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.

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..!