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October 3, 2009

It’s been three whole months since I updated this blog, and I feel bad for sending people links to this website without having updated it recently.

My month-long trip to Europe was fantastic and I had plenty of opportunities to do some of the things I enjoy the most: explore, take photos, and teach. With 30 students and a professor, I traveled through the UK, then to France, Switzerland, and Italy. Looking back, it’s quite amazing that we got all the way from London to Rome on nothing but trains. In an age where we’re so used to hopping on a plane and traveling thousands of miles, it’s a bit of a trip (so to speak) to cover all that land via ground transportation.

Best parts of the trip: Punting in Oxford and losing our punting pole in the sludge at the bottom of the river. Also, biking up some foothill roads in the French alps and looking down at beautiful Chamonix from a ridge.

Worst part of the trip: Being woken up at 6AM by the roommate of a very ill student who was feverish enough to be delirious. Part of the job, so I can’t really complain; it could have been much worse.

While the teaching aspect of the trip could have been a little bit more in-depth, I feel like I had a very positive experience being both a group leader and a photography mentor. I ended up doing a few small instructional sessions with people, but most students were not interested in learning how to take anything better than snapshots on their trip. You can see my photos from the Grand Tour trip here.

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After returning, my two main goals – to find a temp job and to apply for teaching opportunities abroad – turned into full-time work. Suddenly I was spending entire days looking for jobs, writing job applications, filling out forms, and writing essays. A lot of time passed without so much as an email or a call back, but finally toward the end of August things started to pick up. I’ve had several job leads and had a handful interviews. One thing I’ve noticed is that all of these are happening in the big cities – San Francisco, in my case – but nothing outside of the city. Is this an indication that the economy is on its way back up? Trends usually radiate outward from the city and into the ‘burbs, so I can only be hopeful that we’re on our way back to a healthier economic state.

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As of last week, Aclipse received my application for the English Program In Korea (EPIK). Every year, EPIK hires thousands of English speakers from all over the world to teach English across South Korea. I am very excited at the prospect of moving abroad once again and getting back on track toward a larger goal: English education. My longer-term goal is to end up in Europe where I can live, work, and travel. Teaching in Asia, where demand is high, appears to be a great gateway to Europe; one can gain experience in a high-demand environment and use that experience to get into much more competitive locales.

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I’ve been playing more music lately and have been driven to learn a little bit more music theory and hone my guitar-playing skills. Despite playing the guitar for nearly 10 years, my skill level is not where it should be. Interestingly, my interest in playing the bass has been growing in recent months. Last night I finally got the chance to jam with a bass-wielding friend. My bass-playing experience is slim to none, but it felt pretty natural to me (well, as natural as playing a musical instrument can feel to someone who doesn’t have that “natural” knack for music). Maybe in the next couple of months I’ll buy a bass starter kit and get better on my own.

Photography tip of the day: If you are using a light-triggered slave studio strobe, you can avoid issues with timing by disabling TTL flash metering on your camera body. When in TTL mode, your camera will fire a pre-flash before the exposure that will prematurely trigger your slave flash. Disabling TTL metering means you get one flash, and one flash only, and you should get proper timing with your slave strobe.

July 2, 2009

I am leaving tomorrow morning for London and will have periodic internet access during my trip. Since this site is created on iWeb, I unfortunately don’t have a well-prepared way to blog my happenings on this website. This was a lack of foresight on my part. However, I will probably be posting images from time to time on my Flickr and DSLR/BBR Gallery pages. Short updates, 160 characters or less to be precise, will appear on my Twitter page.

I will be gone the better part of the month, returning at the end of July. Happy 4th of July, everyone!

June 30, 2009

I took my dad last night to see Eric Clapton play with Steve Winwood at the Oakland Arena. This concert was their second to last in a tour of 5 months - one which started in February in Osaka, Japan.

This wasn’t the first time I’d seen Eric Clapton, but it was for my dad. Quite an experience. At age 64, Clapton is still one of the 3 best guitarists to ever have lived. Actually, compared to the concert with Robert Cray in 2007, I think Clapton’s guitar playing was quite a bit better. One might even say it’s a bit of a spiritual experience to watch him play, and I’d be inclined to agree. What strikes me about his music playing is how selfless he is when playing with other musicians. He’s looked up to, but he also gives a lot of stage time to those with whom he is playing. Steve Winwood complimented him well, and we heard just as many Winwood songs as we did Clapton songs during the concert (I think?).

There’s nothing like 17,000 people going wild for the same reason you are: sharing a roof, if only for a few hours, with a guitar legend.

June 28, 2009

SFPride has been busy (and warm) this year. People were out in the streets very late and in large numbers last night all around the city. It helped that it was 75+ until very late in the evening. There would have been plenty of photo opportunities had I brought my camera, but I didn’t want to look after it on BART, on the city streets, and in places where drinks could have been spilled on it. I happened to run into two of my favorite ex roommates at the SAME small house party last night... what were the chances?

There is now an RSS feed on the “About” page showing my recent Twitter updates.

June 27, 2009

The A’s game (vs. the Giants) on Wednesday was nothing special. In fact, we only lasted 6 innings in the evening chill before we decided we’d had enough of seeing the Giants stomp the A’s in game 3. The upshot was that taking BART back to Rockridge was pretty comfortable since there was seating available. Typically, the cars are standing room only after games.

Summer weather is gearing up and it is a toasty 84 degrees in Oakland today. With the hot weather usually comes brilliant sunshine, and my red arms reflect (rather, absorbed) that sunshine after today’s outing.

I decided not to take a camera, but did take another gadget: my GPS 60csx. I barely got it to mount on the Trek crossbike, something I’d never attempted until today. The bike mount for the GPS worked on previous bikes, but the Trek has an odd support bar across the handlebars and makes it hard to mount anything.

Track logs cleared, a friend and I embarked on what I’d hoped to be a 15 mile or longer bike ride through Oakland and Berkeley. Wet met and exceeded the goal on our ride. Below is a Google Earth screenshot of the track. You can click here for an interactive Bikely track. The tracks go a bit farther up the hill in Rockridge than the tracks show. This was intentional - for privacy and all. There’s a good 200-300 foot climb over 1/4 mile that really kicks your ass coming back up (especially after 20 miles!), but that same hill allowed us to coast at 30mph on the way down.

All in all, it was a great ride. The Berkeley marina was nice, as was the trail along the bay and I80. At first, I was thinking it was going to be a very noisy trail, being that it’s 50 feet from the freeway, but traffic on that part of 80 is almost always at a crawl. In fact, it was pretty quiet and winds allows us to chug along still at ~17mph.

We stopped at the farmer’s market on the way back and had some soy substrate tacos and tamales, which tasted good (for a non-meat dish) provided a solid energy boost for the ride back. The Saturday farmers market in Berkeley isn’t a big as I had remembered. The Grand Lake farmers market is huge in comparison but doesn’t have as much variety as the Berkeley market. Where else can you get your pocket knife sharpened, your bike tuned up, and buy kombucha mix on one city block?

Photography tip of the day: A simple way to get color balance right when post processing is to adjust the individual color channels in the Levels adjustment. Often times this will help remove a blue color tinge from an outdoor scene or allow you to (help) fix tungsten-induced white balance issues. Consider using this instead of the “Hue/Saturation” adjustment or the “Photo Filter.” You can find specific instructions by Googling something like “color balance in levels.”

June 24, 2009

Today is a fairly normal day with the exception of an outing for A’s vs. Giants tiebreaker tonight at the Oakland Coliseum. Still undecided on whether or not to bring a camera with me. It is almost certain to be a sold-out crowd, and there are very few times I find myself in the Coliseum when it is truly a full house. There’s no question - coming from a professional point of view - that I will not get any sort of remotely appealing shots of the game, but crowd shots at 18mm (27mm equivalent in 35mm format) would be pretty nice. This will be great especially as a balance is struck between the stadium lights and the fading natural light.

Photography tip of the day: Don’t shoot at eye level. If your goal is to make images that force people to do a double take, don’t take them from the most common possible perspective. Get up high, or shoot from a floor-low perspective. Find a staircase, rafters, or somewhere else (safe!) that you can get a shot from. It’ll stand apart from others. Example here.

June 22, 2009

The goal of today’s outing was to see First Lady Michelle Obama speak at the Moscone Center in SF. Since I was was newly refreshed with a new DSLR, Tim and I thought we might be able to make a story of it for California Beat. The White House (Secret Service, specifically), however, is very strict about how many press credentials they give out, and they didn’t have any extras. If we’d only registered a few days ago, we might have been able to make the cut, but alas....

We did, however, get to have a peek of Arianna Huffington of The Huffington Post speaking at the event this evening. That was a kick.

Afterwards, we sauntered about in the Moscone/YerbaBuena area taking photos and lamenting our inability to see First Lady Obama speak, but we made the best of it. See the photos on Flickr.

There’s one thing I want to make very clear: BART needs to train their staff better as to what their policies are about photographing BART, be it inside or outside of a ticketed area. It is not illegal. Need I repeat? Not illegal. I snapped a pretty good shot of a downward staircase and, while on the escalator downward, got told by the attendant up on the balcony that “flash photography is not allowed.” I said “there’s no flash being used.” She said “there’s no photography allowed.” I didn’t really expect her to come after us, but not 15 seconds later - as we reach the bottom of the escalator - there’s an announcement by a man over the loudspeaker saying that photography is not permitted on BART or BART platforms.

I was told that BART was sued about this at one point and lost. Ticketed or not, BART is a public area. There was a discussion on Flickr about this at some point and management sided with the person, not before admitting that any photography on or around BART is considered suspicious at best. The thread is from 2005 but it’s still worth a read: http://www.flickr.com/groups/muni/discuss/98656/ Don’t let these guys intimidate you.

Photography tip of the day: Consider unlinking exposure lock and focus lock on your DSLR. On most (if not all Nikon DSLRs) as well as many prosumer Canon DSLRs, you can set the * (Canon) or the AF L / AE L button (Nikon) to work in a number of ways for you. I’d recommend setting the extra button for AF. This way, you can compose your AF, and use the half-press of the shutter to lock exposure. You would be surprised how much flexibility is afforded to you if you uncouple these two seemingly integrated functions.

June 20, 2009

Today I went and visited the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), which is something I’ve been meaning to do for some time now. It was very enjoyable and the photos are now up on Flickr.

Traffic in the Bay Area can be unpredictable at times. One spot that’s really bad is the 24 ramp onto 580, and then shortly thereafter the 80 East (Sacramento) / West (SF) junction. It seems some days I can make it door to door - from my house to downtown SF - in 12-15 minutes, but some days it takes 35 minutes or more.

Photography tip of the day: Use reflections to your advantage. You may be able to combine multiple elements of a scene via reflections to really add complexity to your photograph. See this photo as an example: Click here. Apologies in advance for the iPhone photo and its lack of detail/resolution. Only 2 more days until the D40 arrives!

June 18, 2009

Well, I finally got around to creating a Vimeo account. I still think that flash videos are terribly inefficient when it comes to processor usage and frame rate at higher video resolutions. Nonetheless, I’m much happier with the HD quality of my Ferrari 430 Challenge Race video on Vimeo than YouTube. Make sure to check out the HD version.

Other things... I ordered a D40 and it should be here in time for my trip to Europe (and even some extra buffer time, to to speak, to acquaint myself with it before hand).

Photography tip of the day: When doing a panning shot - still or video - make sure that your tripod head is completely parallel with the ground. This will ensure that your horizon stays as level as possible as you pan. You can see spots in the above video where this did and didn’t work.

June 3, 2009

About a month ago I left my job at Aerial Services. My (rather diplomatic) explanation is that the job was not in line with my personal desires and goals. I am glad to have had the chance to work there while but I do not regret leaving. It is what it is....

The upshot of this whole thing is that I get to go to Europe to help teach a course through the UC Davis Summer Abroad program. I’m officially the “on-site coodinator” but will have a chance to teach some photography seminars to students who are interested. Through these travels I will be going to London, Paris, Versailles, Mont Blanc, and Rome. This opportunity sprung up through a little bit of proactive research after I turned in my resignation letter at my prior job.

Since I sold my 20D about 18 months ago to finance my Private Pilot Certificate, I will be needing a dSLR for the trip. A point and shoot might do the job, but I want something with a larger sensor so I have more indoor shooting latitude. I think the Nikon D40 is a perfect candidate at around $410 (new). It’ll take the newer SDHC cards - so I’ll that I’ll need is my 16GB card and I’ll be golden!

Future prospects include work in one of the following countries:
France
Spain
Taiwan
Japan
South Korea

My buddy and I are gearing up to submit applications for various teaching prospects, but we’re a bit apprehensive given the mixed experiences we’ve been hearing from friends.

Some random artful creations I have created recently (but by no means are great):

Guitar licks
Pseudo-tourist video

January 22, 2009

Quite a bit of self-discovery and exploration has brought me back to California, where I am again working in aerial photography, surveillance, and analysis.

Transport Canada is notoriously slow with getting requests taken care of. I sent an application to them shortly after moving to Canada, and they neither acknowledged a receipt of the application nor did they ever charge my credit card the $40 ($45?) for processing. I never did get to fly while I was there.

I’ve been telling everyone that California feels positively tropical after having returned from dry, dry Canada. I don’t consider coastal California a humid place, but when you live for four months in a place where daily elbow chapstick application is required, you definitely notice the humidity upon returning home. I was only half-joking to my friends in Canada about wearing a t-shirt and shorts through the rest of the Californian winter - today was the first day in 3 weeks that actually *necessitated* wearing a long-sleeved shirt, and only because it was raining.

Since returning, I’ve logged 3 hours of flying time in a Cessna 172R: one 1.2 hour familiarization/checkout flight with an instructor, and a gorgeous 1.8 hour scenic flight from Livermore to Monterey (and back, of course). Flying goals for this year:

Become night current and fly at least 20 hours at night
Find and utilize at least 2 fly-in campgrounds or locations where camping is within 2 miles of the airfield
Get a complex endorsement (major $$ required to rent a 182, though)
Get a start on earning an instrument rating

Cheers!

September 12, 2008

Ventures have now taken me to Edmonton, Alberta (Canada) to do graduate work in Linguistics at the University of Alberta. The flying is on pause for now, but I plan to get what is called a FLVC (Foreign License Validation Certificate) so that I can exercise my Private Pilot privileges here. It’s hard to say whether or not the climate (or my wallet) will agree with any sort of regular flying schedule.

April 25, 2008

It’s been quite some time since I’ve last updated this site; I’ve been busy with so many other things.

For 5 months, I’ve been working on my private pilot certificate and finishing my studies at UC Davis. Both are complete as of today.

Today, I took my private pilot practical test, also known as the checkride. I’d spent a lot of time, energy, and money preparing for this fateful day, and I’ve come out of it successful. After about 45 hours total logged time, I have now earned my private pilot certificate. This means I can fly privately – not for hire – any single engine land aircraft under 200 horsepower. There are a few other restrictions as to what I can and can not fly, but this license opens a whole lot of doors.

My first passenger (some say “victim”) and I took a gorgeous flight out to the coast and back. Even with two ascents/descents both for coastal touring and a landing at Santa Rosa (STS), the hobbs meter only read two hours. To be able to see the Sacramento area, the Napa Valley, Calistoga, Santa Rosa, and the coast, and still be home in 2 hours is something you can only do in a plane.