Paul Child: What is it that you really like to do?
Julia Child: Eat!
Paul Child: And you’re so good at it!
(Julie & Julia)

Recently, I was watching an Iron Chef America episode where Giada De Laurentiis and Rachel Ray competed against each other with Bobby Flay and Mario Batali as their respective teammates. What stuck out is how Ray kept saying, “I am not a chef, I’m just a cook.”

Coincidentally, I had recently been thinking about the term “foodie” which has apparently officially made it into mainstream language, at least according to the Oxford English Dictionary and Merriam-Webster and they each have slightly different definitions:

OED: A person with a particular interest in food; a gourmet. (Sometimes distinguished from ‘gourmet’ as implying a broad interest in all aspects of food procurement and preparation.)
MW: A person having an avid interest in the latest food fads.

Something has always bothered me about that term especially when people call themselves foodies as if it were a credential that could be earned when it’s really a self-classification and many times, it seems to be used by someone to give themself more credibility with an air of elitism (According to OED, “1982 V. Woods et al. in Harpers & Queen Aug. 66/4 ‘Foodies are foodist. They dislike and despise all non-foodies.’”); there appears to be a similar conversation around chef vs. cook. I’m curious how many self-proclaimed foodies like cooking (OED) and how many just chase the latest trendy restaurants and just eat (MW)?

I also started wondering when the trend of taking photos of food during meals started to become more popular. When I was getting more into photography, I started taking photos of food because I found it as an interesting subject as still life and good practice for framing, composition, depth of field, and lighting. I used to be the only one taking photos of food I had made and food I had ordered, but now it’s not uncommon to be in the company of many (especially in a group setting frustrating our hungry dining companions who aren’t taking photos and also potentially being disruptive to others). I suppose now that social networking has become a regular part of people’s lives, it’s just natural to visually share what people are experiencing through taste.

Since I started reading Best Food Writing 2009, a birthday gift from a friend of mine, I thought it would be a good opportunity to expand my creative adventures to include food here (and my exploration of food establishments in my travel site).

Be warned that although I’m okay with cooking, I’ve mostly been doing baking and desserts (pictured above are pound cake and mixed berry Zinfandel sorbet I’ve made in the past). I’ve enjoyed the precision of baking and how it’s easy to create a baked treat as long as you have the staples of butter, flour, and eggs (and baking powder and baking soda).

After I had a private cooking party this year for my birthday and after organizing a screening of Julie & Julia followed by a cooking party with friends, I’ve been inspired to expand my culinary repertoire into cooking more. There should be some interesting adventures ahead…

Photography has gotten a lot easier these days with digital cameras and their auto settings and I’ve seen people carry around digital SLRs instead of old point and shoots more and more.  When I took a black and white film photography class, the countless hours I spent in the darkroom developing film, developing prints, and printing prints made me realize how much more I’d rather work in the digital photography format than with film; though some found the darkroom therapeutic, I did not.

As with film photography, I don’t “print” my photos as-is, but with adjustments.  The camera never captures what the eyes truly see; Ansel Adams did a lot of dodging and burning on his photographs.

My post-processing workflow involves reviewing and selecting photos, color and lighting adjustments, captioning and keywording/tagging. and publishing.  And then there’s the time spent taking the photograph with consideration for composition and lighting.  This is not just for my digital SLR photographs, but I do the same with my point and shoot photographs.

So when someone downloaded my photographs from Flickr and included them in their own photo album passing them of as their own (albeit unintentionally), I felt as if the time I spent on my photos had been stolen, too.

I haven’t been a fan of watermarking because it also affects the photograph’s imagery, but I’ve reluctantly turned to it.  In a perfect world, everyone would check to see if it would be okay to use photographs (or any other work of others) before doing so, but it’s unfortunate that everyone assumes that if you can get it on the web, you can do whatever you want with it.  I’ve seen lifted photos on Facebook and Evite and they even have copyright watermarks on them and I’m quite certain that the person didn’t ask for permission first.  It’s not just about attribution, but also what the photo is associated with.  I’ve been contacted by book publishers who were interested in using my photographs and when doing so, I want to know the context in which it will be used before giving permission.

I use Adobe Lightroom to process my photos and use the LR2/Mogrify plugin to watermark them in an obvious way.  Lightroom has watermarking capabilities, but they’re extremely limited and watermarking a full resolution photo results in a watermark that’s too tiny to see in thumbnail mode that it looks like dust on the photo.  I also add my information in the Copyright metadata field within the photo itself (although some photo editing applications unfortunately will wipe out that metadata).

In Flickr, I don’t allow downloading by the public and have made it difficult to right click and download the smaller photo (it’s a setting to overlay a blank image as a deterrent).  Only my Flickr friends can download some photos (people photos usually); since Flickr doesn’t have more granular download permission settings available, I’ve gotten around it by only making the downloadable photos private and setting the license to Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike Creative Commons which then allows downloading of the photos in private view.

In the old days, duplicating a photograph took a lot of time and effort; nowadays, photographers need to turn to technology deterrents to discourage plagarism.

It’s a new (lunar) year and although a new year shouldn’t be the only time to set goals, I happened to set a new one yesterday.  

One of the goals I set in 2007 was to visit an international destination at least once a year.  That year, I went to Taiwan, Hong Kong, Shunde, Vietnam, Macau and last year, Hong Kong, Macau, Shunde, Beijing.  Had it not been for the Olympics last year, there wouldn’t have been such an overlap.  Before that, I set a goal to see and photograph the Seven Natural Wonders of the World (though there doesn’t seem to be a consensus on an official list).

Inspired during a recent conversation, my new goal will shake things up a bit yet still fits in with the previous goal:

Seven Continents in Seven Years.

At first this sounds like a daunting goal, but as I thought about it, I might be able to reach my goal in 4-5 years especially with my home continent already checked off and a rough potential plan:

2008 — North America, Asia
2009 — Europe, Australia
2010 — South America
2011+ — Africa, Antartica

My friends and I have been talking about going to Machu Picchu, Peru and I’ve always wanted to see the Egypt and Zimbabwe is on the Seven Natural Wonders list for Victoria Falls.  And last year, visiting Antartica was a topic of discussion… it will be a little more tricky and likely more costly, though.

Now this isn’t about quantity and simply checking off the continents.  With my wanderlust tendencies, I’m also going to try to limit the use of tour operators to only portions of the trips, if I must.  This is about experiencing different parts of the world and wandering off the beaten path… the journey and not the destination.  Now with a concrete plan.  

When I started this travel site, I found a quote that captured what should be the essence of travel and this site: 

“To my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in which almost nothing is so familiar it is taken for granted.”

Bill Bryson, The Best American Travel Writing 2000

So I now have 6 years to experience everyday firsts in 5 of 7 continents.  I can’t wait for the journey ahead!

My lifetime progress is 3 of 7 with 15 countries (6%):

world66.com

 

I enjoy traveling and so I’ve decided to start a blog on travel especially since I have an international trip coming up. I hope to write while exploring when possible and share photos from my trips here.

I wrote my first post in the blogosphere four years ago today. Also having celebrated the tenth anniversary of my AIM screen name last month, I decided it’s time for a change: a new blog… on technology, life with it, and the generation that uses it.

I was invited to participate in a photography exhibition called “Eye of the Beholder” where two of my landscape photographs will appear.

June 1 – June 30
Krause Center for Innovation Gallery
Foothill College
12345 El Monte Road
Los Altos Hills, CA

Hours:
Monday through Friday 6:30am to 9:00pm
Saturday 9:00am to 5:00pm

Directions to the gallery (on the lower level).

Eye of the Beholder

As photographers and artists, we put ourselves behind the viewfinder, through the lens, and see the world through our own eyes. We try to capture the spirit, art, or meaning of the subject with just a click of the shutter. Sometimes, we are there for hours, waiting for the perfect light. Other photographs are serendipitous and perhaps even the result of simple, wonderful luck. In the end, we have a body of work that has meaning to ourselves and, hopefully, meaning to others.

One aspect of most exhibitions is that each photographer chooses to submit a certain number of images from his or her portfolio. In all situations, these are strong images. But the selections are still colored by our own personal and sometimes emotional attachment to particular images. Perhaps we include a specific image because it is not only strong but because of some personal meaning, such as the effort involved or the people encapsulated by the frame. There is nothing wrong with this, but this show, in which we look at work through the Eye of the Beholder rather than through that of the artist, presents something different.

For this show, artists were paired up and presented with each other’s comprehensive portfolio of gallery-quality work. We were explicitly encouraged to not pre-select from this collection, or to make comments about particular images. Our partner then selected the images that eventually ended up on the walls. Each of us have put our exhibited images, the prints that represent our skills, vision, and art, in the hands of another.

The result is an exhibition that truly is about how others see our work. It is about the perspectives, experiences, and sometimes simple preferences of someone else, which may be entirely and radically different than our own. If beauty truly is in the Eye of the Beholder, then let us see what beauty each of us has found in another’s work, and think about the meaning of those choices, those perceptions, and perspectives.

A new site design for Blue Wave Studio.