Nothing gives more pleasure than taking pictures of people, ok I love landscapes but to be able to capture a persons look is something unique. A couple of weeks ago I went to Coimbra, I was going to do a photo session of someone really special.

When I arrived I must admit I was a bit nervous, its not everyday that you get meet a Princess . Mariana was born this month, a lovely child already showing a strong personality.

I took advantage of the ambient light that was coming from a big window in the bedroom and I just used a reflector to fill some shadows.

Mommy and her Princess.

She was looking for something or someone, it had to be Mommy or Dad.

I know who’s gonna have a great Christmas this year, and the years to come.

Keep shooting,

Bruno.

Dark Chocolate and Coconut Truffle Trio with French Dessert Wine

Food Creation, Preparation and Prop

Well I wasn’t involved in the actual making of the truffles so I can’t talk that much about it (it’s her secret recipe ). One thing I know is that she use bits of orange peels so the truffles actually have a dash of citrus taste when you eat it. But I digress. 

Initially I was trying to use my other verrine that I used in my previous post. However I could only fit two truffles into it and the formation didn’t look good. It’s like two chocolate balls hanging in the glass with no purpose. Anyway I did try to use different combination of truffles, use two verrines with two dark chocs and the other verrine with two coconut truffles but they just didn’t work. So I gave up using my favourite verrine and settle with this tall verrine. It turns out that fits exactly three truffles into it. Perfect! 

Now that I decided on the verrine I need to decide on what combination of truffles to put it. Assuming I’m going to use one verrine, I have several choices: all three in dark choc, all three in coconut, alternate dark – white – dark, and alternate white - dark – white. I voted for the alternate colour one – it would be a waste for me not to use the available combination. And I just happen to like the dark choc more so I chose the dark – white – dark combination. 

I always associate dark chocolate with elegant dessert finishing off a fine three course dinner. So again, low key setup come into mind.  What else comes with dark choc? Dessert wine maybe? What? of course it’s French dessert wine! It’s also an excuse for me to use my favourite verrine in this shot. 

Also notice that I create a similar copy of the main setup and put it as a background. 

The shooting 

Camera is rather in low angle position to accentuate the height of the verrine. Softbox is at 2-3 o’clock pointing down 45 degree from the top. I did try to lower the softbox to light the verrine from the side but the reflections are so bad that I abandon the idea straight away. 

The camera is set to F3.5 1/25th at ISO100. 

Observation 

The dessert wine is slightly out of focus, which is delibarate. I made them both in focus at first but find them competing with other for attention so I opened up the aperture a bit to throw the dessert wine a bit off focus. 

Also I angled the camera so that the bottom dark choc has the white plate as it’s background and the middle coconut truffle has the black background. Now I did have problem with the top dark choc truffle because it is dark and the background is also dark, giving a bad contrast – you can hardly see the edge of the top truffle. This is the main reason why I create a second copy of the setup and put it in the background. I positioned the second copy so that the top truffle has something bright as background. 

Also noticed that the top right part of the glass have some choc powder on the glass surface. That’s deliberate otherwise I couldn’t get the edge of the glass visible enough against the background. 

There you go, my last verrine project for the year. I hope you enjoy it and Merry Christmas everyone!

MIDNIGHT SUN REFLECTOR

The BIG 6 and the BIG 8

The BIG series is our most COLOSSAL and TECHNOLOGICALLY ADVANCED line of growing reflectors yet. It has a glass size of 38.875” X 28.375” and a total size of 42” x 28.5”. It is UNRIVALLED in terms of QUALITY and DESIGN in the world of growing reflectors.

One socket assembly with a 1000 watt bulb.

Modify to a two socket assembly with two 600 watt bulbs. Large enough to fit two 1000 watt.

Also, If you look at the rounded corners of our micro dimple panel, in the above pictures, the only real 95% reflective material in the industry, it is designed to generate airflow swirls which assist the evacuation of hot air.

The V-shape in the center is designed for cold air to pass under the reflector shield in order to cool in between the top and the shield. It works as insulation so that the outside top doesn’t become too hot. We call it the Turbo Cooler. Another of our inventions is a deflector at the end of the 1000 watt bulb that will deflect downward the inside light that would usually be lost in the 6’’ or 8’’ hole.

For additional product information, visit: www.midnightsunreflector.com.

First, thought of playing with some colors backlighting but it was too ambitious in my tiny small room. Change the plan and me them all white instead.

Setup:

1 X Nissin Di622 for head light, behind left.

1X Nisson Di622 for Side light from the model’s left.

1 X Sb800 Shoot thru umbrella @ the top front with reflector below the model.

Click Here for a beach slideshow!!!

Photo notes: light source is Cam’s dining room window, image shot with my Nikon N2020, vaseline smeared on skylight filter for soft-focus effect. In the second shot, Cam had her back to the window and I used a piece of white cardboard (covered in aluminum foil, dull side up) to bounce the available light back into her face. 35mm slides scanned by ScanCafe.com

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

Maniac5, originally uploaded by sizzled.

this dude was not riding a bike, he’s just that far ahead of the rest of us. 2011=the year of the reflector snapback

Getting back from a day out early one evening gave me the chance to image the moon that was high in the sky, whilst there was still some colour blue/light left.

Viewing the moon can gve some interesting results in daylight (from what I’ve read!) so I dragged the Skywatcher 130 down to the front of the house and brought the digital camera as well.

As I’d spent some time prviously setting up the polar alignment, adjusting the RA/Dec axis proved extremely easy, in using only one adjustment to keep the moon in view. I’d also sorted out the red dot finder alignment, so I got an immediate view through the 20mm lens.

I took several shots with my camera, again employing the Heath-Robinson method of simply shoving the camera lens at the eye piece and firing off shots, with various adjustments to the exposure control. This is known as the ‘afocal’ method. The best of the images is below, unforunately the ’seeing’ wasn’t brilliant so I resolved to get a decent view from the lens I hadn’t really tried yet: the 2mm.

This was the first time that the view really came into its own and I was able to image large areas of the surface as it made its transit across the sky. The view through the 2mm lens can be seen at the bottom of this post. It was difficult to get the camera to capture an image, much adjustment using the afocal method was made and after this shot the batteries gave out on the camera and that was the end of the image capture session.

Coming up next: looking at methods to fix the camera to the eyepiece and Christmas shopping for the Astronomy amateur…

Posted by Wordmobi

Ho trovato questo video a proposito di un argomento davvero fondamentale : come riuscire a far rientrare un pannello riflettente pieghevole nella sua custodia…

Ci hai mai provato ? Mica banale

E poi l’accento british di questo tipo è davvero fantastico.

Food Creation and Preparation

The cooking is easy. The zucchini is chopped into inches, boiled, then processed using food processor. To my surprise, the puree come out straight with enough consistency for easy filling into the verrine – not to runny, not to viscous. Now, since this was originally cooked as a real dish, I boiled the zucchini in chicken broth to give a bit of flavour. The consequence is that it becomes oily, and it is really a pain if it sticks on the the part of the glass that is supposed to be clean. Windex helped, but still pain.

The rest is straight forward. Put a bit of mayo and dried and finely chopped coriander on top.

Food Preparation

Composition

As I said before, I am feeling creative today. Repetition can be boring, but sometimes it reinforces ideas. That’s what I’m trying to do here. Six identical verrines in the frame and that’s it. No other prop this time, only repetition (or pattern if you like) of the six verrine in some arrangement. Now this is a classic curve that leads the eye from the background spiraling clockwise to the foreground and end up at the bottom left of the frame. It looks quite natural to me, but I am wondering if left handed people would find counter-clockwise arrangement more natural. Anyone?

 The Shooting

Camera angle is normal, ie approx 25-30 cm above the surface set at F4 at 1/50 ISO100. Light is at 9 o’clock with reflector at 4 o’clock. I really need to play around with the position of the light and the reflector to make sure that the main subject – ie the glass in front - has a clearly visible edge definition. Glass is hard to be photographed in this sense. If the positioning of the lighting is not right, the glass seems to “blend” in with the backgroun (because it’s transparent). There is this technique that I read in the book “Light: Science and Magic” by Fil Hunter and Paul Fuqua. They dedicate a whole chapter detailing how to light transparent objects so that the edge definition is clearly visible. Highly recommended.

Lighting Setup

Observation

As I mentioned before, repetition can be boring but sometime it can reinforce ideas. There is a subtle balance between them. To many of them, the repetition become boring. To few, the reinforcement of the idea just didn’t happen. What I believe also, particularly in this case, is the number of item in the repetition. In my previous post about profiteroles, I mentioned that I prefered to use an odd number of item in the repetition since it is somehow “off balance” because it’s not even and therefore makes thing interesting. I did start with 5 verrines in this setup but then when I play around with 6, I think it turned out to be ok too. So even number works as well, but I can’t really pinpoint what or when to use odd or even. Maybe the fact that it arrangement is curved has influence on it. Any takers?

Recently I had bought a Nissin Di622 for strobing purpose from Mitmivec – Eric. To summarize it, the flash has a rather slow recharge speed. It is good to use for strobe, but not really for event covering. As usual, I still prefer to have the own party flashes to stay on the camera’s hot shoe. Else, it is fine to trigger via Radio Trigger or Optical trigger.

Other than that, to fullfill my needs, I had DIY some color film that can work as gel and to be used on the flash. That was how I create these two photos. By using the color films on the top of stofen. The ingredients are listed in the DIY GEL for flashes.

As usual, the setup will be shared. This time I had draw it into a pcs of paper and scan into computer. First it is easier to keep track on what I had did before, and also I may need similar setup in future. Here the setup for this round and please forgive my ugly drawing:

Note: Both flash doesn’t really direct flash to the Chivas. To avoid reflection, it is somehow the feather light hit on the chivas.

Since the gel is on top of stofen, there are still some white color flash to be produced. The reflector is to reflect some of these lights to fill some lights on the Chivas.

Please feel free to comment on the setup. You may have better idea and help me to do better. Thanks in advanced

Caramelised banana, frozen raspberry, and white chocolate truffle

Food Preparation/Creation

The longest part of the prep is the caramelisation of the banana pieces. After cutting the banana into small pieces, I rolled them on a bowl of caster sugar and use chopstick to pick it up and put it on the open flame to burn the sugar until it caramelised. And I have to do it one by one. I wish I had a butane flame blower to do this – much much quicker. Then I let them cool before I put them into the verrine.

The rest is really easy. A couple of pieces of raspberry and then the white choc truffle. I had this white choc truffle that my wife made as part of her French Pattisserie class (how convenient). Then I top it up it a mini mint leaves from my herb pot.

That all sound easy, but I did have to assemble the verrine twice. If you’ve dealt with frozen raspberry before, you’ll know that it doesn’t stay frozen too long. Adding on top of that, I was shooting on one the hottest day in Sydney that time (the temperature peaks at 41 degree Celcius that day). So what happened was I did my first verrine fine and beautiful with the truffle pop out a little bit higher than the verrine glass. As I prepare the scene and the props, etc the truffle has sunk to half the height of the verrine glass. The raspberry layer just get squashed as the raspberries reach the room temperature and become really soft. I decided to keep going and finalise my props before I make the second version. Gotta be quick with frozen stuff. That’s one of the hard part in shooting food stuff.

The Shooting

As with the props, I choose to put a cup of black coffee on the background along with a relatively sizeable sugar container. I wanted to convey the dinner mood at the dessert time. The sugar container sort of reinforce the “sweetness” of the dessert – at the same time balanced out by a black coffee, giving a bit of that coffee-bitter taste so that the overal scene is not to “sweet”.

I also deliberately choose black coloured coffee cup so it almost “blends” in with the dark background and doesn’t become distracting. With the big sugar container, I wasn’t quite sure about it initially because I thought it could be distracting because it’s going to look like a big bright blob at the background. But it kinda turned out ok I think. Maybe the neutral colour with some blurred writings on it makes it work. It sort of draw your eye away a bit from the verrine so forcing your eyes to explore the entire frame a bit more instead of just fixated on the verrine glass.

Camera is really at low angle this time to accentuate the height of the verrine. Also, with low angle, the layer is more visible as is, ie not “squashed” because of the high angle perspective. I did play a bit with exposure to make sure that the frozen ice layer on the raspberry is correctly exposed.

I covered the surface with black cloth to create the low key shot. Soft light is positioned at the usual 10 o’clock direction. Big reflector from 4 o’clock direction elevated quite high so it doesn’t produce a reflection on the glass. I also choose to use portrait orientation because I thought it goes better with the shape of the verrine.

Camera settings are 100mm at F5.6 1/4 second at ISO100.

Observation

A bit of reflection of coffee cup on the glass – again I left it as is. A spot highlight appears on the bottom right of the glass, casting a bright spotlight on the dark surface. I find it quite interesting. Obviously it comes from the softbox and get refracted that way. I’m still trying to get my feel on the type of the verrine glass that’s suitable for dessert or savoury. Some says tall verrines are good for savoury whereas low wide verrines are good for dessert. I deliberately make it the otherway around this time. What’s your take?

Buenas!

Vuelvo a la carga, después de poner el making off de la sesión en la minúscula ducha os presento mi artilugio patentado ·reflector 2000″ jajajaja. Bueno, me dejo de chorradas y me pongo a explicar.

Cuando nos hemos comprado una “peasso” de cámara, nos hemos dejado un pastón en ella y en los correspondientes objetivos…salimos por ahí entusiasmados a hacer fotos, y ¡que fotos hacemos! “Qué pasada, no hay ni punto de comparación con la del llidll” pensamos xD. JODER! Pues claro jaja porque sino iba a haber una diferencia de precio tan bestial…pero claro, nos empezamos a perder por los menús, no sabemos como desactivar el flash cuando antes era muy fácil…etc. Y llega el día en el que hay comida familiar en casa y tu sacas tu pepinaco de cámara para fardar, y empiezas a hacer fotos a lo loco. Al día siguiente de resaca causada por la sobremesa  , vamos al PC y pasamos las fotos de la cámara. Nos poneos a verlas y vemos que no quedan del todo bien, que las personas quedan muy iluminadas mientras que el fondo queda oscuro y feo. Tal que así (vale, imaginar que mi mano es la cabeza de alguien y mi brazo el cuerpo xD jajaja):

Queda claro lo que quiero decir, ¿no? Podéis observar que la mano queda bien iluminada, incluso demasiado brillante (la distancia de la mano al objetivo es aproximadamente de dos palmos). ¿Como solucionar esto? Fácil, muy fácil, más de lo que te puedas imaginar, aunque solo sirve para fotografiar en interiores con el techo no muy alto.

Explicación científica : Lo que vamos a hacer es recoger toda la luz que proyecta el flash de la cámara y vamos a hacerlo rebotar unos 45º hacía el techo, y que de ahí vuelva a rebotar iluminando toda la sala que tenemos delante de la cámara (esto no serviría en un techo negro pues la luz sería absorbida por el color; pero…¿Quién tiene el techo de su casa negro? jaja). Fijaros en el es esquema de aquí abajo:

Y compararlo con el que hay justo debajo de esta línea:

¿Veis alguna diferencia? Esta claro que SI! Las lineas blancas representan la luz emitida por el flash (a modo esquemático claro está). La situación es que nos ha tocado fotografiar a Patricia Conde en paños menores, lo más normal del mundo, y queremos que detrás aparezca ese árbol porque le da un tono alegre y de color a la toma, incluso salvaje, quien sabe (tomarlo como un ejemplo práctico )… Tal y como he explicado antes si realizáramos la toma con el flash directamente nos saldría mal iluminada, como el primer ejemplo que puse con mi mano; aparecería Patricia Conde demasiado iluminada y el fondo oscuro. Sin embargo en el segundo esquema veis que la cámara tiene en la parte superior, donde está el flash un pequeño artilugio (que ahora explicaré más a fondo), y que hay más lineas y por lo tanto más luz. Al rebotar la luz del flash en la mierda esa (que pasa, la llamo como quiero xD jaja) lo que hace es difuminar la luz y esparcirla hacia el techo, y por tanto en el techo vuelve a rebotar y se vuelve a disipar la luz, cubriendo un mayor ángulo de iluminación accediendo incluso detrás de nuestra mujercilla en pelotas e iluminando el árbol.

Hasta aquí la chapa de lo que hace el invento, ¿alguna duda? Pues tomen nota que entra en el examen del jueves jajaja. Y te estarás preguntando, “¿pero el tarao este de que “cohones” va? Quiere decir de una vez como hacer eso!!!” Passienssia, pequeño padawan xD, a ello voy.

Los flashes profesionales por decirlo así pueden rotar el foco y dirigirlo donde quieran, pero los que no tenemos el lujo de poder tener uno de esos nos lo tenemos que inventar. Lo primero de todo, pilla un cacho de cartón, una miaja no! Un cacho elegante, y unas tijeras también! Os dejo un modelo aquí abajo y lo explico:

No está a escala, así que no lo cojáis y lo imprimáis porque no os valdrá.Esto es lo que recortareis en el cartón que habéis cogido (el de una caja de cereales va de perlas).  Se aprecia que la parte inferior es más estrecha que la superior, esto es porque por la parte inferior es por donde lo engancharemos a la cámara (ahí cada uno que mire su cámara y lo adapte, yo tengo esa solapa y lo he adaptado para que forme un ángulo de 45 grados con la horizontal al engancharlo, cuando lo quiero usar lo engancho con el alambre de cierre del pan bimbo, pero hay millones de posibilidades); y la parte superior, que tiene una forma de cono y ensanche recto al final será lo que reflecte la luz que salga del flash. Esta parte la cubriremos con papel para envolver bocatas,  vamos, el metálico, si ese! justo el que estas pensando jaja. Hay que pegarlo con pegamento de barra y que quede bien fijado, con las menos arrugas posibles. El resultado final puede diferir según la persona, pero os tiene que quedar algo así:

Y para acabar, una demostración de como mejora la primera foto con este aparatito.

Si os ha gustado el post pasarlo a todos los amigos o compañeros, seguro que les será util

Un saludo

PD: fran, si, actua de difusor xD jajaja

I have to start using Reflector.  Its really easy and straightforward.  For some reason I had it confused with Ildasm, which is a bit more work.

On the other hand, maybe Reflector answers questions I’m not interested in.  I can see how easy it is to use, but even when my colleague was using it, he was looking into something I was just as happy to ignore.

Maybe its too easy.  Each time he figured out something it only led to more questions.  If you dig into .Net, its endless.  I think I’ll just be happy it works and not always wonder why.

In his latest blog Paul Blogush writes:

"The work that the kids do that is the best is always based on spontaneous ideas, not the ones that are slowly shaped over time, edited and revised.

It seems as though sudden light bulb moments create an energy within them that carries through to the end."

Ain’t it soooo true!

Paul is on the verge of creating an experiment around this observation in his classroom and this got me thinking…

As an activist (and low natural reflector) I tend not to leave much downtime either for myself or those I encourage to learn. However, I too have been experimenting recently and the results have been impressive.

• Allowing natural pauses during coaching conversations => my learner taking a more leading role in the conversation
• Allowing time for a room full of learners to play with a new software tool at their own pace => great questions and more learning than if I hand-held them step by step
• Going for a run after a break of 5 months => 3 quality implementable ideas
• Cycling to the shops in middle of working day => renewed enthusiasm to engage with task in hand
• Listening to same CD over and over again on long journeys => amazing creative insights
• Slowing the pace of my day to day existence => enjoying the time spent with loved ones even if doing no more than cuddled on the sofa watching CBeebies.

Add a comment below to share what have you done recently to create energy.

It seems that quite some people find my blog thru the topic Create your own softbox So I thought to my self; well I could try to keep you here or I supply you lot with some good links to other topics with DIY softboxes. I choose the latter, so here we go:

• DIYPhotography — Best softbox ever
• Softbox from an umbrella
• Another DIYPhotography softbox
• Flash diffuser

Most of those links require you to buy something in a store you usually don’t have around the house. You don’t have to follow their instructions step b step of course. For instance, take the last link, they used hook-and-loop fasteners but you could also just use a stapler. What I’m saying is be creative! Fast, quick and easy solutions are sometimes the best (I said sometimes! Not all the time )

I also found this reflector to be pretty cool. Anyway good luck with making your own equipment!

Now, I know I’m touching a very sensitive issue here. What I mean is this: There are two types of food photographer. The first type is what I called the “purists”. They insist shooting the food “as is”, made without any modification to the recipe. This is sort of an equivalent of a “candid” shot in the world of portrait photography.

The other type is the what I called the “fashionist”. Their goal is to make the food look best in the final image, and are prepared to do whatever modification needed in the process of the food preparation – and more often than not will render to food inedible. They do things like spraying glycerin on top of pancakes so that the honey on the top doesn’t get absorbed into the pancake and therefore make it “saggy”. Yes, things like that.

Which one is better? None, really. Each has their own good and bad. But I find that I need to be able to switch back and forth between this type to really produce an acceptable food shot – like in this project, as we shall see. But here is the final shot.

Butterfly pasta (farfalle) with vegetables

Food creation/preparation

As mentioned before, initially I followed th recipe to make the verrine – ala the “purist”. I pan fried the eggplant with some olive oil that serves as the bottom layer. I also pan fried some slices of zucchini for the second layer – again with some olive oil. Finally, I boiled the butterfly pasta - until al dente of course – in some salt and olive oil – as it’s supposed to be.

You can see that I mentioned olive oil a lot of time, because – as you may already guess it – that’s the thing that causes me grieve when assembling the verrine. They just make the glass so smudgy. I spend litterally hours to make a reasonable arrangement for shooting. And even after that, I have to spend hours in post processing to remove the little oil drops that sticks on the inner glass wall. And worse, at the end, I just don’t think it’s good enough. So I decided to remake it again – with the “fashionist” approach.

The second time around, I went pretty radical. The eggplant base layer is raw, and also the zucchini slices. Being raw make the assembling so much easier and they don’t seem to leave nasty oily marks on the glass wall.  Also, the raw eggplant is more “solid” compared to the pan-fried-with-olive-oil version which is much softer much like a saggy sofa for the layer above. The solid raw version proof to provide a good base for the second layer of zucchini. It sort of prevent the zucchini slices to sink into the eggplant layer.

The same thing applies for the zucchini slices. Raw slices are much more solid, ie not as soft – this in turn provide a good base for the pasta and tomato halves on the top layer. 

For a bit more decoration I put a couple of pine nuts under the grill of few minutes to bring out the dark orangish colour.  And for the final steps, I poured the olive oil so it soaks down into the base layer. The eggplant will just absorbs the oil, giving the appearance that it’s just been cooked.

Props

I decided to go high key this time and in portrait orientation. This leaves me with quite a lot of empty spaces on the top of the frame, so I scatter some of the raw ingredients that makes up the verrine arround the empty space. I think it works quite well. I’m really warming up to this approach now – ie prop with the raw ingredients. We’ll see how well it work in the next project.

The shooting

Camera is set to F4 at 1/20 ISO200. As usual, I use my 100mm macro to shoot this. I decided to set the angle a bit higher so that the top part is a little bit more visible. Lighting is placed at 10 o’clock direction, but quite elevated – it’s pointing down approximately 45 degree to the subject. I am trying to get the top ring of the glass to lit up. Well it does, but the effect is not as visible because the high key setup. Maybe I’ll try again in the next low key project. A big reflector at 4 o’clock direction, also held quite high so it doesn’t form a reflection on the surface of the glass.

I didn’t take a shot of the setup this time – I didn’t remember until I almost finish clean up! I’ll try to remember next time.

Observation

I actually change the glass between my first (failed) attempt to the second. In the first attempt the glass that I used has quite a thick wall. I found this to be a disadvantage. When the glass is thick, and say you put a haf-tomato facing the glass wall, the tomato appear to “float” in the glass. In the final shot above I used a glass with thin wall. I think it works quite well.

Going back to the “purist” vs “fashionist” discussion, I really think being able to switch back and forth is a great advantage. To say the purists are wrong is like saying that shooting candid shot of people are non-sense. Equivalently, to say the fashionists are wrong is like saying people cannot put on make up to be photographed. I probably put myself more on the fashionist side – which side are you on?

Charles Lamb

Born February 10, 1775, London—died December 27, 1834, Edmonton, Middlesex.  Essayist and critic, best known for his series of miscellaneous “Essay of Elia,” but also among the greatest of English letter writers, and a perceptive literary critic.

Lamb’s father, a scrivener, acted as confidential clerk to Samuel Salt, a bencher of London’s Inner Temple.  The boy read avidly among Salt’s books, and at the age of seven went to school at Christ’s Hospital,  where he studied until 1789.  He was a near contemporary there of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, with whom he began what was to be a lifelong friendship, and of Leigh Hunt. 

He was a good scholar, and but for a stutter would probably have proceeded to holy orders.  Instead, he left school, just before the age of 15 and in 1792 found employment as a clerk at India House, remaining there until retirement in 1825.  In 1796 Lamb’s sister, Mary, in a fit of madness (which was to prove recurrent) killed their mother.  Lamb reacted with courage and loyalty, taking on himself the burden of looking after Mary, and being rewarded by her affectionate devotion.

Lamb’s first appearances in print were as a poet, with contributions to collections by Coleridge (1796) and by Charles Lloyd (1798).  A Tale of Rosamund Gray, a prose romance appeared in 1798, and in 1802 he published John Woodvil, a poetic tragedy.  None of these publications brought him much fame or fortune.  “The Old Familiar Faces” (1789) remains his best known poem, although “On an Infant Dying as soon as it was born” (1828) is his finest poetic achievement. 

In 1807 lamb and his sister published, at the invitation of William Godwin, Tales from Shakespear, a retelling of the plays for children.  The next year came a similarly conceived version of the Odyssey, called The Adventures of Ulysses, and in 1809 Mrs. Leicester’s School, a collection of stories supposedly told by pupils of a school in Hertfordshire.

Concurrently with these collaborative works,  Lamb published Specimens of English Dramatic Poets Who Lived About the Time of Shakespear, a selection of scenes, much edited, from the Elizabeth drama.  The Specimens included some passages of implicit criticism, and Lamb also contributed critical papers  on Shakespeare and on Hogarth to Leigh Hunt’s Reflector.  The only lengthy piece of criticism that he undertook, on Wordsworth’s Excursion, was characteristically “gelded” by William Gifford, editor of the Quarterly Review, in which publication it appeared.  

After weeks of waiting, the conditions were perfect to view a near-full moon, high in the sky and with dark skies, not affected by light pollution.

Out came the telescope, set up at the front of the house. I fitted the 20mm lens and aimed roughly for the moon. However, frustration set in as despite the moon being in clear view, I could not get it in view, in the viewfinder. After 10 minutes of panning the scope around the sky, I eventually found it purely by chance and wow, what a view!

With the disc in full view in the viewfinder, all the craters and maria were revealed in sharp detail. Changing to smaller lenses brought more of the moon into view, along with the aiming problem. I’ve come to realise that I have some problem where the red dot finder is completely out of alignment and I need to re-calibrate it so that I can aim the scope correctly.

The 2mm lens is proving to be of limited use at the moment, because even though the seeing conditions at lower levels of magnification were fine, the 2mm lens revealed a shimmer in the atmosphere, so I changed back to a 5mm lens.

Grabbing the opportunity to try some direct digital imaging, I got my camera (a Canon S2IS) out and gently pressed its lens against the lens on the telescope. After some moving around of the camera against the lens and some alterations to the camera focal length and aperture (either f3.5 1/60 or f3.2 at 1/60), I managed to capture the following shots:-

The images have had a little post-processing applied to highlight the dark and light areas of the image, but for a first attempt, I’m pretty pleased and take some inspiration from the attempt.

I must really try and get this red dot finder problem sorted out though…

From a distance, your hands look perfect. Tapered fingers that lead to cuticles of white moons, nails of pearls. A silver ring looping over your middle finger. I listen as you tell me I’m a Reflector with Activist instincts. There’s nodding, apparently it’s true. I’m a known entity and I admire your insights. There’s no clock in the room. We tell the time through conversations ending. Later I observe that it’s fake, the nails are stuck on. I see the glue, the orange streak along your forearm. Your smile is permanent. I wonder what it is that makes you happy.

The other day, a work colleague asked for my assistance regarding a problem installing TeamReview 1.1.2 (for Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2).

The error related to “TeamReview.VSNetAddIn.Addin”, with:

System.InvalidOperationException: Method failed with unexpected error code 3.

This error message is not very helpful, so I decided to use my friends Reflector and LinqPad to help me look for the offending code and then quickly execute and replicate the exception.

To cut a long story short, I discovered that the exception occurs under Windows 7 when the following Visual Studio add-in folder does not exist:

C:\Users\[Your User Name]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\MSEnvShared\Addins”

This equates to:

%APPDATA%\Microsoft\MSEnvShared\AddIns

The problem also happens on Windows XP:

C:\Documents and Settings\[Your User Name]\Application Data\Microsoft\MSEnvShared\AddIns

In order to resolve the issue, manually create the folders through Windows Explorer or run the following command:

mkdir %APPDATA%\Microsoft\MSEnvShared\AddIns

Another work colleague has now raised this issue on the TeamReview CodePlex site.

So… First off,
Do enjoy this song…
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Candy Boy by Meilin
*And I know I should be burnt at the stake for using a pink border… But I felt the need to irritate*
Hmm… Seems like YouTube borders don’t work in this theme.
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Then check out my old post to see what Candy Boy is about.
If a link this long doesn’t get you to click on it, I don’t know what will. Lol!

And finally, here are some figure spams. Lol…
*Couldn’t think of an introduction for this post.*
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Yukino Sakurai 1/8
Good Smile Company
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Tap that! Xp
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As usual, more at flickr set.
One more thing, Yuri Lesbian Anime iz the RoxXors!!? This is probably the ONE time I will approve of incest in animes.
Lol!
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Ok, honestly though, can anyone guess what is wrong with the photo’s above?
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Anyone?
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How about if I show this picture?

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Beet! Times up. The FREAKING PROBLEM is I am missing a YURI sister! Kanade Sakurai! The supplier received INSUFFICIENT Kanade and I could NOT get my hands on one. DESPITE pre-ordering her since MAY!
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Oh well.. Supplier says they will try and get more. Let’s see how it goes.
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And hence, Yukino joins my Pedo corner… MuahHAhaHaha!

I’ve reached the 3rd episode of Aoi Hana and I’ve got one question I want to ask everyone… Isn’t there anyone who is straight in the anime?!!!
At some point, I’m wondering if this is how Japan could implementing birth control if they ever need to. But still, I would looove to go to whatever school that is. OMG! Countless lesbians.
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Last for the day, I kind of swiped a piece of plastic from work today.

Suppose to work as a reflector for whatever photoshoot in the future. I tried it out on the Yukino Shoot above. Seems to be able to bounce enough light. Can’t wait for my next photoshoot now. Xp
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My mind was elsewhere when you asked me about my default printer. I don’t have the right one. I have the wrong one. I wanted to know why, but you could not explain. Heads turned, also needing an answer. How can something change overnight? We need routine here. A solution would come, you promised. I saw how you described my needs on your clipboard, both names spelt incorrectly and a dash leading to a series of numbers. This is how you represent my needs. I want to throw off my coat and the cold air to fall on my skin.

Un interessante video sulla gestione della luce naturale con l’ausilio di riflessi.

Molto pro !