a post without a payoff of sorts... it's about a photograph I took, but you won't see it here.

As the title of this post suggests, it was a self-portrait... and for various reasons, I am one of those people who don't share pictures of themselves on their blog.  It's not that I am living under a veil of paranoia, have incredibly low esteem, or a vampire... if you poke around a little bit, it really isn't that hard to find a picture of me.   

I am just not a big fan of having my picture taken. Thus I am always a bit amazed by the number of people who apparently not only love having their picture taken but sharing it with the world.  The only time I want my picture taken is to document that I've been some place or if I am forced into it (i.e. family gathering type stuff).  Of over 1,000+ pix from our Europe trip, I was in a handful of them... me at Tower Bridge, Big Ben, Eiffel Tower, and Notre Dame (for Mom!).  No surprise in icon-less Amsterdam nary a picture of either us (Todd has even more disdain re: on-camera appearances).

Earlier this week and very much on a lark... I took a picture of myself.

I am still in full experimental mode with this HDR/tone-mapping post-photo processing stuff.  In my pursuit to get out and take more photographs, last weekend I went over and shot our local TGIFridays restaurant that was totaled by a fire a couple of months ago.  While those HDR pix came out okay, I feel like I am getting mixed results with it... which is fine, it's all experimenting... seeing what works and what doesn't and I enjoy that part of the process.  This was just another try.

So I take this closely cropped shot of myself and after getting over the initial shock of seeing my face at 3750 x 2282 pixels (yikes! yowza!), I had a lot of different feelings - horrified, sad, intrigued, disconnected,  excited, content - but found myself returning to it again and again... and really looking at it... truly odd behavior for someone who doesn't like his picture taken and looks at the pictures he is in a very fleeting manner.

Part of my fascination with the picture was the lack of distractions -- it wasn't a "look I'm here!" picture -- it was just me.  And if that sounds egotistical, well let me say it's not a flattering picture. 

Since I was shooting it for HDR (requiring 3 photos taken in quick succession at different exposures), I have a frozen and somewhat solemn expression on my face.  The framing is not great (it was one of those stretch your arms out self-pix) with some late (and not great) afternoon lighting (or lack thereof) coming in from a shuttered window...

Physically, there are the bags underneath my eyes, the receding hair line, the iffy skin tone, the hit-and-miss of some shoddy shaving, and portions of my birthmark that has been a blessing and curse of my life.  I think most of us don't think of ourselves as our age... but given this assessment, there was no denying that there was a 40-year old person staring back at me from the computer screen...and, at times, particularly during the processing part, I didn't even feel like I was looking at a picture of myself. 

Ultimately, I made peace with the picture... both from a photographic and personal point of view.  While to the person cyber-passing it by, it may just see it as just another photo someone took of themselves... but to me it has proven the adage that "a picture is worth a thousand words"... though, in typical fashion, I'm guessing I have far exceeded that quota here.

I am surprised how much of a "journey" it turned out to be for me.  Earlier this week, I mentioned feeling a bit "off" this week and I think there is a little of that in this picture... and the bit of self-reflection that has resulted, is perhaps what I really needed... though it was certainly not an intentional or conscious decision of what was a spontaneous act.

More HDR

It's 7-7-08... and you know what that means, only one month to go to 8-8-08... and if you've watched NBC anytime in the past month or so... you know that means it's the start of Beijing Olympics... looking at my world clock, I see that even as I type this (it'll be posted slightly later)... we will hopefully be inside the Bird's Nest on the 3rd hour or so of the Opening Ceremonies.  Still having a tough time mentally processing that!

A bit easier to believe is that I have uploaded my pix from our holiday weekend in San Diego - you can check them out here.  I wasn't overly impressed with these set of photos on first review... but this trip has certainly getting the short end of the proverbial stick with it being sandwiched between these two international trips.  However, after picking out the better pix and doing a little cropping here and there, I ended up being pretty pleased. 

With my new-found HDR "knowledge" (still learning), I did take a handful of shots with the intent of using the technique/process of combining 3 photos into one. 

In my brief experience with HDR, I see it is pretty controversial.  Some people don't like it... saying that if you need to use it you are not taking good pictures (or pictures that "pop") in the first place... and I even received a comment on my first HDR post from someone likening it to "faking an orgasm"... which I certainly do not disagree with, but also was not something I was purporting it to be. Within the HDR community (and there is one!), there is also criticism of people over-doing the tone-mapping part or not doing it "right." 

My take is that it is a manipulation of photo... and it can take a so-so photo and make it into something greater.  But it is up to the individual that took the photo to apply the technique... and that's where it becomes more artistic and also subjective.  There is quite a bit of finessing (or fussing, as I mentioned in that first post) of the different settings... so it's not just a 1-click "auto-fix" type of process.  I see some great photos, I have seen some great HDR/tone-mapping, and sometimes there's both -- but I think they are three seperate things... and there's nothing wrong with that!

For the most part I have kept my HDR/tone-mapping more on the "realistic" end of the scale, but when playing around with one of my San Diego pix yesterday, I got a little more heavy on one of the settings (gamma, I believe) and I kind of liked what happened.

Here is the original shot (the normal exposure of the 3 shots)...

And here is the more heavy tone-mapped version of it...

I really liked how it morphed into a watercolor/impressionistic painting.  I will never have the skill or talent to paint... so it was cool to be able to do this via a few (dozen?!) clicks or glides of a scale.

You can see more of my "before and after" HDR experiments in my Flickr set that I have creatively enough called HDR - Before & After... or just cut to the chase and see my final products in this HDR "Only" set.

My First HDR

As we will well be on the road to San Diego this time tomorrow... "short timer's" syndrome has definitely kicked in... and while I got a bunch of work dumped on me yesterday, I think it's in good enough shape to return to it after the holiday weekend.

And while I should be doing something to get ready for the trip, alas I got sidetracked with a bit of a photography project.  I have seen some HDR photos on the web ... and with my renewed interest in photography thanks to the new camera... I have been meaning to get around to exploring it a bit more.

What is an HDR image?  Well, HDR stands for High Dynamic Range... and what it does is combine three or more images at different exposures to create a super-duper combined image of the three.  It does require some special software (after my successful attempt, I did purchase a license for Photomatix Pro... which seems to be one of the most popular ones out there)... and some fidgeting around with "tone mapping"... which I won't even attempt to explain...

Fortunately, my camera makes it easy to do/create this ... using Auto Exposure Bracketing, Continuous Shooting, and the timer... it does all the work, automatically snapping 3 images at the self-defined exposures... one each at a "correct" exposure, over-exposed, and under-exposed.  I think that is order of the three original images below...

And then the fun begins, you load up the three pictures into the software and start playing with all the settings!

You can create some very hyper-real (or perhaps, unreal) images... some which can even stop looking like a photograph after awhile.  I didn't go that far with my first attempt at it... but you can see how it turned what was an "okay" sunset into something really spectacular.

Here's the end result!

While the sunset is always the attention-grabber, I was particularly impressed with how sharp the foreground came out -- the shrubbery, rocks, railroad tracks, and wall (all of which barely show up in any of the above pix).

So I've probably entered yet another time-sucking black hole with this latest sub-hobby... but I am sure there are worse things to having another artistic outlet.

I have nothing prepared for you while we are away in San Diego... but I am sure you can live without me until next week!   If there's the opportunity or ability or desire (!), I may Twitter, Facebook, or Plurk over the weekend... so keep an eye on the sidebar for potential updates ... but don't count on it.

Have a great holiday weekend and see you on the flip side!