After the pretty boring Labour Day long weekend, I ended up at Chapters reading books yesterday.

Needless to say, I searched at the Photography section for anything that looked interesting, in fact a lot of them did. I picked a couple of them, looked for an empty seat, and started reading. I managed to read two books in their fullest:

Pro Photographer’s D-SLR Handbook - Michael Freeman
This book is very interesting and informative, reason being it is in fact aimed for pros (even though I not yet am one), and the skills and ideas that it talks about were mostly something that I have always been wanting to know, or things that are interesting enough to actually trigger some thoughts. It has a lot of tips and tricks. It’s got an abundant of information and I felt I really learned a lot reading it. Highly recommended.

National Audubon Society Guide to Nature Photography - Tim Fitzharris
This book has a HUGE amount of very pretty and professional photographs ranging from humming birds to gorgeous landscapes. Huge amount of tips and tricks, plus very detailed information on every single shots that are there, including camera shooting info and the place where it was shot (very useful as I usually memorize the place so that I can go there in person later on). I love how authors include these info with every one of the shots. When these info aren’t available the things that you can learn from the photographs decrease dramatically. I was busy checking out every single picture, most if not all of them were very nicely shot.

Today I went there again (lol) to read a few more:

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 for Digital Photographers Only - Rob Sheppard
This one is obviously everything about Lightroom, which is in fact the primary tool I use for post-processing my images. I already know quite a lot about Lightroom prior to reading this book but of course I’d always like to learn/explore more of its features and capabilities. And in fact I did see quite a lot of tools that I didn’t really know about Lightroom and that I can actually make use of, for example you can adjust the curve by clicking on the image itself…etc. I just skimmed through this book, skipping the stuff that I already knew, focusing on things that I had never seen/tried. Still a very good read.

Rick Sammon’s Field Guide to Digital Photography: Quick Lessons on Making Great Pictures - Rick Sammon
I love this book! It’s got quite a few pictures of the places in Utah that I’ve just been to last month, like scenery from Bryce Canyon National Park, Zion National Park, Arches National Park…etc. I was smiling when I saw the exact same pictures that I took, like the Double Arch and the Balanced Rock at the Arches NP, just felt really great for some reason. Probably because of the fact that I had taken very similar photographs to what the pros did…lol, or maybe it was kind of like a reassurance to me on that I really chose the right places to go. Anyway, this book has LOTS of VERY useful tips on many many different subjects related to one goal - “to take photos like a pro” as the author calls it. There’s usually one tip on each page, occasionally spreads across two pages. Although it’s true that I already know 50% or more of the tips, and have an OK understanding of the rest, it’s still very helpful to see each of these tips again, as they serve the purposes as reminders for me so that I will more likely be able to recall that certain skill that I always seem to forget at the time of the shoot.

These are all very great books and I enjoyed reading every one of them. I guess I’ll be going there soon to read some more, even though I’m sure they don’t want people to do that too often..!

I was told to get off work earlier yesterday (Friday) due to my recent good performance. Since it’s also a long weekend (Monday), I’m getting a 3.5 day off.

In order to relief some stress I drove to the Queen Elizabeth park to take in some fresh air, and also take some macro pictures of various plants and bugs as usual. Luckily I got there early since the sky started to get darker/cloudier around 4pm but I was able to finish my stroll around that time. I got a few flower close-up shots as usual, and the special gift I got was a few pictures of a really weird looking green, leaf-like bug that happened to land on one of the flowers that I was shooting at. I didn’t know what it’s called, apparently, but it made a lot noise when it flew. The little guy was fairly cooperative, just moved around very little, not like the bees that were also there that buzzed around like crazy. It’s hard to shoot macros hand-held, but at the same time it gives you the flexibility without the tripod.

I slept forever last night, got up around 11 this morning, and started to do random things aimlessly.. like eating snacks, checking out Youtube, reading camera/lens reviews…etc. That alone took 6 hours. One nice thing that I accomplished today up to this point was that I hooked up an old Radio/CDPlayer combo to my PC (line out from the radio, line in to the PC) so that I could listen to the radio while working, in high sound quality.

I don’t have the mood to do anything actually, as the majority of my brain isn’t really functioning. I’m probably going to spend the next few days of my holidays to work on a new project that I’ve been neglecting for the past 3 weeks to keep myself busy…work never ends for me.

I woke up this morning, hoping for a better day…

I pushed myself so hard to make things perfect… But things just seem to get worse and worse…

The day got worse, and it painfully reminded me what had happen… telling me that I lost someone i treasured so much.

Everything ain’t the same anymore. The smile, the frowns, the promises….

Knowing that the memory will haunt me.. the pain will remain..

And yet, i feel so numb…Naively thinking that all these are dreams..

Should I talk?
Should I pretend nothing had happened?
Should I believe in what I was told?
Should I be torturing myself?
Should I show how painful it is?

Should I bleed?

I worked hard, Why me?

I dunno…. I need lots of answers. True answers..

It’s all work, for the past 2 weeks, starting right after the day I got back from vacation. Crazy loads of work, 10 hours/day, for 2 weeks. What’s wrong with me, or maybe it’s the work that isn’t right. Something isn’t right, since I find myself almost working at all times. I guess I can just “work less”, but not sure if that’s an option. I’ll try, otherwise it’s just going to get worse, I’m sure. I know something is wrong since I actually forgot that I need to make blog posts.

I need to clear up my mind as I can’t really think properly these days, by that I mean I can no longer schedule my time properly, like allocating time for different tasks…etc, like I used to be able to very efficiently. Hopefully I can see a solution very soon, or I’ll be pretty screwed the coming month…