Finally got this lens. $900USD from ebay. Made in Japan. Been wanting this lens for the past 1.5 years but couldn’t justify the price. Well I wasn’t really that much into “bokeh” and fixed primes, not until lately I started to care more about image qualities. Does every photographer eventually ditches their zooms and opt for the primes? I still love my zoom lenses but maybe one day, I’ll be doing all primes, who knows.

Anyway the lens is heavy - weights about the same as my 12-60mm zoom, kind of crazy. I took it out for some sample shots, so far so good, except that the auto-focus is kind of slow and sometimes it’s not quite accurate. There could be a learning curve for this lens, afterall it’s no fun being able to utilize its best right up front. The bokeh is amazing! In fact the aperture is a little “too big” during the day, when it’s really bright doing f/1.4 requires a shutter speed of > 1/8000 sec! This lens’s opened up a brand new world to me and I can just imagine the variety of pics that I can take using it.

Went with Wendy to the Skagit County near Burlington to see the tulip fields. We left around 7AM but then I forgot to bring some stuff for a few times and therefore had to drove back home to pick them up and wasted some 45 minutes. The drive down the States wasn’t too bad, around 1.5 hours excluding the line up at the border.

I think it was the last day to show the tulip fields before they “top them off”, which is to chop off the petals / head of the flower in order to prevent disease…etc. The remaining fields were still vast and colorful - red, orange, yellow, purple, white, pink…. so many colors. Wendy had a chance to try out her new Olympus E-PL1 camera, and I busted out my Zuiko 50-200mm f/2.8-3.5 for some serious bokeh fun. This lens was extremely capable in the fields, more useful than my beloved Zuiko 12-60mm f/2.8-3.5.

We went to the Burlington Outlet for some shopping but then the place was kind of tiny, nothing much there so we just wandered for a bit and drove back to Canada. We walked SO much and were super tired. Wendy got some sunburn on her nose and face hopefully it’ll heal fairly soon.

I went out with a group of amateur photographers last Thursday for a “photowalk” in Downtown. It was a flickr group but I was expecting more people. Those guys were nice, very friendly and knowledgeable on camera/photo stuff. Plus it really feels great when you get to know people that share the same interests with you. I didn’t get a lot of great photos out of the walk as I’m not a urban shooter, but I did PS a few of them and they turned out pretty well. Thinking if I’ll be joining them up for the photowalk at Granville Island on the 27th.

Aside from that, I’ve made up my mind to do the “difficult version” of the Howl’s Moving Castle papercraft. It’s supposed to be an illustrated book and you can cut out the shapes from the pages, however that book is apparently discontinued and very limited of them are available on Amazon Japan selling for $400USD - crazy. I downloaded a PDF version scanned by some guy, got 5x pages printed for ~$30, and started from there. I bought Elmer’s glue for adhering the sheets and got my x-acto blade replaced (it’s super sharp, can slice through paper so easily) I’ve spent 3 nights, got the head part in shape, and the tongue as well. Some parts like the hinges on the side of its mouth are SUPER tiny and therefore difficult to cut and glue - it’s smaller than a penny. It’s fun though. I don’t know how much time is needed to get the whole thing completed, the other guy Ben Millett apparently got his done in 72 hours. I’m not going to beat his time, will take my time to make the perfect model to the smallest detail.

Have been spending some time doing more trip planning for the upcoming Yosemite National Park & Death Valley Nationa Park trip. I love Microsoft Streets & Trips! Without it it’ll be 80x harder to do any planning, if it’s even possible. In fact I’ve been using it since so long ago that I can’t even remember when.

Went to Chapters to search for books that are helpful for the trip. Chapters on Broadway has way more books than their Richmond counterpart. I picked 6 books or so from the shelf, spot a comfy seat, sat down and read for an hour. I picked three of the books to buy.

The Rough Guide to Yosemite
by ROUGHGUIDES / Paul Whitfield
This book will be my general-purpose book for general information, where to eat, hike, tips, some small guides, maps…etc. I usually get Fodor’s or Frommer, but this one seems to be better.

Day Hikes In Yosemite National Park
by Robert Stone
This is a pure hiking guide. It has ALL possible hikes in Yosemites, detailed information about each trail, trailhead, maps, elevation gains…etc. I’ll keep this book in my backpack at all times.

The Photographer’s Guide to Yosemite & the High Sierra, where to find perfect shots and how to take them
by Harolad Davis
Even though I’m not going to the High Sierra, this book is worthy enough to buy just for all the incredibly useful picture taking techniques and tips about where/when to take any picture at the parks. I have to start reading it real soon, have to finish it before the trip.

I actually just ordered another book online (from BuyCDNow.ca) that I wasn’t able to find in Chapters, or the Travel Bug bookstore: The Photographer’s Guide to Death Valley. It’s published by the same company as the photographer’s guide to Yosemite book mentioned above. Can’t wait for it to come in my mail…

Today I read this book “The World’s Top Photographers and the stories behind their greatest image - Landscape”. It’s a book that I requested from the library. WOW, what an extremely great book! I saw some of the coolest, prettiest landscape photographs I’ve ever seen. It’s a book with photographers from 38 of world’s top landscape photographers. I actually read through every single page of the book (which is quite rare) as there was so much to see. Each photo is paired with a description from the actual photographer, about where and how the photograph was taken. I felt like I’ve learned a LOT reading them. I realized that timing is very important, with sunrise/sunset being the best time for photo taking - almost 80-90% of all the shots in the book were taken either during dawn or dusk! Also a lot of the coolest pictures were taken before/after a storm or heavy rainfall, where the waves and cloud formation were in the most interesting forms.

Some of the photographs I liked the most are from these pros: Michael Frye, Yousef Khanfar, Colin Prior, John Shephard, Michael Fatali. Putting the links to their sites here for future reference.

I also saw quite a few pictures that was taken in the national parks in Utah and Arizona where I’ve also been to - I guess I have no choice but to revisit these parks sometime in the future, to capture whatever that I missed during my last visit..! Apart from Utah, some of the places that I must go sooner or later are: Yosemite National Park (beautiful mountains/waters everywhere), Yellowstone National Park (to see the colorful geysers, and the White Dome Geyser which erupts every 15 min!), Mono Lake in California (very interesting stone formation in the lake), Hawaii Volcanoes National Park (to see the crazy lava flows next to the shoreline), and Deadvlei in Namibia (dead trees thousand years old standing in a white desert).

It’s of course been lots of working the past couple days, didn’t really do anything special other than playing on the piano practicing some songs, and went to Chapters (again) to read a few more books. Some of the books I read during last week:

Understanding Close-up Photography: Creative Close Encounters with or without a Macro Lens - Bryan Peterson
Full colour book with lots and lots of great tips on doing close-up photography from the author’s own experience. I was surprised to learn that “macro photography” is actually very different from “close-up photography”, and people (like me) tend to mix these terms up - macro photography refers to photographs that are at least 1:1 in magnification, so anything less magnified than that is considered to be close-up, not macro. The book talks about all kinds of tools and setups that you can use for close-up photography, namely extension tubes, macro lens, telephoto lens with macro function, reverse adapter for prime lens, macro ring-flashes..etc. Also talks about some essential skills for photography insects, and various other objects. Very informative and well illustrated book that I think is a must-read for anyone that is interested in close-up/macro photography. I want to get a reverse adapter for my Zuiko 50mm ASAP!

Rick Sammon’s Digital Photography Secrets
This is a very interesting book, that is just not like any other books. Loaded with 100’s of tricks and tips on how to shoot certain type of photographs, such as lighting, location, time, framing, creative ideas, action shots…you name it. A lot of these ideas were new to me so it really made me think. Can’t really name every single trick in the book as there were so many of them but I’m sure when time comes, I will be able to recall some of them. This is actually a good point - it’s always impossible to memorize everything in a book, but just by reading them and knowing some of the ideas (if not all) is still extremely beneficial to the mind.

A Bloom A Day - Ron van Dongen
Herbarium Amoris: Floral Romance
These two books are both full-color illustrations of the close-up/macro shots of many many different types of flowers and plants. Very very nice photographs, some of them were speechlessly stunning. I noticed a lot of the shots were shot with a solid background color. Black was used to make the flower stand out and also creates a sense of mystical beauty. Other colors were used to complement flowers with other different colors. In one of the books the author mentioned that he liked to use old t-shirts with solid colors as the background, quite interesting. It’s much easier said than done though, provided that you need a way of placing the background behind the object (maybe some sort of tripod + clips? Or an extra pair of hands), and that you need to make use of the flash as lighting will probably but diminished due to light being blocked by whatever that is used as the background. I think it’s quite difficult, maybe I’ll try it at a later day, but now I guess I’ll stick with shooting with available light, with good DOF to create an out-of-focus background.