Ted::Blogs(): Random Talk

April 2006

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Death Valley 2006

During the Easter weekend, I took a long-deserved photo trip to my favorite place in the world, Death Valley. For the past couple of months, we've been having too much rain and it was great to get out in the sun again. I've been to Death Valley a couple of times before, and this time I tried to visit new places. This time I visited: Rhyolite, Stonepipe Wells, The Dunes (I can't remember the name right now), Golden Canyon, Artist's Pallette, Devil's Golf Course, Badwater, and Zabrieskie's Point. I took two bodies - Hasselblad 503CW (with 3 lenses) and Hasselblad SWC/M. I used Kodak TMX for 503CW with a tripod and Kodak TMY for the SWC/M handheld.

Blurry Vision

I have always been fascinated by selective focusing and shallow depth of field. To me, it is an explicit way to express the most important part of the image. For the same reason, I enjoy using vignetting as a visual effect. The series of pictures here are taken from various places including italy and california. Obviously, they are grouped as a series as they share the same type of visual effects, not because they share the same subject or geographic location.

Body Parts

Collection of body parts taken from a variety of places. I am one of those that believes sometimes 'less is more'. In this case, I feel that by showing only parts of a body the image gives a stronger impression than a full body shot.

Equus

I was born in the year of the horse. Maybe that's why I am fascinated with horses. When I started photography, I was very inspired by Keith Carter (another reason why I am so obsessed with selective focusing). After buying his book, "Ezekiel's Horse", I always wanted to have a chance to take pictures of this beautiful creature. Last year, I went to Vegas with my friends, and instead of playing golf, I drove out to Death Valley. I had the slightest idea that I would have an encounter these beautiful horses.

Rainy Road

I took these pictures on one rainy day. Living in the bay area means that for about 9 to 10 months every year, you miss rain. This was a weird day in the sense that it wasn't during the rainy season, but you can tell I enjoyed it very much.

Winter B&W

One camera, one lens, I took a bunch of pictures. It was on a ski-trip at Beaver Creek, Colorado that I took all these pictures in a couple of days. Extensive use of Tilt and Shift made the selective focusing possible. It was a bright day, and I liked it when the sky came out dark.

Now that I am blogging almost daily, I started thinking about ways how I can increase traffic to my blog. Robin Good wrote this great article titled, "RSSTop55 Best Blog Directory and RSS Submission Sites".

This was probably the most informative article on this subject. But now what? Do I have to submit my blog information to all these sites? Somebody's gotta come up with a submission service for all the 163 sites listed in the article. I know I will pay for that. -- Now that sounds like a good business to me!