New Lens and Sharing some Pictures

I bought a new lens for my Nikon 40DX this week. I have been wanting to get a prime lens for a while and have been looking and browsing, but no buying. After realizing that I had less than a handful of decent pictures from the two weddings I attended recently, I decided to go ahead and get it here. I bought a Nikon 35mm f/1.8G AF-S DX.  This was my first major purchase at a Chinese Photography market. I knew what the price was on Amazon and also new that I would be able to get for same price, but probably not cheaper.

This is a super fast lens! At f/1.8, I can take pictures in very little light. But I must admit that using the new lens takes some getting used to. It definitely makes me think about the process a bit different. The combinations of aperture and speed make controlling the exposure a bit more tricky!!! I really want to use the lens for some real portraits and have been snapping around the house to practice. I can see myself taking this lens on street walks from now on. It is super light and almost like a point-and-shoot if you get the right settings for the lighting. One feature it has that I love is the ability to override the auto focus without changing the setting on the lens. The A/M setting on the lens will allow you to use the autofocus to get 95% of the focus and then you can fine-tune manually. Seems like work, right? But when you are trying to take a close picture of someone, it is sometimes difficult to find the right focus point. The nose? The glasses? Being able to change that on the fly is a good technique for quickly taking a few shots with slightly different points. Anyway, more on the technical discovery's later.


I took a few pictures and wanted to share. Not just a technical article, but some picture of Natalie. Seems like she is growing up way to fast. Oh, and I got a few pics of Tom smiling. Really. Check it out.

Picture of the Expo Center in Puxi taken from car
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My sister-wives from Puxi
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Caught a real smile that comes after the fake smile
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Seems grown up to me
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Conference call night. This is how I see Tom most evenings!
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Some smiles from the morning of International Day. Curly hair courtesy of braids we put into wet hair at 8:30 PM the night before.
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Smiles
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Still loves Mucho (AKA Hobbes)
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She CHOSE to wear a skirt
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I asked for a smile. I got one. Whoohooo!
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These are Natalie's shoes that she wore to school. Told me that morning that the holes have been there for a couple of weeks. Oh, and it was raining this day. Said she was used to her feet being wet.
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Better shot of the inside of her shoe. Off to the market today to get a new pair of fake Converse. Why can't she wear the $50 New Balance she got this summer?
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Trust #30 - Speak Less by Laura Kimball

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know I. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

I once received a fortune cookie that read: “Speak less of your plans, you’ll get more done.” What’s one project that you’ve been sitting on and thinking about but haven’t made progress on? What’s stopping you? What would happen if you actually went for it and did it?
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I guess after all the musing I have done on this quest regarding my desire to start my own consulting business, moving away from that seems odd here. But in fact, reinventing my career is not a trivial project! However, in looking at my Evernote projects ( a favourite app of mine, which I highly recommend. Too bad I can't create a hyperlink on this damn iPad...) I see that "learn portrait photography is the project that has been on my to-list the longest. why? Hmm... Well, for one thing, I HATE having my own picture taken. It's a fact that can be by sampling from family albums and seeing a severe drop off about the age of 13. So the idea of taking portraits is not appealing personally. But I see that there is a lot of useful value in having this skill. Especially with Natalie who tends to be goofy in about 90% of the photos I take of her now. I do realise that this photography skill, while it seems straight forward, does in fact require more set up, more thought into the subject positioning, lighting, background. Pretty weak reason.

So, if I figured this out and actually worked on this, I guess there is nothing to fear. Just hasn't Ben a priority due to my distrust of this type of photography. It feels less real to me I guess.

Sigh... I guess Natalie's photograph will finally get taken this year...

Photography = Mathematics? Horrid!

So I am ver disappointed to learn that to become a better photographer I really need to know math. Specifically fractions. Which is ironic considering that Natalie and I are practicing fractions each night on her math homework. Anyone who knows me, I mean really knows me, will attest my long term frustration with the rules that math imposes. Don't get me wrong, I am VERY logical and mathematics does impose a neat set of logical rules. But I also have a large amount of BS running through my brain which kicks in anytime I recognise that logically I cannot follow a set of rules that I do not remember.

Now I learn that these rules may be critical to assisting me to adjust my photograph lighting to match what I want to see. Too much light? Reduce the aperture to increase the shutter speed. How much? Well, simple silly! Calculate it based on your ISO and current aperture. Just double the fractions. No wait, half the fraction. Wait, you have to factor in the incident light your subject is getting? What? Don't worry, just ensure your reflected light is an equal balance of the black and white in the pictures. She's wearing red. Doesn't matter, it's grey. But he's got a green bag. Oh, slight problem, green reflections are actually black not grey. The right answer is f8 1/125. What the ...??

Just writing this is stressing me out. I have now decided that I will only shoot pictures outside, of a bride and groom standing side by side.

2011 International Women's Day

In honor of the 2011 International Women's Day...

YuYuan Walk Pictures from Flickr

Trying out some new ways to publish my Flickr Photos. Slideshow version on blog...

Chinese New Year - Light Painting

Well, I took a lot of photos last night, but not many worth publishing. Keep an eye on my Flick Firework set for more. However, I was able to accidentally catch a good firework during my not-so-great light painting of CNY (Chinese New Year).And another one I liked...

And these two were a bit interesting...

Daily Picture Project - Day 77

Last half of school before Christmas Break! Yeah! BTW, those are Tom's cowboy boots she has on below!)

"I know I have some Big Shoes to Fill taking over Dad's job in the house. But this hat makes up for my lack of skills!"

Daily Picture Project - Day 76

Had to get a picture for the year with the snow!

"Walking in a Winter Wonderland"

Daily Picture Project - Day 75

Moving on with Metaphors...

"Decided to throw some light of the subject of Santa's Reindeer by sending Santa a letter"

Daily Picture Project - Day 74

Slight pause in the metaphor material. Natalie is sick today. Tummy ache. Though I actually think it may be last-week-of-school-itus. Reading Peter Spier's Christmas book. One of her favorites. Having Tomato Soup. Another favorite. Getting mom to let her stay home. Learned skill.

"Life is good!"

Daily Picture Project - Day 73

Moving on with Metaphors...

Last week I grasped the concept of Algebra. Next week, Quantum Information Theory!"

Daily Picture Project - Day 72

More metaphors! This has turned into a fun lesson about the difference between a "cognitive metaphor" and "visual metaphor". Good concepts that all third graders should understand! Leave it to me to make this less fun...

"Natalie was too busy climbing the ladder to success to see that she had left her snack in kitchen."

Daily Picture Project - Day 71

Metaphors for the Menorah! (We celebrate all religions in this house!)

"Natalie proved to be slower than molasses during the day's first contest"

Daily Picture Project - Day 70

"Zombies make great Pets, They already know how to play dead!"

Daily Picture Project - Day 69

"Traditional Tree or Teal Tinsel Tiding Tree?"

Daily Picture Project - Day 68

Today is Natalie's Pappaw's birthday.  So, we gave him a call on Skype. Happy birthday Robert!!!

"Happy Birthday Pappaw!"

Daily Picture Project - Day 67

"Go AWAY, you're not getting a picture of the back of my hair!"

Daily Picture Project - Day 66

To culminate Natalie's rough couple of weeks (if you haven't heard the details about this, trust me, she has not had a good couple of weeks!), yesterday she cut her hair. Not a lot. But enough. AND we got the second email this week from the teacher regarding homework that was not finished so she had to miss recess. Anyway, she has created a "Hidey-Hole" behind the TV (yes, right where the wires are) and hides in there when she wants to be alone. My theory is that as an Only Child, she cannot be too far from parents, just out of sight. Otherwise she would "hide" in her room, right? So, that is where she was this morning...

"If I hide back here, nothing bad exists"

Daily Picture Project - Day 65

Yesterday Natalie announced that she could no longer support our Daily Picture Project. It was taking up too much of her time. Have I mentioned how bad of a week she is having???  But she pulled herself together this morning and came up with a good idea. Gotta love resiliency! May need to point out that the bottle that has tipped over and is dripping onto her PB&J is Tabasco. We forgot to position it so a viewer could read it!

"I feel like today is going to be a HOT day"

Shanghai Photo Restoration

Well, I undertook a project recently that is interesting but VERY time consuming! Several weeks ago I printed a nice collage of pictures of us (mostly Natalie!) with our Ayi. I framed it and gave it to her. She loved it so much she brought in pictures from her home of her family for us to look at together. I volunteered to scan some of them. I will write more later about these pictures as there are usually some great story that goes with them. Today, I am just showing the first one I started with, a picture of Ayi's mother and her two of older sisters. Ayi also a brother, but he is not in this picture. The picture was taken in 1955. It was not clear if this taken in Shanghai or near the "work farm" were the Ayi's family was relocated to in Jiansu province.

Original - 1955

I took it and started to edit it in Adobe Elements. It took some trial and error! My favorite part is being able to pull out the green dragon that was on the wall behind them. I put about 3 hours total into the restoration of this and it is not a great result. But I learned a lot about cloning and blurring.

Mostly Restored

 The Ayi was thrilled with the results. I am now going to get it printed for her. Her older sister in the picture, on the right, is 80 years old. Her younger sister, on the left, died not too long after this picture was taken. Ayi was born after her sister died. I will put the pics into a story starting in the next few weeks. Lots more pictures to clean up before I can tell it!