Still on my quest to update and sort my Flickr photostream, and today is a batch of photos taken of various toys & figurines.

This will probably be my last post before Christmas, so Merry Christmas! Have a good one!

Well, the Christmas decorations went up last night and so tonight I had the old camera out.
I will probably take some more over the course of the festive season when time permits.

I would like to wish everyone a merry Christmas!

I recently enrolled in a basic photography course to learn how to use my dslr camera, Canon 400D, properly! After having visited numerous websites in search of a course best suited for my needs, I decided on Fast Forward which specialises in short photography courses. It did not take me long to become completely immersed, obsessively taking my camera everywhere I go and photographing everything I see!

So, in addition to fashion, I will now also devote this website to my photos. I hope you enjoy looking at my precious images as much I had capturing them!

Our first assignment was to look at objects from a new and interesting perspective. Below are some of my better efforts:

Tonight I have managed to finish off my vehicle edits on my Flickr photostream, here are some of the results.

Next update may take me anywhere, it all depends on what category of photos I decide to create next. Stay tuned!

Jeg har lenge hatt lyst på polariseringsfilter til kameraet mitt. Løftet var sterkere farger og mulighet til å fjerne reflekser, spesielt på vann og snø. Nå har jeg kjøpt et sirkulært polariseringsfilter til mitt Canon 400D, og måtte ut for å teste hvordan dette fungerer. Det har en ganske kul effekt på reflekser, selv på en overskyet dag finnes det nok av reflekser å leke med. Sjøen er et opplagt sted å prøve seg frem. Jeg fant også noen høstblader på veien. Nedenfor kan du se resultatet med og uten polariseringseffekten. Etter å ha prøvd det kan jeg ikke si hvor mye jeg gleder meg til å prøve dette på snø og spesielt skibilder. Jeg regner med å få mye bedre tegning både i snøen og på andre detaljer. Fuktig asfalt er også morsomt å prøve seg frem med. Filteret jeg har kjøpt er et Tiffen Circular Polarizer.

Disse bildene er altså tatt på en overskyet dag. Poenget med dem var kun å vise effekten av polariseringsfilteret. De er ikke spesielt skarpe da filteret stjeler en del lys.

På vann er effekten kanskje enda mer tydelig. Bildet er tatt på akkurat samme sted med få sekunders mellomrom. Jeg synes dette var knallmorsomt å oppdage at det faktisk fungerer. Det tar litt tid å venne seg til å vri på filteret men det er bare å prøve seg frem.

Nanjing, China – my first company-sponsored trip. Something I’ve always wanted to have but has elluded me for a few years and in a couple of opportunities. I was once scheduled to go to Germany but unfortunately the trip got cancelled. I thought the Germany trip would be the first time I would actually see snow upfront but what do you know -I would have regretted being such a cold place without proper preparation. Good thing Nanjing was first

I was pretty excited on the week long business trip, so I excited that afterall the researches I made about Nanjing, I forgot to research one of the most important things about the place – the weather!

True, I’ve read it a couple of times. They say Nanjing was one of the furnace cities with extreme temperatures in China. It gets very hot up to 38 degrees celsius when it is hot and it can as cold as somewhere around 0 when it is cold. I kept reading it alot but I haven’t really been in a place that I complained about how cold it was so I didn’t bother much. I was more concerned if it was hot (silly me to forget the ‘actual’ weather before leaving).

So there our group arrived in Nanjing on a rainy Sunday. I was hoping to have sometime to walk around the place before going to work the next day but the rain was very cooperative. We ended up taking a quick nap early at our individual hotel rooms in Jinling Hotel. It’s not a first that I’ve stayed in an expensive 5-star hotel but this one becomes special for me simply because it is abroad and I didn’t have to pay anything!

The room in Jinling Hotel was great. The receptionists were very friendly and helpful. For those who have been in China, you’d know not everyone speaks good english or even to try to speak the language. The receptionists were the only ones I could speak to in English other than of course the people working in our office. They were so helpful that I managed to go to purple mountain park (a 45-minute taxi ride from the hotel) before my trip ended just by myself simply by following how they said the directions in mandarin.

The trip to purple mountain wasn’t very comfortable for me. Who would be? I was in a foreign country by myself on a trip to a remote area and it was raining. I didn’t have my phone’s roaming activated and my phone was dead from the cold weather (2 degrees celsius). The taxi driver wasn’t the most pleasurable host. He didn’t bother to speak with me which works both as a good and bad way since I would have a hard time understanding him anyway.

The day prior to my purple mountain adventure, me and my officemates went to fu zhi miao (confucius temple). It was still raining but the place was very lively. I knew it was quite the red district in the area but my officemates doesn’t seem to realize that at all. So I kept all the knowledge for myself. We bought some stuff and took some pictures in fu zhi miao.

On our way home, we rode on a cab. My friends took the back sit while I was on the front on the passenger’s seat. I tried to speak in mandarin as instructed by the hotel staff, “Jinling fondien” and luckily the driver took off to drive us home. He was quite someone to note, I was about to have nosebleed with all the non-english speaking people around me until this taxi driver started to address me in a broken english manner (broken is better than no-english). He asked me where I came from and when I said I came from Philippines he said he thought I came from Singapore (as he did). He was about my age and though he could speak english (barely) he couldn’t understand me any better. So I started talking broken english as well. My friends would make faces at the back seat because of the language we used but hey I appreciated that guy. He was, among any of the people in nanjing, the friendliest I met. I should’ve taken his calling card to pick me up next time I visit someplace there.

Going back to purple mountain, well one thing the hotel staff missed was he told me there were lots of taxis in the area when there wasn’t any at all. I was hoping the tourist information center would be of help but to my dismay they seem to think I was not the one speaking ‘English’. At that moment, I did believe them that I somehow got fazed by all the chinese speaking people and I didn’t know if I was still speaking my second language good enough. I went around by myself though it was raining. I had the hotel umbrella with me, a tripod, a fur coat and of course my canon D400 camera.

I wanted to take a lot of shots but the weather just wouldn’t allow it. The place was very nice. It would be so so much nicer if I had a girlfriend with me so we can walk together and maybe I can carry her on my back just like in koreanovelas. (cheezy!). It was a really nice place and I learned a lot about chinese history there.

Though it was nice, I found some of the areas scary too. Some of them were actually mausoleums or massacre memorials. Just the names plus the crows’ cries would make me not proceed. I actually didn’t go to all the places because I honestly got scared.

The picture on the top left here is ‘Linggu Temple’. The first time I ‘googled’ Nanjing and saw this temple, I already set my sights to make sure I visit the place -so I did. It was about 8 floors high but I could only go up until the 2nd floor. It wasn’t difficult to go to the upper floors but the place was so eerie and when I realized on top was another mausoleum I descended back to the first floor. The souvenir shops were a bit expensive for my taste. They sold some rocks and art which I thought as nice but a bit too pricey for the value.

I made my way to a few other places in the park (where there were more people) and eventually started to worry about how to go back. I had a 2pm flight and had to be back in Jinling Hotel before lunch time. I found my way to where there were a lot of buses and supposedly taxis too but all I found were buses marked by numbers. I went to the tourist center and they ’seem’ to be telling me take bus no. 46. I didn’t want to take the bus simply because I didn’t know how to say ’stop’ to the bus driver. I was even worrying myself that the bus might take me even deeper into the mountains and I’ll totally get lost. I decided to just try my luck and wait for a taxi. After about 30mins or more, 1 taxi came and I almost had to run after it just to get the ride.

Nanjing is a great place. The weather isn’t very friendly to tourists though. But they have quite a good history and a couple of good friendly people. The aroma of the place is something to get used to but isn’t so bad as what others could say.

Gatto fotografato con Tamron 70-210 a Rocca di Mezzo

Cominciamo dal corpo macchina. L’avrete già sentito, più che nella fotografia analogica nel digitale è fondamentale il corpo macchina. Con l’analogico puoi accontentarti di un meccanismo che ti consenta di impressionare la pellicola, tanto buona parte del risultato dipende dalla velocità e dalla qualità di quest’ultima. Nel digitale no, la pellicola non c’è! La sensibilità è nella macchina stessa. E non parlo solo della sensibilità mascolinamente definita “numero di pixel”, ma anche della velocità, cioè del numero degli iso. Modulando questo valore si riesce ad andare incontro alla luce, a coglierla anche quando si nasconde. Il resto della riuscita della foto poi sta nell’obiettivo usato, ma ne parleremo in separata sede. E ovviamente poi bisogna lavorare di diaframma e tempo di esposizione e soprattutto nell’occhio, per fare un bello scatto, ma questo è chiaro.

La Canon 400d costituiva, nel momento in cui l’ho presa, un modello appena superato dalla 450d.

Ambulante sulla spiaggia di Donoratico con Canon 18-55

Era giunto il momento di prenderla essendo stata riposizionata in una fascia più bassa! Non vi parlerò delle sue caratteristiche, cercatele sul web se siete curiosi. I suoi 10 Megapixel erano più che sufficienti per le mie ambizioni (vi assicuro che la stampa fino ad A3 è assolutamente di ottimo livello), così come il sistema autofocus, il sistema di pulizia del sensione, la sensibilità che fino a 800 ISO è assolutamente di buon livello (e anche a 1600 regge discretamente) e soprattutto la possibilità di riutilizzare le due ottiche che avevo sull’analogica (il canon 38-76 e il tamron 70-210) sono stati gli elementi decisivi.

Il concetto è: se siete alle prime armi, avvicinatevi con i giusti mezzi alla fotografia! Inutile prendere una Ferrari e metterci su delle ruote da Maggiolone, no? In questo caso, inutile per me prendere un corpo macchina di alto livello (e costo) per poi metterci su le ottiche che avevo in precedenza, le quali già non propriamente al top oltre che nate per l’analogico, portate sul digitale avrebbero mostrato tutti i loro limiti con un sensore più elevato! Perchè farmi del male da solo?

Il primo segreto della fotografia Low Cost è sapere ciò che si vuole e, in pratica, conoscere i propri limiti. Si avrà tempo e (si spera) soldi per superarli poi!

Il digitale, infatti, aiuta chi vuole coltivare questa passione a patto che non ci si faccia prendere dalla fregola dell’acquisto compulsivo di materiale elettronico! Coltiviamo l’occhio, affiniamo la tecnica, saliamo di gradino in gradino nella nostra passione. Oggi abbiamo la possibilità di effettuare migliaia di scatti, la nostra velocità di apprendimento è potenzialmente decine di volte superiore a quella di un neofita di 20 anni fa: ma diamoci il giusto tempo. A presto

well i went out shooting locally for the first time in quite a while this arvo!

im really pleased with this shot as i have been wanting to not worry so much about panos on perths crowded beaches, but just tryin to perfect the compositions available and capture amazing light! This light certainly worked in my favour as it bounced off the water and rocks!

Shot with the 10-20mm just before being absolutely drenshed by that white water in the foreground, hence the name!

Photographed by Keith Marshall

A brief stop-off on our way north last week.

– License

Full size image can be seen here : The Pleiades with Canon 400D

M45 in Taurus
12 x 15 minute exposures (3 hours)
Skywatcher 200P Newt / Canon 400D
Sailsbury (Dark sky site)

M45 is also known as the Pleiades or Seven Sisters. Unfortunately in this close up image the full seven are not visible. This is one of the closest star clusters to us, and is clearly visible to the naked eye as a ‘cloudy patch’ in the night sky. The cluster is dominated by hot blue stars which are lighting up the dust cloud they are passing through.

Full size image can be seen here : M33 with Canon 400D

M33 in Triangulum
3 x 15 minute exposures (45 minutes)
Skywatcher 200P Newt / Canon 400D
Salisbury (Dark sky site)

M33, also known as the Triangulum galaxy, has a diameter of about 50,000 light years. It is the third largest galaxy in the Local Group, a group of galaxies that also contains the Milky Way Galaxy and the Andromeda Galaxy, and it may be a gravitationally bound companion of the Andromeda Galaxy.