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Jeremy > June 11, 2009; Day 40. Happy Hour. This shot embodies all of my favorite aspects of dining in cook-it-yourself establishments in Japan: work clothes, smoke, talking, laughter, and good food. My colleagues fit right in; we were responsible for at least some of this smokey atmosphere. The remaining Day 6 shots from Japan start here. Raw: Color Temperature: 2950K; Tint: +2 Raw: Saturation: +10 PS: Lab a channel adjustment: “Soft light” at 20% opacity PS: Lab b channel adjustment: “Soft light” at 10% opacity PS: Smart Sharpening: 180-1-Lens Blur
Jeremy > June 9, 2009; Day 38. Shark's Fin at Last. In Concord you can order shark's fin at one of the local Chinese restaurants. But you have to give them 8 days notice and the price is $350. I've never tried it needless to say. However, a little bite is cheap in Japan, so I tried it. Sadly, the bite is so little that I still have no idea what it tastes like. But it was pretty and it was served in what I would call a "dim sum" style. This was ordered at a German restaurant called Mein Schloss in Hamamatsu. The Day 4 photos from my Japan trip start here. Raw: Color Temperature: 2550K; Tint: -1 Raw: Exposure: +0.65 Raw: Blacks: 3 Raw: Brightness: +30; Contrast: +50 Raw: Saturation: +8 PS: Curves: Linear Contrast preset PS: Smart Sharpening: 180-1-Lens Blur
Jeremy > June 8, 2009; Day 37. Unagi House. Hamamatsu is famous for its music, mostly. I’m sorry to say that I know this only from word of mouth, not from any abundance of music I have found exploring here. A fancy piano store in the train station is the only clue. They’re also famous for restaurants that serve eel. Eel is a very good fish that you can easily find in sushi (fully cooked) in the U.S. In Japan it is served more often as a main course over rice. It is always fully cooked and always in a teriyaki-like sauce. Yum. In the background are our customers, Ritch and Joe. We’ve been working with them for the past 20 years, almost always via e-mail, so it is nice to spend time with them face to face. The remaining Day 3 photos from my Japan trip start here. PS: Smart Sharpening: 180-1-Lens Blur
Jeremy > May 31, 2009; Day 29. Unmeringued. Today Peter and I enjoyed a birthday dinner party with friends. This was the fourth course, a lemon pie with a nice crumb crust and a dollop of ice cream. This ain't your grandma's lemon meringue pie. Yum. This is lit mostly from the evening sun streaming in through a nearby window at camera left. Peter is holding a white napkin to camera right. You can see the napkin reflected in the spoon. I don’t know why I have the spoon mingling so close to the dessert. I also had time to pan the dog and got this sole keeper. If that had been my POTD instead, the title would have been “Keep Your Eye on the Ball.” Now begins a long week of prepping for Japan. I hope that the trip yields a lot of photographic opportunities. Raw: Crop: 11.6MP Raw: Color Temperature: 4200K; Tint: +19 Raw: Fill Light: +10 Raw: Saturation: +8 PS: Lab a channel adjustment: “Soft light” at 50% opacity PS: Curves: Linear Contrast preset PS: Smart Sharpening: 180-1-Lens Blur
Jeremy > April 17, 2009; Day 350. Pasta Makers Do It In the Well. Tomorrow I’m hosting the second of my two pasta parties this year. I really wish I had time to host four. I could easily fill the house twice over and not have any repeat guests. Alas, I’m in two photography classes and it’ll soon be time to get biking and kayaking on the weekends. Yet hosting these have been important because Peter and I have been remiss in thanking the folks who have welcomed us into their lives so warmly. We also were quite overdue for a spring clean of the house. I’ve rather enjoyed the two week gap between the parties during which I must keep the house as pristine as possible. In this shot I’m about as close as I can get to the well of flour with my wide lens. The lens itself is actually casting a faint shadow making the flour look a little dirty. If I weren’t actually responsible for this pasta I’d have found a way to move this light source so that the lens was not in the way. This is the first of seven batches of pasta I made today. The flour mound is a cup of all-purpose flour and a cup of semolina pasta flour. In the well are 2 eggs, 1 egg yolk, ½ cup of fresh basil, sage, and chives minced in a coffee grinder, 2 tablespoons of olive oil, and ½ teaspoon of salt. This will yield enough pasta to serve 3 adults. The cups at left contain the key ingredients for the remaining batches of pasta: a second herb batch, two batches made with coarsely-ground dried porcini mushrooms, and two batches each made with 4 cloves of severely crushed garlic in olive oil. The scent from the kneading of those batches is still on my hands 8 hours later. Yum. The seventh batch was a pasta without any special extra flavor added. Essentially, these are the same flavors I made two weeks ago. Tomorrow I’ll make essentially the same sauces. When your guest list completely turns over, your menu need not! Peter and I decided that the flavored pastas are fine but a bit of a hassle. Next year we may try mixing up the flours: regular, whole wheat, chestnut, cornmeal, and maybe buckwheat. Raw: Crop: 9.8MP Raw: Color Temperature: 3300K; Tint: 0 Raw: Exposure: +0.2 Raw: Recovery: +38 Raw: Blacks: 2 Raw: Brightness: +48 Raw: Contrast: +59 Raw: Saturation: +8 PS: Curves: Medium Contrast preset PS: Smart Sharpening: 180-1-Lens Blur
Jeremy > March 31, 2009; Day 333. The Search for Steam. Tonight I thought I’d find a texture shot in a bowl of Chunky soup for Week 4 of my closeup photography class. Instead, I chased after the ever-elusive steam shot. Since I’m spring cleaning this week, I don’t have time tonight to do this right, but I’m certain now that flash is not the right choice for lighting this shot. The flash is so brief that it’s actually a stop-action shot of each individual molecule of water vapor. This would be much better with a bit of motion. We’ll see. I was right about one thing...backlighting the steam, as much as possible without incurring flare, will be the right way to light it. Compositionally, the soup should be lower in this shot. I did attempt some texture shots of the soup but it had a distracting film of oil on it. I also tried a closeup of my own skin and was satisfied enough with the results that I may try that again tomorrow. Raw: Color Temperature: 5750K; Tint: 0 Raw: Recovery: +40 Raw: Fill Light: +15 Raw: Saturation: +6 PS: Curves: Linear Contrast preset PS: Smart Sharpening: 180-1-Lens Blur
Jeremy > March 22, 2009; Day 324. Fisheye Supper. Today Peter and I made a homemade turkey soup that was way better than the first one we made a few months ago. This time we refrigerated the broth overnight so that we could render the fat. Also, we cooked the noodles separately and controlled how much pasta was added. As you can imagine, that first soup was a greasy pasta dish. Tonight's was fresh turkey soup. What a difference. To accompany the soup I bought a pound of ground bison and we made burgers. Bison should not be overcooked and sadly, this burger is. Luckily I had seasoned the meat before cooking and that’s a slab of Vermont cheddar on top so it still was tasty. This was taken with the fisheye lens in an attempt to better my shot from yesterday. Didn’t happen, so I’ll be submitting that one to the class. Still this is a fun lens. That's Peter way over there in the distortion wing. Raw: Color Temperature: 2950K; Tint: +3 Raw: Fill Light: +22 Raw: Saturation: +10 PS: Lab a channel adjustment: “Soft light” at 50% opacity PS: Curves: Linear Contrast preset PS: Smart Sharpening: 180-1-Lens Blur
Jeremy > March 12, 2009; Day 314. Cockeyed World. Tonight I began work on my latest class at the Perfect Picture School of Photography. The class is “Understanding Closeup Photography.” This week’s lesson discussed the many ways you can achieve closeup work with (and without) a dedicated macro lens. The assignment was to chase after macro subjects using as many of these items as possible. Tonight I used my dedicated macro lens, the 90mm Tamron. Later this weekend I’ll stack my extension tubes onto one or more lenses and see how much closer I can get to things. Then I’ll try a wide angle close-up; ultra wide lenses usually allow you to focus close without any extra stuff. This is not the photo I’ll submit for the class. (This one is.) But out of nearly 200 shots taken, I got about 20 keepers, including at least 4 of these crater-in-crater shots. This was the only one where the inner crater is way off center. I like it. This is a drop of half-and-half cream falling on a white plate with a thin film of cream already on it. The drops fell about 12 inches to the plate. I’ve set my new SB-900 flash between the 10 and 11 o’clock positions relative to the camera, just out of flare range. Everything is in manual: I need the most depth of field so I’m at f/57 (the lens is at the 1:1.2 macro position). I also need the shortest possible shutter speed so I’m right against the flash sync speed of 1/250s. Since the subject is very smooth, I want the native ISO for the least amount of noise. Luckily, the flash was able to light under these conditions at 1/16 power. At this aperture, the tiniest dust specs on the sensor show up. Luckily I used a blower before the shoot to take care of big offenders. I may need to go in soon with my Sensor Sweep brush. Raw: Color Temperature: 5800K; Tint: +10 Raw: Exposure: +0.5 Raw: Recovery: +100 Raw: Fill Light: +13 Raw: Blacks: +8 Raw: Brightness: +15 Raw: Contrast: +47 PS: Healing Brush to remove sensor dust PS: Curves: Linear Contrast preset PS: Smart Sharpening: 180-1-Lens Blur
Jeremy > February 8, 2009; Day 282. Once Bitten. Tonight I joined 50 of my friends in a showing of the film Milk at the local non-profit theater. Afterwards, we gathered at a home for supper and conversation. It was a nice ending to a day filled with ice: I put up salt-filled socks to break apart some nasty dams on my roof, and Peter and I chipped out a mountain range of ice along my driveway that was nearly a foot tall. Glenn is one of my many friends. How many friends, you ask? Well, I can immediately recall 4 friends named Glenn (and 2 more named Glen). Don't get me started on the number of Davids and Dennises I know. This Glenn's birthday is this week, so we pitched in to get him this cake. Unfortunately, the birthday boy could not attend the social portion of the night, but that did not deter us from enjoying the cake anyway. I wish I didn’t love cake but I do. My Dad’s sister Carol passed away yesterday, so I will be heading to Waverly, New York, for a couple of days this week. She lived there for longer than I have been alive. It will be a moving experience, I expect, to visit with cousins I haven't seen in years. Raw: Color Temperature: 2400K; Tint: +15 Raw: Exposure: +0.3 Raw: Recovery: +100 Raw: Fill Light: +15 Raw: Saturation: +8 PS: “Radial Motion” action PS: Smart Sharpening: 180-1-Lens Blur
June 11, 2009; Day 40.

Happy Hour.

This shot embodies all of my favorite aspects of dining in cook-it-yourself establishments in Japan: work clothes, smoke, talking, laughter, and good food. My colleagues fit right in; we were responsible for at least some of this smokey atmosphere.

The remaining Day 6 shots from Japan start here.

Raw: Color Temperature: 2950K; Tint: 2
Raw: Saturation: 10
PS: Lab a channel adjustment: “Soft light” at 20% opacity
PS: Lab b channel adjustment: “Soft light” at 10% opacity
PS: Smart Sharpening: 180-1-Lens Blur
Jeremy > June 11, 2009; Day 40. Happy Hour. This shot embodies all of my favorite aspects of dining in cook-it-yourself establishments in Japan: work clothes, smoke, talking, laughter, and good food. My colleagues fit right in; we were responsible for at least some of this smokey atmosphere. The remaining Day 6 shots from Japan start here. Raw: Color Temperature: 2950K; Tint: +2 Raw: Saturation: +10 PS: Lab a channel adjustment: “Soft light” at 20% opacity PS: Lab b channel adjustment: “Soft light” at 10% opacity PS: Smart Sharpening: 180-1-Lens Blur
June 11, 2009; Day 40.

Happy Hour.

This shot embodies all of my favorite aspects of dining in cook-it-yourself establishments in Japan: work clothes, smoke, talking, laughter, and good food. My colleagues fit right in; we were responsible for at least some of this smokey atmosphere.

The remaining Day 6 shots from Japan start here.

Raw: Color Temperature: 2950K; Tint: 2
Raw: Saturation: 10
PS: Lab a channel adjustment: “Soft light” at 20% opacity
PS: Lab b channel adjustment: “Soft light” at 10% opacity
PS: Smart Sharpening: 180-1-Lens Blur
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