A Night in San Francisco

Catching the sunset, nightscapes in San Fran with a good friend :)

(Click for Images!)

An end..? [Of the hiatus]

Long time no upload much? Yes, I'm still alive. I do have quite a few to post, but I'll save that for sometime else later because there's too much to do these days. >.<

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Tournament of Bands. Messing up during cleanup ;p

Hiatus

What the title says. For awhile, at least.

Weekend

Well, I'm back! And to tell the truth, the entire trip was kind of meh, since as always, our family vacations aren't planned ahead of time, so our destination this time (Redding, CA) was kind of lame since there wasn't much to see. However, there were still some interesting pics, so as usual, the better ones (not saying much for me) are below.

(Click to see! [and to advance the picture, if you've never used facebook before.])

As always, I'm trying some different way to distribute pictures, and this time I'm going with facebook! Let me know if there are any privacy issues, so that I can get around to fixing them. Leave a comment below for anything!

POTD

..once again. Quite surprising, right?

This is... what caused me to wake up [relatively] early today. ><

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Anyways, I'll be going out to another weekend trip this weekend (redundancy is redundant?), so expect a couple (possibly more, if I don't fail too much) of pics up.

hc stuff.

Okay, so I'm a bit late. Nevertheless, it's still here and kind of serves as a post/picture of the day.

(Click to enlarge)

Anyways, this is part of my yearbook summer assignment.
More after the break, if interested.

Moar Hiatus.

...just kidding. Did I kill you there? ;)

On behalf of a pestering folk, I'm going to temporarily end the hiatus. For good reason too: I went out with Mr. Austin Yu today, and after a grueling hour long bike journey of failure, we made it to Hakone Gardens!

It was my first time there, and I'd say it was pretty well worth the $5.50 that I spent getting in [and relieving my thirst from biking.]

Here's the best out of today's collection:

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I'll have more up later once I have everything organized and uploaded!
Update: more are up! Enjoy.

Nikon D90 (Gripped) + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8N

Hiatus

Yes, I'm doing the impossible. It's been a good 12 days with no posts, so I think that I'm going to change the motive of this thing. I'll post my good shots, but there isn't going to be anything daily for awhile.

In other news, Ethan has completely relinquished existence of this blog as well.

Hopefully, one day I'll repay all of the photos that I owe.

Oh, and yes, there is something for the day. :/

(Click to enlarge, for one last time?)

Boredom

(No clicky plesh.)

No fancy DSLR, no fancy setup, camera phone and lots of patience. Taken when I was waiting for my parents to finish their groceries.

Alternate shot after the break.

Moar Bokeh.

(Click to enlarge)

I mean, everyone likes bokeh right?

Downtime

Yes, that is the picture of the day. No, it's not my work. But that's where I went, and I didn't have the trusty DSLR on me. Therefore, you get to stare at their logo. @Ethan will know what I mean.

Logo is copyright by pinkberry. I don't mean to steal anything!

By the way: if you're actually looking for something here, wait until tomorrow. Thanks.

Roses

(Click to enlarge)

Semi-rushed job.

*Returns to studying history*

A Waterfall

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Oregon

Well, it's been exactly 6 days since I've last posted, and there's good reasoning for that - here's the draft I had saved from the 1st of July, intended for July 2nd:

For those of you that haven't noticed, there was no post yesterday! I'm well aware of that, and I have good reason for that: I had my 1st semester history final today, so yesterday was obvious a day full of studying cramming. The goal of this blog is to come up with a fresh and new picture daily, so I took the liberty of not pulling out an old picture from my hard drive. But the bright side to everything is today's pic:

However, I became busy packing for my weekend trip to Oregon, leaving me without a pic of the day. While I was in Oregon, the wifi was spotty and my netbook is slow, so I didn't bother uploading any from there.

But today, you're in for a treat: I've compiled the best of my Oregon shots into a handy slide show for your perusal!

(Click for HTML Slideshow)

Nikon D90
Nikkor 18-105mm ED VR
Nikkor 70-200mm ED VR II N
Nikon ML-L3
Dolica AX620B100

EXIF Data is available if you're curious.

Flash slideshow is available after the break.

Bars

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Oh, and I've given up on balancing the posts. Sorry about that if you care!

Bokeh

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Who doesn't like bokeh?

Splash!

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Collab with Albert. Taken on a ghetto setup. It should start to look better soon.

1/8
f/8
ISO 200
Off Camera SB600

Motion

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1.6sec
f/8
ISO 200

Ephemeral

For those of you who paid attention in Dunlap's class, you know what that means. If you're like me and lost all your vocab... not so much. Thanks Albert for the title.

Last day in Taiwan today! So this last post will be about something I found in Taiwan. It's found in other places too (California), but it's just interesting:

This is a 曇花 (tan hua for the Chinese impaired). My grandparents grow them. It is an interesting flower: It blooms only at night, and that flower dies in approximately eight hours after it does so. So for perhaps three days in the year, for eight hours a day, a nice looking flower blooms. Is it worth the work of raising this plant all year? Maybe, maybe not. But it's like the rest of your life.

Beach Ball. At Night.

(Click to enlarge)

Meh, trying to figure out how flashes work. I think I did something right here...

1/200
f/18
ISO 200
SB600 @ 1/64

The Outlook

Ah, it's finally Friday.

(Click to enlarge)

A view of the Saratoga(?) Mountains from Kevin Moran Azule Park.

Ignore that splotch on the right, too lazy/don't want to photoshop that out.

As a test of reader demographics, let me know in the comments if you're interested in finding out how this was done.

Spontaneosity

(I am aware that that is not an actual word. It sounds cooler than spontaneity. I seem to like making up words.)

Let's get this straight that this is not a picture of the day. It's just a thought. With pictures.

Taken:
Puddle, Rain, and Roof
Powershot SD1100IS Hand-held, no fancy remotes
... No flash
Handheld
4-5 exposures

For those of you who don't get it, it's a parody of Frank Wang's water pictures. Here's his take on water pictures:

Hah. Significantly better, right? Sort of like Albert (& Albert)'s post, the difference is camera. But not only: it is also the professionalism as well as the topic of this post, "spontaneosity".

Do I have to title this?

(Click to enlarge)

A regular day, a regular pic.

1/1250
f/3.5
ISO 200

InMotion

(Click to enlarge)

1/4000
f/2.2
ISO 200

Any questions? Leave it down there.

Relationships - the Shallow End

Sorry bout not posting recently. First, I had a real busy past few days, and then I'm also (already) running out of interesting subjects to write about. The fix? slowing down my posting habits (maybe 2 every 3 days or a bit less), as well as widening my spectrum on what to write about. I'll get more into it when I'm back from Taiwan.

I still have a social life in Taiwan! Anyways talking to people and putting some evidence together got me thinking about relationships: specifically, high school ones. Isn't it the tad bit annoying when you just see that touchy couple always hugging or making out. But by my analysis, high school relationships (or lack thereof), are good.

I lost count already.

This picture of the day thing sure is tough to keep up.. especially with summer school. >:/

(Click to enlarge)

Random? Yes.
Crappy? Eh, maybe.
Mediocre? Yes.
Blue? Yes.

EXIF if interested:
Nikon D90
Nikkor 35mm f/1.8
8 seconds
f/10
ISO 400

Subject: Power LED on my computer
Interesting fact of the day: This is the first landscape entry on this blog. Amazing, right?

---

Ethan has a draft here, but I have no clue where he is and when he'll be back, in case any of you two readers were wondering. (It does bother me how three of my posts stack up together.)

A Reflection.

As I walked down the streets of LA this past weekend, I began to observe something that surprised me in a way - and that's the sheer amount of people who use their phone as their main camera, whether it be taking pictures of landscapes, points of interest, or even their kids. Of course there are the usuals with the point-and-shoots and the occasional DSLR or two, so it wasn't too different from what I was imagining.

This goes back to the true art of photography, which is the completely different backside to all the technical aspects having to deal with expensive equipment and heavy black packages. Photography in essence is a plain form of art, anyone with the interest or the talent can become an expert at it, even without a large bank account to support it. The converse is true too, since while ones with a large bank account may have the best equipment, their end results may not be as profoundly breathtaking or even philosophical.

I'm taking today as a day off of the DSLR, to share this image below:

(Please don't click to enlarge)

Yes yes, I know it's nothing special. The point is that it portrays everyday life, and that's a photo-journalistic take on photography itself. The point that I'm trying to get out is that everyone has the ability to take a stab at photography as an art, even though they don't have a fancy camera with multiple lenses and attachments.

[For those of you that are STILL interested in technical aspects at this point, this was taken on my Samsung G600 - a circa 2008 dumbphone.]

Oh, and for those that are wondering, I have no clue where Ethan is Ethan's post is still a work in progress. It distracts me how two of my posts stack together, so sorry about that. Rest assured, it'll be back in order soon.

Home sweet home.

What the title says.

(Click to enlarge)

Doesn't that fit the mood perfectly?

Nikon D90
Nikkor 18-105mm ED VR
f/8
1/3200
ISO 200

For those that are wondering, the edges aren't vignetting, since this was taken of a car window. (Thanks for bringing this up, Albert.)

And as an added bonus, a couple more interesting shots to makeup for the past few days: 1, 2, and 3.

Point A to Point B

"We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children."

- Native American Song

I'm in Taipei now! But in order to get there, I had to take a high speed rail as well as a subway. As you can probably tell by the title, I am going to talk about transportation. Add that to the quote, which is about ecology. Transportation and the effect on the environment. Yay.

Untitled. Or photo #3, whichever you prefer.

*Reporting on stolen wifi*

(Click to enlarge)

I'm going to ramble about my day here, so don't read if you're not interested. Today was Universal Studios and a walk down Hollywood Blvd, both of which are promising sources of photos. But in the end, the results weren't what I was expecting - I didn't exactly get the results that I was looking for. I'd blame it on my parents, but really it's probably my fault for being uncreative and not working with what I had.


It's late right now, and my parents are ushering me to do history homework/go to sleep, so I just dug out a random pic from the card today.

I apologize for the unorganized nature of my posts, but this should return to normal once I return home.

Invisibly Intertwined

(Title by Michelle Shieh)

Eh. My dad always seems to put considerable priority on family, and forces me to do the same, causing me to have to ignore my friends. Why? Because "I rarely see them" and "I should spend more time with them." Why is he so insistent that family is more important than friends? Also, what makes family family and friends friends?

A placeholder

Just obtained some internet access, so I'd feel guilty without posting anything. (For those that don't know, I'm in LA right now.) Expect some cooler images tomorrow.

DISCLAIMER: The following image is lame.

(Click to enlarge)

And... I'm too lazy to get the EXIF data. I doubt you're interested either.

Things should look better tomorrow.

Atheists vs. Theology

"Nature herself has imprinted on the minds of all the idea of God."

-Cicero

I was talking to J. today, as well as Lucy. For those of you who don't know, J. is my resident Christian advocate, and Lucy, at times, has quite an anti-Christian stance. Anyways, it got me thinking about Christian hate. Some people just simply dislike Christians (here's looking at you, Howard). Be it their constant evangelistic attempts, or their ideals, which at times, through strange Biblical interpretations, may be lacking, many Christians are hated on. On the opposite side, extreme Christians do hate as well: the burning of the pink triangle comes to mind.

Why the hate?

Photo of the Day #1

(Click to enlarge)

This marks the beginning of this series. I'll let the picture do the talking. Look familiar? :)

Not the best there is, but I was rushed.

Nikon D90 (Gripped)
Nikkor AF-S 18-105mm ED VR
f/3.5
1/10
ISO 640
18mm

Crits? Leave below.

Hot Girls

I was at the beach in Taiwan today (boring stuff). The girls were not exposing anything (must be some cultural dress code based on immodesty that I am missing out on), but the day at the beach got me thinking about (after several trains of thoughts with multiple stops) love.

NOTE: if you are an easily offended overly Christian person, read this with caution. It's not inherently Christian bashing, but... it may say things that are a bit against your belief.

"Hot girl" here is defined as a human female that is, by your standards, sexually appealing (you would like to do her.)



Human males, being the horny little pricks that we are, created an adjective, hot, to define other humans. As per the general consensus, hot girls have large (relative) breasts, a good chest:waist:hip ratio, skinny but not overly so, with nice facial features (not defined here, also quite subjective.) Being tall helps too. (NOTE: I will get to "pretty" and "cute" later. Until then, assume those 3 are synonymous.) Why is that defined by most as "hot?" Love, being the master puppeteer that it is, is actually being controlled by other things: genetics and hormones. I am not saying that we're all robots with the drive only to reproduce, but that hormones are much more complicated than we can understand and are the reasons behind what is known as "love" (as inquired by the comic above, thank you Bill Watterson.) Simply speaking, our only task in this world is to pass on our genetics, making our offspring as good as we can. Love is something that (usually) aids that process, so hormones cause it because of that.

In the case of having a sexual relationship with one of these "hot girls," we are actually aiding our future generations. (Edited)The breasts are a slight indication toward the fertility and estrogen level of the woman, indicating that she is more likely to produce healthy, fertile offspring. Also, is the baby is female, she will inherit larger breasts which will in turn help her reproduce by being sexually appealing to other men. The good chest:waist:hip ratio, as well as the skinniness and nice facial features also have the same concept. Height is also usually an advantage in the playing field. Therefore, having offspring with a "hot" person will make your child, male or female, slightly genetically superior to the rest, making living (therefore, reproducing), better and easier for him. Therefore, we see and go after the hot girls simply because our hormones are telling us to, simply because it will help our future generations. But this is not what love is at all either! People love each other for kindness as well, despite their flaws. The reasoning behind loving a kind person is also the same concept. The offspring is more likely to be kind, thus more likely to be loved as you loved the kind person. Same for any cute or pretty girls out there. There is a niche (business as well as biological term) for kind, cute, and pretty girls in the world's guys' hearts, the simple fact being that you liking that cute guy/girl will mean that some person in the future will like your cute child.

This all falls under love: Hormones causing one other to want a relationship with each other, sexual or otherwise. While one may argue that true love is not hormonal, I would like to think that it is; it is just a long term hormonal effect that causes one person to lust for a single person over a long period of time (which should be good for genetics anyways).

Some Loose Ends:
Homosexuality/different sexualities: Same concept as above, just not toward the opposite gender and/or species and/or anything else.
Philanthropy: A form of love... but in a different form. Every organism is born with the drive to reproduce, but helping others' survival? For what reason? For what reason do prairie dogs keep guard for other prairie dogs? For what reason do some animals nurse babies of their own species but not of their genes? Because it is important to the survival of their species. If it helps your species survive, then do it.

Agree/Disagree? Post below.

EDIT: Grace pointed out that larger breasts don't necessarily directly affect the amount of milk they produce, so I'm changing that sentence up there to what I believe is really the case.

An aperture into the world, into the brain.

Alright. A new (school) year, a new blog. This time, preferably something that I can relate more to and concentrate more on. Albert, resident photographer, is going to post a daily picture, and I am going to take care of the deeper (shallower if Albert gets any better at photography) side of the blog and make it my goal every day to learn something about... the world, the the human psyche, anything, and post it here. Alright, Albert, open that aperture, and let's get started.