Gellin’ again

I’m on this light balancing kick recently.  I’ve created softer light via shoot-through umbrella, played with putting different colored gels on my strobes for different effects.  But I had never gel’d a strobe to shoot through an umbrella.  I wanted to see if a gel’d light would lose any of its color, or what would happen.  So just to compare, here’s a straight up strobe shot through an umbrella(located in frame, camera left).

Now here’s the same shot but with a 1/2 CTO gel(NOTE: I goofed a bit on this, I actually thought it was a full CTO gel, didn’t realize it was a 1/2 ‘til the next day):

As you can see, the light is definitely warmer even with the 1/2 CTO.  One thing to note is that the gel ate up some light so I had to make some adjustments to make sure my exposure was correct.  In this case, I adjusted my aperture two stops.  Now to apply this out in the field during an actual photoshoot!  I have an idea in mind... and it involves tiki torches lit with fire!  =)

Breakfast of Champions

So I'm in a weight loss bet with six other guys.  Whomever can lose the most weight, by percentage, by November 1st.  On November 1st, we're all weighing in and going to eat a fat bowl of pho at Pho Garden in SF.

Anyway, here's what I ate for breakfast: Oatmeal with egg white, granola(with dried berries), raw almond slices, and a banana on the side.  =)  I actually love eating like this.

I wanna win this bet!

Running Stairs...

I had seen these stairs before.  I remember thinking it would be a killer workout to run up these stairs.  I remember looking a them and thinking it would really suck to run up these stairs.  I remember walking my dogs past these stairs and thinking there'd be no way for me to run up them.  Then I got to thinking about other stuff going on in my life.  Goals I have yet to reach, things I've always wanted to do but haven't, obstacles that get in the way of those goals.  Sometimes all I see are the obstacles that get in the way.  Whenever I think this way I think of a little piece of scripture that says "Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus." - Philippians 3:13-14.  It helps remind me of what I'm striving for.

So I went and ran those stairs.  I ran them until my legs felt like jello, which didn't take very long.  I had accomplished something I always had in my mind that I'd do one day.  I got my milkshake(that's another story).  I know, its just a set of stairs.  Not a big deal, but it was just something I had always wanted to do but never took the time to do.

A few things that ran through my mind while I was running.  The first is that it doesn't as bad as it looks, once I took that first step and kept stepping it was much less daunting than standing at the bottom and looking at the stairs. The second, it was 2:00 pm and I still hadn't eaten anything that day so after I ran the stairs a handful of times, I was getting light headed and nauseous.  I made a mental note to not do those stairs again on an empty stomach.  And finally, the view seems so much nicer from the top afterwards.  The stairs don't seem as bad from the top.

We're mic'd!

So I was at the WPPI Roadshow a few weeks ago and it was a great time.  One of the inspiring moments was a talk by Lawrence Chan of Tofurious and the emergence of "Fusion" Photography.  Still not sure what it's all about, but I guess thats the fun thing about things that are up and coming.  Inspired by that, I went out and bought a "shotgun" mic from a local store.  Here is the Sennheiser MKE400.  MSRP $199.  I want to use it this coming weekend for a wedding, but will do some tests and things in these couple days leading up to the wedding.

Playing with the new gear while enjoying a little froyo.

It's actually a LOT smaller than I thought it was going to be.

Creme brûlée

Creme brûlée
Originally uploaded by bglee818

I have a ton of food in the fridge. A ton. I had a bunch of eggs, so I decided to make some creme brulee. I love, love, love desserts. Here's a simple but oh-so-good dessert that always seem to impress people. Actually, more than the taste of it, I think its people are more impressed by the blowtorch I use to caramelize the sugar on top...  The two on the right are just with vanilla custard.  The two on the right, I just did a little experiment and added some coffee.  I think I made it a little too strong, it'll be better next time.