step 1: go to double rainbow, get pearl milk tea
step 2: go to wonderful foods, get pearl milk tea
step 3: throw away the tea from wonderful’s pearl tea and keep the pearls in the cup.
step 4: strain the tea from double rainbow’s pearl tea into wonderful’s pearls.
step 5: enjoy good pearl milk tea!
What ever happened to predictability?
The milkman, the paperboy, evening TV.
Everywhere you look , everywhere you go (there’s a heart).
There’s a heart
A hand to hold onto.
Everywhere you look , everywhere you go.
There’s a face
Of somebody who needs you.
Eveywhere you look,
When you’re lost out there and you’re all alone,
A light is waiting to carry you home,
Everywhere you look.
Everywhere you look.
you know you’re obsessed with a new camera when you want to take a picture of a computer screen instead of doing a screen capture. anyhow, my sister and i were using our webcams and chatting with each other over IM. pretty entertaining, i had forgotten how much fun the webcam was…mostly because i don’t really know anyone else who has a webcam.
i already have a multi-flash studio light setup for my portrait work, but i’ve always sort of wanted to have some hot lights so that i don’t need to do so much guess work sometimes when taking pictures. i’ve always been torn about whether or not to get some dedicated lights or softboxes. the problem has always been cost. i don’t anticipate using these lights often, so i didn’t really want to spend hundreds of dollars to get a setup like this, especially when i have close to what i need already with my multi-flash setup.
but then i read an article about cheap home studio lighting and was intrigued with the possibility of adding lights to my setup that are always on. the problem i saw with this first article’s use of work lights is that the light thrown on the subject is pretty harsh and you’re going to need a lot of extension cords to power this setup.
but it was this article by dan that really made this a reality for me. he has a very similar setup in terms of equipment and so i decided to check it out a little more and try it out. i never thought about using my umbrellas with work lights and this seems to give a much more diffused light.
i have 2 umbrellas, 2 light stands, and 2 photoflex multiclamps for my flash-based setup already so all i had to do was go to sears and purchase the halogen work lights on sale for $10 each.
after getting the two work lights, the only problem i had was that the bolt that came with the work lights were a little too long and the threaded stud that fits into the multiclamp only was threaded about 1/4″. i had about 1/2″ of play and so i went to home depot and got a few washers and a nut to fill in that gap. then it all screwed in pretty easily and i’ve now got a diffused light source that’s always on. these things run pretty hot, though, so if you do choose to use them, be careful when handling them.
i plan to use the tripods that the work lights came with as a reflector holder. all i need is a clamp to hold the reflector to the tripod and i think i ought to be set.
leeya and i went to dusita for thai food. i was able to use up my free lunch card there today. pretty cool. i really do enjoy their panang curry. i think it’s my favorite so far.
i have this coming friday off and so i’ve decided to take a trip into san francisco to scout out some locations and take some pictures after being reminded of some places that i wanted to check out by rita. this isn’t a final list, but it a small rundown of the places that i’d like to check out.
for any of you SF locals, if there is any other picturesque places that you think i ought to check out (preferably for potential casual wedding portraits) let me know!
here’s the plan so far:
1. alamo square
2. crissy field
3. fort point
4. palace of legion of honor
5. golden gate park
i think my camera addiction is getting out of hand. my early birthday present is the canon eos 20d. now…i told myself i wouldn’t buy this camera because i didn’t really need to, but for some reason, unknown even to me, when it came down to thinking about what to get for my birthday, i happened to order this.
lovely. it is rather beautiful, though. this camera is FAST. way faster than the 10D and it’s also a lot less noiser than the 10D. those were my first two reactions to the camera. i’m pretty happy with it and i can’t wait to stress test it out. i’m thinking about doing a location shoot in the city next week on my holiday. that should be lots of fun.
this brings me to 3 canon digital SLRs and 1 film body. heh…film. how barbaric! i really need to do something with the D30. it really hasn’t seen the light of day in a long time. i’m thinking that the 10D can be a secondary camera when i do shoots, but i really probably should sell that too. i wonder how much those cameras go for these days…maybe i’ll just keep them all for sentimental value. you know…like, remember the time my camera fell off my tripod and the hot shoe on my flash got ripped off and the hot shoe on the camera like all messed up? yeah, good times.
i went to this coffee shop in cupertino the other day and the bathroom is actually quite swanky looking. if it weren’t for the fact that the mirror is all scratched up, it would have been pretty cool.
why people bother to scratch up the mirror and not write on the walls is beyond me, but whatever.
last weekend a bunch of us went hiking at the portola redwoods state park. we hit a few roadblocks, went over some dilapidated bridges, saw a waterfall, and forded a creek. all in all a pretty fun trip.
today was quite the productive day. so many things have just been thrown by the wayside lately and many things have been piling up to do. this morning i finally went to home depot to pick up some things to build out the storage gear for my lighting equipment. paul has been pondering about what equipment to get and that finally prompted me to finalize on what i wanted to do about my lighting gear.
you see, transporting my lighting gear has always been a bit of a hassle. the lighting stands i have are too tall to fit in my backpacking backpack and it is not big enough to carry the stands, my umbrellas, flashes, and other such nonesense. so i’ve been looking around trying to find a bag big enough to hold everything i have. this actually is harder than it seems.
i did find a golf bag cover for $10 at sportsmart, but the prospect of having to lug all of that heavy gear on my shoulder scared me, regardless of how cheap the bag was.
i did contemplate briefly making my own bag, but i’m not so nimble with cloth-like materials. i am, however, reasonably decent with PVC pipes.
my original idea was to build canisters out of PVC pipes that will hold my lighting stands and umbrellas. it turns out, however, that i would have needed a 5″ PVC pipe to hold the lighting stands and those pipes start to get pretty heavy and thick. so i opted not to make canisters for the lighting stands and just let them be in the cardboard boxes that they came in.
now, my umbrellas are a different story. they came in a cheap flimsy soft plastic shell and it offers no protection at all. i wanted to get 2.5″ PVC pipes for this, but home depot didn’t have it. (i doubt that they even make any of this size, actually, in home depot’s defense. the 3″ PVC pipes just looked HUGE though and a little too heavy to really make it worthwhile, so i crossed my fingers and bought 2″ pipes and caps.
i got home, measured the pipes, cut them, and cemented one of the caps on each and let them set. now i’ve got two containers that the umbrellas *JUST BARELY* fit into.
next was finding the bag. i went to sportsmart to check out their duffle bag selection. most of the duffle bags were just too small and couldn’t fit the 36″ light stands. i was disheartened and about to go home when i spied a wheeled duffle made by alpine design. they are probably some generic brand nobody has heard of, but they offer everything that i could want in a duffle bag. reinforced bottom, wheeled base, and an extending handle so you can comfortable roll the duffle bag anywhere you need to. it is GREAT. and it fell in my budget. (i had sworn that i would not pay the outlandish costs of specialized bags made to hold lighting gear that start at around $80. that’s ridiculous! it’s just a bag, people.
AND the wheeled duffle has this extra compartment on the top that is separate from the rest of the duffle bag. it UNZIPS from the duffle bag to become a separate backpack! how cool is that?!
so this bag now carries everything i need to become a portable studio: 2 light stands, 2 umbrellas, 2 flash brackets, my tripod, 2 reflectors, 2 optical slaves, 2 slave flashes, and enough batteries to light up a christmas tree.
so this is what i ended up with:
[imgthumb=/images/2005/0312/IMG_8344.jpg] [imgthumb=/images/2005/0312/IMG_8347.jpg] [imgthumb=/images/2005/0312/IMG_8348.jpg]
[imgthumb=/images/2005/0312/IMG_8353.jpg] [imgthumb=/images/2005/0312/IMG_8355.jpg] [imgthumb=/images/2005/0312/IMG_8354.jpg]
[imgthumb=/images/2005/0312/IMG_8357.jpg] [imgthumb=/images/2005/0312/IMG_8359.jpg]