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photo: a mantis on the wall

Tuesday, October 30th, 2012
I was sitting on the step taking a phone call, and was startled to spot this awesome, huge praying mantis on the wall beside me. I switched to speakerphone and shot a photo during the call. Sometimes the best camera is the one you’ve got at the time.
praying mantis
Click to see bigger. Probably not necessary though, as there’s a decent amount of camera motion blur.

Posted in environs, Los Angeles, Photos | No Comments »

Shanghai: Apartment Shopping

Saturday, April 16th, 2011
Photo

Catching up on posting a few photos from that sojourn in Shanghai. This one was shot in a dusty hutong in Shanghai. Grease from a jianbing seems to have clouded my iPhone’s camera. I think I remember at the time choosing not to wipe it off because it looked interesting. The kid in this photo has the perfect kind of barely-reactive wary look. Better that than succumb to overwhelm, can’t have a billion people throwing a tantrum!

Posted via email from Zach’s posterous


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An item of Chinese food I wasn’t brave enough to try: “Xidan”

Friday, March 4th, 2011
Photo

Look closely if you dare (click the image to see it at full resolution). Those are no ordinary eggs –unless you expect beaks with yours.

This seems a bit similar to the Filipino food “Balut”, a mainstay of eating challenges on US-oriented reality tv competitions. Often the competitors gag and bow out. I’ve always figured I’d pass such a challenge without issue, as the dish in question probably tastes fine. But when faced with Balut’s Chinese cousin, I skipped the opportunity.

I showed the photo to a shanghainese friend, who said the dish is called xidan and is very good for health problems. I asked if it works, and she said,”of course.”

So there you have it. Xidan. Yum.

Posted via email from Zach’s posterous


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China Fashion Show #1

Sunday, February 6th, 2011
Img 2305
The most stylish (yet very shy around foreigners with iPhones) girl on the subway. Her very fashionable parents saw me try to take her photo and approved, and then her Dad took my phone away and proved himself with this photo the better photographer of this particular subject.

Img 2324
A sparkly owl coat, seen on the streets of Songjiang, Shanghai, China. If you’re ever curious if a given photo was shot in Shanghai, just look for guys carrying their girlfriends’ designer purses –it appears to be the local custom.
Img 2280 - Version 2
My new sweater proclaims that I am "having a Fine Time with your Friends" and exhorts all that "You Must be a Eiffel Knit Life". Word.

Posted in Amusing, China, Photos | 2 Comments »

a new set of header images

Tuesday, October 12th, 2010
I moved back to the US of A three years ago, so it’s time to retire my old Beijing-themed header images. I’ll miss the photo of the bicycle-based park barbers and the photo of the bicycle-based couch mover and even the photos of a younger version of myself in front of a red wall, but it’s time for a set that’s new and more relevant to Los Angeles.

So here are the header images I threw together yesterday, along with brief explanations:

New Blog Header Kubrick Wide 3
In Los Angeles it is important to drive everywhere, regardless the distance. Yes, you could walk 3 blocks to your destination, but then you’d miss out on the many routes suggested by your car’s factory-installed GPS system.

New Blog Header Kubrick Wide Studio City Sunset
An average sunset in the hills of LA’s "Studio City" district.

New Blog Header Kubrick Wide 2
The pets of a film editor I know share an "American Gothic" moment. Part of the "A day in the life of Burbank" collection.

New Blog Header Kubrick Wide 6
Disneyland isn’t exactly LA, but it’s close. This picturesque scene is part of the Grand Canyon diorama, one of the many sights to behold while enjoying Disneyland’s charming and ancient train ride.

Due to the extreme horizontal aspect ratio, it’s a challenge to edit images for the header. But it’s fun. The header image displayed per visit is chosen randomly. Once I’ve installed more images, you’ll likely see a different image each visit.


Posted in Deals, environs, Geeky, Photos, Running | No Comments »

Photo: Hawaiian Green Sea Turtle on a black sand beach

Tuesday, July 6th, 2010

From a recent trip to Kona. I’ll post a link to the rest of the photos on Flickr as soon as I finish editing them.

Posted in environs, Photos | No Comments »

Jay Leno in his daytime, Coldwater Canyon slot

Saturday, July 3rd, 2010
Jay Leno driving along Coldwater Canyon
Click either photo to see it full-size.
Rachel and I were driving along Coldwater Canyon Blvd in Studio City this morning when we spotted something that’s a not-infrequent sight around here: Jay Leno driving one of his very cool vintage cars down the road.

I grabbed her cell phone1 and snapped a couple of pictures. He did the same. I don’t think he has a blog in which he posts photos of people in the act of taking his picture2, but if he does you’ll now be able to find a photo of me on it.

Jay Leno driving a vintage car


  1. It’s an iPhone 4G. I’m pretty impressed by its camera’s image quality. I don’t think I gave the phone enough time to properly set its exposure for that 2nd shot, there’s likely have been better highlight detail had I waited a couple of seconds. [↩]
  2. which is something I’d definitely do if I were any sort of celebrity [↩]

Posted in Los Angeles, Photos | 2 Comments »

Where’s Chow? Aperture 3 facial recognition in action.

Thursday, June 3rd, 2010
Where's Chow
I thought this screenshot might amuse. Click the photo to see it at full-size. At the top of the image are photos that include Chow Yun Fat, cropped to just the automatically recognized face. Below a line are photos that Aperture 3 thinks may be the same person. To refine the computer’s idea of what his face looks like and tag more photos with the appropriate name I had to select all Chow Yun Fat photos from the bottom part of the screen and drag them to the top, above the line.

For more info on the facial recognition feature in Aperture 3, check here on Apple’s website.

I have about 16,000 photos in my archive, and though the process isn’t completely automatic, the facial recognition feature made it much more feasible to tag all the people in these photos. Even just the fact that the application can display an entire set of photos cropped and resized to only show faces alone would be a huge help, the fact that Aperture 3 makes decent guesses is a bonus.


Posted in Amusing, Apple, Geeky, Photos | No Comments »

a photo from my run from Minneapolis to Golden Valley, MN

Friday, April 2nd, 2010
1-2
The other day I ran from my cousin Andy’s place in Minneapolis over to my cousin Steve’s over in Golden Valley. I snapped a set of photos when I left the Theodore Wirth Parkway and began running next to the 55W. At the time I enjoyed the sunset visible at the end of the road, though it’s awfully small and faint in the resulting panorama. Click to see the image full-size. The separate photos were automatically stitched together and cropped with the iPhone app AutoStitch.

Posted in environs, Photos, Running | No Comments »

A preview of my Canon DSLR picture style tests…

Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010
Color Style Test Preview

Coming soon, the results of my test shoot of several of the most popular “flat” color styles people have been using in their attempts to preserve the maximum amount of picture information in the H264 files recorded by Canon DSLRs.

I shot the same setup with 5 different color style settings, and will be looking at all of them in Apple Color in order to determine which setting I prefer.

I’m well aware that tradition holds that no camera test is complete without a photo of a beautiful lady holding a redundant umbrella and smiling at the photographer, but I decided plastic grapes would just as ably serve that function1.


  1. And the grapes had to stand-in, as no people were around when I shot these tests [↩]

Posted in Final Cut Pro, Geeky, Photos | No Comments »

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