I went climbing tonight. I've been trying to go on a weekly basis lately. I miss it and I hate that the time I took off last year made my climbing deteriorate so much.
There was a slight sense of relief today when I finally red-pointed a 5.9. *sigh* It's been really slow getting back to this point. 5.7s and 5.8s have been no problem but the 5.9s were just killing my fingers. I can feel the 5.10s are getting closer finally too...
Apparently some of my friends that I've known for years used to climb so my getting back into it has sparked their interest and we've been climbing together.
Anyway, as I was there I was reminded of this little bouldering gym I went to when I was in Tokyo. I really liked that gym. It was tiny but full of people and had all kinds of bouldering problems. The people who worked there didn't speak a word of English but were really trying to help, trying to explain how the problems worked. I want to go back. If I make it to Japan at the end of the year, I plan on definitely going to a climbing gym. I actually still have the membership card for this one so I could potentially go back to this place (I also remember where it was and how to get there.) I have a few random business cards from places I went to in Japan in my wallet - odd, I never take business cards... let alone keep them... but for some reason it made sense when I was there and for some reason I now refuse to take them out of my wallet!
Back to the 5.9s... Story of my life right now. Come on, you can get better so much faster, you just need to try a little harder. Stop being so lazy about everything. I keep thinking that if I actually tried a little harder I could make some serious progress on a lot of stuff. But that sounds like work and I'm just not convinced that it's worth it... I'll get back to trying eventually... I'll get bored of this I'm sure...
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Express yourself - TPMG
I finally forced myself to try a TPMG event (after lurking on their site for probably about a year now!)
Anyway. We did a challenge called "express yourself". Everyone was split into groups of 4 or 5 and given a list of 10 emotions that we have to capture. Group members had to be models in the photos. Some of the emotions had requirements such as "with prop" or "with X background".
This whole thing of making expressions on demand is not my thing - it usually turns into me laughing uncontrollably. Luckily 2 other members of my group seemed a little more serious about being models which worked out well. [There are pictures of me doing silly things too... unfortunately, they are on other people's cameras and may now be used against me.]
Here are the top 3 [i think?] pictures that I took:
Disgust
worry [not sure i get the emotion here...]
wonder
This event showed me one big thing - if you ask people if it's okay to take pictures, it's surprising what you'll get out of it. The Wonder picture was taken at BCE place where Katharine Harvey (artist who did the Waterfall at Nuit Blanche 2008) was setting up a chandelier made of recycled materials. We asked if we could maybe get one of our people in the middle and then could take pictures - they surprisingly agreed. Another instance involved an electric bike shop which was willing to wheel out bikes for us to use as props in some of our pictures. We stopped some random people to ask if we could take pictures of their dogs, everyone we asked were surprisingly very willing.
I can't wait to see what everyone else did with their pictures - I think it'll be interesting to see what everyone else 'saw' when they were taking the shots.
On a very unrelated side note: my floor hockey team won 3rd place in the finals on Friday. Pretty crazy! The last game was insanely close - going into overtime with a score of 9-9. We had 3 minutes of sudden death overtime and the players on the floor during the remaining minute would be in the shoot-out if no one scored. Luckily we scored within the first 2 minutes of overtime. It was pretty crazy.
Anyway. We did a challenge called "express yourself". Everyone was split into groups of 4 or 5 and given a list of 10 emotions that we have to capture. Group members had to be models in the photos. Some of the emotions had requirements such as "with prop" or "with X background".
This whole thing of making expressions on demand is not my thing - it usually turns into me laughing uncontrollably. Luckily 2 other members of my group seemed a little more serious about being models which worked out well. [There are pictures of me doing silly things too... unfortunately, they are on other people's cameras and may now be used against me.]
Here are the top 3 [i think?] pictures that I took:
Disgust
worry [not sure i get the emotion here...]
wonder
This event showed me one big thing - if you ask people if it's okay to take pictures, it's surprising what you'll get out of it. The Wonder picture was taken at BCE place where Katharine Harvey (artist who did the Waterfall at Nuit Blanche 2008) was setting up a chandelier made of recycled materials. We asked if we could maybe get one of our people in the middle and then could take pictures - they surprisingly agreed. Another instance involved an electric bike shop which was willing to wheel out bikes for us to use as props in some of our pictures. We stopped some random people to ask if we could take pictures of their dogs, everyone we asked were surprisingly very willing.
I can't wait to see what everyone else did with their pictures - I think it'll be interesting to see what everyone else 'saw' when they were taking the shots.
On a very unrelated side note: my floor hockey team won 3rd place in the finals on Friday. Pretty crazy! The last game was insanely close - going into overtime with a score of 9-9. We had 3 minutes of sudden death overtime and the players on the floor during the remaining minute would be in the shoot-out if no one scored. Luckily we scored within the first 2 minutes of overtime. It was pretty crazy.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Failed HDR
I tried again tonight. This time I was an hour later. I think I was a little too late because the light was fading quickly. Anyway. As I stood there, laptop in hand trying to get this shot I felt really ridiculous. I think I could've done a better job using just my remote and careful camera setting changes.
And of course, as I was at this corner taking these pictures sirens started sounding all over the place and next thing I knew the building I was taking pictures of was surrounded by a firetruck, an ambulance and a police car. I decided that maybe I should just call it a night.
It was significantly busier than it was on Sunday... All around a poor night for doing this. I put together a few of the shots and they're littered with ghosts of cars and people. Not so good... (I'm also being lazy and doing my editing on my netbook instead of a real screen so it probably isn't fantastic looking).
I also took a few random shots as I was setting up. Had this one been taken from a lower angle I think it could've been really interesting... I still like it though... (I definitely prefer it to the HDR shots!)
And of course, as I was at this corner taking these pictures sirens started sounding all over the place and next thing I knew the building I was taking pictures of was surrounded by a firetruck, an ambulance and a police car. I decided that maybe I should just call it a night.
It was significantly busier than it was on Sunday... All around a poor night for doing this. I put together a few of the shots and they're littered with ghosts of cars and people. Not so good... (I'm also being lazy and doing my editing on my netbook instead of a real screen so it probably isn't fantastic looking).
 |
| From Random HDR |
I also took a few random shots as I was setting up. Had this one been taken from a lower angle I think it could've been really interesting... I still like it though... (I definitely prefer it to the HDR shots!)
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Camera Control
Why didn't someone tell me about this sooner? [oh wait, they did. I just didn't process the information until a month or so later...]
I finally installed Nikon's Camera Control on my laptop and tried it with my camera. Interesting...
It's pretty cool that you can control most of the camera settings remotely through the computer or you can just take pictures while plugged in and have them display right away on screen. I haven't played around with it too much - it looks pretty straight-forward but I wonder whether or not it can do what I would like it to do... I'm going to have to investigate some more...
I'm also wondering how useful a tool this would be... I think I can see myself mainly using it for HDR shots... I guess I could use it for time lapse or night sky shots too (not a huge fan of either of those... a time lapse might be interesting? maybe?) I can do pretty much everything else with my little remote. And even with HDR shots unless I'm at home am I really going to want to be standing on the street with my laptop, camera and tripod in hand?
I guess I could just take pictures of my ear while I sit at my computer.
Yep, I'm officially bored.
I finally installed Nikon's Camera Control on my laptop and tried it with my camera. Interesting...
It's pretty cool that you can control most of the camera settings remotely through the computer or you can just take pictures while plugged in and have them display right away on screen. I haven't played around with it too much - it looks pretty straight-forward but I wonder whether or not it can do what I would like it to do... I'm going to have to investigate some more...
I'm also wondering how useful a tool this would be... I think I can see myself mainly using it for HDR shots... I guess I could use it for time lapse or night sky shots too (not a huge fan of either of those... a time lapse might be interesting? maybe?) I can do pretty much everything else with my little remote. And even with HDR shots unless I'm at home am I really going to want to be standing on the street with my laptop, camera and tripod in hand?
I guess I could just take pictures of my ear while I sit at my computer.
Yep, I'm officially bored.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
HDR
When I get bored I start taking HDR pictures... Also I've been thinking about a building that I've been wanting to HDR-up recently so tonight I ran out, took a handful of pictures and came back. Here's what I have:
Version 1: light is much more evenly distributed... kind of boring but more 'realistic'.
Version 2: more dramatic but harder to see detail in bottom right
Obviously, you have to click on them to see them in their true glory (ha!)
If the weather cooperates this week I may be able to actually get the shot I want. It's all about timing and patience. This isn't really the shot I wanted - I was about an hour too early.
Version 1: light is much more evenly distributed... kind of boring but more 'realistic'.
 |
| From Monique's Random HDR on Picasa |
Version 2: more dramatic but harder to see detail in bottom right
 |
| From Monique's Random HDR on Picasa |
Obviously, you have to click on them to see them in their true glory (ha!)
If the weather cooperates this week I may be able to actually get the shot I want. It's all about timing and patience. This isn't really the shot I wanted - I was about an hour too early.
Panoramas
I've finally gotten around to processing some of my Paris panoramas. I've been pleasantly surprised so far - having completely forgotten that I'd even taken these.
I meant to do some post processing of pictures today but this panorama thing has taken longer than anticipated - it's a very slow process, especially when you have more than 10 exposures... and yes, many of these have more than 10 exposures (a little excessive maybe).
The seams are a lot more visible when they're so small... also... these are pretty huge pictures (biggest is 11644 x 2487 pixels)
I spent Friday and Saturday scouring the city for something interesting to take pictures of... I couldn't find anything. The winter is lingering much longer than I would like and it's leaving me with this very uninspired feeling. People are still bundled up and hiding indoors. Here are a couple of pictures from Friday's walk.
Allan Gardens Conservatory
He's back with a whole new 'stage'
the most interesting thing I found
I meant to do some post processing of pictures today but this panorama thing has taken longer than anticipated - it's a very slow process, especially when you have more than 10 exposures... and yes, many of these have more than 10 exposures (a little excessive maybe).
The seams are a lot more visible when they're so small... also... these are pretty huge pictures (biggest is 11644 x 2487 pixels)
I spent Friday and Saturday scouring the city for something interesting to take pictures of... I couldn't find anything. The winter is lingering much longer than I would like and it's leaving me with this very uninspired feeling. People are still bundled up and hiding indoors. Here are a couple of pictures from Friday's walk.
Allan Gardens Conservatory
He's back with a whole new 'stage'
the most interesting thing I found
"I'm a street photographer not a terrorist"
This may be a little old news but I just found this image this morning and felt the need to post something about it. I've heard of photographers being arrested in London before and having their films / cards confiscated. This takes the cake though.
“Far too many people are carrying and using cameras in complete anonymity and absolutely nobody is keeping an eye on what they are doing with them. This is clearly a threat that makes it impossible for the public to feel safe, and PSICO will go a long way to protect them from dangerous and antisocial photography. We will know exactly who is photographing what, and if there is anything suspicious we can take them off the street.”
In an attempt to ease the street photography laws in London they are doing the following:
1) Forcing photographers to apply for registration to take pictures in a high traffic tourist area of London
2) Forcing them to then wear bright yellow vests with an electronic identifier / tracking device issued by the police.
3) Using CCTV cameras to identify 'illegal camera usage' - apparently the CCTV cameras in the area send out a signal that is reflected on camera lens coatings and can then be used to compare with locations of the electronic tracking devices of registered photographers to identify 'illegal use'.
Read the full article about what London is doing to try to control the epidemic of antisocial photography.
“Far too many people are carrying and using cameras in complete anonymity and absolutely nobody is keeping an eye on what they are doing with them. This is clearly a threat that makes it impossible for the public to feel safe, and PSICO will go a long way to protect them from dangerous and antisocial photography. We will know exactly who is photographing what, and if there is anything suspicious we can take them off the street.”
In an attempt to ease the street photography laws in London they are doing the following:
1) Forcing photographers to apply for registration to take pictures in a high traffic tourist area of London
2) Forcing them to then wear bright yellow vests with an electronic identifier / tracking device issued by the police.
3) Using CCTV cameras to identify 'illegal camera usage' - apparently the CCTV cameras in the area send out a signal that is reflected on camera lens coatings and can then be used to compare with locations of the electronic tracking devices of registered photographers to identify 'illegal use'.
Read the full article about what London is doing to try to control the epidemic of antisocial photography.
Thursday, April 09, 2009
same old...
I realized at some point a few days ago that in order for me to do any kind of photography courses that are part of a program I would probably have to apply for said program and in most cases the application deadlines have passed - well at least for the programs I'm most interested in.
So now I'm not sure what to do.
Ryan has suggested that I just plain old go back to school and add another major to my Fine Arts degree. I hate this idea. I hate it because I know that I would spend forever learning about stuff that I may never use. I also hate it because I know he's right - if I look at many of my favourite photographers they went to school and studied art (surprisingly many of them were painters - I am not a painter. I have not painted anything since grade school and am not about to begin again.)
As I thought about this yesterday I started asking myself what my goals are when it comes to photography and whether or not it makes sense for me to go down this road. I know that I want to take courses - that I want to spend time learning about photography, learning to take better pictures... but I don't know that that's what I want to spend years doing (if I were to go back to University it would take many years as I would still have to work.)
And I think that's an important question.
In the meantime I will look at other options... I have tons to learn... and apparently a lot of time on my hands when I get home - a bad sign is that I've started playing on my Wii pretty regularly - oh no! I received a few photography (history) books for my birthday so I'm working through those along with my usual pop-science reading and attempts at studying Japanese. I wonder whether or not taking photography courses is necessary, whether I could learn more just on my own... (I could buy a lot of books for the price of a course!)
Also I've got another idea which I'm running with right now, more on this in a few weeks hopefully...
So now I'm not sure what to do.
Ryan has suggested that I just plain old go back to school and add another major to my Fine Arts degree. I hate this idea. I hate it because I know that I would spend forever learning about stuff that I may never use. I also hate it because I know he's right - if I look at many of my favourite photographers they went to school and studied art (surprisingly many of them were painters - I am not a painter. I have not painted anything since grade school and am not about to begin again.)
As I thought about this yesterday I started asking myself what my goals are when it comes to photography and whether or not it makes sense for me to go down this road. I know that I want to take courses - that I want to spend time learning about photography, learning to take better pictures... but I don't know that that's what I want to spend years doing (if I were to go back to University it would take many years as I would still have to work.)
And I think that's an important question.
In the meantime I will look at other options... I have tons to learn... and apparently a lot of time on my hands when I get home - a bad sign is that I've started playing on my Wii pretty regularly - oh no! I received a few photography (history) books for my birthday so I'm working through those along with my usual pop-science reading and attempts at studying Japanese. I wonder whether or not taking photography courses is necessary, whether I could learn more just on my own... (I could buy a lot of books for the price of a course!)
Also I've got another idea which I'm running with right now, more on this in a few weeks hopefully...
Wednesday, April 08, 2009
another published picture
Sunday 2 weeks ago one of my pictures appeared on Biking Toronto (woot woot!) - how very fitting I figure given that I was once addicted to all things with 2 wheels. [I still find myself checking people's bikes as they ride by and very often, if my camera is wrapped around my wrist will try to quickly snap a shot.]
Here's the link to a page that's now hosting the picture (I never actually got to see it on the actual day.)
Photo of the Day
Not my best picture - but probably one of my better 'back-shots'.
More to come later... [hopefully I'll finish that blog post I've been working on for the last 3 days at some point soon!]
Here's the link to a page that's now hosting the picture (I never actually got to see it on the actual day.)
Photo of the Day
Not my best picture - but probably one of my better 'back-shots'.
More to come later... [hopefully I'll finish that blog post I've been working on for the last 3 days at some point soon!]
Thursday, April 02, 2009
Berlin Pictures
I finally got around to looking at these.
They aren't great. They're seems to be a theme of grey going through them. I've omitted my people pictures as I'm not sure what to do with them just yet. I'm not impressed. I thought they looked better when I was first looking at them but now... I don't know.
Here are a few, more of the same can be found on my flickr site.
Reichstag
Reichstag
The holocaust memorial
This is not an uncommon sight - this is actually one of the main public transportation lines and one of the bigger stations...
Jüdisches Museum
Holocaust tower
Shalechet (memory void) - Jüdisches Museum
Checkpoint Charlie - US Army Checkpoint
Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche
I found a little alley that was covered in graffiti. There were stores if you followed the crazy stairs hidden behind unmarked doorways. I ventured into one of the buildings (and took a few pictures - none posted here...)
there was a courtyard if you walked far enough into the alley
On my last day after going to see Annie Leibovitz's exhibit I went to Fernsehturm (the TV tower - there's a picture of it on my flickr stream). Oddly enough I took this picture quite randomly. Later that night I went out with a bunch of other travelers (none of which were from my hostel!) and we went into a bar in the basement of the pink building in this picture.
And the infamous "apartment alley" that my hostel was located in (I can actually see the hostel in this picture!)
Now comes to post processing... there are a few pictures that I can't wait to work on.
I guess I've been pretty busy this week. I think most of the time has been spent trying to figure out how to keep up the little Japanese I have (I'm back to studying on a daily basis again) - e-mailing various schools trying to find out if they have something available at my level. I'm going to try to find a language exchange partner again too.
I'm also toying with the idea of possibly taking some photography courses. I'm not sure how serious I want to be about this - whether I should be looking at one-off courses or if I should look at courses that fall within an actual program... I feel like I'm kind of plateau-ing with the photography - I need some fresh ideas... I've ordered Cartier-Bresson's book of essays on photography (I can't wait to get it - why is it that good books are always out of stock!?) I'm not sure how much this is going to help me. I have no intention of ever getting into "art photography", nor do I want to do event photography (unless it's an event like november's Movember Gala) but I do want to get better. I need someone to criticize my pictures and tell me how to make them better... what to look for... what I'm doing wrong... what I'm doing well... I have to admit - a lot of the pictures I posted above are pretty uninteresting to me - this is also not the type of photography I want to be doing.
They aren't great. They're seems to be a theme of grey going through them. I've omitted my people pictures as I'm not sure what to do with them just yet. I'm not impressed. I thought they looked better when I was first looking at them but now... I don't know.
Here are a few, more of the same can be found on my flickr site.
Reichstag
Reichstag
The holocaust memorial
This is not an uncommon sight - this is actually one of the main public transportation lines and one of the bigger stations...
Jüdisches Museum
Holocaust tower
Shalechet (memory void) - Jüdisches Museum
Checkpoint Charlie - US Army Checkpoint
Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche
I found a little alley that was covered in graffiti. There were stores if you followed the crazy stairs hidden behind unmarked doorways. I ventured into one of the buildings (and took a few pictures - none posted here...)
there was a courtyard if you walked far enough into the alley
On my last day after going to see Annie Leibovitz's exhibit I went to Fernsehturm (the TV tower - there's a picture of it on my flickr stream). Oddly enough I took this picture quite randomly. Later that night I went out with a bunch of other travelers (none of which were from my hostel!) and we went into a bar in the basement of the pink building in this picture.
And the infamous "apartment alley" that my hostel was located in (I can actually see the hostel in this picture!)
Now comes to post processing... there are a few pictures that I can't wait to work on.
I guess I've been pretty busy this week. I think most of the time has been spent trying to figure out how to keep up the little Japanese I have (I'm back to studying on a daily basis again) - e-mailing various schools trying to find out if they have something available at my level. I'm going to try to find a language exchange partner again too.
I'm also toying with the idea of possibly taking some photography courses. I'm not sure how serious I want to be about this - whether I should be looking at one-off courses or if I should look at courses that fall within an actual program... I feel like I'm kind of plateau-ing with the photography - I need some fresh ideas... I've ordered Cartier-Bresson's book of essays on photography (I can't wait to get it - why is it that good books are always out of stock!?) I'm not sure how much this is going to help me. I have no intention of ever getting into "art photography", nor do I want to do event photography (unless it's an event like november's Movember Gala) but I do want to get better. I need someone to criticize my pictures and tell me how to make them better... what to look for... what I'm doing wrong... what I'm doing well... I have to admit - a lot of the pictures I posted above are pretty uninteresting to me - this is also not the type of photography I want to be doing.
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