Archive for June, 2009
Iranian Election Photos
And on a more serious note, I have stayed up all night following the #IranElection tweets on Twitter, which come in by the hundreds ever ten seconds or so. As a photographer, the pictures were most interesting to me, as a few started being TwitPic’d in from Tehran. However, it was someone’s re-tweet of THIS gallery that really caught my interest.
Warning, the gallery includes some very graphic images of the injured, dying, and dead.
From my understanding, the photographer is collecting photographs from people in Iran and posting them to Flickr via email. Many of the photos have been picked up by the major news organizations around the world. Not only are they extremely revealing of what’s going on in a country that’s been mostly closed off to the international media, a lot of them are amazingly good pictures.
It almost makes me want to be a heroic photojournalist, but luckily for my mother’s peace of mind, I’m sure I would be far too much of a coward to ever venture into chaotic streets like that. All I can do is sit back and admire these brave photographers.
Painting – Japanese Spitz Hill
Photo of the Day – Panorama – Round Top
Today Gabe and I went to the Puu Ualaokua Park Lookout up Round Top Drive!
Photo(s) of the Day – Saturday Shoot-Around
Today, my friend Mike and I joined up with some of his other friends for a photo shoot-around day. We walked from Chinatown to just past Farrington High School – it was a long, hot walk! Here are some of my photos from the day, in which I was focusing on textures and color isolation/combinations:
Photo(s) of the Day – Waikiki Fireworks
We went to Waikiki to watch the fireworks tonight! Top photo was taken by Kaeo, and the rest by me. Reid and I are making the “Are you taking a picture?” faces.
And here’s a cool photo that Reid took, but I processed:
Curry House!
One of our favorite staple places to eat is Curry House Coco-Ichibanya. With several locations throughout Honolulu, there is always a place nearby where we can grab a delicious, affordable, and filling plate of curry. They have two types of curry, regular (spicy) and mild. Then next choice, toppings, can be selected from their expansive menu.
My usual personal favorite is the mabo tofu curry with gyoza, while Kaeo often gets stewed shrimp or chicken cutlet curry. On this day, Neil got a kalbi curry, while everyone else got gyoza curry. Besides toppings, you can also customize the amount of rice you want, measured in grams!
However, my choice today was to get my mabo tofu curry with udon rather than rice. While Curry House offers take-out, the udon is only offered for in-house dining.
The udon took me forever to eat, since it stays so hot in the bowl, but it is delicious. If you like curry, and haven’t been to Curry House yet, I highly recommend you go.
Photo of the Day – Serious Business
Constant vigilance!
Holga Love
Got my latest toy in the mail today! It’s a Holga lens attached to a Canon camera body cap so it can be attached to Canon SLR and DSLR cameras. They are available for purchase at HolgaMods.Com, and ship really fast! Now I don’t have to wait to take 120 film to get processed, or if I’m feeling really needy about taking some Holga shots, I can have some instant gratification! Woohoo!
The reason it’s so blurry on the edges is because of how the sensor and lens don’t quite match up, but I think it’s kind of awesome. Photoshop-effect without the Photoshop! Here are a few of my traditional Holga shots done with 120 film, and here are some far superior examples of Holga photography than mine.
Holga cameras are cheap, plastic cameras that are one of the most readily available for shooting medium format film. They are famous for their distorting plastic lens and tendancy to leak light, giving the images a dreamy, nostalgic aesthetic. In this day and age when it is easy to get a crisp, clear photography using a digital point-and-shoot, Holgas have become a tool for artistic, expressive imagery.
I highly recommend buying Holgas from HolgaMods.Com, as the cameras there are slightly modded to get past some of the more annoying traits (loose-winding film, etc.), while they still capture amazing pictures. The site also has some neat information about the history of Holgas, as well as tons of fun modifications such as shutter releases, pinhole lenses, and more!
I’ll be back with better photo examples later!
Saw UP, And Loved It!
Image © Pixar/Disney. All rights reserved
So, as part of the “away-from-computer” day, Gabe and I went to see UP in Disney 3D at Ward yesterday. As per usual with us, we didn’t really know what it was about, but we automatically go to see anything by Pixar (I’m hoping Gabe works for them someday!), and as I had never seen a movie in 3D before, we decided to fork out the extra $3.50 for the glasses and the experience.
Here’s the synopsis from the movie’s official site:
From Disney-PIxar comes “Up,” a comedy adventure about 78-year-old balloon salesman Carl Fredricksen, who finally fulfills his lifelong dream of great adventure when he ties thousands of balloons to his house and flies away to the wilds of South America. But he discovers all too late that his biggest nightmare has stowed away on the trip: an overly optimistic 8-year-old Wilderness Explorer named Russell.
There were so many things to love about this movie. I don’t want to spoil anything, so I won’t go into any specifics, but there are a few things I have to point out. I absolutely loved all the old photographs of Carl and his wife Ellie through the years. In fact, in one sequence they are on a picnic as a young couple, and I’m pretty sure I somewhat squealed when I spotted a Brownie Bullet camera almost exactly like my dad’s first camera that was recently given to me. I was also in love with the dog Dug, who, through a special collar, is allowed to speak to people, and what he says is exactly what I’ve always imagined dogs to sound like.
The animation and textures were absolutely beautiful. I love how Pixar has perfected the stylized human being while still making them feel human to the viewer. Because Gabe is studying animation, and thus I’ve been studying it over his shoulder, we really appreciated all the nuances in movement in all the characters. The 3D aspect of the movie was pretty neat too. At first, I was worried the glasses were going to give me a headache, but by the end of the movie I had almost forgotten them, as if all movies should look 3D. However, it was a trailer for a documentary on prehistoric aquatic creatures that made me fully appreciate the 3D technology when a dinosaur of some sort lunged out of the screen toward my face!
So, I highly recommend that everyone go see UP! Expect some tears, as there were some truly heartbreaking moments, but also expect a lot of laughs and enjoyment. WALL-E was my favorite Pixar film so far, but I think that UP might have taken its place. Pixar always seems to outdo themselves with each film they do, so I’m very much looking forward to Toy Story 3!
Photo(s) of the Day – Point-And-Shoot Color Fun
Some red/yellow/blue (and green!) action from my trusty G9.
© 2010-2012 Dallas Nagata White
