Sunset at Stanford

This is the sunset at sunset after Google lost to Facebook a year or two ago.

More raindrops on plants!

While I was leaving for work this morning, I saw that there were just tons of little raindrops on the roses and leaves in front of my house so I rushed in to get my camera. I think these are a lot better than my previous set (even the ones I didn't post). Guess I'm getting picker. I love how the raindrops on these look almost like scales.

SFMOMA

Went to SF MOMA this weekend and I can't say that I loved the art inside, but man was the building awesome! I took more photos of the building itself than the art inside! I guess I just don't understand modern art at all. I'm not saying there isn't any skill or thought going into the art, but personally, I just don't see it. Or rather, maybe it's more that I just don't like it. I mean, looking at some of the photos I took of the building, you can probably say that they are a bit abstract as well, so maybe it's not so much that I don't understand abstract art, but rather that the kind of art shown in the museum just didn't appeal to me. Maybe it was too messy and busy. I've always been more of a minimalist so maybe that's the reason? Also, I guess you don't have to understand the art in order to like it either. I mean, looking at my photos, I don't see any clear message or anything, I just think they look kind of cool, so maybe that's okay. Anyways, here are some photos. There are a couple more here.

Old photos

I've been digging through some old photos lately and found one of my favs. There's actually nothing technical about it. I was just in the right place at the right time. In fact, I took this with my mom's old prosumer camera on our cross country trip a couple years ago and just snapped this shot while we were still driving. The window was probably still up as well. Sometimes, I just think, after all the books I've read and shots I've taken, I still haven't taken many better shots than this. What have I been doing all this time? Anyways, I just love the simplicity of the colors and the clouds. Oh how I love these clouds. I've been trying find clouds like these ever since I came to Cali. I get excited every time I see a cloud in the sky now. Sigh ... hope you guys like it as much as I do.

More flowers

It was raining this morning and I decided to take some pictures of the flowers in front of my house. Since it just stopped raining, there were some beautiful rain drops on the flowers that I just had to capture. Almost missed my morning shuttle :/

This brings up an issue that I've been trying to sort out lately. I even had a long discussion with a friend about it today. It deals with my passion as a photographer and why I take photos. Many of the books and DVDs that I've been reading/watching always say something about "telling a story" and I don't know if I should be trying to tell a story or have a message within my photos. I mean, at this point, I feel like I just want to take pictures of cool stuff, and especially learn to take pictures of cool stuff that other professional photographers are really good at taking and someday have a picture that's "cool" enough for me to blow up and hang up on my wall. So I guess the question is, is that okay? Am I missing the point of photography? Is my "passion" too superficial? Should I be trying to tell a story or do something for the greater good? Anyways, I guess I'll dive into this deeper in a later blog post, but that's just what I've been thinking about lately.



More pics here: http://picasaweb.google.com/vashthest/Flowers#

Portrait Experimentation

Playing around with my lighting setup (430 EX II with shoot-through umbrella). These are some shots of my friend Yi (we have the same name, I know). I kinda wish the background weren't so dull though. I'll have to play around with distance from the wall to get a darker or lighter background.

Also, I learned that posing people is hard. Everything from the facial expressions to the position on the body and the arms. Also, since we're both new at this, it was hard to get some natural looking shots. I'm already not a very talkative person so it's especially hard to get people relaxed and comfortable in front of the camera. Coupled with the fact that I'm still trying to think about flash to subject distance, flash power, my shutter-speed, aperture, ISO, and composition, it's next to impossible to try and tell my model how to pose. Luckily, Yi's an old friend so he'll put up with me. Thanks Yi!



Also, my trial with butterfly lighting:

More pics here: http://picasaweb.google.com/vashthest/Portraits#

24!

It was my bday yesterday and it was awesome! We had a joint bday party at Buca's. The food was great, the company was great, and the after party was great too! My friends also threw me a surprise bday party at work as well on Friday. I love my friends. And oh, I love my flash =). Anyways, the group shot below. More shots here.

Fall leaves

Fall comes a bit late in California so we still have colorful leaves now. Also, because it's starting to rain, the grass and everything is a lot greener. This is a picture I took on my way to work one morning. I love the colors, and yes, I did increase the saturation of the colors a bit to show the different colors in each tree.

Dancing Jellyfish

Another jellyfish shot. I like this one because they look like they are dancing with each other. Sigh ... so peaceful and relaxing ...

Quick preview! Jellyfish!!!

I've been so busy lately that I haven't been able to post any of my pictures, but I found the time today to export one of my favorites. This was taken at the Monterey Bay Aquarium and there are lots more to come! Stay tuned!

Colorful leaves

We have this one tree at work that started to change color before any of the other trees. It looked really colorful against the nice blue sky. Wish it wasn't so dark in all the areas but I still like the saturation.

Sunset

Haven't posted in a while due to sickness and a high school friend also came over. I'll be posting a lot more now since I have a ton of photos though. Here's a pic of a sunset the other day. We have some beautiful hills behind our house with a great view and I've been meaning to go up there and take some night shots.

Strawberries in water: Round 2

This time, I decided to try it out on a white background with high key lighting. I had to use my flash to get things this lit up and I used my 50mm f/1.8 to get the nice sharpness. What do you think? I like this set better than the first set.





Couple more here: My PicasaWeb

Super excited yet disappointed

So apparently I have 135 views on my favorite strawberry in water picture (this makes me super excited) although no one left any comments and I don't know how they found my picture or who's viewing it (this makes me disappointed). Come on PicasaWeb, don't you have these stats, can't you show me? Also, what makes people want to comment? Do you have to know them? Do you think about the possible ramifications that can come out of it? Or does it really just have to be a really awesome picture? Now, I understand that the picture isn't that great, but I'm just curious.

In case you don't know what I'm referring to, it's this picture, and you should comment!
http://picasaweb.google.com/vashthest/StrawberryInWater#5394081330948927874

Just for fun: Self Portraits

While taking photos of strawberries, I decided to experiment with some portrait photography as well. However, none of my roommates were home so I had to take photos of myself. Man is it hard to pose yourself and think of what it'll look like on camera! After taking a few with just a t-shirt on, I decided to spice things up and dress up like a cowboy. What do you think?

Strawberries

I've been watching Youtube videos about photography everyday and I came across a pretty cool idea from Bryan Peterson: shooting a strawberry dropping into a vase filled with sparkling water. Here's his video if you're interested and here are my shots.

This one looks like it's drowning:

I like this semi-symmetric dive:

Super bubbly!

I think this one is my favorite:

You can see some more here: My Picasaweb

PicasaWeb vs. Flickr

Does anyone that likes photography use PicasaWeb over Flickr? Am I just too much of a Google fanboy to not switch? Every time I look at my photos on PicasaWeb, there are tons of artifacts in the images and they are not as sharp. I know Google wants to reduce latency and provide a faster user experience, but can you not do that by sacrificing image quality, especially after I've gone through and painstaking post-processed each picture?

I also would like to see the stats that Flickr has on PicasaWeb, mostly because no one looks at my photos, so it's nice to know when it happens. On PicasaWeb, they have a view count, but they don't have a dashboard or easy way to see what photos have been looked at by people recently, or better yet, what the most viewed photo is. Surprisingly, I have around 65 views of this one flower shot that I took a couple days ago (the one of the side of the flower with the greenish background in my earlier posts) but I don't know where they came from and how they even knew it existed.

Anyways, I'm thinking of switching over until PicasaWeb can do something smarter.

Henry Vilas Zoo in Madison, WI

I went to the zoo this past September when visiting my girlfriend in Madison, WI and I loved it. Even though the zoo was free, it was very well maintained and had a good amount of animals (although they had red pandas on their advertisements, the exhibit wasn't there yet). Here's one of my favorite shots (I think he's purposely posing):

And this is a close up:

And here's the lion they had:


I'll post more pics later, but if you are in the area, you should definitely check it out. It's totally worth it.

Another flower shot

This is the kind of picture that I've always wanted to try. Luckily, the pedals on this flower look nice and I was able to post process this image to get a colored rose on a unsaturated background. What do you think?

Flowers!

Took a few shots of some flowers by my house.

Lassen Volcanic National Park

Just some pics that I took at Lassen. I love that place. So beautiful.

Brokeoff Mountain (Not the same as Brokeback Mountain)



Lake Helen with Lassen Peak in the background



I love these clouds



Look at the view!



On top of Lassen Peak



Lassen Panorma

Speed of a puma! Strength of a bear!

OMG! Bravestarr is on Hulu! This used to be one of my favorite tv shows!! I love you HUlU!

If you haven't seen it, check it out here: http://www.hulu.com/bravestarr

Winchester Mystery House

Negative Tide - Half Moon Bay

More pics here: My PicasaWeb