Seven Things - I have been Tagged by Remi Woler

Apparently there is a new game going around the neighborhood. It's a pyramid game where you post a blog with seven facts (known/unknown) about yourself, then tag seven friends at the end, hoping they will continue the campaign.

If it weren't for good friends like Matthew Weier O'Phinney and Remi Woler having been tagged in the previous steps of this game, I am not sure I would have joined. In the old days, we used to get chain letters delivered by the actual mail - snail mail that is. Then when email appeared, the annoying chain letters changed medium (but remained annoying nonetheless). Now it's a Blog chain - what's next - a Twitter chain?

So seven facts about me:

• I am a Green Card holder, moved to the US 4 years ago, and I love it here!
• The first two programming languages I ever used were Basic and Fortran 77 in this order.
• I am allergic to cats. The first cat I owned (I was not allergic to him) was called Gustav.
  
• My first job was as an assembly line person, in a plastic caps manufacturing factory. I collected the caps, 50 at a time, and placed them in cardboard boxes. I was 14 at the time, and it was my first summer job.
  
• I love Photography (duh).
  
• Before working for Zend as Marketing Programs Manager, I founded and ran my own online store, that specialized in "haute couture" for babies and kids - it was called CuteLittleClothes and my former partner bought me out ans is still successfully running it!
• I can't pronounce Remi Woler's real name :)

And here are the Bloggers I can think of tagging :

• Etay Gafni - my one and only!
  
• Mark De Visser - my former one-of-a-kind boss (I miss you)!
• My very good friend Cal Evans (I miss you too..)
• And also back to Matthew (are there any rules about the same blogger being tagged more than once?)
  

And here are the rules I'm supposed to pass on to the above bloggers:

• Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
• Share seven facts about yourself in the post - some random, some wierd.
• Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
• Let them know they've been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter.

Different ways of looking at your Subject

One of the tips I gathered about taking better photos, was to approach your subject from a different angle. To make your photo more interesting, try looking at your subject differently.

Instead of taking yet another bunch-of-trees photo:



Try looking at them a different way (and maybe play with your Aperture to get a hazy effect):




Looking at the first photo, you see a photo of a small forest. You've seen many of those. You don't feel part of the scene, you are standing on the outside looking in..

The second photo, makes you feel as though you are lifting your head and gazing up. You are in the forest, not just looking at a photo of some trees.

I love photos that make you feel something (other than bored, that is :o)

A really nice Canon joke

I know I have not been blogging as much as I used to lately, but I got a brand new job, and it kinda Hoovered me...

I got this really nice Canon joke that I wanted to share with you guys:

The Smiths were unable to conceive children and decided to use a surrogate father to start their family. On the day the proxy father was to arrive, Mr. Smith kissed his wife goodbye and said, "Well, I'm off now. The man should be here soon."

Half an hour later, just by chance, a door-to-door baby photographer happened to ring the doorbell, hoping to make a sale. "Good morning, Ma'am", he said, "I've come to..."

"Oh, no need to explain," Mrs. Smith cut in, embarrassed, "I've been Expecting you."

"Have you really?" said the photographer. "Well, that's good. Did you know Babies are my specialty?"

"Well that's what my husband and I had hoped. Please come in and have a seat".

After a moment she asked, blushing, "Well, where do we start?"

"Leave everything to me. I usually try two in the bathtub, one on the couch, and perhaps a couple on the bed. And sometimes the living room floor is Fun. You can really spread out there."

"Bathtub, living room floor? No wonder it didn't work out for Harry and Me!"

"Well, Ma'am, none of us can guarantee a good one every time. But if we try several different positions and I shoot from six or seven angles, I'm sure you'll be pleased with the results."

"My, that's a lot!", gasped Mrs. Smith.

"Ma'am, in my line of work a man has to take his time. I'd love to be In and out in five minutes, but I'm sure you'd be disappointed with that."

"Don't I know it," said Mrs. Smith quietly.

The photographer opened his briefcase and pulled out a portfolio of his baby pictures. "This was done on the top of a bus," he said.

"Oh, my God!" Mrs. Smith exclaimed, grasping at her throat.

"And these twins turned out exceptionally well - when you consider their mother was so difficult to work with."

"She was difficult?" asked Mrs. Smith.

"Yes, I'm afraid so. I finally had to take her to the park to get the job done right. People were crowding around four and five deep to get a good look"

"Four and five deep?" said Mrs. Smith, her eyes wide with amazement.

"Yes", the photographer replied. "And for more than three hours, too. The mother was constantly squealing and yelling - I could hardly concentrate, and when darkness approached I had to rush my shots. Finally, when the squirrels began nibbling on my equipment, I just had to pack it all in."

Mrs. Smith leaned forward. "Do you mean they actually chewed on your, uh...equipment?"

"It's true, Ma'am, yes.. Well, if you're ready, I'll set-up my tripod and we can get to work right away."

"Tripod?"

"Oh yes, Ma'am. I need to use a tripod to rest my Canon on. It's much too big to be held in the hand very long."

Mrs. Smith fainted

That's all till next time...

Animals make the best models

I went to San Francisco Zoo on Sunday. Found out that the way I feel about zoos changed all over again. What started out as sheer enjoyment when I was a toddler, going through slight interest in my teens, turned out to be total horror being a parent to two toddlers running all over the place.

This time, I was there in two capacities. First, as a parent to a toddler and a first grader. Second, as a photographer. In order to maintain the latter, I rented a double stroller and strapped the kids in snuggly. Wow, I got an immediate upgrade to the whole zoo experience. No running after a wobbly toddler trying to hand over his pacifier to a roaring lion, no last minute pulling the youngster out of the penguin's pool. It was joy all over!

Second, I looked at the animals through my lens, which is a different experience all together.

First impression: Animals are great models.

Take a look at this cool Gorilla (a bit shaded but I did my best with the aperture):



Second impression: They are even better models if they have some sort of pattern on their skin. Preferably with contrasting colors.

G-I-R-A-F-F-E, giraffe is munching on a tree:





Third impression: An unusual color will always do the trick:



And how will the zoo experience be complete without a cute duckling walking away from its water dish:

Yahoo! Photos are shutting down the operation

I just logged into my Yahoo!Photos account, where I have hosted all my photos in the past three years (we are talking hundreds of Megs), and got a new splash screen saying Yahoo!Photos will be shut down in September 2007.

It's not that I am that crazy about their interface (even the new one was not something to write home about), but I will be a bit sad to part from Yahoo!Photos. Kinda like graduating from high-school. You know there is a great new world out there and are very excited to take part in it, but you are still a little bit reluctant to let go..

Many major photo hosting companies joined forces with Yahoo!Photos, and created migration programs. I chose to transfer my photos to Shutterfly (just because they have such a cool girly UI, and they offered a free 8x8 picture book if I signed up with them :o). Before I started the transfer process, which is pretty straight forward, they let me know that it may take up to 48 hours to transfer all my photos.

I will let you know if the transfer was successful. I really don't want to start uploading the whole lot again...

I just got my photos showcased at our neighborhood Spring party

This was so exciting! Being a starter photographer, I got so many compliments and people actually dropped by my house to congratulate me on my photos!

Taking the photos was really easy. I take my dog out about four times a day at different lighting conditions, so I had a few weeks to check out our neighborhood, see which flowers are blooming, what is the best time of day to take their pictures etc. I also tried to spot the more interesting views, and find the right angle to take the pictures.

I ended up with not too many photos, but pretty decent ones. The following photos were actually taken in front of our neighborhood Safeway, could you believe it?




Those guys were taken on my green and yellow day - as an aid to getting more interesting pictures I sometimes make a color day for myself - I only take pictures that have a specific color in the composition. Here are the results:







The next one I used the principle of looking for a repeating pattern. The little green weeds gave some life to the pebble stones in one of the front yards on my street, and made the photo more interesting:



The next one is a nice logs photo I took in Yosemite last month. It uses the pattern as well so I thought I'd put it in here..

Composition

During the past couple of weeks I have been reading tons of books about photography. I want to share what I learned with you guys, so I am taking a break from technical lens stuff to talk about composition for a while.

What makes a good picture?

That is the million dollar question, of course. Run through some of the photos you like, and some of the photos you dislike, and try to figure out what worked well in the former, and what is wrong with the latter. You can’t really put it in words, can you? Something just feels right in those you like. Something just feels wrong in those you dislike. A lot of it has to do with composition, and there are a few simple guidelines that can make a perfectly boring picture into one that will make people smile.

Composition Techniques

Composition is the way you arrange the objects in your photograph. You want to send a message in your photo, get your viewer to be interested in your object/objects, and get them to try to figure out the story behind the photo.



There are six main techniques photographers use to achieve good compositions:

1. Simplicity
2. Symmetrical balance
3. Asymmetrical balance
4. Radial Balance
5. Rule of Thirds (see previous post)
6. Framing


My next post will be all about simplicity.