Monthly Archives: May 2011

Happened to turn the tv dial to oprah’s Master class series. I watched Oprah talked about herself and Maya Angelou, too. One question that stood out from both of their talks is “what is it that we came to this world to teach, to offer.” I always thought of the opposite. What is it that we came here to learn. I guess you can look at your life’s meaning in either of these two ways. They both are teachers in their field and they feel at home being the teacher, opening people’s eyes, take away their blind spots. I think I came here to learn. I seldom have the wisdom or mind to teach. I often can’t even figure out what I am supposed to learn and hence get the same lesson over and over again.

I am very thankful that dramas have gone down in my life. And past relationships are being mended sometimes to my pleasant surprise and of no effort of my own. Those years of dramas and emotional turmoils were something I would not wish on anybody. And through them, I learned to be non judgmental and compassionate. I am not perfect, I am still learning. But because of my own experiences, it’s a bit easier to see both sides of a story.

Maya talked about her mom’s passing and reminded me of my mom. I really regret that we did not reach that peaceful understanding for each other in the end. I think she passed away thinking no one cared about her and closed her mind towards me too. That is one of my greatest regret.

Yesterday, after my dance lessons, I turned the car towards beach wood place and went to the Apple store. The store was packed with people as usual. I walked around a bit looking at the iPhone cases. One of the sales people asked what he can do for me. I asked if they have any iPad 2 now inshore. She told me to go to a certain table and use a certain iPad with a certain button and some one will come and help me. I thought that was a long way of answering a simple question. I was going to just pretend I would do that and walked away. Another salesman volunteered to take me there and pushed the button for me and told me that I am second in line and left. Now I felt I was obligated to wait for this sales person to answer a si ple question whether they have iPad in the store or not. In a shirt while, a lady showed up and after I repeated my question, she wanted to know which one I’m interested in. I told her a white one. Then one question after another, we are narrowing down to the exa t model and service. And she said she will check in the back to see if they have one.

I decided to look around so e more, and a minute later she came to find me and said they are bringing it up for me. And I should pick out a case. Thus, I ended up with a 64 gig, white iPad with Verizon in my hand walking out the door 15 minutes later.

I love the new iPad, it’s much thinner, snappier and with the 3G connection, I don’t need to worry about losing the Internet connection ever again. I am very happy to finally own one. Although I know I will eventually get one, but the way I got one was kind of amusing. I guess they assume that because of the short on supply means that anyone who asks about one must want to buy it if there is one available. They dont think it can be a casual question.

I’ve been using it after loading all the apps on it. And so far so vey good. Just like the iPhone, I do not know how I can get by without one any more, it’s my reading device, it’s my email, it’s my journal writing tool, it’s my surfing tool. The only gripe I have about it is it’s inability to show flash. Why oh why they decided to take this important feature out is beyond my understanding. Surfing gets frustrating when you cant view the content you come to.

Other than that, it is perfect for a personal on the go gadget that keeps one plugged into the world. I am so lucky to be living in this era of gadget take off time. They come fast and furious and it makes our lives so much easier and it helps expanding our mind so fast. You can learn a new skill just by getting online and google about it or download an ebook go read about it. You can listen to your favorite kind of music for free. You can jot down your thoughts as soon as they come into your mind. Oh, I guess I am describing the iPad again. I just love it!

We went to the Indians Game last night, May 23, and saw an exciting game.  Of course, it was exciting because in the end we won.

I brought the camera with the 28-300mm lens and a monopod.  So while Leo followed the game and either got excited or frustrated depending on how our team was doing, I was busy playing with the camera.  I still can’t take very sharp pictures from a distance like all the wonderful landscape pictures that Trey took.  I guess it will take time to practice.  But I got some nice pictures albeit a bit blurry.

Processed them in the lightroom today and put them up on my website .  This is quite fun.  Haven’t got a workflow down yet.  But I imagine it will come along eventually.

E’s graduation day today at E. J. Thomas Hall. I got up real early at 6:30 to try to get there right at 8am when the door opens to get a good seat. Ha, was I in for a surprise. Apparently, everyone else had the same idea. The parking lot was full and we had to circle around to park in the deck.   When we walked in, there was no good seating so I chose one that’s in the center and up.  It turned out to be one of the worst spot. The layout of the place has no center isle. So every one has to pass everyone else to get to where they want to sit. Although we sit in the middle of a row, it’s the row that the door opens to, so it seems like every person has passed us to get to his or her seat.

After we sat down, I started to test the camera and the new 70-200mm lens. It just won’t do anything that I learned to do. When I put it in the A mode, I can’t change the shutter speed. I tried to adjust the settings going through all the menus, no dice. It was getting close to the ceremony and I was getting a bit frustrated. I finally got the video camera out and thought I would have to just resort to the video instead of pictures.

After the ceremony started, they turned lights on on the stage. And that helped the situation a lot. After fumbling with the ISO, the aperture and the shutter speed, I finally was able to take some fuzzy test pictures. I made a mistake not bringing a tripod thinking I wouldn’t be able to put one up. So hand holding the camera produced fuzzy pictures. Since the camera bag was there, I tried to put it on my lap and then sat the camera on top of it. It finally started to take some decent pictures.

Since E’s near the end, I had lots of time practicing. When she is almost up, I handed the video camera to Leo and I set the camera to take continuous shots. The focus and everything else was already set, I just started to take as many pictures as I can while she was on stage. I actually got some decent pictures. Not as sharp as they can be if a professional was using the camera. But they are at least not blurry.

Afterwards, we went outside and took some pictures with her friends and her dad.  They turned out pretty good too.  I am very pleased with the photos.  Finally, the camera is producing some nice photos for me at important occasions.

E and her dad and some of her friends went to Olive Garden for lunch.  I was too late to suggest that we go to triple crown which would have been an excellent place since they were basically empty when Leo and I went there for lunch.  I passed out when we got home and had a long nap.  When I was processing the pictures after the nap, E was getting ready to go to the diner that her dad’s having.  He invited  me and Leo too.  After a lot of going back and forth, I finally decided to go.  I thought it will make everybody happy even though I feel a bit awkward.  Ok, very awkward.  The negative experiences from the past have made me very uncomfortable to think about being in the same room with her dad.  I saw that my stress also stressed E out.  And I finally decided to go so her dad wouldn’t be embarrassed if I don’t show.

But it turned out to be a world shifting dinner.  J has been respectful and friendly to Leo and me when we got there.  And continued to talk to us and even put food in our plates.  I was very shocked about his 180 degree change of attitude towards me.  He has aged a lot, the health problems probably attributed to the effects.  He is not avoiding eye contact or tries to ignore my presence any more.  He talks and responds.  A huge change and one that I still can’t quite wrap my mind around.  I appreciate this shift of attitude and I talk and interact with him throughout the dinner and we said good bye with a smile and I promised to send him links to the pictures I took today.

I am breathing a sigh or relief for the day.  I have been dreading it for a week.  But it turned out to be better than my wildest dream.  What a day.

E, however seemed a bit down when she came home.  She said she was tired and didn’t say much except that she didn’t get a cake for her friends at the dinner.  It could be a very stressful day for her because of my unease with the situation.  I feel partly responsible for her subdued, slightly sad feeling.  I hope she feels better tomorrow.  It has been a very stressful day for everybody but it turned out to be more than ok.  Leo has been a sweetheart through it all.  He helped to maintain the levelness in me, an anchor for my jumpy feelings all day.  I am very blessed for that.

The Nikor 28-300mm arrived today and I took it to the park for a test drive. This lens is amazing. The time was at dusk around 7:30pm and it rained off and on all day. So the color of the trees and grass is amazing. Although it’s the first time I use the lens and the first time I put the camera in the M mode and learned to adjust the apature and the shutter speed, I got some great pictures. Great in my beginner’s eyes anyway. I am so impressed with the camera and the lens.

The whole collection is here. It’s nice to have the server at home. There is no size limit for photos and it’s easy to get to. Once I figured out how to move files between the macbook and the home server that is.

I took these photos with my iphone. Color is wrong under the lamp.

At first, I was not sure if I would risk cutting up the cord to make this thing work. But I eventually decided to go ahead as I always do, plunge into things that I don’t know if I can handle. ha. The result was success. It worked. And it’s charging my macbook pro now. The hyperjuice block is also being charged so I can use it tomorrow with my ipad or iphone. Yea!!!

Finally, I took the webinar tonight. And I downloaded Sunday’s and watched it before the live one. I am full of HDR now. So much to take in. I have not actually put all of it to work yet. Trey is nice enough to provide the pictures for us to practice. But I would have to go and take some pictures for HDR processing. However I am not sure I will go 100% HDR. I love to use some of the techniques to give the pictures some omph but don’t really want to take it to any extremely extent. HDR can be artificial looking or surreal. I like to keep my photos more real. I think a lot of people in the webinar have already been doing this for a while. They uploaded their homework after the first webinar before any techniques were shown. I am a bit late to the game I guess.

Also got the shutter release for the camera but the infrared one does not work. Have to call B&H Photo tomorrow to see how to send it back for a good one. But the wireless one does work pretty well. One more gadget to bring in my photo bag. I am sure it will get lots of uses too.

I’m given a Acrobat problem to work on. After installing v10 and tried to open some big documents, I have no problems. Don’t have to wait for the processing. So not much progress on solving that problem.

Saw that the 3rd webinar video is up. Need to download it when I get home and not to forget about the one that’s on tonight.

Reading the “Exposure” book. Hoping to remember what I read. Wanting to go out and practice what I understand now. f/8 and f/11 are the who cares apature which use the “sweet spot” in the camera. he he. sounds like I know something. nah..

The secret to keep oneself inspired and not be stuck in a rut is to keep finding new skills to obtain, knowledge to absorb and motivated to ‘learn’.

The young lady in the outer lab said I look skinnier today. All because the tight jeans I’m wearing today. Good to be able to fake it sometimes.

A good learning day. Finally, this book gives me a good grip on the aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. Although the weather prevented me from going out and take pictures, I actually learned more by reading this book. This is the 3rd day that I stayed at home all day. Saturday, I cleaned. Sunday, I waited for the guest and entertained the guest. Today, after the guest left, I got a new lens for e’s graduation picture taking and found this book to learn some basics of photography. I just can’t wait to put all this knowledge to work and try to get them under the belt so i can take more time finding a good composition rather than finding the right exposure or focus.

Bob was here yesterday. Leo cooked arabic food and we finished 2 bottles of wine plus another Margarita for Leo and Scotch on the rocks for me and Bob. Bob and I stayed up and talked till almost 1am while Leo napping away on the couch.

It was a good visit. Old friend for Leo and new acquaintance for me.

The only downside is that I missed Trey’s webinar again for the second time in a roll. And when I went to download the video, I saw the message that it will be delayed cause he is on location to shoot the shuttle launch. Darn!!! Oh well. I do have tons of other things to read and do. Still, he covered layers and masks yesterday. Double Darn!!