If you like browsing through Flickr as much as I do (or if you want your son’s latest photos to be your screensaver), get it here. It does what you’d expect it to, plus two tricks:
Every so often I have to remind myself that I know this:
Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.
Siddhartha Gautama (a.k.a Buddha)
Wisdom from 2,500 years ago still needs to be learned today.
Our stuffed animals have testicles.
Kabukicho HDR photoset
HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography is a process of taking a set of underexposed, properly exposed, and overexposed images and blending them together into one incredibly detailed photo.
I took these last night, and frankly, I’m not as wowed as I expected to be. One thing for sure though is they show Kabukicho exactly as I picture it in my mind. My self-assignment was to take ordinary scenes and compose them in a way that makes people want to stop and look at them like artwork in a gallery, but at the same time make them feel as though they’re experiencing the location itself, not just a photo of it. I haven’t found what I was looking for yet, but I’m still going through the shots, and I intend to go back there and try again and again until I’m satisfied. I also want to do the same thing in Ginza.
Come to think of it, I should really go to Yoshiwara. Only thing is, I wonder if I’d be as left alone as I was in Kabukicho. Yoshiwara seems like a more close-knit place, and they might not appreciate an outsider who doesn’t follow the rules. The clientele there expects privacy and anonymity, not some foreigner with a camera and tripod tromping around like he owns the place.
If you like the photos in the set, keep checking back. I’ll be posting more. My new header image is also HDR. I like it!
To learn more about HDR photography, this tutorial is a good place to start.
Now here’s a guy who has found his true calling in life. What I find most shocking about him is his intelligence. He’s often criticised but never fails to take it gracefully and articulate his views far better than most people in the public eye. I wish he had a podcast.
Tony, Andy and I are in the car in this episode talking about various stuff, including my stories about when Tony and Andy were born. I had a binaural mic clipped to each visor. You can hear my voice crack as I remembered a little too vividly how hard it was to watch my wife suffer through hours and hours of labor. I’m not saying it wasn’t hard on her–of course it was– but it was hard for me too. And very emotional.
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I’m happy that the roughly 20 visitors who I know by name are really, really nice people. It’s the other one or two thousand frequent visitors I’m curious about. It’s funny, I really have no idea how I manage to attract that many people. But it makes me feel good. Turns out I’m not as alone as I sometimes (often?) feel. Everyone should have that many friends.
Here, I have a great idea: how bout ya’ll gimme five bucks? I’ll dump it in the living room and roll around naked in it.
Title says it all.
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…and this idea popped into my head:
We tend to take our own thoughts and feelings too seriously, and those of others not seriously enough.
I sent it to a friend and she said, “I don’t think so.” Isn’t that funny? Here I am thinking that I’ve come up with an idea that’ll change my life, and she thinks it’s not even true. It proves the idea right.
I know it’s certainly true for me. I can look at almost every personal relationship in my life and say for sure that I could do better in each of them. I feel like I want to set a timer for every two hours and remember that thought every time it rings until the idea and I have become one.
Boy, did I miss the boat last year.
Those 20 million really freaked me out. I wonder if I can get hit stats like that again, and this time monetize.
In other news, I’ve busy this week. I’ve been spending evenings visiting a good friend who’s in the hospital with pneumonia.