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Now that I have a SLR and a lot of free time, I actually find my home to be pretty fun to take pictures of. Mainly ‘cuz my mom keeps a plethora of plants at home, both indoors and outdoors; but even still on a nice day, both my backyard/frontyard (depends what you call the front of the house; the door that everyone comes in is actually the “backdoor”) is pretty nice, that and there’s actually a river out back with a nice little bridge and a playground that I have never visited since I’m too old to go play outside =p.

Anyhow, last summer two birds came to nest and lay eggs in one of my mom’s flower pots in the balcony, and my parents went through this whole ordeal of trying to “help them out” by putting up an umbrella on my balcony so they would be shielded from the weather and trying to feed them with food (joke is, they wouldn’t eat grains of rice but ate swiss chalet bread, so guess they are “white” birds after all). Surely the bird must have enjoyed it here (eggs hatched and the baby birds learned to fly and the family left after a month or two) because the parent birds have came back this year!

The story for this photo goes, Belinda was enjoying the sun on her balcony, MSNed me and told me there were birds on my balcony, so I snuck downstairs with my SLR and took shots of the birds through my kitchen doors (hence the glare and reflection and what not, especially to the right), but I think I scared them away when I tried to open the screen door to get a better shot. I actually didn’t see the second bird (its hiding in the flower pot behind the angels, you can see its tail) until I scared both of them off :|. Haha and apparently my mom saw these birds trying to nest in the flower pot a few days ago and tried to scare them away and hence she stuck the angels in the flower pot, but I guess birds aren’t scared of angels =p. My preference is, let them nest all they want at the balcony so they don’t chirp outside my window at 4am in the morning =p.

Is it time to start the Flickr photostream? I’m thinking that it’s time that I started to make use of the sites out there (such as Flickr) and not just wait for my own vaporware site to appear which will have some super awesome super duper gallery (as pictured in my head)

Anyone else using Flickr or experience with? My brother was pretty amazed I didn’t actively use Flickr.

So yeah I have been playing with my camera for a few days, pretty happy about it, though there isn’t much to “wow” about – I did play with Phil’s camera for quite a bit so I know my way around most of the controls. But regardless I do intend to read the manual :P.

Heh the night I got my camera jon told me to take a few shots to make sure the camera works… it didn’t really cross my mind that the camera wouldn’t work, so I dug out my old CF card just to try… and the first shot I took was complete black *gasp*. Freaked me out a bit, until I realize my settings were all off (and the room was pretty dark).

Anyhow the 17-85 is no impressive sharp L lens but I think it gives me a lot of room to play with for now. So no impressive sharp pictures, but monkey is happy.

Oh and I definitely need to get used to taking off and putting back on the lens cap =p

So I went to Henry’s Photo Show last Friday at the International Center, and it was surprisingly crowded for a Friday showing (can’t imagine how it’ll be like for the weekend). There are some deals, but not a lot… and I’m glad I got in for free (thanks jon). There were a number of interestingly titled seminar and workshops but unfortunately none of them turned out amazing. I think I forget that a) not everyone at the show are computer savvy geeks; and b) maybe half the people at the show only own a P&S so the audience isn’t strictly SLR people.

Anyhow the first seminar I went to (most of these seminars are held by Henry’s School of Imaging, and it is like a condensed preview of the course that they offer at their school) was on Flash & Lighting Fundamentals, and oddly what it taught was basically identical to what I read the night before online at some how to use a flash tutorial site. And then I went to some Stage Presentations that seemed promising – “Portrait Lighting” sounded pretty hardcore… but ended up being too hardcore – they were demoing how to setup those studio lights and softboxes and umbrellas etc. And then I went to another stage presentation that also sounded promising – “Exposure and White Balance Techniques” – but it turned out pretty disappointing. I recorded this stage presentation and just randomly cut out a clip below as an example, and hopefully you’ll see why its disappointing.

Anyhow at least the guy gave out his website which introduces some tools and gadgets he finds nifty. (Anyone know what Lensbabies are?)

And yes some of the stage presentations are more like marketing shows, like one for the Quik Pod – which is like a very tiny monopod that you hold with your hand so you can get the camera away from you to take a shot at yourself :S.

Then I spent most of my time loitering at the Canon booth looking at different SLR and lenses, but it seems like… the people there weren’t very helpful, at least to my questions (maybe my questions were just too… hard). But then I thought my questions are pretty normal, like I asked, what’s the diff between a XTi and a 30D… and the answer was….. “XTi has 10MP compared to 8MP; but 30D has a better light metering system and a better build…. but they are pretty similar”. At least I walked away from the Canon booth with a pretty Spring 2007 catalog with lots of pictures of goodies.

Then I went back to check out some more seminars – stopped by a Digital Darkroom seminar (also by Henry’s) which taught some stuff on PS Elements, and then I went to the Wedding and Event Photography Workflow seminar by Apple, which was by far (no competition whatsoever) the best seminar of the day. Hehe I really think Apple must have some amazing public speaking training program cuz the guy can present really well. The seminar was showcasing Aperture and how it can save you time and make your wedding photo workflow more efficient – and even though it wasn’t selling Aperture per se, comparing this seminar to PS Elements I think I’ll prefer to use Aperture any day.

Anyhow before leaving I picked up the ballhead for jon and the ___ for myself so at least I didn’t leave empty handed =P. Probably wouldn’t go again next year unless there’s something you’re looking for AND there’s a deal on it.

So.. highly-anticipated-but-nothing-big-yet-great-enough-that-it-won’t-be-revealed-until-it’s-on-the-camera camera accessory that YFA picked up at the photoshow.. is up in the air.

Any guesses as to what it is? Circular polarizer? tripod? flash? maybe something more obscure like a neutral density filter or..

One of those protector-doors which attaches to the back of the camera that opens up to reveal the LCD.. thats going to be my obscure guess.. seems to suit YFA. If not, then my vote is on a battery grip.