Category: photos

About various photos I’ve taken. Unlike other entries, these are dated with the date I took the photo (or thereabouts).

Our Lucy Liu

In the Japantown parking lot, my girlfriend starts the topic:

Her: My roommate, Nora, moved down to Los Angeles the other week.

Me: Yeah?

Her: …and already someone down there stopped her in the street and told her she looks like Lucy Liu.

Even *I* get that a lot…

Me: Oh God! She looks nothing…

Her: Yeah, anytime white guys see a pretty asian girl, they say she looks like Lucy Liu.

Me: Ha! …or Michelle Yeoh.

Her: Because they’re the only two asian people they know.

Me: And if it’s a guy it’ll be Chow Yun Fat or Jet Li.

Her: White guys thinks it’s a compliment. But what they’re really saying is, ‘All Asians look alike to me.’”

DSC_5201

Nora and friend
Steak A5A, North Waterfront, San Francisco, California

Nikon D3, Nikkor 24mm f/1.4G, SB-900
1/24sec @ ƒ/2, iso2000, 24mm

Nora at her going away party. (For you white people, Nora is the one in the picture that looks like Lucy Liu.)

Me: I wonder which one they say I look like?

Her: Umm……

Me: …probably Michelle Yeoh.

(If she wasn’t parking at that moment, she’d have hit me.)

DSC_5203

Nora
Steak A5A, North Waterfront, San Francisco, California

Nikon D3, Nikkor 24mm f/1.4G, SB-900
1/25sec @ ƒ/2, iso2000, 24mm

Now that you mention it, she does sort of remind me of Chow Yun Fat.

Posted on by tychay 3

The first lines outside Apple Store

You may have forgotten by now, but the first lines outside Apple Store were for the openings…

My graduate school friend, Dave, called me that morning and mentioned that an Apple Store was opening up in the area and we should check it out. We casually showed up just before noon and were totally blown away by the lines.

The line for Apple Store

The line for Apple Store
Apple Store, Palo Alto, California

Olympus C-2500L
(3 exposures, 1/200-1/400sec, f/2.9), iso100, 11.8mm (47mm)

I took this photo nine years ago today (October 6, 2001) outside Apple Store Palo Alto. It was the ninth Apple Store opening, and the first street-level Apple Store.

The sign reads: “5 down, 95 to go.” It is a reference to the fact that Apple has only 5% market share and the retail store concept was trying to reach the other 95%.

Apple modeled the store after the Gap. The anticipation buildup was stolen from the first lines for Microsoft Windows 95 six years earlier. Apple’s nearest competitor, Gateway Country Stores failed three years later in 2004. Microsoft would copy this idea eight years later in 2009—with impending failure?

I’d say the retail store idea worked better than Apple could have ever imagined.

…

Discouraged by the lines that morning, we had lunch across the street at Pluto’s. When we finished, there was no line and we walked right in. They still had some free t-shirts when we left.

That was a good day.

…

Update: Apple and Microsoft go head-to-head with Microsoft’s fifth store-to-be.

Posted on by tychay 2

From Photo to Finished—Automattic

10 Minute Lightning Talk for the Automattic Meetup at Seaside, September 2010

Automattic is the company I work for. The company is distributed worldwide and once a year we gather at a remote location and meet face-to-face. This year, all the employees are taking a little time during the meetup to compose and give at least one presentation for each other, talking about any subject we are passionate about.

For this presentation I chose the subject of photography. Specifically, taking one photo from start to publish describing how I took the shot and the editing steps I chose.

Like many bloggers—Automattic is also known as WordPress—I’m passionate about photography and I felt that many of the other people it the room might be interested in it also—our founder and CEO’s online handle is “photomatt.”

I hope you enjoy this presentation!

This was the second presentation I gave that day. I composed it just after I finished the first.

Photo to Finished

View more webinars from terry chay.

This presentation will be expanded into a post around Christmas. Look for it!

Posted on by tychay 4

Macbook stickers

A while ago, when I saw Mark Kater, he showed me the vinyl sticker he got for his Macbook Pro. The next time I stopped by, I remembered to photograph it.

Mac am Ironman

Mac am Ironman
Tagged, Financial District, San Francisco, California

Leica M8, Cosina-Voigtländer NOKTON 35mm F1.2 Aspherical
1/30sec, ISO160, 35mm (47mm)

The processing is pretty much the Toy Camera preset in Aperture. Pretty powerful huh?

He got it from some place on etsy. It turns out die-cut vinyl Macbook decals that incorporate the apple logo are hugely popular—there are literally hundreds of them.
Continue reading about Stickers and such after the jump

Posted on by tychay 7

More Aperture presets

More Aperture presets

Aperture Presets are not new to Aperture 3. Before this however, you had to apply them by using the lift-and-stamp tool and share them by generating an Aperture project. It was never a very good solution. But my recent post on presets, made me look into our archives for some Aperture 2 settings to add to my Preset Library.

Download the presets here. Current version at time of this writing is 0.3b.

Without further ado, here they are: (Remember to mouseover the images to see the pre-preset versions…)

Sky Enhancer

The Bay Bridge — Graeme's Sky Enhancer

The Bay Bridge — Graeme’s Sky Enhancer
Embarcadero, San Francisco, California

Sony DSC-WX1
1/320sec @ ƒ7.1, ISO160, 4mm (24mm), panoramic video

This photo was a sweep panorama of the Embarcadero to the Bay Bridge was done by the amazing Sony WX1 on my walk home from the San Francisco Farmer’s Market.

Graeme Smith came up with this setting darken and saturate the sky. When coupled with a brush and other enhancements, this should be a pretty good start for landscape photography.

Outdoor Contrast

Everybodys Happy Man — Bakaris Outdoor Contrast

Everybody’s Happy Man — Bakaris Outdoor Contrast
Chinatown, San Francisco, California

Sony DSC-WX1
1/250sec @ ƒ7.1, ISO250, 4mm (24mm)

On a street corner in Chinatown there’s a guy yelling, “Happy! Happy! Happy! Everybody’s happy!”

Bakari finds this levels tweak adds some much-needed contrast to outdoor photos.

Cross-Process

Music at the Ferry Building Farmers Market - heber's Cross Process

Music at the Ferry Building Farmers Market – heber’s Cross Process
Ferry Building, Embarcadero, San Francisco, California

Sony DSC-WX1
1/125sec @ ƒ4.5, ISO80, 18mm (100mm)

These band was playing at the Farmer’s Market. I think they’re from the Haight normally.

Aperture now has two cross-process presets, but I thought I’d bring in the one created by heber vega also. Cross-processing probably started with a mistake from dipping films in the wrong chemical bath during development… now it creates an interesting recognizable effect.

Film Look

Scott Beale - Film look

Scott Beale – Film Look
Varnish Fine Art, South of Market, San Francisco, California

Nikon D3, AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D
1/60sec @ ƒ1.8, ISO800, 50mm

Scott Beale, a fixture of the art, culture, and technology underground scene of San Francisco back when it really was underground decided to celebrate adding cloud hosting services at Varnish when I took this photo of him. Varnish Fine Art was recent victim of eminent domain.

This is an old trick from the video camera world. One way to get video, in Final Cut, to get a look resembling a movie was to adjust the output curve of the finished video to resemble film’s characteristic curves. You do this by creating an slanted S bend in the curve. Since Aperture 3 finally has curves, it was time to create a “film look” preset, which I did.

Hope you enjoy the presets, and contact me if you have other suggestions for more.

Keep shooting.

Posted on by tychay 11

2010-01-16 Melanie’s Bday

From a previous article, I finally found a way to work in Aperture again. But since I’m also trying to pick up photography again, I thought it’d be fun to write a little bit showing a few experimental images taken from that day.

This will be a way to test out a new WordPress plugin I just wrote to do mouseovers. As long as you’re on this blog article, you can run your mouse over the image to see the pre-processed original image.

The specials are…

The specials are…
Mission Beach Cafe, The Mission, San Francisco, California

Olympus E-P2, M. Zuiko Digital ED 14-42mm 1:3.5-5.6
1/5sec @ ƒ3.9, iso 1600, 17mm (35mm)

I arrived a little late as usual, but just in time to order dinner with everyone else.

This was actually the first image I used to test out whether the workflow works. Because of that, the DNG output was 8-bit, not 16-bit. That may have accounted for the overaggressive smoothing, or it could be the lack of dynamic range in an ISO 1600 µ4:3 CMOS sensor (roughly 1/4 the size of a 35mm frame). Then again, maybe it’s the setting on Topaz Adjust plugin. In any case, it does have the painterly look that you get when you start remapping dynamic range of an image. Not too sure if I can still call this a photograph.

If you mouseover the image, you may be wondering how I pulled color from the black-and-white original. The original is the JPEG, but the image was generated from the RAW. For documentary photography, on cameras which resemble rangefinders like the Leica M8 and the Olympus E-P2, I prefer black-and-whites previews, which force me to concentrate on tone and not color—but it’s always nice to be able to grab the color channels from the RAW if I change my mind.

This exposure tests the outer-limits of the kit lens: 1/5 of a second at a borderline too-high-for-this-camera ISO at the largest aperture for this 35mm EFL. Had I my old 17mm pancake, I’d have gotten a full stop faster. Still, it got focus-lock and the in-body image stabilization allowed me to shoot handheld braced against elbows on the table. Yeah!

More photos in later pages…

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5
Posted on by tychay 4

Champagne Starbucks

Shared a morning with two friends who are leaving Facebook after four years. Then I noticed I was the only one with ratty shoes.

I’m the only one without the cool shoes
Starbucks, South of Market, San Francisco, California

Leica M8, Cosina-Voigtländer NOKTON Classic 40mm f1.4 S.C., B+W 486 IR Cut
1/125sec, iso160, 40mm (53mm)

Even Cyan was sporting the Kitteh.

Oh well, one of the nice things about living here is other people have taste.

Posted on by tychay 2

Below red

A package came in the mail when I was on vacation, I went into work to pick it up. It was my Nikon D70 back from LifePixel. Of course, I had to take some photos on the bus ride back.

On a crowded MUNI

On a crowded MUNI
San Francisco, California

Nikon D70+eIR, Tokina AT-X PRO 16-50mm f/2.8 DX
1/30sec @ f/2.8, iso 400, 16mm (24mm)

Hmm… maybe it isn’t obvious, perhaps an unprocessed image will help…

Looking out the window

Looking out the window
San Francisco, California

Nikon D70+eIR, Tokina AT-X PRO 16-50mm f/2.8 DX
1/180sec @ f/6.7, iso 200, 17mm (25mm)

This photo is pretty much, straight out of the camera.

Yes, I had the camera modified for infrared photography. And, yes, I’m going to have a lot of fun with it…

San Francisco at sunset

Nikon D70+eIR, Nikkor 14-14mm f/2.8G
1/250sec @ f/8, iso 500, 22mm (33mm)

View On Black

Continue reading about Some IR snaps after the jump

Posted on by tychay 9