Friday, December 30, 2011

Dec 30 - Desert Skies

On second thought, here is a second post with some non-Camila photos. I didn't quite get what I wanted with the sand dunes, but the color in the sky is worth posting.

And for those who know my photography and are wondering, no these are not HDR. They are single exposures with auto or standard white balance applied. I did play around with curves because I don't have a graduated ND filter yet. (I tried going to Casey's in the morning, but they don't carry what I wanted).



Dec 30 - Desert Dunes

I needed to do one more national park road trip before my pass expired. I visited Death Valley exactly one year ago when I first got the pass, so I figured a revisit would be apropos. My goal was to get a sunset photo of the sand dunes. I did get some nice shots with some fantastic color in the sky, but in the end, I wasn't super crazy about them.

So in their stead, here are some photos of Camila LOL.





Sunday, December 18, 2011

Dec 18 - Hawk'r Popup

I attended Great Bao's "Hawk'r" popup dinner event at Bread and Butter tonight. I really do make a lousy food critic—I'm not that picky and I pretty much enjoyed everything. Yes, the noodles were undercooked, but I didn't think they were bad at all. The congee was pretty bland, but that seems to be how congee normally is and it's the other ingredients that give it flavor (not that I am a congee expert in any way). For sure, my favorite was the hamachi, followed by the pork belly bao.

In any case, here is the six-course dinner, in order of appearance.

Beet- and Vodka-Marinated Hamachi, Soy Salt, Lemon, and Horseradish


Seafood Congee, Salted Radish Omelet, Chinese Doughnut


Roast Duck "Tamale"


"Great Bao" - Pork Belly, Preserved Mustard Greens, Crushed Peanuts and Cilantro


Taiwanese Beef Noodle Soup


Spanish Milk Tea with Tapioca

Saturday, December 10, 2011

Dec 10 - Total Lunar Eclipse

My plan was to capture the lunar eclipse through my cheap telescope. Long story short, things didn't quite work out how I wanted. As a result, here is a non-telescope photo of the moon taken around 6:15am (about 10-15 minutes after it reached total eclipse).



I did manage to take some very unspectacular photos of the moon as the Earth was slowly casting its shadow on it. Just for the heck of it, here is one such example.