Poppies
Taken on Saturday, June 2nd, 2007 at the Santa Barbara Zoo in Santa Barbara, CA with the help of Erik's 75-300 zoom lens. Thanks, Erik!
On Sunday evening, Erik dragged me out of his dorm room and we went for a photo stroll out on the beach just a few minutes' walk from his door. Amazing.
The UCSB campus is really an incredible place. Erik is fortunate enough to have a spacious single dorm room with a window facing a lovely green courtyard and, just beyond, the deep blue Pacific Ocean. I'll admit that I won't miss cramming into an extra-long twin bed with him come June when he finishes his Masters' degree, but I'm gonna really miss the sound of the surf crashing below us in the middle of the night. I very much doubt we'll have that luxury where we're moving.
So a few days ago, I read instructions on the website of wünderkind Mike Matas on how he went about creating the 20" x 30" poster made up of 98 photos that hangs on his apartment wall.
I found the concept immediately fascinating, and linked to it here on my site just so I wouldn't forget about it. I had to have one of my very own, so I spent far too long on Monday night importing photos into iPhoto, putting together the 98-photo mosaic and attempting the exporting. I was working on my G3 800mHz iBook (with 256mb RAM), so the wait was rather long, and creating the pdf was not easy-coming.
In any case, by Tuesday evening I had a finished product, and I ordered a "life poster" (as Mike refers to it) of my very own making. I was insanely surpised to see that it had shipped the very next morning! I'm anxious to see the hard copy results, but if it's anything like I imagine it is, I'll be trying to find more occassions to give these as gifts.
Kudos again to Mike; between this and his work on the Delicious Library, this kid appears to be on the razor-sharp cutting edge of things.
Tracey over at Sh1ft.org has put together the May Day Project, which is set for this Saturday (May 10 2003). This is going to be a little tough for me, as I normally spend Saturdays in bed, sleeping, and occassionally waking up long enough to read a little or watch a DVD. This project will (hopefully) encourage me to actually get up and out of the house, to spare you the boring stuff.
Oh, and I also encourage you to go visit Tracey's photoblog, 'cuz it always has something beautiful up.
Thanks to the lovely Heather over at Dooce.com and her equally-lovely husband, Jon, I have managed to learn my very first Photoshop trick! It is her "Lovely Glow Effect" and it has opened my eyes to a whole new world. Above are the results. The original photo is on the left, the effected photo on the right.
The folks over at Lomography.com have come up with yet another great marketing-scheme... the BelOMO Vilia, a camera with a "'Triplet' multi-element glass lens that yields dazzling saturation and excellent sharpness'". Whatever that means.
Am I tempted? Of course! Will I buy? Doubtful. But they're US$85, and you can buy one here. If you do purchase one, I'd be interested in knowing what the results really are.
Today marks my first entry to Theme Thursday. I guess I'm just not feeling very creative today, and since I'm only starting out at this whole photography thing, I don't really have much of a portfolio to pull from, at least not of scanned photos. Anyway, here's the entry. I found that the word "music" looks weird in this photo, like some alien word I haven't seen before. You know that thing, when words look abstract and just... odd? That's happening here for me.
This is my submission photo for this week's Photo Friday topic. It was in the last download of shots from my camera, and the shadowy figure seemed to have some semblance of relevance. Come to think of it, this photo appears riddled with shadows. Well done me! (nyuk nyuk)
