He has data for a lot of cities, including Richmond. It is kind of a cool visualization of census data. For some cities, I see sharp, straight edges separating racial regions, and I can’t help but wonder what marks such clear divides.
Coldplay – “Fix You” (youtube)
One of the best songs ever recorded. When the bridge kicks in, with that simple, repetitive guitar riff that should be boring as hell in no time, I can’t help but crank it up. Then the drums pick up…I’m blown away every time. It moves me in an inexplicable way. I guess I’m kind of a sucker for that kind of emotional swell.
Tonight consisted of a trip to Valley Produce after work, followed by a a good time blazing new culinary frontiers with Mary. We made these zucchini fritters and tzatziki sauce to go along with mac and cheese with kielbasa, which Mary frequently cooks. Finished it out with some pita and a couple bottles of Peroni. The fritters (and the Tzatziki!) were great; my only complaint being that we made them a little too thick so they had a too much soft inside. Next time I’d flatten them a bit more before frying.
I guess you could say I’ve started a beer theme, and I think I’m going to run with it. Today’s beer is another porter, and has, amazingly enough, a not so subtle coffee flavor to it: Fuller’s London Porter. I tried a lot of color filters for the flash on this one. The final result was with a yellow filter, flash behind the bottle again. I’m not really loving these shots, but I ended up going with this one:
And the runner up:
On the one hand, beer bottles are a somewhat boring subject. On the other, it’s a great excuse to buy good beers, and it’s a chance to try and make a bottle look interesting. It is clearly possible: This guy has done an awesome job with a heineken bottle.
One good beer deserves another. I didn’t enjoy this as much as the Black Butte, but it was still damn good. The photo I like a lot more. Remote flashes just open up a whole new world of photographic fun…
I got a Camelbak fourteener backpack about a year ago, and have taken it all over since then. It is probably the best backpack I’ve owned. While climbing Mt. Baldy a month or so back, one of the plastic clips that holds the sternum strap onto the shoulders of my pack broke off. I sent an e-mail to Camelbak telling them it broke, and asking if I could get just a replacement part. I was more than happy to pay a few bucks for the part, I just really didn’t want to buy another $120 backpack. But, they did even better:
Hello,
Thank you for contacting CamelBak. The defect you have encountered should not be expected from any of our products. We stand firmly behind the quality of all the products we make, and I apologize for this inconvenience. Just let me know your U.S. address and I’ll be happy to send a replacement sternum strap for you.
I got the new strap last week, and it’s back to being good as new (just dirtier). Just wanted to share the pleasant response, and say that I can strongly recommend camelbak gear, even if the clip did break.
Black Butte Porter. First sip left a good enough impression that I wanted to take its picture…and remember to buy it again!
Azure Ray, is a 9-year old duo, recently re-formed, and just recently discovered by me, which I’m enjoying very much. Can’t remember if it was KCRW or Pandora that led me to them. All three are awesome.
A week ago, on June 24th, 2010, my little brother got hitched. Aside from being outdoors during a heat wave, the whole affair went off quite well with, I think, a happy couple and happy guests. I enjoyed having lots of subjects to photograph, and I think wedding photos make a great excuse for a flash gallery, so here it is:
Most of the time, on a bright sunny day, the world looks a lot better when you remove the polarized light glaring from reflective surfaces and the atmosphere. If you’ve ever worn polarized sunglasses, you probably know what I mean. A few months ago, I spent the $100 or so and bought a Hoya HMC PL-CIR filter for my most oft-used lens, and it pretty much does for the camera everything the polarized glasses do for your eyes. It does wonders for mid-day, bright sunlight photos, or shooting through glass or other reflective surfaces like water. Choosing between dark foreground and blown-out, highlighted sky is also a lot less of a problem. I figured I’d share some example shots showing what a polarizer can do:
I should disclose the details of the experimental setup here: I did not actually remove the filter in any of these shots. In the “polarized” shots, it is simply rotated to block the polarization of the sun glare, and in the other rotated away so that it does not (in which case, it should behave like an ND filter, just making the whole image darker). The camera is in Aperture Priority mode, so the exposure varied between the shots according to the incoming light. It is important to rotate the filter to the right place before each shot, as the required angle depends on the angle of the camera as well as the location of the sun.
