Indeed, it is a grave fault of most education systems that artistic skills are not taught as rigorously as so-called academic skills as students grow older. Furthermore, society has a tendency to pigeon-hole people into either being scientific, or artistic in a way that implies that both are somehow mutually exclusive. Of course, often too late, people realize that to be a very successful science-person, one needs creativity, which isn’t explicitly encouraged until students are almost ready to go into research. My views on the faults of modern educations systems are perhaps best left to another post, but for now, I present a how-to guide for drawing molecules.

Molecules are beautiful things. You take these little things called “atoms” which generally consist of protons, neutrons, and electrons. The number of protons determines which chemical element the atom is classified as, and also tends to determine the number of electrons which orbit the nucleus. For reasons far beyond the scope of this article, these electrons are arranged in “shells” around the nucleus and these shells tend to “prefer” a certain number of electrons to be in them. This desire to complete the shells causes different atoms to come together and share electrons in what are called “covalent bonds” (I encourage the curious reader to read further). This is how we get molecules.

I drew my diagrams with the purpose of assisting a friend who is completing her PhD in Chemistry. Not being trained in the use of graphics software, most of her diagrams had consisted of crudely-scanned drawings borrowed from other papers, as well as the occasional drawing made using Microsoft Power Point *shudder*. Obviously, if power point can produce a usable result, then that’s fine, but in my eyes, this is similar to calculating the area of a circle using 3.1 instead of .

I first learned how to use graphics software while in high school, during a time of my life when I wanted to be a graphic or industrial designer. I eventually switched to mathematics because I thought it was more beautiful and thought I would never use those skills again. However, they became very useful when I came to write my honours thesis and I was in need of some mathematical diagrams.

Graphics software is generally fairly easy to use, though most packages are so feature-packed that they can seem overwhelming and it can take quite some time before you can use them with any kind of “fluency”. For scientific diagrams, I like to use Adobe Illustrator. Illustrator is an example of a “vector graphics editor” which means that, unlike a “bitmap graphics editor” images are not saved as a set of pixels with specific values assigned to each, but instead are a set of instructions. When you draw a circle in photoshop, the image is a bunch of points with position values and colour/brightness values. When you draw a circle in illustrator, it is saved as a coordinate for the center, radius, border colour, fill colour.

Bitmap editors are ideal for things like photographs, but for technical drawings, vector editors are preferable. This is because images are infinitely scalable, and complex diagrams are reduced to an easy-to-manipulate instructions set, rather than a difficult-to-separate bunch of pixels.

Let’s draw a circle, and fill it with a “gradient fill”. I made the gradient go from white to red, and made it radial, to give the illusion of a three-dimensional ball. This is our first atom.

Take oxygen (you have to, otherwise you would suffocate, har… har…). Its atomic number is 8, so it has 8 protons and 8 electrons (it may have any number of neutrons, but usually has 8). It has an s-shell and a p-shell. The s-shell has two electrons in it and is full, while the p-shell has six, and is two short of its optimum number. The oxygen atom meets another oxygen atom and finds that if they both share two electrons, then they can complete each others’ p-shell. Since they share two electrons, this bond is called a “double bond”. We begin our drawing by first laying out a diagram of the structure:

Simple enough. Now we take two red balls like the one above, and we slice a bit off the side of one like so:

Then all you do is rotate the oxygen atom on the right by 135 degrees in the clockwise direction and then put the two together to get our tidy little representation of .

If we want to be really tricky we can modify this diagram slightly to make it even more “realistic”. In vector drawing programs, lines are generally called “paths” and they are defined by points. When lines pass through these points, they can change direction abruptly resulting in a zig-zag effect, or the can pass through the lines smoothly. A combination of these is used for the right effect. So let’s take our sliced oxygen atom and add a point to the path in the middle of the straight line. Then we make that point one of those “smooth” ones (technically speaking, they’re knots in a spline). The two points at either end of this line remain as the non-smooth type, and we end up with:

It is perhaps difficult to see the usefulness of going to all that trouble until one observes the finished result. Varying the curvature of that cut-out can vary the apparent viewing angle of the molecules. Other little tricks like making the atom in the pair that is furthest from the observer slightly smaller, also adds to the 3D “pop” of these illustrations.

Of course, beyond a certain point the curvature of the surface of the nearest atom of the pair obscures the curved surface of the point at which they join (such as in the example on the far right). In this case, one can simply place one circle on top of the other and with a slight offset.

Let’s try something more difficult. How about some booze? The layout of the molecule for ethanol is as follows:

Now anyone who’s done even a little bit of high school chemistry will know that the atomic number for hydrogen is 1, and the number for carbon is 6. Oxygen’s is 8. When visualizing this, we must remember that the atoms will be different sizes. Fortunately, others have gone to the trouble of measuring atomic diameters so we don’t have to, and there are many lookup tables available on the internet. Here’s one I ripped off wikipedia:

So, as we can see, oxygen is slightly smaller than carbon, and hydrogen is way smaller than either of the two. Next we have to consider the geometry of the molecules. This can actually get pretty complicated because the shape of different s, p, d etc. shells differ in unusual ways. Fortunately, for the first few elements of the periodic table, much is already known about the way they form bonds. Carbon (which wants to form four bonds) likes to form them in a tetrahedral way, while oxygen seems to form its bonds at 109 degree angles. Taking all these into consideration, we end up with:

So these are relatively simple molecules. When we draw more complex molecules, we often have to proceed slowly and in stages, otherwise we get confused (or at least I do). Let’s try a surfactant. For this example, I’m just going to use fluorinated compound of . First I start out with a rough sketch of what it’s going to look like:

It’s just one long chain of carbon atoms where one end is attached to mostly hydrogen, while the other is bonded to fluorine. So we begin by simply drawing a long chain of carbon atoms. However, I’ve drawn one half in a slightly unusual way. The reason I’ve done this, is because I happen to know that long chains of have a tendency to twist the carbon chain because they’re so “full”. The hydrogens, however, do not present a problem, so the chain for that section is very regular.

The next step is to put on the hydrogen atoms. This is relatively easy. (six carbon atoms are obscured from view)

Now, due to the twisting nature of the fluorinated part of the chain, putting the fluorine atoms on is more than a simple matter of drawing it once, then copying it 25 times. The angle from which these atoms are viewed changes with every successive pair. So instead, I begin with a “palette” of different atoms (which look a little bit like moon phases).

Finally, I stick them on. I look at where they are and then select the most appropriate fluorine atom. Sometimes I make slight adjustments. By the time I’m done, it looks a bit like this:

where hopefully it is a little easier to see the twisting that I was talking about before. The observant reader will have noticed that, just looking at the diagram, there seems to be no real reason why the fluorine section couldn’t have been straight and regular like the carbon one. However, there’s more to it than what is represented in the diagram, and we need to remember that this is simply a representation to help us visualize what’s going on (in the case of this surfactant, we have a hydrophobic “tail” section – the bit with all the fluorines, and a hydrophilic “head” section. Many surfactants also have an OH-group on the head which is even more hydrophilic because it forms hydrogen bonds with water molecules).

Molecules do, of course, get much more complicated. Much larger molecules exist, such as crystals, which are often, essentially, one giant molecule. They are, however not difficult to draw because of their very regular, repetitive nature. Right at the top of the complexity ratings of course is DNA, so to finish off…

so we begin our little diagram

So… we have these phosphate-sugar bits on the sides that act like railroad tracks. In the middle, you have base-pairs guanine (G), cytosine (C), adenine (A), thymine (T) in which is contained our genetic information. So you take the above, and you set it out in a ladder:

Then we twist it into shape. Since I can’t be bothered drawing such an enormously complex molecule (or even a small part of one) I present an example that I ripped off google image search.

…and it replicates.

Jente and Josh

Photographs are very powerful things. I am only really just starting to appreciate that. One thing you can always do is just take a lot of photos randomly, and hope for the best. With digital photography, this strategy is much less expensive than it used to be, but even so, when reviewing the photos, you still need to know what you’re looking for. For the purposes of this discussion, we shall refer to that extra little bit as the “magic”. The photo above of Jente and Josh was taken at a small Christmas celebration with the Aussies in Holland. There was something about that party, it wasn’t raucous or anything (although there were raucous moments), but it was quite subdued in mood (and lighting). I really wanted to try to capture that in my photographs and this photograph seemed to capture it best. This might sound strange, but you just sort of have to “feel” the moment.

Everyone probably knows what I mean if I talk about the mood in a room changing when someone walks in or out. The same can sometimes be said of individuals smiling, or when a decisive moment is reached in a game of poker. This “mood” is often reflected in people’s faces and expressions, which in turn contribute to the mood itself (there are probably differential equations describing this). Thing about a photograph, is that at any one time it only captures a very small part of the room. Moreover, it’s capture is limited to things that can only be perceived with your eyes. So the photographer’s challenge (as I see it) is to somehow capture a very complex emotion, which is the sum of events leading up to a point as well as the product of multiple things, perceived through multiple senses, and to capture it in a two dimensional visual representation.

I tried a lot of different things that night; taking pictures of ornaments, taking very wide-angle shots with a lot of dead space, taking very close-crop face-shots. All in an effort to convey this mood of contentment, yet with a nagging sense of loneliness. I already knew that I was going to make all my photos black and white, or at least desaturate them considerably. It was not the right kind of mood for colour photographs. Feeling moods and emotions is one thing, and it is very important for a photographer to be able to do that, as well as sensing the emotions of others. But capturing it in such a way that similar emotions are triggered in the viewer of your photographs is extremely difficult. There is no formula for doing it, you just have to feel the magic.

Silver medal

This might sound strange, but I’m not a huge fan of sports photography. I find it a bit boring. You see, if you’re a sports photographer for a newspaper, there are certain kinds of shots that they are after, and they are mostly boring. In speed skating, where a perfect race looks almost identical to a not-so-great race, the photographer’s task is challenging. If I were a sports photographer for a newspaper, I would probably be fired very quickly because I would submit lots of non-standard photos, such as the one above. Without context… it still works. You’ve got a girl who looks a little disappointed. Notice the flag, indicating that she was probably a medalist… obviously not a gold medalist. If this accompanied a newspaper article, you would know that her name is Jenny Wolf, the current world record holder, who has held that record for a few years now, who is the leader in standings for this event at world cups, and who was heavy favourite for the gold medal. Now the photo makes even more sense. She has that distant look in her eyes, that “what if” look. I’m sure she was happy with her silver medal but I’d bet a lot of money that at the moment when this photo was taken, she was thinking more about the gold medal that she didn’t get, than the silver that she did. With a photograph, you’re not just trying to tell a story with the image, but you’re also trying to convey emotions.

Obvious emotional moments

Sport photography shouldn’t be boring, because there’s something about sport that brings out a very complex range of emotions in people, and not just the athletes. Sometimes, you’re lucky and you get moments like the one above, which happen during the course a sporting event. Moments where the emotion and the context are (literally) screamingly obvious.

a less-obvious moment

And at other times… between the hurly-burly of the action. Maybe it’s when someone is getting ready on the start line and has some kind of strange ritual, or perhaps it’s the moment when they recognize someone in the crowd, but these moments are much more interesting, because they remind us that athletes are also human. This is one of my favourite photos from the 2010 winter Olympics because it captures the moment when Annette realized that her olympic dream (at least in the 500m) was over. She did bounce back later and get a silver medal in the 1000m (missing gold by only 0.02 of a second!)

Eric Heiden

The portrait is easily one of the most challenging types of photos to take. It is relatively easy to teach someone how to take a technically-sound photograph, but teaching someone how to take a good portrait is difficult. Why? Because being a good portrait photographer depends a lot less on your technical skills with a camera, but much more on you ability to connect with and interact with people. Most people freak out in front of a camera, and even if they don’t, their behaviour changes noticeably when they’ve got a large camera pointed at them. As if that wasn’t bad enough, you’re trying to distill the very essence of a person in a photograph, and sometimes (often) you will hardly know the person you are photographing. Of course, it helps to remember that the person you are photographing is themselves, so you can hardly capture a photograph that doesn’t communicate *some* of their essence.

The first step is to get the subject relaxed. The best way to do this is to talk to them. This accomplishes two things – firstly, it relaxes them so they are more “themselves” and less “them reacting strangely to a camera”; secondly, it gives you the opportunity to try to get to know them a bit better. The ideal portrait photograph is one where a close friend of the subject looks at the photo and say “that is SOOOO [insert subject's name here]“. The above photo is one that I took of Eric Heiden (who I encourage everyone to look up if you don’t already know who he is). Eric is such a chilled-out, down to earth guy that I didn’t realize who he was when he came to sit with us for lunch. I eventually realized and was somewhat awestruck by how totally cool and accessible this guy was considering he is the greatest speed skater ever to have lived. I wanted to capture his very relaxed nature, which was difficult because the room where we ate our lunch was also next to the warm up/down bikes at the Utah Olympic Oval, so the background was always very cluttered and busy. I employed a very simple trick which was to shoot from a lower angle so that only the upper part of the wall and the ceiling would be in the background of the shot. He now uses this photo as his profile pic on facebook.

The real key to finding the magic has nothing to do with lenses, sensors, focal lengths and whatnot. That’s like saying that the key to good poetry is all about good punctuation and vocabulary. Obviously you will need to learn about all those technical aspects in order to take technically sound photographs. But really good photographs, the ones that reach out of their two-dimensional confines and speak to our hearts, rely on… well… our hearts. You need to have an open heart, and connect with the subject matter, be it a landscape, a flower, or another person; and you have to have to the courage to let your heart speak through your photos. It’s about noticing the small details, the quiet moments, and being able to hear the whispers in the crowd, but it’s also about seeing the bigger picture at the same time, giving context. It should be like poetry, or music, always speaking to our hearts and always finding something new, something different… and occasionally something beautiful.

As I said before, it is difficult to describe. I spend a lot of time looking at the work of other photographers (and not just internet porn) for inspiration. Whenever I look at a photo I ask myself “what was the photographer thinking?”, “why did she make the photo like this?”, and I often ask the same questions of my own photos. It is important to allow yourself to “feel” the emotion of the image; try to be the image, and feel what it feels. Maybe it’s crying out in pain, frying some greasy bacon for breakfast, or maybe it’s giving you the cold shoulder, then try to communicate that. Also, keep it simple. It’s just a photograph. You look at it. That’s all. And practice, this is perhaps the most important thing.

Maybe none of what I just said makes any sense at all. That is probably part of the reason that people consider me a better photographer than a writer. But many have asked me about photography, and when I point them to the article about photo gear, and the two preceding articles – “The Truth Behind the Shutter” and “More Truth Behind the Shutter“, I am told that I haven’t said enough. Now I’ll probably be told that what I’ve said makes no sense… oh well. I guess it goes to show that you can’t learn how to be a good photographer just from reading. Good luck!

Neill Blomkamps District 9 is edgy and brilliant

The readers of my website who have been following for a long time will know that I have written the occasional film review. In truth, I review a shockingly small percentage of the films that I watch. Part of the reason for this is because I often can’t be bothered, but the main reason is because I don’t want this website to become a movie reviews site, or to become known as one. That may seem strange, but this website is very much my public “face” on the internet, and while I am very much into movies, I don’t strongly identify with being known primarily as a film critic. In truth, I’m not particularly enamored with being known as a speed skater, preferring “mathematician”, “scientist”, or even “photographer”. (I also answer to “shit stirrer”, and “THAT guy”)

Recently though, I’ve been getting back into the business of watching a lot of films. In my youth, I was a very frequent patron of a local video rental store and I have easily seen over a thousand films, most of them very bad. These days, with the advent of the internet and torrenting, it has become increasingly easy to watch whatever films one chooses. I also fly a lot and boredom on long-haul flights combined with increasingly convenient entertainment systems has further increased my movie-watching opportunities. On the subject of technological advances, it has become increasingly cheap and easy to get into the business of making films. That’s right, I’m getting into film making. It has long been on the cards for there to be a TV show or documentary made about the Australian speed skating team, and the extraordinary story of its formation and progress, now punctuated by Sophie Muir’s participation in the Olympic Winter Games.

One of my mini-philosophies on life is that, if you ever want to be good at anything, there are two things that you must do: (1) observe as many examples of people who are good at doing that thing, and their work, and (2) practice as much as possible. I think that is the key to my success at still photography, that I spend a lot of time just looking at really good photos and thinking about them, and also that I just get out there and take a lot of photos (in the last 12 months, I’ve taken well over 60,000 photos).

So, as part of my preparation for constructing the documentary on the Australian Speed Skating team, I’ve assigned myself several bits of homework. First of all, I’ve begun making short videos (the training video, Josh’s introduction, and Sophie’s Pep Talk are examples). Second of all, I’ve been watching all the nominees for this year’s academy award for best picture (and then some). I’m a very opinionated and snobbish movie watcher preferring Lawrence of Arabia over Titanic any day, and one should keep this in mind when reading my reviews about the films and my opinions on their chances at the best picture award. But first, the nominees:

Avatar

James Cameron’s 3D epic is not a bad film, not at all. It is noteworthy for many reasons: first and foremost, it is in 3D. Unlike other offerings requiring polarizing glasses, the 3D-ness of Avatar was very well done. It wasn’t gimmicky, and after you got over the initial excitement of watching a movie in 3D, you mostly forgot about it and it really just enhanced the medium rather than becoming a distraction. I imagine that the first moviegoers watching films in color back in the 30s had a similar experience. There is no doubt in my mind that this is the future of film although we may not see widespread adoption for quite some time. The commercial success of Avatar, however, is very encouraging as it was undoubtedly a very costly production, and almost certainly recouped its costs.

Once you strip away all the technical wizardry, what are you left with? A well-paced plot with a fairly simple story, wrapped in a handful of deeper questions about the value of modernity, technology, and spiritualism in a post-colonial world. Filled with clichés, it is almost as if Cameron is making a mockery of the genre. “Unobtainium” is the classic MacGuffin and it is only actually seen once in the film’s entire 162 minutes. Visually, many scenes are strongly reminiscent of older Hayao Miyazaki films. The floating islands remind me of Laputa, and the tree of souls and its surrounds look a lot like scenes from Princess Mononoke. The writing and dialogue in general is sound but nothing special. In fact, it reminds me of action films from 15-20 years ago which, back then, would have been considered very bland, but in the context of the current crop of nearly-unwatchable action films (like 2012) which take bad dialogue and writing to whole new levels, it is a breath of fresh air.

The characters are not particularly complex, nor do they really need to be. Stephen Lang’s performance as head of security is quite strong, but is borderline overkill, especially towards the end where the energy of the film escalates and his behavior becomes frenzied. Michelle Rodriguez also played her character well and kept it very “real” in a surreal environment. Sam Worthington’s accent changes annoyingly throughout the film, but his performance was otherwise decent. He certainly didn’t mess it up, but an actor with a greater screen presence may have been able to add more substantially to the role.

Certainly a contender for best cinematography, and best editing, it is not best picture material. It is almost a certainty for best special effects even though it is up against two very strong nominees in Star Trek, as well as District 9 (both blend their special effects into the film more subtly). The academy and I haven’t always agreed though, so Avatar could well win best picture, even though I don’t believe to be good enough to even deserve a nomination.

The Blind Side

This is good old fashioned storytelling in film form. This is a formulaic story about a disadvantaged and talented sporting youth being adopted by a wealthy family. It is based on a true story, and focuses on the human struggle above all else, and that is its strength. The struggle is a mighty one, and the story is real, giving the movie an emotional weight that many sporting movies find difficult to find.

Sandra Bullock plays a very good WASP and carries the narrative of the film. Having only seen one of the other nominees for best actress, it is difficult to say whether she will get the nod, but she takes on the role well and with a maturity that I didn’t expect.

As for best picture, I doubt it will win. There’s just not enough there. If Bullock had pulled out a performance on the level of Jack Nicholson’s in One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, then that alone could have pushed this into the hunt. While engaging, it didn’t feel urgent enough. While touching, it just wasn’t moving enough. It is an outside, but highly unlikely contender.

District 9

Neill Blomkamp was discovered by Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson and he does a stellar job with this edgy and brilliant piece. Curiously, he did not receive a nomination for best director, but his is, in my opinion, the strongest contender for the title this year.

Based very loosely on the infamous district 13 in Johannesburg, this film is ostensibly about a large number of alien refugees who have to be dealt with by a sinister, privatized “Multinational United” corporation. It is a poignant statement about racism, segregation, and privatization. The best thing about it all, is that it doesn’t actually state any of these things to make that statement, instead, relying on the story to reveal those things to us. The character development and transformation of Wikus van der Merwe takes us through this gritty film at a brisk pace from the start all the way through to its conclusion.

It is similar in many ways to the 1988 film Alien Nation, although the situation of the aliens in this case is slightly different, as is the overall motivation behind them. Towards the end of the film, the tone changes slightly and it becomes more of an action shoot-out, which is disappointing. Nevertheless, it remains engaging and riveting throughout, and was a surprise commercial success despite no big-name actors and very little publicity. It is also up for the best screenplay based on previous material (a short film, directed by Blomkamp called Alive in Joburg) and definitely has the quality to win that as well. Being of the Sci-fi genre, it wouldn’t surprise me if it didn’t win best picture, but I certainly hope that it does.

An Education

Based on the Lynn Barber memoir, An Education is a coming of age story about Jenny, a young school girl from London’s outer suburbs with aspirations to go to Oxford, set sometime in the early 1960s. She begins seeing Dave, an older man who opens her eyes to the grown-up world. The story is simple enough, and the narrative follows the slow revelation of the life of David and his best friend Danny. Danny’s ditzy girlfriend is sometimes a little too ditzy, almost to the point of being jarring, on hearing that Jenny hadn’t done well on a latin test in school, she remarked “Someone told me that in about 50 years, no-one will speak Latin, probably… not even Latin people”.

Other than that constant comic relief threatening to burst the bubble of disbelief, the characters are textured and believable. Alfred Molina is great as Jenny’s father, and Emma Thompson makes a wonderful albeit brief appearance as the principal of Jenny’s school. Carey Mulligan gives a great performance as the main protagonist and the overall coming together of the elements of writing, editing, acting, and cinematography progresses very well and seamlessly throughout the film.

Though thought-provoking in light of what was to come later (e.g. feminism) and the issues that are dealt with, are carried well by the character development. We are encouraged to sympathize with Jenny, and we are drawn into the story which is engaging and well constructed… that is, until the last 10 minutes or so. For some inexplicable reason the whole film seems to fall apart just towards the end, and feels very weak towards the finish. It feels almost as if the film makers stopped trying, and that is a pity. Until then, An Education is a very strong contender for best picture, but due to the lack of punch in the ending, I’m fairly confident that it won’t emerge victorious. Mulligan though, is an outside chance for best actress.

Carey Mulligan in school uniform, getting wet at the side of a road with a cello

The Hurt Locker

As war movies go, this one’s pretty good. Following the story of several members of the bomb squad in Iraq, it captures the tension of the life and death situation well. It is technically a superb movie and could well pick up cinematography, editing, sound editing, and sound mixing, all of which it was nominated for. Unfortunately, as a complete film, I feel it falls short just slightly, but director Kathryn Bigelow (best known for Point Break, who is also nominated for best director along with ex-husband James Cameron) should be very happy with the film.

The film is an extended character study of Sgt William James, played by Jeremy Renner (and played very well I might add). A bomb specialist who seems to delight in the high-tension, high-risk situation of having to disarm the myriad of improvised explosives that the Iraqu insurgents dream up. The tension is very well-captured indeed, although I feel that the overall narrative lets the film down in that it is very episodic. The story moves from one set piece to another with only the faintest of segues. Each set piece is, individually at least, a wonderfully constructed piece of work (I especially liked the one where they get pinned down by a sniper for a whole afternoon), but there isn’t enough of a common thread to unite them all.

If, however, you can ignore the lack of narrative “glue” in this film, it is quite enjoyable and very well-paced. It is gritty in the way that the opening scene from Saving Private Ryan, or most of Black Hawk Down is, and cleverly avoids the realm of the political by focusing on an individual story through his tour of duty. I also have a great respect for the movie because it doesn’t fall into common hollywood traps like “you can’t kill a main character”. This film, just like the war, is indiscriminate about who gets knocked off. It may, despite its deficiencies, win best picture, though I doubt it. Much more likely to win the more technical awards, and is a decent chance for best director.

Inglorious Basterds

This is also one of my more liked films among the nominees. Quentin Tarantino directs a not-quite-historic period-ish film about Nazi-occupied France during the war. Clearly a talented director (and one of my favorites from a stylistic point of view) Tarantino’s films have always seemed a bit incomplete, or perhaps not-quite well-rounded would be a better way to describe what I’m thinking. In any case, Inglorious Basterds is his first very “Complete” film.

A story told quite simply, it is the characters and their development which drive the plot. Engaging dialogue, and charismatic characters keep the viewer glued to the screen throughout its 158 minutes. Unusual for a big hollywood film, a large portion of this dialogue takes place in French and German and is accompanied by subtitles. If you pay careful attention to the subtitles, you will notice that they occasionally (and intentionally) don’t translate what is being said, for example “oui” in French is sometimes subtitled “oui”. This, along with many other subtle signs throughout the film indicate Tarantino’s propensity to quietly mock the film making establishment.

Christopher Waltz, who playes Colonel Hans Landa (the “Jew Hunter”) gives an exceptional performance (speaking four languages quite fluently during the course of the film), and is rightly nominated for the award for best supporting actor. Overall, I wouldn’t mind seeing this one grab the best picture award, although I have a sneaking suspicion that it won’t. Still, a thoroughly enjoyable film, and enjoyable by a very wide demographic owing to the combination of Tarantino’s stylistic action sequences, as well as the more subtle in-jokes about the film industry peppered throughout.

Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire

A moving drama about the car-crash life of poverty and teen pregnancy in modern society (with a bit of incest and sexual abuse thrown in for good measure). Precious traces the story of Precious, an illiterate, overweight teen who is pregnant with her second child by her own father. You would struggle to start out worse in life, but this story is more about hope than anything else, and is ultimately uplifting.

Mo’Nique, who plays Precious’ abusive mother, gives an inspired performance and is my pick for best supporting actress. Even Mariah Carey makes an appearance, and thankfully actually does alright in the role of Ms Weiss (she also doesn’t look anything like she normally does, which helps the suspension of disbelief – and disbelief is what you invariably feel when you see her name on a cast list). In fact, the director, Lee Daniels, deserves a lot of credit for keeping this film together, because with subject material like this, it is all too easy to descend into melodrama and cliches. Instead, the film is gritty, real, and quite confronting.

The editing also deserves a mention, although at times it does seem to “try too hard” and overdo things just a little. Although the film doesn’t have any significant dead-moments where the momentum stops carrying, it also sometimes fails to connect with the audience. Perhaps it is my fault for not being culturally sensitive enough, although having occasionally lived briefly in Harlem (where the film is based) I doubt this is the case. A good movie, not a feel-good movie, and also not a best-picture.

A Serious Man

This was very enjoyable to watch. The Coen brothers do awkward, strange comedy very well, and this is no exception. A very cleverly-written piece about a man whose life is slowly disintegrating around him. The narrative flows almost like a piece of classical music, with central themes and recurring elements popping up and being repeated and reinforced as the story develops, giving the viewer a sense of an impending climax.

Larry Gopnik is a physics professor, and he leads a very happy life with a wife and two kids. He doesn’t really “do” anything, and that is one of the central recurring themes. There is also another interesting recurring theme concerning duality and uncertainty. There are many forks in the story which are almost-but-not-quite revealed (and some that are) but this lack of narrative closure doesn’t detract from the plot. In fact, it is used to enhance it.

A very clever film, and perhaps a little too clever for its own good. Many viewers will find the lack of closure in its various sub-plots confusing and ultimately unsatisfying (blame the current environment of brain-dead instant gratification movies like the unwatchable 2012). It should be a leading contender for the best screenplay written directly for screen category, but I doubt it will win best picture. I wouldn’t mind if it did though.

Up

Up is an unusual story about an explorer who sets out to accomplish the unfinished quest of traveling to “paradise falls” which, in many ways is an exact movie-universe replica of Angel Falls in Canaima, Venezuela (which I happen to have visited once). Of course, not everything goes according to plan, and a boy scout of sorts ends up an accidental passenger on this voyage, which takes place in a house suspended by thousands of balloons and propelled by sails (which doesn’t make sense if you know anything about sailing, but whatever).

Many have been raving about Up, calling it the best Pixar film ever. I disagree, feeling that honour still belongs to Wall-e (the first 50 minutes of it anyway). This film is worth it for the first 10 minutes and the last 5, for reasons that I won’t go into because it would spoil the film but anyone who has seen the film should know what I’m talking about. The rest of the film lacks the emotional gravitas that the bookends at the beginning and the end carry. I think part of the reason I didn’t enjoy the film as much as others is because I failed to connect or sympathize in any way with the character of the kid-boy scout who I found distracting and annoying (which is ironic, because as a child, I was very much like that).

That being said, this is not a bad movie at all. It is entertaining, and deals with (albeit at quite a superficial level) weighty issues like old age, parental neglect, and hero worship. Out of all the pixar movies, this is the one I would most categorize as a “kids film” while most of the others are quite mature films dressed up as kids films. I don’t believe Up is a serious contender for best picture, but should win the best animated feature category.

Up in the Air

Ryan Bingham (played by George Clooney) has the unenviable job of being a man who is hired by other companies to fire people. For this he spends over 300 days of the year on the road, flying from place to place across the US’ extensive air travel network. This film depicts the story of what happens when a “new kid” arrives in the company and changes their practices, effectively grounding him when he is just short of a lifelong goal – a million frequent flyer miles (myself, I am probably just short of 300,000, but those are from much longer, and less frequent trips).

Based on a book, the dialogue is snappy and it is the characters who ultimately bring this story to life. Clooney, along with Vera Farmiga, and Anna Kendrick are all nominated for acting awards and rightly so. Kendrick especially gives a great performance as the young naïve new kid who comes to face the human realities of what it means to actually fire people (apparently she’s in the Twilight series of movies, which seems like a waste of acting talent really). I was not particularly impressed by Clooney’s performance, although his reaction to certain plot twists is very well carried-out. I don’t believe he has a chance in the best actor award being up against the likes of Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker) and Morgan Freeman (Invictus).

A fun and very competently executed film. It loses a bit of momentum just towards the end of the second act, but that is mostly to prepare the audience for the third. Kendrick, being very attractive (how else do you get cast for a Twilight movie?) is sometimes distracting in this sense, although it is a welcome reprieve from what is otherwise a very dialogue-driven and cerebral film. I wouldn’t pick it for best picture, but it is a film that I would have no trouble recommending.

George Clooney fires someone while Kendrick looks on

As many of you know, I enjoy taking photos. Some of you even enjoy viewing those photos. Seeing as I do not have any kind of media accreditation for this event, my ability to bring you photos may be somewhat limited because my access to stuff will be somewhat limited.

Even so, there’s no doubt that I will snap many pics while I’m here (some of them might even be good, but don’t hold your breath), and if you really want to see them, I’ve set up a dedicated page on my darkroom photoblog specifically for the purpose of displaying those photos.

The link is here.

Old links to photo albums of the European Inline Championships, the Dutch Single Distance Championships, the Calgary World Cup, and the Salt Lake City World Cup can be found by clicking on the text.

Enjoy!

If you’re interested in the results of the championships, click here.

Michel on the second corner of his 300m Time Trial

Taking good photographs is not only about being artistic and having a good eye. Modern SLR cameras are seriously sophisticated things and learning how to operate one properly is no trivial matter. Sports photography is probably one of the least artistic and most technical sub-discipline that you can do. You just need a fast camera and a good lens right? Well, yes and no. Sports is the most unforgiving type of photography there is if you don’t have good gear, especially lenses. But you still need to be good at operating a camera.

Joji Falls

Joji Kato is the junior world record holder in the 500m, and is one of the leading contenders for the gold medal at the upcoming winter games in Vancouver. He can hook it around a corner at about 60km/h which is scarily fast. Tracking an object moving at that speed through the eyepiece of a heavy SLR camera and a 200mm lens is not easy. A camera that can take 8 frames per second certainly makes the job easier, but you’d be surprised how difficult it is to track something at this speed while taking photographs. A trick I like to use is to actually keep both eyes open – my right eye keeps the subject in the frame while my left eye is able to see the bigger picture.

When Joji exited the second corner of his 500m at Heerenveen, I knew something was amiss. His left skate “booted out” which basically means that he put it down at a slightly funny angle and it caused the skate to be whipped out from under him. I instinctively pressed the shutter release and ended up with an amazing sequence of his crash. This is the second photo in the sequence and is my favourite because it is the point-of-no-return. You can see his left skate digging into the ice and twisting his body out of line. He slid about halfway down the straight before slamming into the cushion – he was physically unhurt. The next day, he skated it again and won.

Lunge at the Line

Another important thing to remember is to keep your wits about you. When there is a close finish, it is sometimes easy to get caught up in the excitement only to miss the photo. Everyone knew that this race was going to be close, there was a handful of people who possessed one or more world championships jerseys. There was a lot of pushing and shoving going in, and coming out of the final corner so I stepped around the official photographer for the event (who was busy watching it and not taking photos) and pointed my camera at the line and just pressed the shutter.

Team USA

Just because sports photography generally focuses on the more technical aspects of taking a photo doesn’t mean that you can’t be artistic. While I would be the first to admit that a photo like this would probably never run in a newspaper, I like the way that the motion blur gives a sense of movement. From a technical standpoint, this was notoriously difficult to capture. I had to wait for precisely the right part of the skaters’ step so that they would be moving directly towards the camera as I panned from left to right with the shutter open (which is why they aren’t left-right blurred as much as the background).

Nicole Skates

Sometimes, in editing, you chance upon something unusual that happens to look good. This was the first photo I took of the entire meet, and I was just playing with the settings on the camera. Afterwards I was playing with the contrast and shadow settings, and adjusting the curves because I didn’t like the way Nicole’s braces seemed to “pop out” of her mouth because of the way they caught the light. The result was this dark and very sharp-contrast image which eventually got used by one of her sponsors on some advertising material.

Discussing the Race

Another thing I like to remember is context.  For me, what a photo is basically try to do is to communicate something. The more, or the more powerfully it communicates something, the better. You’ll hear photographers talk a lot about “dead space” which is basically wasted space in the photo which isn’t giving the viewer any new information. This photo is almost at risk of trying to convey too much information. You have the peleton of skaters with the information board in the background showing how many laps have been skated. You’ve also got Wayne and Bill Begg in the foreground discussing the race (they kind of “frame” the photo nicely though, don’t you think?). Context is also important for knowing what you’re looking at.

Olympic Oval

Nicole seems to have a way of sneaking into my good photos. I like this capture because it doesn’t really show very much, but just enough for you to know what’s going on. Here you’ve got a skater skating… but where is she skating? If you couldn’t read, you wouldn’t know, but these days it is reasonable to assume that the viewer can read (especially if you’re on a website).

Scrum

Sometimes freezing something in mid-air can convey motion just as much as blurring it can. This is a rugby ball just as it has been thrown into the scrum. Anyone who knows the sport of Rugby well would instantly recognize what’s happening here. This photo was part of a series of photos which made up an audio slideshow showcasing Columbia University’s rugby team.

Memorial Service

There are many tricks the photographer can use to draw the viewer’s attention to a certain part of the photo (other than freezing a rugby ball an inch off the ground in the middle of a scrum). While not particularly common, the method of using a lens’ distortion to draw the eyes of the viewer to elements of the photo occasionally crops up even in print media. The memorial service following the tragic death of a student at Columbia was attended by many. I wanted a way of capturing the large crowd without the crowd dwarfing the candles or the photo. I opted for the fisheye which enlarges things in the center of the frame and brings your attention to them. Although the news editor at the time wasn’t particularly fond of fisheye photos appearing in the newspaper, the editor in chief liked it enough to put it on the “good work week” pin-up board.

Christmas Eve

The best photos need no explanation. The laptop computer towards the right of the shot can possibly be viewed as a distraction, but it also helps balance the light-dark balance of the photo. There is nothing tricky about the exposure here, just like the shot of St. Nick’s pub discussed previously, this was one where I just saw something that I thought looked cool, and took a picture.

The photographer photographed...

Parties present a wealth of photographic opportunities. The real trick is to somehow capture the mood of what is happening through the photographs. Capturing kids on camera is an especially difficult thing to do because they are often camera shy and, in any event, will usually react to having their photo taken in some way. Whenever I photograph events, even parties, I try to be a “fly on the wall” and not be noticed (which I’m generally good at doing) but kids seem to have a knack for noticing you. I liked this photo because it shows one of the kids doing something that she would have done regardless of whether or not I had a camera. As soon as she lifted the camera to her eye and had committed to taking the photo, I quickly did the same and was able to beat her to the shutter (I was surprised that the auto-focus was quick enough to take this actually).

A bee

Taking good pictures of insects is almost as difficult as taking good pictures of children, but for slightly different reasons. They are both small and unpredictable. Capturing this bumblebee was tricky because it moved too quickly for the autofocus to track reliably. The answer – manual focus. Manual focus with a 200mm f/2.8 lens is not an easy thing to do, and my keep-two-eyes-open trick came into play once again. To get the focus right I tilted backwards and forwards slightly to make slight adjustments to the plane of focus and, as soon as I saw the bee in focus (or saw that the bee was about to be in focus) I pressed the shutter.

Night market

Night photography presents interesting challenges because of the lack of light. This often gives you more scope to be creative with exposure. Modern digital SLR sensors are extremely sensitive to light, much more than our eyes or film. In this photograph, I was able to take advantage of this and overexpose the image slightly (the real scene was a bit darker than what you see here). The sky, for instance, was almost completely black at the time, but the sensor was able to pick up the slightest amount of light leftover from the sunset. The overexposed light from under the tents also makes that part of the photo look much “warmer” (I also played with the colour temperature of the photo) and more inviting, reflecting the “feel” of the scene.

Traffic Jam

This was one I took for the Spec. We needed a photo for the story on congestion pricing, so a traffic jam seemed like a good idea. The photo editor knew a good location to get a view over the West Side Highway but it was getting a bit late. By the time we got there, we had lost the sunset light. To make matters worse, the bridge across the highway had a very high fence around it which would obscure the view onto the road. So I did what any self-respecting photojournalist would do and climbed the fence. When I got close enough to the top, I reached over and started snapping away, but I wasn’t the only thing snapping – an overzealous security guard was fast approaching and shouting at me to get down. I looked at the screen at the back of the camera and wasn’t satisfied with what I had, so I changed the settings to get a longer shutter and reached over and started taking more photos, keeping an eye on the screen and adjusting the exposure as I went, all the while shouting “I can’t hear you above the traffic” to a very angry security guard. I eventually apologized to the guard, insisting that I couldn’t hear what he was saying above the noise of the traffic. This photo was the lead photograph on the front page the following day.

Times Square

This final photo is another product of my 5am wake up which was discussed earlier. The light was perfect and there was very little traffic (by times square standards) so I took a series of about 12 photos from the one spot in the middle of the intersection (I waited for the red light, don’t worry). After playing with the stitched panorama for a while, I couldn’t get it to work in the “usual way”. I had envisioned a dark asphalt ball with buildings radiating out from it, but it never seemed to look right. Instead, I flipped the photo and transformed it the other way, so that all the buildings pointed to the center of the circle. I instantly knew that I had hit on something… and there you have it.

I hope this two-part series has enlightened you on how I go about taking my photos and has possibly inspired and informed you for your own photographic endeavours. The most important thing is to enjoy doing it, and don’t be afraid to try new things. Digital photography allows you to take as many pictures as you like at zero extra cost and that is something that you should definitely take advantage of. Good luck!

The Pitch

A while back, while living in New York City, I visited the old Yankee Stadium for a Yankees game. Baseball, while I appreciate the way the game works and the impressive skill of its players, is not really my cup of tea, but it does make for some good photos.

I was sitting a reasonable distance away from the pitcher’s mound, in seats that me and a friend had purchased for about $55. The position did offer a good angle of the pitcher’s throwing action. The only unusual thing to note in the action is the follow-through, mostly because the ball is thrown at close to 100mp/h. This photo appeared in the magazine “116″ (not as big a deal as it sounds) and was also featured on bwog. It was also the last title image on the old version of this website.

Contrary to popular belief (ask anyone), this was not a multiple exposure. Whenever you do a multiple exposure, when you go over 5-6 frames, it is too easy to end up with a moving subject that is far too faint, or a background that is so bright that it overwhelms the subject, which wasn’t the effect I was going for. This was actually painstakingly done in photoshop. I cut out the pitcher from each individual frame and placed him in, one-by-one, manually adjusting the opacity until every individual frame “looked right”. There are about 13 frames in this photo and, believe me, it took a long time.

Thialf Corner

Same deal, slightly different approach to the photo. This series of shots was taken with a wide angle lens at the widest setting during Dutch Nationals in Thialf, which is where I practically live right now. It is also, by far, the best venue for taking photos since (1) the air circulation system (those yellow pipes) keep the air a balmy 15º C above freezing and (2) the white painted concrete beneath the ice (most ice tracks are slightly grey) reflects the light onto the subject very evenly. The televised events are the best, because they turn all the lights on full-power. Actually, the photoshopping here was much easier because I didn’t have to worry about the opacity of the subject at all, I just pasted her in there.

commuter panorama

Speaking of wide-angled shots, I have become well-known (among my facebook friends, who clearly didn’t know me very well before all this) for panoramic shots. This one comes from a memorable photo shoot for the Columbia Daily Spectator, or “Spec” as it is affectionately known. The effect seen here can be achieved with something called a “fisheye” lens (apparently this is what a fish sees, whilst waiting for the subway). However, this particular photo was not taken with a fisheye lens (I didn’t own one at the time). The tell-tale way of knowing that is because the overall resolution of the original photo that I submitted was many times that of my camera, while a fisheye typically takes a perfectly circular photo which you then have to crop to get a rectangle resulting in a lower resolution.

Aside from the obvious reason – that I didn’t own a fisheye, I wouldn’t have used one anyway. You see, the article was about Amanda, the girl on the far left of the photo (you noticed her, right?). She commutes every day to-and-from Columbia, which is unusual for undergrads here because everyone is expected to live on campus. It was, therefore, important to be able to make out her face. I actually shot this with a “normal” zoom lens (not a wide one) and took 6 photos (at a 28mm focal length, if you’re interested) which I stitched together in photoshop. Recent versions of photoshop have tools that make this very easy, the thing you have to remember is that “auto” often screws things up, so the setting I used to distort the photos before blending them together was called “cylindrical” which basically bulges the photo in the middle and pinches it a bit towards the sides, depending on the focal length.

Subway Party

The New York Subway is such an iconic and recognized setting that some find it difficult to get a new photographic angle on it. About once a semester, the folks at Potluck House organize a party which takes place on the subway. It ordinarily gets on somewhere in the city and goes out to Brighton Beach for a skinny dip before hopping back on the subway to return home. All this usually takes place between the hours of 1am and 4am. I thought I would take my camera along, and it’s a good thing I did…

This one is a textbook example of a technique that I have recently learned is called “dragging the shutter”. This is what happens when you take a scene where you normally just use the flash as your main source of light, but hold the shutter down for a long time so that the ambient light has time to illuminate the background. On a normal point-and-shoot compact camera, the flash usually lights up (often overexposing) the subject while the background remains very dark. With an SLR and good flash (and some knowledge of how to use them both), you can get around this by (1) turning the power of the flash down and (2) holding the shutter open longer.

To achieve the above effect, I deliberately moved the camera around a bit (I promise, I hadn’t been drinking) and set the flash to synchronize with the second shutter – that means that the flash flashes when the shutter is about to close rather than when it has just opened, this doesn’t mater at all for this photo, but becomes important later. The result is the feeling of motion caused by the blur, but not of total disorientation because there is still a very sharp image in amongst all of the zany-ness.

Drums on the beach

Sometimes though, there isn’t much to be gained by lighting the background. This was the case here, another photo from the subway party. After skinny dipping we played drums and sang on the beach. Taken with a normal zoom lens at the widest setting, I’ve used the distortion in the corners to not only accentuate the flying of Morgan’s hair, but also to sort-of focus the energy in the picture which is centered by the direct flash illuminating the middle. In the background, it is very dark, but for the distant lights of the city which almost look like flames in the shot.

St Nicks Pub

Continuing the theme of shooting late at night in New York, we have a photo of St. Nick’s pub in Harlem. Come here any night of the week, and you’ll be treated to several hours of pretty awesome jazz in a very full pub. There is a somewhat timeless quality to this photo. There really isn’t anything to it, and I could have taken this photo with any camera that has existed since about the turn of the century. I decided to make it black and white because I felt that the colours confused things and were distracting in a photo which is really about nothing more than good composition. There are no “dead spots”. The top-left corner is a bit quiet, but the art of good composition is about not making your photos too “busy”. I was trying to capture a mood here, and the long shadows, overexposed light from within the pub and stark contrasts were more important than filling the frame with every little bit of information possible. But really… I just saw this scene and thought “that looks nice” and took a photo.

Overlooking Columbia

Laurel will probably kill me for including this one, although she did make it her facebook profile pic for a while, so I assume that she likes the photo. This unique view was captured from the out-of-bounds roof of the International Affairs Building at the corner of Amsterdam and 118th. The shutter was open for about 2 seconds and, for a hand-held shot of a live subject, there is almost no motion blur! I was testing my new Nikon’s low-light capabilities (verdict: unbelievably good). There are actually a number of similar shots where Laurel does different things, like look into the camera, but I liked this one the best.

As you may have surmised, I’m not a huge fan of using the flash, preferring instead to use available light. It was about 11pm in October and there wasn’t a whole lot of natural light… so I used just enough to illuminate her face (I also like how it’s illuminated from below and how there’s even some rimlight around the top of her head) which resulted in the buildings being slightly overexposed. I experimented with stopping down the aperture (this was f/2.8 – wide open) to try to get more detail out of the buildings but realized that (1) I was having enough trouble getting enough light as it was and (2) overexposed buildings out of focus looked nicer than overexposed buildings in focus. I also desaturated it a little (took some of the colour out) because I thought that the way the camera’s sensor picked up the colours in the shot was a bit too vivid, and I was going for a more subdued look, to go with the weather (who knows, if it had been a hot night, this may have been a more saturated photo).

The thing I like most about this photo is that, for those who know the Columbia Campus, it is immediately obvious what it is, despite being out of focus. The girl and the dark ledge frame the photo and give it context. I also like it because the look on Laurel’s face reflected my mood at the time, and so I probably think this photo is much better than it actually is.

John Legend

This was actually from one of my earliest assignments with the Spec. John Legend and Jeffrey Sachs got together (not like that!) to talk about poverty and how to fight it. Actually, that was mostly Jeff, John played the piano and sang a little. The only shots that ran in the paper were the “standard ones” which were mostly not-mine. I just asked myself “how many photos are there of people playing the piano” (answer: a lot) so I was trying to get a slightly different take on it. In this photo there is just enough information for you to see what is going on, yet it doesn’t look like the standard “a man playing the piano” picture. On a technical note (har har), I should’ve used a flash (although there is a chance that I was told not to) because if there’s one thing that stage lighting does that is bad for photographers, it is that is messes with your “white balance” (the balance of the intensities of red, green, and blue so that colours are reproduced correctly).

The Mall

During spring break, I took a quick trip up to Washington D.C. to see if I could get the opportunity to slap George W. Bush in the face. That opportunity didn’t present itself as I had hoped, but I did get a chance to take some photos. On the point of light sources affecting your white balance, this photo is an interesting example. Sunrise and sunset are the best times to take outdoor photos because the light is really good. Overcast days are also good because the clouds diffuse the light and spread it evenly and without sharp shadows on whatever it is you’re shooting.

This photo was taken near sunset, from on the steps in front of the Capitol Building. It is difficult to tell, but this photos has undergone a huge amount of editing. For some unknown reason, the colours just didn’t want to work, so I twiddled with individual colour channels’ luminosity and saturation for hours just to get it looking like I remember it looking. Was it worth the effort? I don’t know, but this photo got published in a travel guide.

Then and Now

This one was just kind of cute. While in DC, I chanced on the St. Patrick’s day parade. I saw one, then the other, then I KNEW that I had to get them in the same shot (and facing opposite directions). It proved surprisingly difficult (you’ll notice that part of the front wheel of the penny farthing is out of the shot) because one of them, I’ll let you guess which one, was moving very quickly. Sometimes being a photographer is like being an army sniper, you set up your target, stalk it covertly, then shoot it at precisely the right moment. There are crucial differences of course, like your target not being dead afterwards, having an unlimited supply of ammo, and being able to dress more casually.

Times Square

Sometimes stalking your prey is more difficult than just chasing strange things or waiting for stuff to line up. In this instance, the thing being chased is… buildings. They don’t move much, but in Times Square, everything else moves… quickly. It is surprisingly difficult to stand in the middle of Times Square at any time of the day, so I went on a fairly summer-ish day at about 5am and hoped that the sky was clear. Stalking good weather and very very early mornings can be frustrating because these factors are largely out of your control. Once the light got good, it was just a matter of putting on the wide-angle lens and using the distortion to create an over-accentuated perspective which gives the viewer a feeling of being trapped in a hole – a very brightly-lit hole, in the middle of an awesome city.

Dawn Panorama

Another 5am photo-stalk. The sun is just beginning to come up, enough to light the scene, but not enough to actually cast a shadow. It also allows me to overexpose all the lights, which turned off only a few minutes after I took the photos (there’s another version of this, made up of photos taken only five minutes later… it looks completely different). The photo editing was a two-stage process, first I stitched all the photos together into a long left-right panorama using the process I described above. The final trick is to make the very long rectangle into a square (by stretching it) then “convert rectangular coordinates to polar coordinates”. For those less mathematically-inclined, it is simple – everything on the bottom edge of the photo goes to a point and everything on the top edge gets spread out over a circle. All the bits in between end up… in between, and voila! you get this. A print of this was donated to a community art auction… I don’t know if it went for much, but I did hear that it got a lot of “wow”s. (I donated an almost identical photo the year before except it was taken midday on an overcast day on the day of the first snow in December 2007… so it looked like a big snowball).

To be continued…

The Minolta SRT 101

This is a camera that I have not commonly been seen with. My first foray into the world of SLR (single lens reflex) cameras was this trusty Minolta. Delightfully fiddly, everything on it was mechanical. The lightmeter required a button-battery to be installed in the body, but the camera could operate without it (but you’d have to guess the exposure). I’ve shot several skating events in Australia with this camera and a lens whose specifications I cannot recall. Obviously, this was a film camera, and I have boxes packed to the brim with negatives to prove it.

My SLR adventuring took an extended break when digital cameras became prominent. I went through several digital point-and-shoot cameras and almost forgot my love for photography until I was traveling through South America. When one finds oneself on a 5-month backpacking tour of a continent such as South America, one finds that one has many opportunities to take photographs. After a few months on the trot, I was starting to feel limited by the abilities of my (admittedly very good) point-and-shoot Sony DSC-N1, a 10 megapixel camera with a touch screen.

Unfortunately, when one is traveling, one is generally on a somewhat limited budget and my decision to dive into the world of digital SLRs could not have come at a more inconvenient time. I was in Bolivia… and my next stop was Paraguay. Neither of these countries possessed a shop which would sell many DSLRs. Even if they did, it would be difficult to gather enough cash together to purchase one. After Paraguay was Brazil, so I planned to make the purchase in Sao Paulo, a city of 20 million people, and the center of commerce in Brazil.

Fortunately, I was able to get internet access while in Brazil, so I was able to research my purchase. At the time (early 2007) the market for entry-level DSLRs was just beginning to heat up. The incumbent was the first sub-1000USD DSLR ever – the Canon EOS-400D, also known as the Digital Rebel XTi. The challenger was the Sony Alpha-100. Both had almost identical specs and prices. The Canon had the advantage of being one of the two big players in the DSLR world (the other being Nikon) so it had a very wide range of lenses and accessories to choose from, as well as a very clear upgrade path in the unlikely event that I should wish to continue pursuing my passion for photography. Sony, however, had just bought out the DSLR division of Minolta and were just starting out in the DSLR business. That meant that it didn’t have a huge range of lenses, or a medium or high-end camera to upgrade to at the time, but it meant that old Minolta lenses would mount on Sony cameras. Nikon wasn’t even on the menu at this stage, because it’s entry-level model, the D40, only had 6 megapixels (the 400D and A100 both have 10), and none of the shops in Sao Paulo stocked Nikons anyway.

The Canon EOS-400D (Digital Rebel XTi)

In the end, the Canon won out. I figured that my dad (the previous owner of the Minolta) was too frugal to have bought any good lenses (this proved to be correct), and the availability of Canon accessories made this the best choice for me. I bought the camera body in black (silver looked very tacky, in a bad way) with a battery pack (because I knew that I would have to go for long stretches between access to electricity) and the EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 lens. At the time, I only really understood what focal length meant, and had no idea about aperture (the numbers after the “f”).

I was instantly happy with my purchase, and didn’t experience any buyer’s guilt. Owing to lower pixel density on the sensor (more on that later) there was much less noise, and pictures in low light were subsequently much more usable. All the controls that come with a modern SLR camera were a delight – the ability to control exposure through shutter speed and aperture, and the very tactile feel of twisting a zoom lens all contributed to a much better photography experience. The 3 frames-per-second continuous shooting also allowed me to capture certain things better, like a glacier calving.

For those dedicated danielyeow.com readers who were following my exploits in 2007, the point at which the camera switch happens is just as I arrive in Rio (you probably noticed). From then on, I took photos at a much increased rate. I started the trip on the 11th of January, and took about 6,000 photos between then and the 8th of May (when I got the camera). Between the 8th of May and the 12th of June (the end of my trip), I took about 6,000 photos (although, to be fair, I also saw stuff at an increased rate towards the end of my trip, but even allowing for that, I was much more shutter-happy).

Apart from having manual control over the parameters of the photos, the advantage of a DSLR lies in the image sensor. It’s easy to get caught up in the megapixel-war that camera manufacturers have manufactured. Just for reference, 6 megapixels is enough for a 10cm by 15cm print, 10 megapixels is plenty for an A3-sized print, and 25 is good enough for a large poster. 25 megapixels is also roughly equivalent to the resolution of film, and when I say “film” I don’t mean the cheap stuff you buy from the street vendor outside Ankor Wat, I’m talking about really good film, like Fuji Velvia. If all you ever want to do is put photos on the web, you never need more than 4, if you’re sending photos to a newspaper, you’ll need 8-10, and if you’re putting things in magazines and coffee table books, you’ll want as much resolution as you can muster.

Megapixels aren’t everything. My Sony DSC-N1 and the Canon EOS-400D both had 10 mp on the sensor. The crucial difference is that the Sony’s sensor is about the size of my little toe’s toenail, while the Canon’s sensor is the size of a small postage stamp. This means that each individual pixel gets more “space” and experiences less electromagnetic interference from adjacent pixels. That might sound ridiculous, but when you put 10 million light-sensing dots on an area the size of a toenail or postage stamp, these things add up. When you have a lower pixel density, it also means that the image doesn’t have to be focused on such a small space, which is slightly less demanding on the quality of your lenses.

Another small technical detail that made me choose the Canon over the Sony was the type of sensor. The Canon sensor is a complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS), while the Sony’s was the more common charge-coupled device (CCD). CMOS sensors are usually only found on the high-end cameras because they have a higher rejection rate in manufacture. They also dissipate less energy than CCDs which means that they’re a bit better for battery life, and they have slightly better light sensitivity.

Sadly, my experience with the 400D was cut short in Colombia. While attending and participating in the 2007 world inline speed skating championships, my laptop, camera, ipod, and cash was stolen from my locked hotel room (which was, mysteriously, still locked when I came back). I thus had to journey from Colombia straight to New York without a camera, and live without a camera for a nontrivial amount of time. In the intervening time, I was able to plot my next move.

In September 2007 Canon released the EOS-40D, which was very much NOT an entry-level camera. Mostly the same specs, but a larger and more durable body, slightly more advanced image processing circuitry, and a staggeringly quick 6.5 frames per second continuous drive. I also finally figured out what aperture meant. The number after the “f” is simply the focal length divided by the diameter of the pupil. In laymans terms, a smaller number means more light goes through. This helped explain why lenses with small “f” numbers were so much more expensive.

The Canon lens lineup, complete with specification

Being able to let more light in has a few obvious advantages. It allows for a faster shutter speed, which is useful for things like water droplets and sports photography. It is useful for shooting in low light situations where a flash is impractical or not allowed. A smaller “f” number has another advantage which is not quite so obvious – it gives a shallow depth of field. That’s just a fancy way of saying that the amount of world that will be in focus will be small, and the out of focus blurs will be much bigger. If you think about the way optics works, it makes sense… alternatively, think about a pinhole camera – everything is in focus, to the point that a lens isn’t even required. (FYI, the f-number of the human eye is about 2)

So I set about collecting a range of lenses to cover a wide range of focal lengths as well as getting some lenses which had very low “f” numbers. I added a good external flash to my arsenal at which point I realized that, in bang-for-your-buck terms, a good flash is a better move than a better lens (trust me, taking time to understand and experiment with light and how it affects your photography is the best thing you can do to improve it).

The Canon EOS-40D and all that went with it

Around the time I was completing this collection, I also took my photography to another level when I joined the staff of the Columbia Daily Spectator. Shooting assignments gave me the prefect opportunity to practice my skill. The assignments were varied, presented new and interesting challenges that I would not have normally encountered, and often had very tight deadlines to be met. I was flabbergasted when my first assignment appeared on the front page the next day, and I also broke some kind of unofficial record for fastest promotion to the position of staff photographer, although to be fair, I joined at the beginning of second semester, during which there is less competition among new photographers for assignments.

At this level of photography, there is just about no excuse for not getting technically good photos, which is why I am always surprised when complimented on my ability as a photographer. Between all of my lenses, I had almost the full range of focal lengths covered, including a 180-degree field-of-view fisheye lens. In addition, a perk of having the resources of the Spec, is that we have the occasional guest speaker in the form of Ed Keating, a two-time pulitzer prize winner from whom a young and inexperienced photographer can learn a lot (and perving on his Leica MP camera was fun too).

Where do you go from there? Well, it’s all about the sensors, and technology moves at a scarily fast pace. The 40D, with its specifications, costs just under 1000USD for the camera body (no lenses) at the time of writing. As recently as 10 years ago, a film camera body with equivalent specifications would have cost upwards of 5000USD, and it wouldn’t have been nearly as user-friendly. Current sensor technology is superior to film in many ways, especially in regards to light sensitivity. So far, the only thing that has been lacking is that the sensors in most DSLR cameras are usually about 24mm by 16mm – slightly smaller than a piece of film (36mm by 24mm).

The advantages of having a larger area over which to spread your pixels has already been stated above, so why aren’t all DSLRs made like this? Well, it’s expensive to do, and the rejection rate is very high in the manufacturing process. Full-frame (as it’s called) cameras are also usually slower than their APS-C (referring to the type of film with the same dimensions) counterparts because the shutter mechanism has to move a larger mirror out of the way. Lenses have to be larger and heavier (read: more expensive) because they need to focus the image onto a larger space. Also, and this was never a problem with film, more data needs to be processed simply because there are generally more pixels on the sensor. But as I mentioned above, technology moves very fast, and by about September 2008, I was ready to move with it.

Three top-of-the-line Nikkor Lenses and Flash

By this stage in the game, Nikon had finally got their act together and entered some seriously good contenders into the entry-level and pro-sumer markets (the Canon EOS-40D is considered a pro-sumer camera). Generally more expensive, but with build quality to match, Nikon had fallen behind Canon mostly because it didn’t make full-frame cameras, and its other cameras were considered expensive for what you got. Then they pulled a fast one, and released the infamous, game-changing D3. The D3 was full-frame, could shoot 9 frames per second, and (here’s the kicker) had 12 megapixels.

It seemed unusual that Nikon’s new flagship model would come with only 12 megapixels, especially when Canon’s equivalent, the 1Ds Mark III had 21, but Nikon did a very clever thing by not competing directly with Canon, but offering a similar, but slightly different camera with different advantages. 12 megapixels on a full-frame sensor leads to a ridiculously low pixel density. That means that the sensitivity in low-light is a touch absurd. How absurd? Consider film, which used to get grainy if you went above 800 ISO (higher numbers are more sensitive), then there’s digital point-and-shoot cameras which produce unusable photos after 400 ISO. Most DSLRs produce usable photos up to 1600 ISO. The D3 produced usable photos all the way up to 64000 ISO, and marginally usable ones up to 128000 ISO.

That camera body costs about 5000 USD, which was a bit beyond my budget. Months later, however, Nikon released the D700, which was a smaller, cheaper, and slightly slower D3, and this one only cost 3000 USD. After doing some calculations, I figured that I could sell all of my Canon gear, and a few pieces of furniture, and be able to afford the D700 with three top-quality lenses. So that’s exactly what I did.

Nikon D700 with the Zeiss 50mm f/1.4 lens

I was also very sneaky and didn’t tell anyone that I was replacing my camera, instead opting only to inform them that I was selling my old gear because I was moving overseas (the truth, but not the whole truth). The truth was eventually revealed at my going away party to the machine-gun sound of 8 frames per second in a dimly-lit room where we made merry and sang kareoke.

So, at the end of the day, I had a few less lenses to play with (I do miss my fisheye), but I have a much faster camera, an infinitely better auto focus system, and a weather-sealed one (I can shoot in very heavy rain if I ever need to). The Nikon lenses are also professional-grade with weather seals on all the moving parts and joints. I use Tiffen high-transmission filters on the front of all my lenses to protect the front lens element from scratches.

Although I have done professional work, and have also sold many photos to newspapers, magazines, and the occasional book, I’m certainly not making any money from this “hobby” of mine. To this end, I am considering starting a satelite site to showcase and possibly sell photographs that I take (and I do take a few). If anyone has any suggestions or experience with this, I’d love to hear about it.

I had been listening to the competition on ABC classic FM but it hadn’t occurred to me to actually go along until my friend Andrew Wee emailed me with the idea. Being a fan of string quartets, I decided that the Friday afternoon session would be a good one to attend. We arrived at the town hall with 20 minutes to spare and purchased our student rush tickets for the very reasonable amount of $10. Then we realised that we hadn’t eaten, so rushed off to have a very quick lunch.

The South Melbourne town hall doesn’t have the best acoustics in the world, but it isn’t a bad venue. The ABC were doing a live broadcast from the venue which included a chance for the audience to have a chat, which is why everyone is crowding around this corner of the hall.

A pleasant side effect of this being a competition is that all the performers are very young. Indeed the rules state that the average age of the group must not exceed thirty years. As an interesting counterpoint to all that, the average age of the audience was at least twice this. This is one of the quartet’s we saw, the Badke quartet. After recovering from the initial distraction of an extremely attractive first violin (it is difficult to tell from here, but its a Stradivarius), we came to the realisation that they were actually very good musicians. This inspired us to purchase tickets to the finals which would be on Sunday at Hamer Hall, venue of the 2004 Stand up for your Rights comedy night.

The next day, I roamed around the city to attend the numerous free concerts which were to be held at various venues throughout the Melbourne CBD. These concerts were a great deal of fun because the audience was far more varied in terms of age and general demographic. I think the big sandwich boards advertising free chamber music outside the various halls probably attracted many people who wouldn’t have otherwise known about the competition.

The atmosphere was also more relaxed because, with the official rounds of the competittion over, the players could relax a little. None of the finalists were playing today (they were probably frantically rehearsing).

The two venues were old churches which, although not boasting concert-hall acoustics, were very pleasant venues to sit in… despite the very loud and creaky seats.

Armed with my ticket to the finals, I set off for Southbank on a sunny Sunday afternoon.

Well, the sun was actually just setting when I set out, but it had been quite a sunny Sunday.

Hamer Hall is located along the shores of the Yarra river, along the south bank in fact… in an area (not surprisingly) known as Southbank.

I dined at a quaint little Italian job called “Scusami” which, I think, means “excuse me” in Italian. I ate more than what is pictured above…

Having previously been a hirer of Hamer Hall, I know all the venue regulations back to front. One of them is that photographs are not permitted without express permission of the Arts Centre Trust, which manages the venue. I did not have express permission, but I did have a stealthy skill at taking photographs with my rather chunky Canon DSLR.

The flowers on stage right are supposed to balance out the lectern on stage left… I think someone overestimated the size of the lectern.

At the conclusion of the perfomances, which were very pleasing to the ear, there was a long wait while the jurors, led by Julian Burnside, Q.C. deliberated on their decision. In the end, the Atos Trio won the piano trios division and the Badke Quartet won the string quartet division.

After the whole schmozzle, we bumped into Ajay who seems to know everybody in the music fraternity, at least in Melbourne, and he happened to know one of the organisers and was able to direct us to the location of the afterparty (after we grabbed some nibbles, of course)

The afterparty was held at a lovely venue in the middle of the city (convenient for people like me, who live in the city) and we got to hang about and mingle with musicians.

As the night wore on, things got blurry and we got tired… so I went home. I couldn’t believe that these guys could just keep on partying, I mean, I didn’t even have to play any music and I was really tired.

Perspectives on The Weird Plays from newbie, actor and deity – Daniel Yeow

What man can claim to understand the manifestations of God?

Who the hell knows, but I had to try and figure it out for my part in the recent Omniprop double bill – Euripides: The Weird Plays, which included the somewhat whimsical Helen and the rather darker Orestes. These plays were my first involvement in both MUCAAS and its spin-off theatre company Omniprop. The experiences were quite positive, so much so that I was promptly sucked-in to MUCAAS and am now a fairly regular pub attendee.

Jumping into the role of Apollo was no easy task. (I played Apollo in the plays, did I mention that?) I had astutely avoided all classics subjects in favour of archaeology subjects for most of my classics and archaeology major. In addition to this, I had not acted in anything since year 12, which was so long ago that I don’t care to mention it here.

The rehearsal schedule was rigorous and intense (especially during the “intensive” sessions held during the September break). The MUCAAS crowd were ever-helpful and not nearly as intimidating as I thought they would be. The breakthrough came when it came out that I had attended one of those exclusive private boys schools. “Ok Daniel, Apollo is an arrogant dick who thinks he’s better than everyone else”. It was easy from there on in. It was almost as if I had spent my school days training to method act the part of Apollo.

Opening night was nerve-wracking. Not because I didn’t know my lines, not because I was afraid of delivering them in front of an audience, no, nothing trivial like that. When the guild theatre opens to the public and people start walking in and taking their seats I am on stage. I AM ON STAGE! I have to stand there, in nothing but a skirt (which got shorter every night) and “androgynous” (think drag-queen) make-up. Needless to say, I got alot of strange looks.

I was very lucky. I had three long-ish monologues, but apart from that, I didn’t have to do very much at all. I got to open the play and I got to close it. In between, I got to sit backstage and do… whatever. I got up to various different things, practicing my speed Rubik’s cubing, playing Tetris, Chess or Go on my laptop backstage, helping people to conduct ridiculously quick costume changes. After everyone was over the first-night-nervousness, things were fairly smooth sailing from there.

As the nights went on, we became more and more comfortable with our lines and our characters. The audiences increased and so did the volume of the laughs… and the claps. By closing night, a few minor incidents aside, we were ready to cap off a very successful season of Euripides plays. Aside from the chore of having to repaint the whole of the Guild theatre black, it was a fairly fun, if slightly long, bump out.

Bless lovely peace