Mini Celebration

Felt like being a little nicer to myself. Bought a slab of steak, some bella mushrooms, brussel sprouts (not one’s usual greens) and one Idaho potato and presto!

steak

As usual, pardon the bad presentation. Was hungry and tried to get it to look as nice as possible.

Potatoes aren’t built equally. Some have more starch, some less, or they have more taste in them. Just like how McDonalds use Russet potatoes for their French fries, you can taste the difference. Heh, I’m just being particular at the moment.

So what is there to celebrate? Nothing much other than the year end and happy holidays. Yes, to be politically correct, it’s happy holidays and not quite Merry Christmas, although it is the holiday that we get off from work. There are other holidays around now that are celebrated by different races, and it wasn’t apparent to me prior to me being here in NYC.

So far it’s quite a different culture here and as my office is multicultural, you pick up a little bit of how different everyone is.

* * *

Heh, it’s so close again, the end of the year is just around the corner and once it comes around, I can hop on a plane and fly off to Melbourne for a break. Just want to get away from the cold a bit. Not too keen on the part where I have to get onto the plane, I still dislike travelling, but it will be worth it.

Adding Spice

Another stab at something different. They sell some nice chicken sausages here that they wrap around pine nuts and sundried tomatoes. Then I just pile on the garlic to infuse its flavour in the oil, although to get that to work properly, one really should fry the garlic in oil a little longer before adding anything else.

sausagepasta

* * *

I’m not left with much to shoot these days, and I want to keep the momentum with photographing constantly so I can pick things up as I go along. Besides snapping pictures, I’m also putting more effort into post processing. The food photos over the last few days have been challenging, as it’s on a black plate and everything else is brightly coloured. It’s not that I prefer orange and reds in my food, it’s just what I have available in my refridgerator and I need to get rid of it. There is also the question of bulk and pasta or rice is the most efficient method of energy transfer into the body.

Food issues aside, I’ve been having issues tweaking my photos. It never seemed to be a problem before, and it might be an in camera setting. I can definitely say the warming filter on my lens does play havoc to the colouring of the entire image, as sometimes it’s just not meant to be there. Will swap it out in favour of a normal UV one when I get back to Melbourne.

I’ve been looking at other photographs lately and a lot of them have a feel and look to it that I quite admire. The look I’ve been wanting is a toned down monotonic look, with a totally blurred background and only one topic of focus. For the composition, I’d need one of my lenses. For the colour and look, one needs to play around with post processing to mute out the warm colours and leave it with a cool, lasting impression.

Excited with the trip back. Just need a break from the cold and to spend time with famililar faces.

Pushing For More

Tonight’s dinner. Was hungry so just took a few shots and wolfed the plate down. Kimchi fried rice with tofu and chicken plus a fried egg. Miso soup not photographed.

kimchifriedrice

* * *

The snow was missing in action today, as the weather forecast was snow. Wanted to go out shooting on Sunday, but it was pelting snow and ice, and I didn’t want to expose my camera to the elements, although I feel that it is much more up to the task of doing that than I am.

On my first trip back to Melbourne, I lugged over 2kg worth of lenses and camera nearly 16,000km across the globe. I wasn’t too keen on that so on my trip back to NY, brought only my bread and butter 17-55mm f/2.8. Now I’m semi regretting it, as I would have liked to play a little more with my 30mm f/1.4, or had a 200mm to shoot with.

Heh, being more open minded to various types of photography now, and sometimes I realise, the end result matters in the sense that, you don’t really care about the details of how one got to that final image with post processing, you just look at the images and go wow. I haven’t been shooting enough or editing enough to go on to the next level of picture making. My skill is starting to stagnate at the little details I picked up during my course and all the reading I did after that. Now it’s time to go make pictures, and it doesn’t help when the sun goes down at 430pm or that it’s freezing cold outside when you do go out.

Well, personally those are just excuses. I can actually take photos in the subway or drag myself to one of the famous, local museums and just shoot to my heart’s content. So as long as the weather doesn’t box me in again, I think that’s what I’m going to be doing this weekend.