35 posts tagged “polaroid”
A curious sheep checking out this little boy:
And the curious me checking out this little guy:
And my little guy checking out this bigger guy:
And my little guy checking out the even bigger guy:
From the family trip polaroid set here.
Accumulated 5 years of mileage and I'd finally redeemed them for a few tickets for our family trip. Not exactly my type of vacation but it is still great (I've never done that but my dream vacation is very long and slow, beach and people, sunshine and camera, aircon and writing). I love the first day's visit to Mother Farm, we had very close encounter with animals and I was really surprised that the lambs are so kind and innocent to people even though they can be rude to each other. Many of the species there have huge scrotums too, almost like the size of your head! Almost every one of them looks like smiling all the time. One of them even liked me so much he/she marked me with his/her gland secretion repeatedly.
To me, Disney is totally kind of boring. I'm happy with the mechanical games though, especially roller coasters, but today Space Mountain was closed..... arrrhhhhh! Oh it was a great parade tonight though, featuring millions of colorful light bulbs on all of the performers and cars. I have to say that Japanese are highly sophisticated in crowd management and self-discipline in public space. During the parade, not only did the crew organized people in place very professionally, the crowd itself is like self-organizing units knowing where to go and what's the limit. Everybody was sitting down so everybody else can take great pictures and see the parade clearly. I love this crowd awareness, like flocks of birds. The firework was not as beautiful as the one in Hong Kong Disney though.
OK, this trip I'm carrying 4 cameras with me. I could not leave any one behind in my hotel because each seems to be suitable for certain condition and they work well together (imagine this perfect harmony between your wives!). Polaroid SLR690 is great for its square crop and unique color, Voigtlander R4A 35mm 1.2 + AGFA 400 film is great for low light condition and shallow DOF, Lomo LCA+ with Lomo 200 slide film is to create stunning e-to-c high contrast photos. Finally, Ricoh GX-200 is to fill-in the gaps, like snap shots and videos.
So I was carrying these 4 cameras for the past 2 days. I'm going to Hakone tomorrow leaving heavy luggage in Tokyo for 2 days. I will still carry these 4 cameras with me expecting to capture great imagery to share. CU in a few days!
Not long ago I said PoGo is No Go, particularly for serious photo journaling people. I decided to use up all the ZINK photo paper and sell the unit fast. Then 5 days ago when I received the self-inking stamps for the Travel Photo Cafe 2009, I played with the stamps on the opposite page of 2 PoGo prints I sticked on my notebook. 3 days later, I found that the colors on the PoGo print faded in areas in direct contact with the stamps!
You can clearly see the icons left an "impression" on the PoGo print. Perhaps the ink is acidic, perhaps something else. I have another PoGo print reacting to Copic marker drawing as well. Despite the fact that the PoGo's ZINK paper is waterproof, the surface is susceptible to reaction somehow. I'm definitely not using PoGo/ZINK for photo journaling. Yes, I said it again. This doesn't happen to my Fuji Instax or Pivi prints.
This year marks the third year of an interesting event to be held in city'super and LOG-ON. In this concept cafe (particularly in Festival Walk's LOG-ON), you will find:
- Stationery and photography travel gears (19th June - 2nd July 2009): Canon, Fuji, Lomo, Moleskine, Midori, KOLO, MT-tapes, LUXE, Kodomo stamps, Staz-on inkpads, etc
- Travel Talks: 3 different sessions on 20th June 2009 presented by traveler and photographers. Learn how to steal time and write better on your journal, life hack tricks included. Why a trip to Cambodia changed a portrait photographer's view on life and how a traveler's mindset is different from a tourist's. How imagery and text combined can create lasting memory through photo journaling. Only a few days left for registration!
- Mini Game with interesting prizes: Follow the instruction on the postcard and go to Festival Walk LOG-ON store, find the hidden message which is a travel quote written by G.K. Chesterton, write it down and submit. You get a chance to win nice gifts from great brands (check out this Flickr photo and move your mouse over to see what they are)
- Stamp your notebook/postcard: Yes stamps, bring your notebook or use our postcard. I've made these icons into self inking stamps for your fun: Moleskine, LCA, Travel Cafe logo, fountain pen. They sort of summarized what this event is all about. Also, Designphil (Midori) in Japan made these two stamps for our event too! They are only available in Hong Kong during this period, so collect them while you can!
-
Enjoy!
Took me a few tries to get the right sunlight for a key photo to be used in the Travel Photo Cafe 2009 event (19th June - 2nd July).
Grabbed a new book from Jim Collins during lunch a few days ago.
Carrying Sausage Man with me all the time coz his recommendations are quite pleasing.
Made champion/#1 loser/#2 loser badges from leather for the dart event in June, people love them. I wasn't thinking straight and made this holder for pen or for darts I didn't know, now it doesn't quite work either way.
Looking at my blackboard some time ago realizing that things got done pretty much as planned, pleasing.
As for outdoor activities, a day with family to a fishing village. Fisherwomen selling their catches or dried seafoods from their sampan parked at the pier.
A dog waiting for the last sampan to get away from the remote island.
Loving the look of my camera and leather case I made.
Sunset getting later as summer approaches but still a signal to go home.
Mom always drop food/fruits to our house while we were not here.
Oh an amazing outing with colleagues, outdoor BBQ using charcoal, sunny and breezy day between rainy days, perfect day.
Went to a factory converted arts center called JCCAC (Jockey Club Creative Arts Center). 8 stories of innovations and creativity in compartments. Low rise building with a lot of breeze. Lovely but hot day.
Great gifts from Kelly, the last lecture book, tops bookmarks, graphite object, etc. Thanks Kelly.
Yup, lomo produces chocolate too, I can't eat it coz I don't want to destroy its nice packaging.
Admiring a return package of the notebooks I sent to Japan for exhibition. Midori was kind enough to give me loads of interesting postcards, charms and envelopes.
Produced only in small quantity, the Lomo LCA 25th Anniversary badge. Going to that birthday party on 19th June!
End of blurb.
My friend Kelvin couldn't resist the temptation of Polapremium's big discount on the "Polaroid Pogo Moleskine Special Edition" and despite the not so good reviews all over the net, I said "count me in" knowing that I will need a real small photo printer for my travel journals. We both regretted on the day we received the package.
The price is amazingly attractive. A PoGo alone costs US$80 to $150, but Polapremium is selling this special set at US$72, you get a free Moleskine too. I love both brands and the packaging is great. The size of it is a little bigger than an iPhone and about double the thickness of an iPhone. The first thing I did was to charge it up but to my surprise the power socket on PoGo is kind of shaky probably because of it not being soldered to the circuit board strong enough by design. The power button on the machine is hard to press and located right beside the USB cable which is very inconvenient. After more than 6 hours of charging, the printer printed 6 photos and the battery indicator became red and refused to print another one. Yeah I know, I was warned about battery life but this is not portable at all.
Print quality.... totally unacceptable. It looks like a result of laser print out (you can actually see the contours of color layers especially in dark areas), but resolution of an inkjet (I know, I'm not able to describe it properly but this is how I feel). You can also see faint white vertical lines every 3mm on the print, not a good sight as a photo. The paper gives you an impression of cheap labels instead of a photo print with glue on the back. I cannot find any information about the acidity of the paper and glue.
I know these are pretty crude comments, considering the amazing zero ink technology by Zink behind this. I think it has great potential, just that both the paper and the machine are not mature enough to give end user a good photo print coz it is natural for us to compare print quality with a lab or a typical photo printer despite high admiration of its technology behind. I love the size, bluetooth printing and pictbridge support. I hate the battery and print quality. For serious photo journaling people, I cannot recommend PoGo.
After secretly injecting my personal interest of photography in our merchandising for the past 4 years, I was finally granted to have such a real section in the new APM LOG-ON store. If I were to propose such section on day 1, it wouldn't be approved, it would be subjected to a series of scrutiny, inquiry, doubts and attacks, eventually became an unfinished project on corporate earth.
I'm thankful even though it takes time for them. But in the process I figured all forces mysteriously working together towards this hidden agenda, mysteriously! Through numerous small projects, vendors getting more mature, customer showing more interests, higher standard is achieved..... I'm intrigued. All these require just one single binding force of good will and aspiration. Well, it is no big achievement but for myself it is rewarding enough.
The Photography retail business on earth is amazingly boring. You want a camera you walk into a camera shop, you want something printed you go to a lab, you want gadgets you go back to a camera shop. There is no CONTENT and sharing in all of them. On the surface, if you go to this Photography section of ours, it can appear all too commercial, composed with brands like Lomography, KOLO, Canon, Fuji Film, Umbra, etc. But look, there are people behind these brands working hard to bring out the fun and aesthetics to everyday lives. What's lacking in this industry is just a place to find and share contents. I'm not saying this very section is in its ultimate form, but it is a start, a very primitive start.
If you remember the "Our Last Polaroids" event last year (community photos here, here, here, here, here, here and here), it is the best memory I got in this journey. The online and offline community worked hand in hand to pull off this 2 week exhibition and gathering. It is the nearest form of the ultimate Photography gathering space in my mind.
Well back to reality. The most appealing thing about this area is that it is not a camera shop or lab. I gathered quite a few things related to analog, film, album, frame, photography, polaroid camera and films, lighters, key chains, instax, lomo, superheadz, prisms, etc. You can say it is a collage in retail form. Again, I'm not proud of its current state yet, I'm only proud of the process. So there's still a lot to do.
BTW, FujiFilm Hong Kong gave us great support recently. They made us this little Instax town display for our new store launch. Very creative use of instax film on paper made figures! How lovely.
"Life is like photography, you develop from the negative". What a great quotation I found from one of the felllow voxer's tag line.
Last month I finally use a "huge" blank wall at home to post all the best Polaroids I made. It really brightened up our home and I got an early morning kiss from my wife because of this :P It is a great storying telling wall, a lot of memories and emotions.
If you ever love the idea of a Polaroid wall, do check out youtube and search for an Addidas commercial featuring an European girl having fun with her Polaroids in a day. I couldn't post a video link because somehow the TV commercial "violated" something.
I was among the first to grab a Diana Instant Back from Lomo about a week ago. After trying out a few packs of Instax films with lots of failure, I finally learned something. Even under broad daylight, flash is almost necessary. Any photos taken in partly cloudy condition with flash will result in a very dark background since the shutter speed of Diana is around 1/60th sec. To get a fully lit environment behind your subject, you have to use the B mode and time yourself to 1/8th sec in addition to using a flash.
The fun of having a Diana camera with Instant film is that you get the nice look as well as instant gratifications. In addition, there are so many Diana lens accessories you can play with a lot of different effects. I'm particularly interested in the surprise effects from double exposures. One interesting method to get a nice collage is to type some light color text with black background on your computer monitor, shoot once using a Diana close up lens, then double expose the film with another scene with flash on your subject. It works great with black and white graphics on your first exposure since you are going to fill up the black space with things you shoot on the second. I haven't perfected it yet but it gave me hours of fun by burning money.
The difference between "Diana Instant" and Polaroid is that with Diana Instant, you can't frame your shot as precisely as a Polaroid, but you get to play with double exposure, different lens effects, color flash, etc. And of course I love the square image Polaroid produces along with its surreal color, smaller size photo from Diana Instant is less impactful but cute. One more contrast between Diana Instant and Polaroid, for me: fast snap shot vs. slow photography.
Here's the plan for my 4 days Easter holiday: 2.5 days with family, 0.5 days to work on personal stuffs, 1 day for work preparation (if my wicked plan works, I can have an additional few hours of darts and pub visit with my friends:)). As for inner pleasure, I listened to The Shack audiobook and tried to discover pleasant and peaceful scenes throughout my external activities.
One of my objective is of course to take my son to "new new places" as he puts it and exhaust him as much as possible. He had such a great time with his elder friend in Science Museum and later at home running around. I couldn't believe it when he said "I want to sleep" at 8:30pm. That was yesterday.
Today we were supposed to get up early and go to take a ride on the Ngong Ping 360 cable car, but we were too late to arrive and long queue is typical during holiday. Disappointed and our plan changed to a leisure lunch and a visit to the Tian Tan Buddha. The price for 3 cups of noodles was a staggering HK$95 but the colorful paintings and decorations beneath the big Buddha mountain gave us a peaceful lunch full of sunshine and I love it.
It took us 268 steps to get to the big Buddha on top of the mountain, they are divided into sections of 16 steps each and it was no big deal at all. Light breeze on the top, great sunshine, great photos :)
On the way back, we passed through a horse farm, a tea tree garden and stopped by the Wisdom Path near the Phoenix Mountain.
Seeing my son's happy face is most rewarding. He likes to see "new new" things and places and I'm happy to be able to give him that without much difficulty, for now. This of course will change in time, how many "new new" things I will be able to give him? How can I give him the "new new" internal peace experience? I'd love to see how it turns out.
My Groups
-
Life and Photos Updated: 1 minute ago
-
Photography Updated: 35 minutes ago
-
Photographers Updated: 35 minutes ago
Neighborhood
Explore friends, family, friends & family, or entire neighborhood.
