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Member Since: 8/15/2002

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Monday, May 18, 2009

Tungs'









    


Thursday, July 10, 2008

awwww

Still furiously working on the previous wedding's photos, but here's one from another for a change up
(it is the wedding season after all).

No matter how amazingly cute the bride and groom are, this couple always steals the most aww's.





.edit.

I'm looking at my photos from a different monitor and I clearly need to re-calibrate the one I work on
with something other than my eyeballs.  Oh, how I wish I still had access to a color lab with a $7,000
monitor capable of displaying full Adobe RGB gamut, and almost equally expensive 44" photo printers
that color calibrated themselves.
Anyway, I'm thinking X-Rite's i1/Eye-One LT, as that's seemingly the best for the money.  I've heard
mixed reviews about Pantone's Huey.  Any other colorimeter suggestions?



Friday, May 30, 2008

style

Maybe it's just me, but I get the feeling that people aren't so into the "stylistic" shots anymore
(or were they ever?), with the noise and blur and sepia tone.  I suppose it's a matter of taste
and not over-doing things like many a myspace-ers do with their camera phone shots.  But, if
you botch a decently composed shot, it's a good way to sort-of make up for it.

This shot was 6 stops underexposed, noisy (especially after pulling the exposure back up), and
had camera shake.  So I added in even more noise and blur.  It's definitely not the best photo
of the ones I've finished (I probably could've done without the faux vignette/border), but at
least you can see what's in the frame now.



And that's my philosophy: if you screw up, screw it up worse and then pretend you did it on purpose.


I'll probably add more photos, but working til 1am doesn't give me much time to do a lot of editing,
so it'll be a while.


.edit.

Here's a handful more photos.  I've put em up of facebook too, but facebook just sucks the life and
quality right out of all the photos.  These are better to look at.

















This is it for posting the wedding photos here.  Wait a month and then ask me for the finished
products.



Friday, April 25, 2008

HDR & fireworks

So this is my first attempt at HDR.  Well, the first one that I've ever shown anybody.  This is a technique
I'd like to get good at cause it can yield some interesting results.  This is 6 images, each between 2 and 10
seconds.  My process on this was just using photoshop's merge to HDR function, which was kind of
unimpressive in and of itself.  So I went ahead and did a little custom burning and dodging to flare it up a bit.
I also silhouetted the treeline to make it more dramatic.  The HDR merge did a pretty good job of getting it
into the proper exposure, which unfortunately made it a little bland looking.  Anyway, as a whole, it looks
kind of tame compared to other HDR images that have caught my eye and interest, but I'm pretty sure this
frame exceeds the dynamic range of other pictures I've taken before.  Hopefully, this will give me an excuse
to do a little more shooting and processing.  Please do let me know if you've got any tips on HDR processing.
Oh, I forgot to add that I set the WB on incandescent to get the skies a little bluer.  Almost like having a blue
filter!





Here's just some random photos of fireworks I got to catch the eve of PSU's Blue & White weekend.
There's nothing really special about them.  I just like catching fireworks.  Especially if there are no giant
stadium lights blocking half of them.  Boo.










  


Monday, March 31, 2008

sharp

I've had my eye on Shun knives for a very long time and finally got around to getting a pair:
8" chef and 3.5" paring.  Why Shuns?  Here's an excerpt that's mostly from Chef's Catalog:

Rust-free stainless-steel construction:  The perfect balance of carbon, chromium, cobalt,
manganese, and other steel hardening metals, VG-10 "super steel" holds an incredibly sharp
edge longer for easier edge maintenance. Shun knives earn a superior Rockwell Hardness
rating of 61 [high quality western knives average a hardness rating of 53-57].

Razor-sharp edges:  Shun knives are ground to a 16° angle for extreme sharpness. The best
German knives are only ground to a 22° angle.

For more info, Alton Brown can fill you in on details about the knives and how to use em.














The wave pattern on the knives is a result of how they are constructed; 16 layers of SUS410
high carbon stainless steel pounded to 3/1000th of an inch and then clad on each side of the
VG-10 core.  Hot.  Traditional samurai swords were also made with this layering technique.
Extra hot.

The block of wood that the knives are stuck to is a Mag-blok made of bloodwood and coated
in a food-safe satin finish.  Knife blocks are insanely hard to clean and if you don't properly
clean and then dry your knives before you put em in, you might as well be perpetuating your
own bacteria farm.   Standard knife magnets have bare metals or magnet strips exposed, which
can chip/dent/scratch your knife blades.  Not hot.  You're typically supposed to keep the blade
tips up when storing them on a knife magnet (in case it falls so a: it won't chip the blade and b:
you won't chance losing a toe).  Unfortunately, my kitchen counter makes this impossible for me
as there is no room for the handles.  Also not hot.




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