Life Through the Lens

Carlsbad Caverns & Guadalupe Mountains Roadtrip 2011

This was the first Thanksgiving that I wasn’t able to go to Big Bend with Doug and Jim.  It was kind of a bummer, but I essentially ran out of vacation this year…although that doesn’t matter anymore.  I then planned a trip to Carlsbad Caverns New Mexico, and asked Yama if he wanted to come along.  After work in Wednesday we headed west.  As it turned out the drive wasn’t much longer than the typical traffic filled drive to Dallas.  Click here for all the photos.

 

I picked out this cool hotel called the Trinity…it was the only non chain option, but seemed to be the nicest option in Carlsbad.

The room was pretty swank, but they only had one bed and a sleeper sofa.  We alternated who had to sleep on the sofa. Still it was worthwhile.

Especially since the room came with free coffee and pastries in the morning.  I was expecting danishes and some french toast, but got lattes and scones/muffins/cinnamon rolls/strudel instead.

 

We decided to hit Carlsbad Caverns on Thankgiving as the crowds would hopefully be smaller that day, and it turned out to be a pretty wise decision.  There were so few people there, we could easily setup tripods and shoot.

Here’s some highlights of the Caverns

 

Being that everything was closed on Thanksgiving, we made our way to the Best Western for the Thanksgiving buffet.

 

The next day it was raining in the morning, so we headed up to Roswell to look for some aliens and see the sights. First stop was the visitors center to get a pic with aliens and figure out what sights there were to see.  Needless to say, it was a bit disappointing.  We checked out the Bitter Lake Wildlife Refuge and saw nothing but birds. Then went to the Lea house to see the house of one of the founders of Carlsbad. Also saw the POW memorial, where WWII German POWs built an iron cross into the bank of the river while working on the chain gang.

 

The next day, we went to the Guadalupe Mountains to hike the Devil’s Hall trail.  Its freezing in the morning, but warmed up a little later.  It was an awesome hike with some sweet sights.

 

Sunday morning, we headed back to San Angelo, but on the way we stopped off at the Living Desert Zoo.  It was pretty cool, but the animals were less than active.

Adorama Tri-flash FLH8

Browsing around the Adorama site for cool stuff that I couldn’t live without, I ran across this little hidden gem.  Being a hard core speedlight user, I had always needed ways to get more power out of little flashes.  Way back in the day, I made up a triflash adapter of my own, instead of paying $80 for Lastolite’s version.  Downside was that it was made of 1/4-20 bolts and didn’t look really nice, and was a real pain in the butt to assemble and use. So imagine my surprise when I found this Adorama Triple Shoe Adapter for $16.  It is pretty decently made of high quality plastic.  It takes the weight of speedlights without any creaking or free play.  The best part is that it has an 1/8” phono jack for triggering with a wireless trigger or optical slave.  At full power it gives me 1.5 stops over what a single speedlight can provide. Definitely useful in a pinch or when E-TTL is more convenient.

Austin Photo Expo + Anne and the Frenchies

Last weekend I headed out to the Austin Photo Expo that’s put on my Precision Camera.  It’s a fun and informative weekend of free seminars and a large floor where all the major camera and accessories vendors come to sell some goods at discount.  It was kind of last minute, as I didn’t get the email until the Wednesday before.  I tried to convince Doug to come out, but he had made plans already.

 

After I filled my brain with photographic knowledge, I met up with my friend Anne to grab some Thai food. Afterwards, I had to twist her arm into taking some portraits…so that I could use my photo knowledge and play with some new lighting techniques.

 

On Sunday before I had to leave for the Taste of Asia festival in San Angelo, we went out to brunch for Anne’s friend Aurore’s Birthday.

Around the Texas Horn

I felt like I was running the bases at a baseball game played on the state of Texas last weekend.  I had planned to be in Dallas for the last weekend of the state fair, then my buddy Derek called up and said he was going to be in Austin that weekend.  Being that I haven’t seen him since last Christmas in Seattle, I made the trek to Austin to hang out for the night.  It made for a tiring triangle of long distance driving, but it was worth it.

First stop to the Congress Avenue bridge to see the bats.  I’ve ventured down there many times, but never saw any bats.  Guess that night was my lucky night.  I was really surprised to actually see bats and then actually be able to photograph some.

Then it was off for some Shinerbock and dinner.  Derek wanted Tex-Mex, but I never ate Tex-Mex in Austin before…usually too busy eating stuff I couldn’t get in San Angelo.  I Yelped some place called Corazon, but it had maybe 2 mexican dishes on the menu.  It was expensive, but not fantastic.

After the somewhat disappointing meal, we went off in search of dessert/pie.  I took him to Gourdough’s, but they had take off to a festival of some sort (should have checked their twitter first). We ended up at Magnolia Café South, where I had a delicious Pecan pie. Afterwards, we stopped off my friend Anne’s place, where she was having a dinner party with her French grad student posse.

 

The next morning, we hit up Flip Happy Crepes for some lunch before I had to leave for Dallas, and he had to catch a flight back to Seattle.

 

Driving up to Dallas, I saw this 458 on I-35W…looks like its brand new.

 

I had planned to meet up with Dave and Ali on Sunday for the Fair, then we could convoy back to San Angelo together. Saturday night Ryan, Nicole, and I headed out to a Tornadoes Hockey game.  They are an NAHL team, but provided plenty of exciting hockey as well as a full on brawl.  Before the game, we got some dinner at Fadi’s Mediterranean Grill.  The food was delicious, but I got way too much…damn cafeteria style restaurants!  We also saw some weirdo superfan dressed in this yellow zentai suit.  Here’s all the photos.

 

Sunday was fried food day, all day!  There were so many delicious concoctions to try out.  Pretty much everything I had was good, except for the deep fried beer.  It was just warm Shiner in a ravioli…it was gross.

Deep fried Frito Pie was the best

Critter Fritter (beef stuff jalapeno)

Chicken Fried Bacon

Deep Fried Beer – the worst

Buffalo Wing in a Flapjack

El Bananarito (banana in a sopapilla)

Fried Cookie Dough

Deep Fried Autumn Pie (pumpkin pie)

Fried Autumn PIe, Butter, & Cookie Dough

Low Key Panasonic GF1

I was reading the latest issue of American Photo and saw the coolest lighting treatment on the new Sony A77.  So I reverse engineered the light to see if I could reproduce it.  I decided to retake the photos of the GF1, since the first ones I posted were more or less snapshots.  See the results below.

 

So how did I do it?  I figured out that there had to be an uplight from the bottom directly opposite and in line with the key light.  I used a 24” Qbox with grid to control light spill and a Lumiquest Softbox III just opposite and down low to give that extra contrast and sparkle to the hand grip side of the camera.  Here’s a setup shot below.  Its pretty easy to do in a small space and with only two lights.

Family Portraits

Did the annual family portraits for my friends Joe and Amber last weekend.  These are usually for the Christmas cards that Amber sends out every year, but they also wanted to document their daughter Carlie growing up.  Last year, she was barely crawling, now she’s talking and running around.  Amazing how quick a year goes by.

(click on photos to enlarge)

 

Here’s the family from just a year ago.

Scott Kelby Worldwide Photowalk & Big Android BBQ

I’ve been a bit behind on posting to the blog lately.  Last weekend I was in Austin for the Kelby Worldwide Photowalk and the Big Android BBQ.  The weekend contained three of my favorite things, photography, smartphones, and BBQ!

I had a great time meeting up with fellow photogs and running around the University of Texas campus taking photos of things. This is Simi, the leader of our photowalk.

 

Here’s a couple of my favorite photos from the walk.  Nothing spectacular, but decent.

 

The Big Android BBQ was right after and was pretty informative as well as a lot of fun.  Got lots of free swag, got to see hot tech blogger girls, and eat some tasty BBQ. We even had a totally disorganized google maps scavenger hunt to win a Galaxy Tab 10.1. Not only was there a wrong address on the map, but the contested started 30 min late, and the URL for the maps was posted at a hotel 10 miles away, which we didn’t find out about until the organizers tweeted it 30 min late. In which time, someone who was staying at the hotel handily won. I wasted a quarter tank of gas driving around Austin, but did get to make some new friends. 

The LG Girl

 

Cyanogenmod himself

 

But the best part of the weekend was getting to eat at all the Food Trucks.  Since I was ridin’ solo, there was no compromise when it came to what I wanted to stuff my gullet with…and boy was it awesome.  Has some pork belly ssam and ribs (so good, it was like meat candy) at East Side King @ Grackle.

 

Kim Chi fries with Pork bulgogi @ Chi’Lantro

 

Steamed Pork bun with hoisin sauce and Bacon fried rice w/fried egg banana ketchup and sriracha sauce.

 

Chicken Tiki Masala and Garlic Naan at G’Raj Mahal (sorry no food pick, I had to get it to go)

 

Migas and Monk Special @ Torchy’s Tacos

 

And last but not least, the Pulled Pork BBQ sandwich at the Big Android BBQ.

Going Away for Our Friend Lauren

This was the last weekend for Lauren in San Angelo, she got a new job in Houston making a bunch more money.  So we decided to head out to Sealy Flats for some dinner and Blues.  Texas Blues Runners was the live entertainment that night and they rocked!  I guess the guitarist used to play for the Doobie Brothers.  This was also the first true test for the Panasonic GF1. As I had hoped, it turned out to be the perfect low light people portrait camera.  The F1.7 was clutch, as I shot wide open the whole night.  ISO performance was decent, but much better than anything else in the compact camera class. Video quality was also excellent, but the lack of image stabilization in the 20mm made for some shaky video.

 

 

Panasonic GF1 20mm F1.7

I finally decided to dip my toes in the Micro 4/3rds pool to see what all the excitement was about.  I was also looking for better high ISO performance from a compact camera.  The G12 and S95 are great, but really start dropping off in quality above ISO 400.  The m4/3 cameras were supposed to have pretty good RAW performance, and the Panasonic bodies had the best AF around until Olympus released the EP-3. So I picked up a used Panasonic GF1 (best of the GF series because the controls were setup for a serious photography and the sensors haven’t changed any in the 12MP range) with a 20mm F1.7 lens off Fred Miranda forums for a killer price.  The lens is a pancake style lens with a fast aperture and a 40mm equivalent field of view…probably closer to the human eye than the 50mm is. I took some quick test shots with and was truly impressed.  The ISO400 output was clean, to the point of not needing any post production Noise reduction. ISO 3200 was pretty noisy, about the level of my 5D MKII at ISO 12,800, but could still get usable results out of Lightroom.  Here’s some shots of the new camera. Click on the photo to enlarge.

Labor Day 2011 in Dallas

I didn’t have any major trips planned for Labor Day, so I decided to make a long overdue visit to my friends Nicole and Ryan up in Dallas.  It was an epic weekend of photography, eating, and fun!  I drove up after work on Friday and met up with Ryan, since Nicole already had a dinner with friends planned.  We headed off to get some delicious Thai food at the Banana Leaf. I got the Waterfall Beef, which was a surprisingly tasty cold dish. Then it was off to Yogurtland for some Passion Fruit and Guava Froyo. The epic pics from the weekend are here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Saturday started off pretty early with a quick trip to Panera Bread for breakfast, then headed off to meet up with some friends at the Fort Worth Zoo.

 

 

Since we were in the Ft. Worth area, I suggested we head up to Watauga, to a place that was on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives.  The Chef Point Café.  It’s a Conoco gas station that has a gourmet dining restaurant attached to it.  The story goes that the owner couldn’t get a loan to open up a restaurant, since they had no previous experience, but they could get a loan for a gas station. Crazy.  We had some delicious Artichoke bottoms stuffed with crab meat and I had the Blackened Stuffed Chicken with angel hair pasta.

 

 

After we recovered from the food coma, we headed down to Deep Ellum, which is know to be a slightly rough, but artsy part of Dallas. They had a hot rod car show going on, so we went down to do some photography.

 

No stop would be complete without another meal. We walked over to the Twisted Root Burger, famous not only for their burgers, but for their home brewed root beer. Instead of calling your name, you’re given a card with a famous celebrity on it.  I got the original Karate Kid…Ralph Macchio.  I also had their burger of the month, Peanut butter, bacon, and Jalapenos…all things that I love separately, but were magical when combined with seared meat and bread :)

 

Sunday was The Coffee House Café for breakfast. Pancakes and Coffee.  We results were a bit mixed.  The service was okay, but one of their coffee specialties turned out to be pretty bad.  Nicole got a Pour Over, which is coffee that goes through some convoluted contraption to brew, then is mixed with a flavored syrup.  Turned out aweful.  Not a good thing to have on your menu when “Coffee” is in your name.  I had the Lemon Ricotta pancakes were were awesome.  The regular drip coffee was pretty good too.

 

After that food coma, we prepared for a Labor Day Cookout at Ryan’s friend’s house.  There was a lot of food…and kids running around.  We had brisket burgers, cookies…and best of all, Chocolate Salty Balls.

 

Then it was off to downtown to meet up with Nicole’s cousins and her friend Kelly…in another kind of rough part of town called Oak Cliff.  There was a margarita tasting festival, with booths from all sorts of restaurants and bars. Unfortunately, it was really poorly organized and tons of people were squished into a 1 block area.  First you had to wait in line to buy a wrist band, then when you finally got in, you had to wait in equally long lines to get a “tasting cup” which was maybe 2 oz of liquid.  After a while, we would just walk up and take cups from the side. When it started to get dark, we hightailed it out of there and met up at Village Burger in Uptown for some dinner.  Food wasn’t too bad, but a bit forgettable. I had the Portabello burger…having been burgered out the last few meals.

 

I planned on leaving late Monday afternoon, so I could get some stuff done before the week started. Nicole and Ryan make some blueberry pancakes with blueberry compote. It was pretty good, except for the smurf looking color the pancakes took on The weather had dropped into the 60’s that morning and we headed outside to to play around with the dogs and try to get some action shots.  On my way out, we tried to find an Greek restaurant that was open on labor, and ended up at Zoes Kitchen.  I had a pretty light Hummus and salad plate.  That really hit the spot after all that extreme eating.