The New Year celebration flew by in an instance, as everything else seems to do. First thing we know we’re eating dinner and then hour by hour goes by and it’s time to count down the last ten seconds of the year.
At midnight exactly we pop the bottle of champaign open, shoot some firecrackers and poppers and then toast the new year. After a small desert my favorite parts starts — gift giving and receiving. We had a mountain of gifts under our Christmas tree.
We all got a lot of stuff. Alena got a perfume that she wanted — Shiseido Zen and a pair of sports wrist watches for mountain climbing and such. I got Casio Pathfinder 1500, the one with titanium bracelet. The watch has a lot of functions — compass, altimeter, barometer, temperature sensor beside other things.
My parents and Lina got us a whole bunch of Star Trek seasons of Voyager and The Next Generations. Now we a full set of each.
Linka also got us some towels with custom embroidered names. And my aunt got as some very colorful serving dishes. Good holiday with a lot of fun New Year is. My favorite. Too bad it is over so quickly.
Today I’ve done some more experimenting with the lightbox. Again — not perfect, but again — interesting.
The setup is pretty simple. Color paper on the background, black marble for the bottom and simple paper as a reflector inside.
And after some more experimenting I came up with this B&W photo. Better reflections on the dial, but I think I like the color on the first one.
says:
December 26, 2008 @ 20:35
Great results for the 2nd attempt and with only one flash! I also like the setup shot as its good to know how its done. Nice touch with a high-tech flash diffuser (napkin) 
Expecting more?
says:December 27, 2008 @ 01:14
Going to experiment more tomorrow. I think I need to tape up the insides of the box with some black tape because I’m getting yellow light even when I’m not using yellow light.
Looks like I’m getting some reflections from the box (cardboard) itself.
says:December 27, 2008 @ 01:14
Oh, and I forgot to say:
Thank you for the comment!
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With all the watch excitement lately I needed to come up with a good way to share with the readers of the blog. For that you obviously need good pictures. And to take good pictures of watches you obviously need a lightbox of some kind.
I used a simple guide posted on Strobist to build one without spending a lot of money. Borrowed a cardboard box from work, Alena bought some tracing paper and that’s pretty much it.
I need to replace one of the lamps with a regular bulb with a lamp with a tungsten bulb to get rid of the yellow light. And I guess a 2nd flash would do wonders too. But overall not bad of a result at all for a first try with this cheap structure.
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Our second day started out very early. After eating the breakfast at our hotel and driving through the downtown we left El Paso and set out to the east, towards the Carlsbad Caverns National Park through Guadalupe Mountains National Parks. These were our two main objectives for the day.
As soon as we left the city we were greeted by an always familiar yet different southwestern landscape that I’ve come to love so much over the past years. Huge flats, tall distant mountains, what might seem to be scarce vegetation of unusual to us composition — cacti and yuccas, and the never ending road. Road that I might say is always great no matter how distant of a place it runs through.
Our first find was a big white field that was absolutely flat. Finally, the salt flats that I’ve heard so much about. I guess the water evaporated not so long ago, or it was raining recently. The salt was not rock hard, but soft and slightly soggy. I imagine during the summer it feels more like concrete.
In Gaudalupe Mountains NP we got a whole bunch of new stamps for our passports (4 official and one bonus). The park consists completely of hiking trails. We took a rather short one going through different plants with plaques attached to most of them. But we didn’t spend much time here as we didn’t want to be late to our next park.
We got to Carlsbad Caverns NP at about 1:30pm. The natural entrance to the caverns closes at 2pm and the elevator down closes at 3:30. After talking to the park rangers we decided that we’ll take the elevator right away, since the natural entrance adds an hour to the hike and you don’t really get to the interesting part until you reach the point where elevator would put us anyhow.
The elevator took us 750 feet down (that’s more than half of Empire State Building). I’ve never been in any cave or cavern before so for me this was a new experience. First of all the whole thing is HUGE. The farther we went the more space opened up. There were bleak lights installed behind some rocks, but you had to watch carefully where you were going because it was still pretty dark.
The formations of different stalactites, stalagmites, columns and other things I do not know the names for were magnificent. Underground lakes and springs, the constant sound of water drops. My dad was the “luckiest” of us all with respect to water drops landing on his head. At one point he started worrying about growing a stalagmite.
I managed to take a good number of pictures and most of them came out well thanks to my micro-tripod and a remote control combo. The only thing that is hard to capture is the size of the whole thing. On some photos you will notice the trail itself with guardrails around it. Those were from 1 to 1.5 meters in height and should give you some sense of scale.
After that we drove through a tiny town of Carlsbad itself to our final destination of the day — another tiny town in New Mexico — Artesia. We ended up having our 2nd anniversary dinner right in the hotel Chinese Buffet. But it’s not the food that matters, but the company, and the day itself was great.
says:December 8, 2008 @ 00:02
У тебя, Даня, получились просто замечательные снимки пещеры. Но, я думаю, для большего эффекта неплохо было бы поместить какую-нибудь фотографию с людьми, чтобы лучше прочувствовать объем подземных залов и размеры колонн и каменных “сосулек”.
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Several weeks ago we did a small photo-shoot on Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn. We were mostly taking photos of 2 cars — 300C and Caprice. However I think I ended up with several pretty good portraits, and that doesn’t seem to happen often to me. 
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Yesterday Alena and I took a good number of photos of the car. I picked out several and decided to post them.
First shot above is obviously a headlight. The bigger (outer) ring is the part where HID bulb is. It is used for low beams. The smaller circle contains a normal bulb and it’s used for high beams.
The second photo is my favorite shot from these series. The car looks really mean and aggressive from this angle.
Chrysler emblem on the front grill.
300C HEMI badge on the trunk.
5.7L V8 emblem on the engine.
V8 HEMI engine it all its glory. It still is pretty clean.
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It was a nice, cool and sunny day. Than it decided to rain. Hard. However the sun didn’t disappear.
There is a term in Russian for it — “слепой дождик” which literally means “blind rain”. Turns out there is a term for it in English too — “sunshower”. I never heard it before. Also turns out there is a whole article on Wikipedia about it.
says:June 19, 2008 @ 11:22
You probably should add the Russian terminology to the Wiki entry.
says:June 19, 2008 @ 12:08
Yeah, I noticed that they didn’t have “слепой дождик” and only had “грибной дождик” — “mushroom rain” for those how doesn’t speak Russian.
Now we have to figure out how to edit that wiki. I’ve never done it.
says:June 19, 2008 @ 12:26
Done!
says:July 15, 2008 @ 17:17
Finally had a chance you read your site… this picture is off the hook.
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So I’m mostly sitting home for the last couple of weeks. I desperately look for any more or less decent job or internship, but, as you probably heard, the economy is kind of going downhill, so there are less opportunities for an entry level than I hoped there would be. Oh well.
I went on a couple of interviews so far. Read more…
says:June 18, 2008 @ 13:12
Excel Bible?
“A1 begat A2 who begat B3 who begat C4″ -M6
“And J1 turned to M6 and spoketh ‘thou shall not cocatenate with thy neighbors cell’” -L3
says:June 18, 2008 @ 14:09
Bwahaha, that’s hilarious.
says:July 5, 2008 @ 07:46
Вау! Вот так размерчики
Но… для меня обычно повседневная библия - Налоговый кодекс Российской федерации. Откровения от Минфина (не в обиду никому будет сказано…)
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I’ve been experimenting with flash tonight which left me with a photo above. Now I keep sitting and starting at it for no apparent reason. In my mind I keep seeing different interpretations, but they are just candles. So I figured I’ll just post it here.
As to the technique of taking this photo — there is not much too it. I have constructed a tube out of a piece of cardboard and attached it to the flash. I aimed it directly at the candles, turned the lights off and took a shot. Photoshop editing was minimal.
says:May 10, 2008 @ 12:53
Это фотография - отображение нашей жизни. Вблизи все видно отчетливо, а чем дальше, тем меньше деталей можно разглядеть, все становится расплывчатым и неясным. А в самом конце лишь проступает бледный огонек, тускло мерцающий в темноте и манящий своим зыбким сиянием. И когда ты, наконец, сможешь разглядеть это пламя, понимаешь, что все это просто снимок, мимолетный слепок крупицы нашего бытия.
says:May 10, 2008 @ 13:35
Спасибо за комментарий! Самое интересное — это то что у меня получалась именно такая интерпретация. Чуть ли не слово в слово.
Именно поэтому я решил выложить эту фотку, чтоб посмотреть какие она вызовет ассоциации. Получилось интересно.
says:May 31, 2008 @ 15:47
классно, что эксперементируешь
понятно, почему получается
если бы не эксперементировал, - не получалось бы
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Here’s another photograph from my favorite series it seems.
It’s been a rainy day, but unlike usually rainy days this one doesn’t seem too depressing. I guess it’s because all the trees are finally turning green and there is spring in the air after a long gray winter.
The photo is an HDR composed of 3 images. The bright white circles that are visible in some portions of the picture are drops of rain.
says:May 9, 2008 @ 21:44
Good picture, view is impressive.
But rain today was rather heavy, especially in the morning. I was glad to be able to stay at home.
says:May 9, 2008 @ 21:54
Thank you.
It’s been raining all day and it’s still raining. We just watched a sad movie and I’m becoming a bit depressed.
says:May 9, 2008 @ 22:52
Well, the rain kept the customers away at work, so I like the rain and I like the Photo. Keep up the cool pics, alway like being impressed by cool photos.
says:June 15, 2008 @ 14:19
[…] again. And it keeps going still. I want to publish a photo, but there is already one posted that represents the mood just right. And on a different topic we ordered a pair of Obama t-shirts with Alena. The site […]
January 3, 2009 @ 00:04
Glad to hear you guys had fun, and now have lots of goodies to play around with. Enjoy, and may the new year bring you Health, Happiness and everything you wish for yourselves.
January 4, 2009 @ 13:33
Thank you, dude. I hope you have a lot of new goodies too, and the best wishes from all of us to all of you as well.
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