Warbird On A Highway!

Video caught by a state trooper, a Harvard T-6 on its way to Oshkosh had to make an emergency landing on an interstate due to engine problems.

I would so crap myself if I was driving down the highway with a plane landing beside me.

Panda! On A PLANE!!!

Taken from Jetphotos.net

Only in Japan...courtesy of All Nippon Airway (ANA), the launch customer for the Boeing 787. ;)

Skylog (with planes!)

Parallel approach at dusk, after the rain.

Rain, rain, go away...

It had been raining almost all day in Melbourne. I had been reading Conversations With Glenn Gould and listening to KMCO when around 1700h a smidgen of sun appeared amongst the dark gloomy clouds. I had to go outside...I spend almost all of my work days indoor in front of computers. I needed to see the sun.

So I packed up and checked my motorcycle before heading west on 192. During daytime, 192 is one of my favorite roads to travel: Sparse traffic, no toll booths, and smells of manure every few miles. At night however, 192 can be a very scary and messy place to ride, because most of the road is unlit, and there are A LOT of insects smashing into you at 50 MPH. My face-shield contained an insect collection by the time I returned home.

Oil spill in the clouds

I am not an optics expert, but I think this one is a variant of a circumhorizontal arc. I stopped by the side of the road to photograph this beautiful phenomenon. Other than sharpening and contrast, the colors that you see in the photograph are real.

Sunset and Silhouette

737 Southwest

I wasn't prepared to spot...I decided to head to MCO out of a whim to photograph silhouettes of planes. I had never done it before, and Florida has a tendency to produce beautiful skies right after a hard rain.

Using the 18-200mm lens, I snapped away at the arrivals, paying closer attention to how the sun outlines the planes vs the planes themselves. The transition between sunset and twilight is very short, and I was standing in relative darkness 30 minutes after I arrived. All in all I was only able to get about 20 photos, of course none of Airliners quality. At this point, I really don't care about submitting my photos to them anymore...

Silhouette of 737 Southwest

The Mating Game

Here is what my roommate had to say on the subject:

Fuck the game.

My roommate is AWESOME.

Maybe when more girls stop playing it, more guys will stop too.

Here's hoping.

787 IS OUT!!!

The first 787 on Airliners.net!!! :D

Statues...To Life

Introduction

Remember that any sculpture, no matter how masterful its construction, is simply a lump of solid when bereft of light, shadow, and perspective.

This past weekend at New York City, my mom and I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Arts on 5th Avenue. The last time I was there was almost ten years ago, when I was a first grade brat living in Queens.

I never really cared for Manhattan (and the rest of the world seems to associate New York with Manhattan, even though it is but a small part of a small city in a large state). However, I've always loved Queens, with her factories, low income housing, and ethnically diverse neighborhoods...even more so than the other boroughs of New York City. The community that I lived in was made up of mostly international students with families. The streets were decrepit and the houses were gray, but it was still a fun place for a six year-old running to Dunkin' Donuts in the middle of winter.

Queens is also the home of JFK International and LaGuardia Airport.

When my mother graduated with her Master's degree, we decided to be tourists for a day and explore downtown. Leaving the car at the station in Stony Brook, we took the train and the subway from Long Island to Manhattan.

The Triplets of Static Drama

Statues are great subjects to practice portrait and candid photography. The setting is made for you by the artist, all you need to do is apply drama to that setting.

Good curators and designers at the Met know how to use lighting (artificial or natural) to the artwork's advantage...the choice is up to the visitors as to how to view the pieces and how to let the works affect their emotional states. Too many people go to art museums just to see, but not to feel. The former will leave the building thinking art museums are incredibly boring. The latter will be captivated and not realize an entire day has gone by and he/she has only explored 1/4 of the entire collection.

To translate the sculptures from 3-dimension to 2-dimension allows you more freedom to play with perspectives. An off-centered subject and uneven angles, gives the viewer a sense of uneasiness, and thereby heightening the drama. More contrast can achieve a certain dramatic feel, much like a silhouette of a figure giving the subject a mysterious and brooding look.

Marble sculptures are interesting to work with, because of the way the material scatters light. From computer graphics, I learned that rendering marble, for example, can be quite difficult due to the property of marble being both translucent and opaque. The specularity of marble is also quite different compare to a well polished glass sphere, the latter being easier to model in rendering algorithm.

All these quirks gives rise to difficulty in capturing marble in a dramatic light on 2-dimensional medium. By default, marble sculptures will rarely have sharp angles for the shadows to dwell, so I tried emphasizing the contours and smooth lines of the figure as well as the contrast within the sculpture itself, and also in comparison to the subject's surrounding. The result is that some of the marble sculptures, like Aphrodites from the Grecian History Collection, came out more like silhouettes.

Finally...

Of course, never be afraid to post-process. Consider post-processing as a method to overcome the shortcomings of your camera. Film or digital, good photographers have done some cropping and post-processing to their image, whether the tools be chemicals or software. The photograph is a coloring book for you to paint with your imagination. Don't be afraid to try.

Because I draw and paint way before I seriously went into photography, I have no compunction with playing around with my photographs. Photographers are simply artists working with existing events, creating templates confined by the moment of capture. They tweak their templates to their liking, and the final products ignite the imagination of the viewers...much like a sculpture or a painting.

No amounts of digital editing can turn a crappy template into a good one. Believe me, it is damn near impossible.

Skylog (Rainbow Under The Wing)

Date: 28 June 2007
Route: MCO-JFK
Airline: JetBlue Airways
Model: Airbus A320-232
Tail No.: N533JB "Usto Schulz"

I flew on my first Airbus plane a few days ago, en route to New York City to attend my mother's graduation ceremony. The A320s really are quite adorable, and honestly, quieter than the 737 (which I rode to return to MCO a few days later).

The wires sticking out of the pylons and the wingtip are discharge wicks. They release static electricity back into the atmosphere. The static built-up is caused by the friction on the surface of the plane due to constant contact with high velocity wind, akin to rubbing balloon vigorously against your hair/skin.

Though this is not a very good photo, it was one of those moments in my life when I smiled and felt happy to be alive.