Day 107 of 365 January 1, 2010
Posted by pikapika20 in Food 365, Photo 365, Randoms.Tags: books, fish, Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, resolution
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I spent a very lazy first day of the 2010 doing not much in particular but annoying my fish and being irresolute. I like the idea of resolutions, but have not the resolve to carry them through.
On the plus side, I finished a book. There’s something so satisfying about finishing a book… a sense of accomplishment… but a sense of loss too. This book had me almost believing the characters were real and wishing that I could meet them in real life… not a mean feat. I swear after every good book I read that it will change my life FOREVER! They never do, but at least I enriched my mind? The book in question is called The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. It’s a quick and easy epistolary novel (a term I picked up from a friend) about the German occupation of an island in the English channel. It’s charming.Though I’ll admit I was slightly disappointed with the namesake, the characters charmed me out of my short pouting fit.
More supermacro for your viewing pleasure
An artist's rendering thereof... or just Photoshop
Pills and Pomegranate
Day 106 of 365 and New Year’s Eve January 1, 2010
Posted by pikapika20 in Food 365, Photo 365.Tags: new year
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Happy New Year! And as many people have been pointing out: Happy New Decade.
On fb one of my friend’s statuses is as f0llows:
Word of the year 2010: cumbre (Spanish: summit, top, peak) where I fully intend on being throughout this new year and decade!
Well said, J… well said ^_^ .
My word of the year? I haven’t decided yet. Maybe “disciplined”, “resolute”, “persevering” or something along those lines. Sounds so boring compared to J’s.
Here are a few pictures.
Day 105 of 365 and Tong Yuen December 31, 2009
Posted by pikapika20 in Food 365, Photo 365, recipe.Tags: recipe, Photography, macro, Chinese food, glutinous rice ball, sesame
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Macro from my point and shoot isn’t too bad. Apparently a point and shoot has good macro capabilities because of its small sensor.
A small sensor = more depth of field = more of the frame in focus = usually a good thing.
Frost from the roof of a car... you can see the foreground is blurry, but the rest is pretty well-focused.
Tomorrow is New Year’s Eve and I’m going to a potluck sort of party. I’m making some great endive appetizers, and tested out a Chinese dessert recipe. We had some tonight. Here’s the recipe:
Tong Yuen (Sweet Glutinous Sesame Balls in Soup)
- .25 c of shortening
- .67 c of black sesame flour (ground black sesame)
- 2.5 tsp of icing sugar
- 1.5 c glutinous rice flour
- 2 tsp cold water
- .25 c boiling water
- Cut the shortening finely and then mix with black sesame and sugar. Put in the fridge for 20 minutes to firm up.
- Right before taking the sesame paste out of the fridge, prepare dough.
- Mix together the flour and waters. Roll into a log and cut into about 30 pieces.
- Take paste out of the fridge and cut into 30 equal pieces. Roll into balls.
- Clean your hands and fill a little bowl with warm water (this will keep your dough a little on the moister side… the glutinous rice flour sucks up moisture so you may also want to put on gloves).
- Roll a piece of dough into a ball and then flatten in your hand into a circle about twice the diameter of the sesame ball. Put the ball in the middle of the dough and fold the dough around it. Roll in your hand until round. If it begins to split (and it will) put pieces of dough, or fold over it. Use A VERY LITTLE BIT of the water to make the dough close up over itself.
- Repeat for all 30 balls.
- Boil a pot of water with rock sugar and some pieces of ginger. When it is boiling, add the rice balls and let boil for about 5 minutes. Serve with soup. Most people will eat 2-4!
- Freeze any remaining rice balls laid out on a sheet pan (to keep them from sticking together), then put in a ziploc bag.
If you boil them too long, or you don't seal them properly, they pop. But don't worry.. your soup will look gross but taste delicious!
Day 104 of 365 and Supermacro December 30, 2009
Posted by pikapika20 in Photo 365, Photography.Tags: diy, Photography, supermacro
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While surfing the internet a while ago, I discovered supermacro without the supermacro lens. How delightful, since lenses are so extremely expensive (at least for what I want to do). Here’s how:
- Put your fast lens (many people use a 50 mm) at its widest aperture (lowest f-stop) and put it to the side.
- Attach another lens to your camera (I only have 2, so it’s not hard to pick.) Put it at maximum zoom and manual focus.
- Holding the 50 mm in front of your other lens END TO END, move in and out to get your subject in focus. Alternatively, you can buy a ring that will attach them together.
- Click away.
I have to say that that a ring or similar device would be great. There are a lot of “DIY” supermacro lens sites that say you should use tape or pvc tubing or other insane things. As I like to kick it old school, I just used my hands. Anyways, another thing you might want to have on hand is your tripod. This makes life much easier. So many of my photos were blurry! Here’s a link.
I don’t seem to be able to upload my food picture, so it’s another day without.
Day 103 of 365 December 29, 2009
Posted by pikapika20 in Food 365, Photo 365.Tags: HDR
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More HDR today, but while wandering around Chapters (after playing some sort of discourteous musical chairs in the parking lot), I found an awesome macro photography book so I’ll be moving on shortly. I’ll keep an eye out, but I haven’t seen any scenes that I would really like to get an HDR with. I guess I like the colour contrast in this photo, but other than that it’s pretty lame.
For dinner we had congee. I was thinking that I wanted to cook some and then my dad magically did. Wow!
Day 102 of 365 and Sherlock Holmes December 28, 2009
Posted by pikapika20 in Food 365, Photo 365, Randoms.Tags: HDR, review, Robert Downey Jr, Sherlock Holmes
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Sherlock Holmes
The new movie Sherlock Holmes came out Christmas Day. We saw it today in a packed theatre and it was amazing. The plot was good, the actors savvy and entirely convincing, the special effects seamless. Much as I enjoyed Avatar, Sherlock Holmes definitely topped it.
I also have to say how impressed I am by Robert Downey Jr.’s comeback. I didn’t really know who he was, except for some news when I was a teenager about drug use or something like that. Iron Man was definitely a thrilling movie, but he was just phenomenal as Sherlock Holmes. Not for a moment did I remember that he was an actor in a movie, nor did I think that his role was like any other I had seen him play before. He and Jude Law were just utterly convincing, with great comic timing and fast-paced action too. As for Rachel McAdams, the trailer made her role seem like another throw-away damsel-in-distress (though she may seem capable enough for the first 5 minutes), but the character and performance were strong and interesting, playing an integral role in the film.
To sum it up: great film. You have to watch it.
As for the Photography
Today was a day with bright grey clouds and dull landscape. So it was perfect for HDR? I didn’t have my DSLR out so this is all manually bracketed (and without a tripod too!) The results aren’t fabulous, but not bad.
For dinner… chicken. Huzzah.
Day 101 of 365 December 26, 2009
Posted by pikapika20 in Food 365, Photo 365, Photography.Tags: HDR photography, Photography, Photomatix
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It was Boxing Day, so I refused to go to the mall or basically anywhere. There are no good deals that I can see on photography gear and therefore I’m less inclined to go out. Instead, I did some photography experimentation:
HDR
HDR stands for “High Dynamic Range” Why?
The PROBLEM: You are looking at a scene and the sky is gorgeous and the landscape is brightly lit and green and lush. You want to take a picture, but are inevitably disappointed. The landscape is sort of bland and dark, while the sky is totally blown out and overexposed and white. The result? Ugly, boring pictures that have all the life sucked out of them. HDR photography removes this problem; it uses postprocessing and multiple exposures to capture what you REALLY see in a scene.
HOW DO YOU DO IT?
- Take a few pictures at different exposures. This is called “bracketing”. The camera has to be in exactly the same spot, though, so most people use a tripod and remote.
- Upload your pictures and then put them into an HDR program. It will automatically fuse the pictures together for you and you can adjust lightness and darkness.
I used the AEB (Automatic Exposure Bracket) function on my camera to create the above three bracketed photos. What that means is that they are exactly the same but with different exposure times. The first is the image I originally designated, the second -2 seconds and the last +2 seconds.
After about an hour of fiddling around in Photoshop (I have 3.0… which does NOT have the automated HDR merge feature that the newer versions have), I finally downloaded a trial of Photomatix. Link Doing the hard work yourself by cutting and pasting the areas you want out of each picture and merging them together is REALLY HARD. Also, it’s really ugly and was not at all worth the effort. I absolutely recommend getting an actual program.
Photomatix: Photomatix is easy and fast. I downloaded the free version, and here is how it works:
- Open the program and drag/browse to import the pictures you want to merge.
- The program will automatically merge them together to try to bring out detail in every part of the scene.
- You can adjust light levels and saturation and contrast and so on in the program.
PROS of Photomatix
- So easy to use, it’s ridiculous. It actually made me feel like I did no work.
- It’s best to shoot at a higher aperture so that more detail is apparent throughout your scene.
- It automatically aligns and crops so that if you have had a little camera shake or shifted your camera a little bit, the problem will not appear.
CONS of Photomatix
- You do NOT have much control over which image goes where.
- The colours are a little oversaturated somehow.
- It says “PHOTOMATIX” all over the resulting image (easily stamped out in Photoshop)
The words in my book are more clear (Alice Munro of course!) and the raindrops are fairly clear at the same time. Looks a little like the middle exposure though.
Check out the examples on the Photomatix website for more interesting HDR images. They’re really gorgeous and I can’t wait for a nice sunny day with dramatic clouds, or a gorgeous sunset!
As it turns out I didn't get a picture of food today. Here's a bus though.
Day 100 of 365 December 26, 2009
Posted by pikapika20 in Food 365, Photo 365.add a comment
Merry Christmas and a happy Day 100 to you ^_^
Today I played around in Photoshop to enhance the lights and details I wanted to play up, and tone down extra lights. For example, in the one below, I turned down the brightness in the top layer and enhanced the details of the tree branches so that the tree in the foreground could stand out more. In the second picture, I darkened the lights and reflection on the house and car to help the tree pop out.
Though this picture is slightly blurry, it gives a more Christmasy feel than the pictures with sharp focus
Since it’s Christmas, I made a roasted chicken today. One thing I learned today: trust the thermometer and not the time! It will always tell you when your chicken is ready (putting it back into the oven invites dry meat). You can see the amazing bubbling of the skin which, paired with high heat, is an equation for perfectly crispy goodness. Today I roasted garlic and fresh thyme under the skin with a little bit of butter and it was really delicious.
Day 99 of 365 December 24, 2009
Posted by pikapika20 in Food 365, Photo 365.add a comment
Walnuts and pecans
DIY Angel Wings December 24, 2009
Posted by pikapika20 in crafts.Tags: angel wings, crafts, diy
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For our Christmas skit, I made angel wings. In all I think I spent about 3-4 hours on them, which is great compared to some of the 70 hour projects I found on the internet. This guy is a little crazy!, but these are the instructions I generally followed. Sans the “fallen” angel part!
You will need:
- 1 wire hanger
- white fabric (or quilt batting)
- feathers: quills (24) and other (4 packages)
- hot glue gun
- ribbon
Unbend the hanger and reshape into a general wing shape
Cut out two layers of the fabric at least 4 inches wide in the general shape of your hanger. This is what we will hang the feathers off of.
Sandwich the hanger in fabric, making sure to hot glue gun both sides of the hanger to the fabric and the fabric together.
Hot glue the quills to the very "bottom" edge of the wings all the way up so that they stick out straight (even at the top). I glued them alternating on both sides. Fill in the rest of the wings with the smaller fluffier feathers in rows. When you get to the top, glue the feathers sideways, starting at the bottom of the wing and working your way up. Complete all sides. You're done!
Attach a ribbon to the middle and bottom of the wing to make arm straps. It’s gorgeous!
TIPS:
- You need to use quills for the wings to look even remotely realistic.
- Use fluffier feathers towards the top of the wings.
- Don’t worry about covering every square inch of the fabric, or your wings will be too thick and bulky. Stagger the feathers in rows as you glue upwards and you will cover the tips of the feathers nicely.
- To make feathers appear longer, glue one on top of the other with the glue along the spine.
