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Archive for the ‘Photography’ Category
Tamara & Giovanni
Tuesday, August 30th, 2011
This past weekend I inherited Bryan’s two finches when he left for Afghanistan.
They are a white zebra finch named Tamara
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Violin Upgrade
Monday, June 6th, 2011
I ordered a new violin back in March, because the time had come to upgrade from the annoying-sounding beginner violin I started on three years ago. Lucky me, work became insanely busy right around that time, so I’ve only had a chance to play it a few times so far.
Its sound, like its color, is warmer and more beautiful than the old one’s. Now I have to practice more to live up to its beauty.
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Matchingfreak Woes
Monday, December 13th, 2010
Rabid fans may have noticed that I didn’t update Matchingfreak for about the past three weeks until a few minutes ago. I had my reasons…
- We moved to a new place, and I haven’t found a proper well-lit place for me to take my pictures. I usually take my pictures when I come home from work, but now that it’s winter, it’s always dark by the time I’m home. The lighting in my new room is okay, but the new, fluffy carpet is newly washed, and I don’t want to soil it.
- My camera died. It all started when the button to take the picture fell off earlier this year. For months I used the camera with the button taped back on. A few weeks ago the button fell off and I lost it. I would have to take the pictures by depressing the indented section under the button with a pencil, which was frustrating and weird to say the least. Finally it stopped working altogether a few weeks ago.
- Ever since my dad bought me a new camera, I’ve been struggling to put together my “routine.” I whipped out a suction-cup “tripod” (it’s really a unipod), because this new camera can’t stand on its side by itself like my old one (barely) did. And, again, struggling with finding a corner of the house with good lighting where I can wear my shoes.
So I spent the past few days taking the pictures in my balcony during the day, because I didn’t go to work. But now that I go to work tomorrow, I’ll have to find some lucky volunteers to take my body shot for me. I’m too shy to ask people, though. I’m also too embarrassed to get my picture taken in public.
Like my mom said, I put the “freak” in Matchingfreak.
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Feedings at great uncle’s balcony
Sunday, October 31st, 2010
Here are some pictures to supplement a previous post where I talk about feeding doves in my great uncle’s balcony. Unfortunately, I’d forgotten to take my camera’s data transfer cable with me on vacation, so I took these pictures with my phone instead.
Pigeon gulps down seeds as its less courageous friends watch enviously.
A mourning dove sheepishly partakes of a seed under the watchful eye of the alpha pigeon.
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Spotted Dove Spotted!
Monday, July 5th, 2010
When I go to different cities, one thing that captures my attention is the difference in variety of local urban birds. For instance, the starlings in Arizona were huge compared to the ones I’m used to seeing in Southern California. The mourning doves in Istanbul are more of a reddish color than the ones here, and coo differently. I can’t help but feel like Charles Darwin, observing the difference in beak shapes of the finches in the Galapagos Islands, each type formed through years of evolution in isolation on an island. Usually, it’s the rock pigeons (the run-of-your-mill gray pigeons we see in almost every city) that seem to look the same everywhere.
Hong Kong had a disturbing lack of regular pigeons in the city, but I did notice many doves. They looked like standard mourning doves I’m used to seeing…
…except, these ones had silvery looking heads and dark necks laced with white spots! Yes, I was looking at a spotted dove, or Streptopelia chinensis.
Like all doves I’ve seen, they’re so impatient to walk around in circles frantically, making it difficult for me to photograph them well.
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Arizona desert
Monday, May 10th, 2010
I was gone the past week at a conference in Pheonix, Arizona. I’d never been there before, so the desert landscape, flora, and fauna looked quite different to me. We were treated to a hummer tour of the desert on the last day, which was magnificent. Here are a few pictures from the tour.
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Non-matchingfreak self-portraits
Tuesday, April 13th, 2010
When I re-started Matchingfreak back in 2008 for the second time, I was excited that I would have an excuse to take self-portraits again. There had been a serious decline in picture-taking since college, and this project was to salvage the little amateur photographer in me.
Well, I do take more pictures in a day now, but no more “discretionary” shots than I had been taking before. Is it that my surroundings are less inspiring, or that I am less inspired? Perhaps both, and I realize this.
I got a haircut last Saturday. They made my curls look so perfect that I knew it was a good self-portrait photoshoot opportunity, for old times’ sake.
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Sunday, July 24th, 2005
My mom and I went to Petco and got two parakeets today:
Sorry the one on the left has poo on his back! Anyway, they have Turkish names. The one on the left is Bulut (“cloud”), and the one on the right is Peri (“fairy,” but it also comes from the word periwinkle).
They’re so scared of their surroundings. They haven’t moved or made a sound since we put them in their cage. They keep staring at us. Now, they’re pretending to be asleep. They’ll be fine tomorrow morning.
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Monday, April 18th, 2005
I went to the music library today to look for a book. I couldn’t find the book, but I did take some pictures. The aisles were so narrow that I can’t explain it in words (click on the pictures to enlarge):
Last night, I moved the printer onto the floor, because it took up too much room on my desk. The printer part doesn’t work, but I still use the scanner part, so it’s still connected to the computer.
Today I made a bookcase out of a cardboard box and put all my books and folders in it. Guess where all those things used to be before I made this bookcase? ON THE FLOOR! Now there’s so much space opened up that I’ve realized how badly I need to vacuum.
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