Category: curious

Shazam!

I was so impressed by a Hipstaphoto I saw in December where a photographer had used an Olloclip to capture a snowflake, that I just had to go out and purchase one of my very own.

After the Christmas holidays, they were on major backorder, so I wasn’t expecting my new iPhoneography device until February.

I did a little hop click of my heels when it arrived this week.

Super!

Between moving and the deluge of new projects at work, I haven’t had a bunch of time to play with the glass lenses and ingenious clip for my iPhone.

Yesterday, I sat in the work cafeteria slumped in my chair trying to get in some nutrition, and my eyes landed on this tableau:




Well, the light was nice and the shakers were interesting. So I decided no time like the present.

I dug the Olloclip out of my pocket, slid it on the iPhone, and took some quick snaps.

These aren’t well composed and in some cases, focus is a little wonky.

And yet, I’m deeply impressed.

These three shots were all using the macro lens:



Red pepper flakes. They almost look like jerky. The light streaks are from the sun bouncing off the ridges in the shaker




Pepper that looks like grains of sand.




Take this photo with a grain of salt


So far, I’m digging the Olloclip. I still have to try out the fish eye (though I’m not really a fan of fish eye lenses) and the wide angle. Honestly, I bought the Olloclip for the macro lens, so I expect the other lenses won’t see as much use.

I think the quality of the Olloclip is a bit better than the Macro Cell Lens Band (reviewed here) mainly because it’s made of actual glass and not plastic, but I find the lens band more portable.

Either way, they make delicious looking macro photos. Time to explore!

Happy Friday ya’ll.



It should be noted that I paid for the Olloclip myself and that this review was not solicited, nor was I compensated. I’m just a giddy fangirl and proud of it.

All photos Copyright 2011, Karen Fayeth and subject to the Creative Commons license found on the far right column of this page.


From a Different Angle

Today at lunch, I took a quiet, solo walk on the walking path near my office. Since my walking partner was too busy to come along and my iPod battery was tapped out, it was just me alone with my thoughts.

A dangerous combination.

Being without distraction makes me more observant of everything going on around me. For example, the blue nosed ducks that have arrived as the weather turns colder. The squabbling Canada geese. The flatfish skimming the bottom of shallow waters in the lagoon.

And the humans. Oh those wacky humans.

As I rounded one corner of the path, I saw two guys in business suits taking photos of each other. They were standing by our iconic tall building with the company logo on top. This is a not unusual sight, really. In fact, I think for some of my coworkers in Asia, having a photo from headquarters posted on their internal directory page is a badge of honor.

Since so many people have that photo on their page, everyone is trying to get the different, quirky and odd take on the same photo so they can stand out a little.

This came to mind as I noticed one of the guys posed awkwardly with his finger pointing up. The other was splayed out on the ground, almost in the water, camera pointing up, coaching his subject “a little to the right…a little up…a little more…”

I know what they were doing. They were trying to replicate that cheesey internet meme where through the magic of perspective and photography it looks like someone is holding up a bridge or touching a seventh wonder of the world.

Like this:



Image from homdoc74‘s Flickr photostream

Only with an office building. I have to admit, they weren’t being shy about this at all. They were really going for it. I kind of felt bad for the guy laying on the ground wearing a full dark suit. That’s going to be a weird one to explain when he gets back to the training room. (there’s a sales training going on this week and there are a TON of dark suits wandering around)

I’ll bet the photo will look cool. But the set up looked goofy as hell.

Something akin to this:



Photo from PhotographyUncapped.com



Friday Gadgety Goodness

I’m rather blown away at the recent rapid advances in the quality of mobile phone photography.

The art from has gone from a simple lo-res snap and upload to Facebook, to a genuine, respectable medium.

Today I’m going to gush like a lovesick schoolkid over a product from the Photojojo store that just happened to find its way under my Christmas tree.

Called a Macro Cell Lens Band on the store listing, it retails for $15 and is simply a small macro lens that fits on my iPhone by way of a sturdy rubber band.

Here it sits my iPhone (photo taken with The Good Man’s iPhone):





Easy to install, easy to use.

Since the internet is loaded with budding photographer’s photos of cats, I decided to turn my new lens on my other unsuspecting pet, my male Betta fish:

Here he is:



Photographing a fish is rather challenging, in that he is constantly on the move. The camera on the iPhone4s has a much quicker shutter and handles light so much better that previous versions, so I was willing to try.

One thing about this little macro lens, you gotta get close up on your subject. The little card that comes with the product suggests about 1 ΒΌ inches. That’s pretty close. My Betta is terrified of my big DSLR but seemed curious about the iPhone, so that helped my cause.

I’ve noticed when shooting my very expensive macro lens on my DSLR, I struggle with focus. The macro lens will only make one part of the photo crystal clear and the rest is not.

This little rubber band lens is the same. I love that the little fishy’s eyes are so clear and detailed. I just wish the rest of his face was too.

It’s such a handsome face.




Due to the low lighting in the area where the fish tank is located, these photos are a bit noisy, but not terribly so. I think with more light that would be less of an issue.



The Good Man says this one looks like Admiral Ackbar

Overall I’m deeply impressed with what this inexpensive little lens and an iPhone can produce. These photos were taken with the Camera+ app, by the way.

Just a little bit of magic on a blue rubber band. Brilliant!

My next mobile phone camera add on will likely be an Olloclip, which is considerably more expensive (about $70USD), but also considerably more advanced.

Look at this photo of a snowflake on a pine needle. It was posted on Facebook by Hipstamatic Rocky Mountain and he used the macro lens on the Olloclip and the Hipstamatic app.

Incredible!

And in my humble opinion, a huge leap forward for the medium of iPhoneongraphy.



Photo owned and copyrighted by Hipstamatic Rocky Mountain




This was not a paid review for any of the products mentioned in this post. This is simply my joy and enthusiasm for new techniques and tools for the art of iPhoneography.

Other than the snowflake photo, all photos in this post are Copyright 2011 by Karen Fayeth, and subject to the Creative Commons license found in the far right column of this page.


Lessons From a Shredding Machine: Things I have learned about myself

For the past three days, it has been me, a U-Haul box (size Medium) filled to bursting with papers, and a shredder.

I shred and I shred and I shred.

Then the machine overheats and stops shredding. Then I go back into our under-house storage and pull out another box, bag or whatever and go through it until the shredder cools off.

Then I start shredding again.

Today, as I got down to the bottom third of the box of papers, I was sucked into a time warp. I was pulling out bills and correspondence dating back to 1999.

That’s 12 years ago. Twelve-year-old documents. Twelve years is both a very long time and yet a mere blip in the world.

It has been quite an archeological journey through the strata of one medium size U-Haul box.

Here’s a few things I’ve learned along the way:


1. For the most part, the stuff that I kept was the kind of stuff that shouldn’t have gone into the trash. For example: pay stubs with my social security number, account numbers and other identifying information listed. Papers with credit card numbers. Things like that.

Where I fell down was in not having a shredder. When I moved from the South Bay to this place, I burned out my old shredder and didn’t replace it. So I just kept all these papers in a box.

About 2007 or so The Good Man and I bought a shredder and so I’m doing a better job of keeping ahead of this stuff.

That’s growing, baybee.


2. I’m not actually a hoarder. Last evening I was a bit worried. I journeyed deep into the bowels of Google to read up on it. A true hoarder will have stuff filling every corner, including their car.

I abhor having a car filled with crap. Also, I think it’s a travesty to have a garage and not be able to park in it.

So my hoarding side and my tidy side conflict. This tenuous balance is what keeps me on the “not so bad but could use some work” side of the hoarding line.

Whew!


3. It feels really good to shred every remnant from a job I held for just a year and that treated me very shabbily.

Really good.


4. Boxes of crap kept up off the ground don’t mold. Boxes sitting on the ground become a scary experiment in the rapid proliferation of mold.

Just. Ew.

This doesn’t happen in New Mexico.


5. I don’t bounce checks nearly as often as I used to.

I’m sure that’s partly because I don’t actually write checks anymore. But I also don’t overdraw my account like I used to. I shredded TONS of notes from the bank notifying me that I was overdrawn.

I haven’t seen one of those in a long time. Like years.

I think I used to play it pretty fast and loose with the float time on checks. Not so much these days.

That’s growing, baybee!


6. I still keep a copy of all the important payments I make (like a copy of the check sent to the Superior Court to pay a red light camera ticket) but I don’t keep them in paper form anymore.

Don’t gotta put .pdfs in a medium size U-Haul box.

Ain’t no one gonna complain about a cluttered hard drive but me.


7. Getting out from under a pile of twelve year old crap feels really, really good.

So good I uncorked a nice bottle of red and am relaxing tonight feeling pretty happy about my progress.

So the shredding is done and the separating the wheat from the chaff, or the donate from the trash, continues tomorrow.







Image from The Lake Mary Blog.


That There is a Winner!

As the Holiday season draws to a close, just two days now until “The Big Day” those of us at work come together for our annual “What Did You Get From The Suppliers?” comparison event.

As I started my career working for the government, I rather enjoy being in private industry where we can accept small tokens from the companies we work with.

Now let me just say, I’m usually the big loser in these competitions because I work with the telco commodity. Those companies are as cheap as the day is long.

I thought I had a pretty good entry this year for Worst Present. I got this tacky plexiglass picture frame that sits in a weird base and when I put the plastic part into the base, it immediately broke.

And then, I got ANOTHER one in the mail the next day. Their sales team clearly didn’t coordinate.

So I brought that out and declared it the worst gift of 2011.

But I got trumped and trumped hard.

“Oh NO!” I heard from the corner. “I can beat that.”

Beat that, she did.

Behold:






Now, it helps to know that the recipient of this present is a very classy, stylish girl from the City. She’s quite Coco Chanel and Jimmy Choo.

To make this gift even more charming, it was handed to my coworker while still wrapped in the plastic shopping bag from the Dallas airport.

Obviously I had to concede the race. I reboxed my broken plexiglass frame in defeat.

By the way, the lady with the worst gift is also the winner of the most and best gifts too. She works in temporary staffing. Those suppliers fall all over themselves to give stuff away at the holidays.

I need to consider working in a new group. This annual defeat, even in the worst category, is gosh darn humbling.

And for as ungrateful as I may seem, I really do enjoy the little trinkets our suppliers send.
.
.
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Especially when it is a box of See’s candy.