30

And today, ladies and gentlemen, is my 30th birthday! :)
Hoy cumplo 30 años! no muchos, ni muy poquitos... justo los que son! :) :)

Series

A new homework for photography class:
create a series of "my ...", where you could choose what the ... was.
o "My aquarium": the one I got for xmas. :) Taking these photos was not as easy as I thought. Auto focus did not work, then manual focus, and the fishes just swim all around: then lower iso (and its noise) and large aperture to get some decent photos. No wonder why so many snails found place in the photos! ;)
o "My garden (in winter)": we took some very dark and beautiful photos from the garden, using the super tele-lens.

Let's see what will be the next homework.

Conga

If you would live in one of the congas we've got at home, and W would come and play and hit and play, this is what you would see.

Starting up again

Soooo... It's been a long time since I wrote anything here. I've been busy busy busy lately, writing papers, abstracts and so.

Little summary of the last days:
o My mom and two cousins came for a visit in xmas time. This has been the coldest winter since I live here... and I heard it is the coldest since 15 years or so... then my tropical mom and cousins enjoyed a cooold xmas, full of snow (charming) and ice (slippery). :)
o Baby jesus gave me a little aquarium! :) :) :) Now I have some fishes at home, including 8 cardinal tetras (the blue and red little fishes in the photo), 1 hillstream loach (Igor, the one on the glass) and 2 snails (not in the pic). Actually, many other snails that came with some plants are happily reproducing and populating the tank. Not that bad.

And that is it. Again, I'll upload some photos (I've postpone that since june last year) and include a link around here.

Shark, eel and calamar in the market

Green-eye shark - Tiburon oji-verde


Eel and Calamar - Anguila y calamar

... and one of the eels went into our stomach!

Rainy reflection of plant

The reflection of plant in my office window, after an rainy afternoon.
-- exposure time: 1 sec.

Fall - Otoño

Oenerdijk

The street in front of my house. :)
Large exposure time again (6 sec.)

Photography lessons - Homework 3

A whole week passed by without uploading the homework here... but here it comes.

We learned (learnt?) about shutter speed or exposure time.
This is a very intuitive concept, it controls the time that shutter remains open to allow light to go into the sensor or film. Small number, e.g. 1/500 sec., means that the shutter opens and closes very fast. Large numbers, e.g. 20 sec., will open the shutter for longer time (20 sec.) and close it again.

For example, if you are in a park and take a picture of a pigeon starting to fly, then you can have very different results depending (among others) on the exposure time you use. A 1/1000 sec will give you the image of the pigeon in the air, just floating there with the wings in a "flying" position. In contrast, a larger number (maybe a 1 sec.?) will create an image where the parts of the pigeon that are moving are blurred. You could say that the first image is a static image, and the second a dynamic image. Some photos about this will come in the future (cross my fingers).

The homework was to play with long (exposure) times in the night and use small light sources. There are lots of beautiful photos taken like this: light graffiti. There are even movies, for example PiKaPiKa (thanks Wilco). All these examples keep the camera still, and move light sources around to create the figure you want... well, our homework was to do the contrary. Use a light source and move the camera, and here are some of my photos:



(click on the images for a larger image)

Olympus e-510

I'm the proud owner of a dSLR. :)

Photography lessons - Homework 2

We learned about aperture, and how it changes a picture.
Long story short: large aperture (small f/ number) will blur the objects that are behind/in front the object you focus on. Small aperture (large f/ number) will let everything sharp.

Then, the homework was to take two photos of the same object with the largest and smallest aperture available and see the results.

I chose a plant with beautiful orange "peppers" in F&F's garden.

Small Aperture f/22

Large Aperture f/3.0

But the nicest result was by accident. Look at the little green plant next to the peppers, that stands out in the photo with large aperture.

Small Aperture f/22

Large Aperture f/3.0

Photography lessons - Homework 1

Homework:
take a photo of something you see/do in the morning and in the night. And one more from your work.

Morning: the clothing cabinet... and the little mess of shoes. Although I should say that most shoes are wondering around other corners.




Work: That's my desktop. Teapot, articles, etc and the plant.




Night: The kitchen while we were cooking some delicious pasta.

Mussels in Utrecht

Last week we went to Utrecht to make a couple of tramits. That day we ate delicious mussels, and here are some photos.




...............

Some garden visitors

The red butterflies:


The orange butterflies:


The workers of the hive:


The white one and the scary one:


The cats:


The caterpillars:


The slimy ones:



The jumpy ones:


and the "sophisticated" ones:


These photos were taken in our garden, between july and august 2009.