Handball In The Snow

pdn PhotoPlus Expo 2011 - Miscellaneous

Leica, so expensive only retired LIRR pensioners on disabilities can afford them.

Lady has been on Expo since time immemorable.  Video rig for Nikon DSLR.

Pulitzer Prize winning wildlife photographer ...

Is spelling out the word professional so hard?  Stingy film give-away.

Real camera, man.  Real camera.

Rockwell's archenemy ...

Big man on a smaller venue.  Vincent Laforet, he's still presenting the same old slide show he does every year since 1900.  They just seem a bit staled, albeit good.

Watch out, BMW is onto the photography business.  Or is it Mercedes-Benz?  Oh no, it's another clever ripoff design from my fellow country men.  If BMW and Mercedez have an illegitimate son, that's going to be TRIOPO, it's tripod except misspelled on purpose.  I want a TRIOPO.

It's not camera shake, it's 3D Handycam.  Look something's popping out.  3D glasses mandatory.

pdn PhotoPlus Expo

The Canon 1DX naked.  It feels light in the hand

Basically it's a machine gun.

Imaginary conversations follow ...

"I don't know much about this ... I just had an hour training on this but it shit I mean shoot like a machine gun.  It's just freaking awesome."

"Does it focus?"

"You mean does it focus right?  Correct?  I don't have a clue but it has like 100 focus points so yes.  Anyway, it shoots like a machine gun so it's just awesome."

On another more serious, disturbing and disappointing note:  Nikon has no new flagship products on display.  And alarmingly some of the products I tried on were iffy.  I tried the million dollar Nikkor 35mm 1.4 with nano coating and the shit just didn't autofocus on a D700.  OKAY, the guy thought it might be the camera.  Then mounted it on a D7000.  Still no good.  Then tried on another smallish DSLR, then the thingy came alive.  This just confirmed what I read online.  Good thing I never bought the million dollar 35mm f1.4 with that special nano coating.  So the lens or the camera or some combination thereof was kind of iffy.  (Some say it's just bad contacts, well if I pay $2000 on a lens and $2000 on a body I want them to just work and not to have to get out an eraser to clean the contacts.)

pdn PhotoPlus Expo

I don't go out much and when I take pictures outside I just do it on my own.  I don't know it has become a trend that people use lens hood and like to have them pulled back or actually mounted in reverse.  I think that looks pretty odd.

Make sure the lens hood doesn't cover the front when shooting ... so what's the point of using a lens hood?  I just don't get it.

Smallish lens hood

Biggest lens hood

pdn PhotoPlus Expo

Nikon always has the best models each and every year.

The Nikon 1 camera seems pretty nifty and speedy in operations.  I was shooting with the Fuji x100, I had some unrealistic expectation of that thingy.  And it turned out not what I thought.  I am old school and I thought the camera doesn't have the right mass for its size to inspire confidence, I'm sure it's easy on the hands and shoulders.  The write speed is just atrocious.  Everything seems slow.  But I do like the view finder.  And Nikon 1 seems pretty smart or I am just not so informed and aware of current technology, the viewfinder just comes to life when I put my eye and look through it so I think that's pretty darn smart.  I always enjoy a good viewfinder.

1 in vomit pink

V1 in black and with flash

pdn PhotoPlus Expo

On my way to the expo on 34th street.  My favorite subject.  Basically anything that's inanimate, banal and mundane.

pdn PhotoPlus Expo

Honestly, I don't know what it's called anymore.  You have photoplus, expo, pdn.  It's all very confusing.  I think it just failed in terms of branding.

Instant photo taken using a Fuji camera and scanned by my Epson Perfection V500 Photo scanner using iScan software on a Linux AMD 64 bit machine running Ubuntu 11.10.  Fuji seems to be pretty generous this year.  I asked the man behind the film counter to make sure they don't give out samples as I saw no free sample sign at all but he did give out 3 120 Reala 100 to me.  So a big Thank You to the guy.  On the other hand Big Yellow got kind of stingy: one roll only, which I think is very understandable and reasonable but that doesn't mean that I like it.  The Big Yellow guy manning the free sample counter was like cool and detached.  Well you are a marketing person.  The second one seemed somewhat better.  I got my Ektar 100 both in 35mm and 120 formats--I was a return customer, went there twice just to get two rolls of film, I know I'm just pathetic.

Fiona Apple

Criminal
Across The Universe

Draft Mode in Blogger and Mobile Web

For those who still use blogger as their blogging platform, and like their blog mobile enabled all you need to do is to pay somebody to create a lousy app.  Or not.  Just enable the draft mode in blogger.  That is it.  Or if you are like Apple who pretty much pioneered and championed mobile browsing by inventing the iPhone but still insist on the full web site experience then suit yourself.  The end.

Bill Cunningham New York

Cunningham, an octogenarian, must be flattered that people are still interested in his sex life or at least want to know if he is gay or not.  As it turns out he is married to his work and is never romantically involved with anybody.  So I guess the answer is even he himself can't be sure if he is or isn't homosexual.  Sometimes I wonder why someone's sexual orientation weighs so much on one's life.  But it sort of always does especially if one is not heterosexual, it's like your whole life is defined by your sexual orientation, well I digressed.  There are a couple of things that surprise me.  The number one being, not the homosexual question, but about his religion.  Cunningham is Catholic and goes to church every Sunday and when asked about his religion he seems badly shaken and on the verge of a meltdown and for a few seconds he just keeps his head down and can't utter a word, which is unusual given his usual cheerful predisposition, at least on the documentary though the few times I saw him in real life he seemed seriously detached, not unfriendly but not warm or anything probably he needed to stay focused when he's at work which I am sure he was as he is at work twenty four by seven.  The second surprise is how jocular Anna Wintour is when talking about Bill Cunningham.  She is chatty and warm and doesn't hide behind her sunglasses.  I think Cunningham certainly suffers for his art though he says he enjoys it, his work ethics is next to none: he won't even allow himself to eat or drink a glass of water in those high society parties he covers as that would be inappropriate.  When nowadays people, like the Sartorialist, causally brag about pageviews, CPM and quarter million dollars ad revenue, Bill is decidedly humble and frugal and vows to never sell out.  As he says if you don't get paid they can't make you do things. Or something.

PS:  I think Cunningham shoots with some FE or FE2.  But the latest is, judging from a post/picture I saw from the Sartorialist, he might be shooting a Nikon D7000 with a manual lens attached.  Good luck with the focusing, CHILD.

Times Square Micky and Minnie

Tim Gunn

Making it work. Sent from Yahoo! Mail on Android

Land Camera

Land camera by Anton Corbijn via The New York Times.

A World of Sizing Confusion

I found this most helpful in the sense that it's informative and will get closer to what you look for in terms of sizing.  In this world of online ordering, I think if you really want to get ahead of the game you should supply the actual measurements to your customers.  A simple number like 8, 9, 10 or size S, M, L simply doesn't cut it anymore and yet most sellers online simply don't bother.  It's just bad business.

Size matters.

Conversion chart that is closer to the "truth."

Ubuntu 11.10

Ubuntu 11.10 code name !@#!@$!%$!@#$ whatever.  The upgrade/installation is mindblowingly frictionless I felt like I was not challenged in any way whatsoever.  This shit just worked.  So there is really nothing to fix or talk about.  I probably use 1% of the OS and the only app I use is Chrome or Firefox or any given day.  And Shotwell to suck the pictures out of the SD card.  That's all folks.

Summer 2011

#ows Broke Twitter?

#ows gets violent.  Police motorbike crashed into crowd?  via 1010 win news.

caption from 1010 wins website--> New York City police officers runs over a Legal Aid Society observer as Occupy Wall Street demonstrators march through the streets near Wall Street, Friday, Oct. 14, 2011. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer) UPDATE: OKAY, it's more of a scooter than a bike.

iOS5 Upgrade And Miscellaneous BS

I never like iTunes and I never bother to understand the iTunes sync.  It's like you plug in the thing to your computer and then make sure the thing doesn't sync anything.  Or all your pirated music will go up in smoke.  Or something.

I updated some of my iOS devices to iOS5 not because I have to but because I can.  I just plugged them in and did something and then something happened--updated iTunes then iOS5, frictionlessly smooth until I wanted to try the iCloud backup which came with 5GB free storage per iCloud id, after that the price goes ridiculously high just like everything that's Apple.  Like most other Apple BS, it simply doesn't work, at least for the first n times.  I don't know why it didn't work the first n times but if I were to guess I would say:  the server had been too busy?  It doesn't make a whole lot of sense.  Anyway, after much verbal threats and exposing its suckiness on twitter (see my twitter feed on the right)--, iCloud backup all of a sudden started to work.  I was able to back up my device for free which is all that is important, free as in I don't have to pay.  Not that I really needed to back up anything, I did it because I can and it's free.  I never backup any of my iOS devices.

And oh yeah, like most computer stuff I did, I just did whatever to make it work without knowing how or why. Woohoo.

My first impression of iOS5 is yeah, twitter is now deeply integrated (fb being the illegitimate social bastard doesn't get the deeply integrated treatment in iOS5 and so are all others), just like Android is and gets a bit more or too literal: it actually makes a tweet sound or a whistle when you post a picture which is enchanting and at times annoying or even endangering as your boss doesn't need to hear the tweet sound.  Essentially Apple iOS gets just a tiny bit more social that before.  The new pull down notification is like Android's.  And of course iOS looks a bit more refined in the execution, to me, at least.  Eye candy and all.  iCloud is kind of iffy on the first few dozen tries.  And in the end, to make it really work you need to pay Apple because 5GB is hardly any storage at all--iCloud is very conscientious to remind you your storage is running low and to pay up.

Next: Ubuntu 11.10.

Albert Watson

Any work of art is a reflection of the artist himself.  I feel this is as much a portrait of Mr. Jobs as it is of Mr. Watson himself.  The analog picture was taken with a 4x5 view camera in 2006.

Picture taken from Apple's web site for illustration purpose.  Copyrights belong to its rightful owner(s).

I Like My Woolrich

I bought my first Woolrich when I was at college.  I just love the plaid.  Fast forward to 2011, the only Woolriches I like and can afford are from eBay.  This isn't exactly a negative as I can still find what I like if I look hard and being patient the entire time.

Jobs: "I wanted my kids to know me."

via 9to5mac
From Isaacson’s upcoming Essay in Time Magazine:

A few weeks ago, I visited Jobs for the last time in his Palo Alto, Calif., home. He had moved to a downstairs bedroom because he was too weak to go up and down stairs. He was curled up in some pain, but his mind was still sharp and his humor vibrant. We talked about his childhood, and he gave me some pictures of his father and family to use in my biography. As a writer, I was used to being detached, but I was hit by a wave of sadness as I tried to say goodbye. In order to mask my emotion, I asked the one question that was still puzzling me: Why had he been so eager, during close to 50 interviews and conversations over the course of two years, to open up so much for a book when he was usually so private? “I wanted my kids to know me,” he said. “I wasn’t always there for them, and I wanted them to know why and to understand what I did.”

Siri The Eerie

I have to train Siri to understand Chinglish in order for her to work for me.