As a part of Christmas present, my father-in-law gave "guys" a salmon fishing trip together. This realized in June of 2017. My father-in-law, two brothers-in-law, and I took a trip to King Salmon, Alaska. As the name of the city says it all, it is known for fishing King Salmon. It was a great experience fishing salmon for the first time. It was also awesome taking some photos of the wild in Alaska.
I had another opportunity to visit Budapest Hungary for work. This time, it was in January. It was cold, and we had little snow. Also, there were ice floating in the river. In this trip, I brought a plastic toy lens: Holga by Lomography.
I took most of these night time photo while walking with my colleagues. For that reason, I did not have the opportunity to use a tripod and had to handhold resulting in high ISO and really noisy images. But for a toy lens with a fixed aperture of F8, it was not too bad and it produced images taken with a toy lens/toy camera on a film.
I stayed just one night in Berlin for a business trip. Unfortunately, it was snowing and freezing cold. Just walked around few blocks around the hotel.
I had a chance to visit UK for work, and took a couple of days of personal days to walk around the city of London. London is a place I was interested in visiting and taking photos of the unique and iconic city scape.
April 2016
I had a chance to visit London for business. I took a couple of days off to enjoy my birthday walking around the city. I visited Notting Hill (famous with the movie Notting Hill) and Portobello Market. Visiting the market was great with cute and colorful houses, a lot of antique items, and original art works. I met Charlotte Reed and purchased her book, May the Thoughts Be with You: Ideas and Wisdom to Inspire Your Days, and a piece of her art work.
My younger son's first time riding a horse at Desert Mountain, Arizona. My family gets to travel at least once a year to Arizona to enjoy the sun and some outdoor activities. This time, my kids tried horse riding. Though they had a trainer guiding a horse and they only rode around a small area, it was a good experience for them.
Taken with Lensbaby 2.0
September 2015
I had another chance to capture sunrise in Budapest. First time was March, and this time was September. Little warmer sun and color. Lights in building. You can see a part of Chain Bridge and St. Stephen's Basilica. Taken from Buda Castle right by St. Matthias Church.
August 2014
My wife and I went to San Francisco for our anniversary. San Francisco has been one of my favorite cities to visit. One of the personal interests in visiting San Francisco was making a photo of Golden Gate Bridge. The first time I visited, the widest angle I had was 28mm, and it was not at all wide enough to capture the entire bridge. This time, I had 12mm, and it looks better. Though it was August, it was pretty windy and cold. I strongly suggest taking light jacket and warm hat. Even in summer, it gets pretty cold with strong wind.
Another DIY film camera kit I found on eBay was Pinhole Art 135. I believe Lomography sold theses long time ago; however, I have not seen this for sale, and I have not found one even on eBay since I got mine.
This kit came with all wood and metal pieces necessary to build a pretty cool looking pinhole camera. There were two issues though. First, maybe the kit was an old one, and some of the pieces were curved and made it little more challenging to put them together. Second, the instructions were not that great.... I mistakenly glued the front piece upside down...
For the "lens", I got a laser drilled pinhole on eBay. To amount on a tripod, I used Reticam Smartphone Tripod mount (on eBay, on Amazon).
Since this is a lightweight and pretty compact, I will be carrying this one to my upcoming vacations to try it out. Also, building this gave me pretty good ideas on how to construct pinhole cameras with wood, and maybe I will try putting something together soon.
Pros
- Good looking camera.
- Simple camera.
Cons
- Difficult to find.
- Maybe too old and conditions may not be great.
I attended a photo event by Amazon at Seattle Center. There were not many vendors attending the event; however, Samsung was offering an exchange program to their new Samsung NX500 for functioning DSLR which I traded my Canon XTi. Also, Lensbaby was offering photo walk through Chihuly Garden and Glass at Seattle Center giving attendees a chance to try their lens systems. While I like the simplicity and ease of use of Lensbaby 2.0, I definitely liked the better control offered by Lensbaby Composer Pro. Also, being able to change aperture from Optics rather than aperture discs is definitely a big plus.
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