Tag: birthday

The Washington Monument (and me)

From my Uncle Francis:

Hello Terry,

Your birthday is coming soon (6/9/12). Happy birthday to you, Terry.

We hope for your & Marie’s continued success & happyness.

I am sorry for not communicating with you. I am still OK but have to do many medical checkup and others.

I have been looking at old photos in an album was sent by my + your mom’s mom after we lost our home by fire in 1991.
I found a photo of you, Ken, & your mom at the Washington Monument, all in smile. What a happy time that was! I often
wish that your mom is still here. She would have be mighty happy and proud of you and Kenny becoming so successful.

Uncle Francis & Auntie Clara

PS: I am a novice at Photoshop to retouch, hence, sorry for the photo being a kind of old faint yellowish look. A higher resolution (but without retouch) picture is attached.

Terry, Mom, and Ken at Washington D.C. (1973)

Me, Mom, and Ken at Washington D.C. (1973)
National Mall, Washington D.C.

Pentax K

(Of course, I retouched it in Aperture.)

Here are two stories inspired by the photo, I’ll share with you on my birthday.Continue reading Washington Monument stories after the jump

Posted on by tychay 0

Cradle bed

Yesterday was the 15th birthday of PHP, which was nice.

But today is my birthday, which is better!

A long, long time ago in a crib far, far away… (a story from Auntie Gia):

Have a very wonderful day today. This is an indeed a special day. I remember when your mother and father brought you home from the hospital after your birth. I was in Pittsburgh helping take care of Ken. Your parents brought out Ken’s old cradle bed. It was small. Before they could put you in it, Two year old Ken stuffed himself in the cradle, lied down, sucked his thumb and would not move. Your mom enjoyed that moment.

From the hospital

Back from the hospital, with my brother
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

I guess they moved us to the bed (I am two weeks old in the photo).

Have a happy My Birthday, everyone!

Posted on by tychay 9

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

My first R rated movie

Me: I’m an innocent.

Mager: I believe you are secretly not innocent.

Me: I have gaps.
Me: Hmm… I should blog that.

…

Maybe I should have saved this for a Seven Things post, but my first R-rated movie was Quest for Fire. I saw it with my mom.

Here’s what happened.

My dad felt that it would be okay if my brother saw an R-rated movie for his birthday party, but there was no way C—’s mom would allow C— to see Porky’s. But, somehow Quest for Fire was okay because it was “an art film.” My mom had to chaperone my-brother’s-friends-whose parents-weren’t-cool-enough-to-let-them-see-Porky’s… and me.

…

My brother finally did catch my first R-rated movie in cable when he was in college. Of course he was shocked because Quest for Fire puts Porky’s to shame.

When he recounted that observation to my parents, I added, “I remember seeing that. I hated it because there was no speaking, only grunting.”

“Haha! You were like nine!”

“That was a horrible movie!” Mom rejoined, “I had to put my hand in front of Terry’s eyes for nearly thing. And he kept shouting, ‘Mommy, mommy are they done pumping yet?’ The whole theatre could hear it. I was so embarrassed.”

Ahh! Quest for Fire—one of those movies that makes you wonder What the fuck was MPAA ratings board was smoking at that night?

Quest for Fire in Hulu

Kid Tested, NotNSFW! Watch the movie. Jean-Jacques Annaud lays the smack down on the pr0n industry when he gets rid of the dialog entirely.
Posted on by tychay 3