I was walking along the water yesterday, and I saw a seagull that looked strange. I thought it was badly injured. So I climbed over some rocks to take a closer look - thinking it had a horrible broken beak. But no, it wasn’t hurt, it was just sitting there with a huge starfish sticking out of its mouth. It stayed like for a minute before flying away, regurgitating said starfish on a rock, then eating it. And there, now you know too. No thanks necessary :)
Amazing weather in Seattle this past weekend. That coincided nicely with the arrival of my new Olympus 75mm f1.8 lens. Here are some snaps while walking around with it attached to my OM-D.
The 75mm from Oly is an amazing piece of glass. After a few shots, it feels every bit as good as the legendary Canon 135mm f2 L (IMO the sharpest lens from Canon’s lineup). The best thing about it though is the size. As much as I loved the Canon 135mm, I always found it awkward to shoot with. A little too long for portraits, too big for street photography, etc. The Oly feels perfect though. It’s still quite long for portraits but the fact that it’s only slightly bigger than a 50mm f1.4 from Canon (or about the same size as the Canon 85mm f1.8) is amazing. Will be fun shooting with this.
For those who didn’t see it, here’s the screenshot of our April 1st homepage experience. As many realized, you can get to it by searching for ”google” on bing.com. It’s been a fun day with lots of tech companies expressing their creative sides. I thought my team did great on this and there was a nice nice intro by Michael Kroll on the Bing blog.
I had an all hands on Monday with my team at Bing. An all hands is where everyone has to listen to me talk for a bit and then gets excited and inspired by some of the team doing awesome demos on some upcoming initiatives. It was a lot of fun with a ton of energy. The image below was one of the first slides I presented in my talk.
I’m halfway thru Brene Brown’s book Daring Greatly and I love it so far. If it continues at this level, it’ll be my favuorite book this year by some margin. I love the concept of daring greatly. It’s about taking risks in a way that’s authentic, vulnerably and openly and supported by others.
It’s the epitome of the culture that I both what to be a part of and want to help build.
It’s been a year since I bought the Olympus OM-D. While I’ve shot with micro four thirds gear for some time, this is by far the best I’ve used. In fact, it’s my favorite camera I’ve owned to date - surpassing even the 5D Mark II I shot with for a couple of years. I don’t always recommend the OM-D over say, a Canon equivalent, for people who are starting out as everyone’s needs are different. But if you’re looking for the perfect blend of image quality, portability and amazing tech then there’s nothing better. Anyway, I thought I’d mark the occasion with 10 of my favorite photos taken with this camera. I posted some of these in my “best of 2012” post recently but there’s a few new ones in there too. Lenses used in this collection of photos include:
Autosuggest in search engines are a reflection of what people are searching for, and therefore what the general population wants to know.
The Meaning of Life is no longer the biggest question. Only #6 on this list, behind some of the more important questions of our age. Such as, “what is the harlem shake” :)
Blurb is awesome. I first used their service years ago when you had to download their custom software and the print quality was so-so. Since then the printing process, the quality of the paper and the software have all improved dramatically. One great improvement is that there’s integration directly into Lightroom 4. Going from edited / post processed photos to a book typically takes me just a couple of hours. You can then upload directly from Lightroom which is also super useful. The other great thing is that the paper quality has gotten SO much better. I now print using their Proline Pearl Photo paper (190 GSM). I still get minor differences between my screen and the print - but I can live with the differences.
I don’t do anything fancy with what I print - we just make books to mark road trips / vacations we take. I usually collect my photos into a series, turn them into a book and a couple of weeks later we have a lasting memory of every time we go away.
Here’s some example pages from books I put together recently. I recommend anyone who’s getting more advanced in their photography / printing to give this a shot. It’s a lot of fun and you get something to keep forever.
Snow, dog treats, rottweiler, good light, compact camera handy… the perfect ingredients for an impromptu series.
A quick study of Multnomah Falls, Oregon. I took these last weekend. Multnomah is less than an hour’s drive from Portland and one of the most beautiful & hypnotic waterfalls I’ve seen in the Pacific NW. I could stare at this place for hours.
