the klog

Here's my annual list of my own photos that I liked the most from 2011, in chronological order:

I went to India a couple of times last year, and because it's literally half-way around the world (but still in the northern hemisphere), the great circle flight path is pretty much due north, meaning we got to fly over glaciers.

I attended an Indian wedding in India! The bride and groom got up on a rotating platform! That rotated! And there was a flower petal cannon! Be sure to watch my video of this scene if you haven't already.

Flight attendants on Emirates. I'm happy with how this shot turned out looking like corporate brochure photo. :) The funny thing is that I messed up my settings, so it was really dark, but I brightened it in Lightroom and pumped up the noise reduction, which is what gives it that plasticky corporate look, I think. Of course, their well-trained smiles help, too! :D

"Our Love Can Never Be"

I basically saw these two, thought up the title, cracked myself up, and then spent a good ten or fifteen minutes waiting for them to actually look at each other so I could get this shot. :P

Somehow, the lighting of these chefs came out just right, so that an otherwise mundane photo turned out to be inexplicably appealing to me. I'm undecided about whether the composition would be better if the center chef were slightly to the right.

So I managed to get a press pass to bring my DSLR into The Independent to shoot Rupa & The April Fishes. Ironically, my favorite shot of the evening was actually from before the show started, when she was tuning her guitar.

I recently took another guitar-tuning photo that I liked. Maybe that can be my "thing". I could do a series of photos of people tuning their guitars at shows. :)

"Honey, I'm home!"

I got the idea into my head for this picture of my newlywed friends. My subjects were reluctant, but I insisted on carrying out my vision! I could not be stopped!

They liked the end result. :)

This shot is semi-posed. I saw my friend's dad do this mock-eating motion, and I asked him to do it again so I could take a picture. It was just too adorable. :)

The Narrows at Zion National Park were amazing. There's this one section at the beginning where you have to hike through chest-deep water! It was so fun. In this photo, I like how the lines on the cliff wall happen to radiate from my two friends on the right.

I liked how cooling off the white balance here allowed the blue lighting to set her apart from the background.

Here's my post from 2010, and my lists from 2007, 2008, and 2009

And here's a longer list of my favorite photos in reverse chronological order if you want to see more!

So a couple of months ago, I helped the David Chiu for Mayor campaign shoot this video, though they ended up not using it:

Their idea was to make a video inspired by this SF Weekly article in turn inspired by this campaign page.

Halloweenified profile pic of @ec:

(If you don't notice what I changed, be patient and keep looking...)

(Inspired by this Halloweenified profile pic of @robinsloan by @irondavy.)

So I saw this photo via Tamara Mann's Google+ of Jama ar-Rahman mosque in Baghdad (under construction):

And I commented that it looked like a spacecraft getting ready to lift off. She responded that it does have a certain Mos Eisley feel to it, which led me to create:

But then I thought, perhaps my original suggestion was more accurate:

Yay Photoshop! :)

At 53rd St and 6th Ave:

The giant brick building here now belongs to Google:

It began its life as a freight depot, then became home to the Port Authority. Now it houses a number of different tenants. It's SO HUGE. It's like a skyscraper turned on its side!

Parking is in short supply in New York:

And finally, I loved this cake at some shop called Lulu:

:D

I went back to New York and toured MOMA again. I love that place. It made me so happy! Let's lead off with... The Menstruation Machine!

Here's a music video explanation of it:

Um, if that wasn't enough, here's what the placard had to say:

With her Menstruation Machine, Sputniko! explores the relationship between gender identity, biology, and choice. The device, equipped with a blood-dispensing system and electrodes that stimulate the lower abdomen, replicates the pain and bleeding of the average five-day menstrual period. It is designed to be worn by men, children, postmenopausal women, or whoever else wants to experience menstruation firsthand, transforming an internal, private process into a wearable display of identity. The video tells the story of Takashi, a biological male who builds the Menstruation Machine and wears it out on the town with a girlfriend, strutting around a shopping mall and occasionally doubling over in pain. Sputniko! notes that the Menstruation Machine may be particularly desirable now that hormone-based contraceptives such as the birth-control pill have rendered menstruation biologically unnecessary.

Btw, I love how this artist has an exclamation point in her name. :D Here's the music video for her other exhibit about a mechanical crow:

I love this idea of making music videos for your electronic art contraptions. :)

Okay... onward!

This is a Rubik's Cube for the blind, featuring braille on all the faces!

Even the out-of-order signs are awesome at MOMA:

And finally, for all the Point Break fans (I know you're out there :D), there was a Kathryn Bigelow exhibit, and here's a storyboard from the film!

Parents of the bride being adorable:

And some unplanned speeches:

Some portraits I shot at my friend's wedding:

First, the groom:

And then some of the guests:

Awesome hair:

Contemplative:

I saw the image on the left floating around a few weeks ago, and then today I saw the one on the right:

Okay now can we just agree that (a) both corporations and governments provide value, and (b) they both still have flaws and could be improved? I guess I kind of disagree with the sentiments expressed by both of the original sets of protestors AND both of the image-creators who are mocking the protestors. Maybe I can unite everyone in common hatred of me? :)

The scene at the wedding ceremony:

:)

I also rather liked the pens at the signing:

This shot of putting on mascara…

…reminds me of this scene from A Clockwork Orange. :P

Putting on eyeshadow is much less frightening:

Every wedding needs one of those shots with the flowers in the foreground and subjects blurry in the background, right?

And finally, some hair curling action from before a wedding reception in another city:

More photos of my just-married friends. Here is my prediction of their future home life:

:D It took a lot of finagling to get them to pose for that. :P

And I call this next one "domesticity":

I loved this tree. :D

And here are the actual roses at the rose garden:

(I kinda went for the same effect I came up with at another wedding a couple of years ago.)

I dropped by Art All Night in DC and loved this installation titled "Seen Unseen" by Christie Malvin:

It's a mixture of projected silhouettes of passers-by combined with live skateboarders skating between the projector and the canvas.

And then I bought a friend's kid a plush Cookie Monster, and I couldn't help resist having him star in a video first:

It took me a while to clean all the cookie bits out of his mouth afterward. :P

A week ago, I went to see Rupa & the April Fishes. My favorite shot was actually during tuning:

Full Rupa & the April Fishes set here.

Later in the week, I caught the tail end of the San Francisco Cabaret Opera's performance of Kurt Weill songs. I think she looks a bit like Billie Holliday here, no?

A few more SF Cabaret Opera photos here.

Later that night, I caught My Goodness. His hair was in his face the whole evening:

And then I saw Two Star Hotel. Here's their bassist looking manly:

Full My Goodness and Two Star Hotel set here.

I made a second trip to Bangalore. Here are the chefs at a fancy restaurant called the Khansama:

Night-time foliage at the Taj West End Hotel:

A couple of pictures of discussions:

And finally, I really liked the smile I caught here:

:)

I went to a craft party and decided to make some meta-craft. Here's an animated GIF of someone else's origami creation:

That's a blue peacock and a white peahen.

The Mysore Zoo was surprisingly huge! There were lions and tigers and giraffes, too, but here are some grooming marmosets:

A lounging gorilla:

And some crows just hanging out on some sambars:

I liked how these workers carried stuff on their heads:

And finally, my one "street photography" style shot of the trip:

I took a day trip to Mysore on my second visit to India. It's about a 3 hour drive from Bangalore. Here are a few shots of fruits and pigments from Devaraja Market:

I only had my US SIM Card with me this trip, so I turned off data roaming. Luckily, Google Maps for Android just released a Labs feature: After enabling Offline Maps in Labs, you can just search for any city, select it, and download the maps within a 10 mile radius. I was able to view the map of the Mysore area without data access! The GPS still worked, too.

So my driver from Bangalore actually got a bit lost. He didn't know where Devaraja Market was, and he just tried to drop me off at some random shopping area. The Offline Maps actually came in handy: I was able to guide my driver to the right place! :D

A few more street scenes:

Here's a rather full van:

A beast of burden:

A women police station:

Airport security lines in India also have separate men and women lines.

Finally, I visited a small Railway Museum, and the most interesting part was this "Austin Rail Motor Car":

It had a fun caption that was full of spelling and capitalization errors and lacked punctuation entirely. I don't feel like making fun of bad English again, so I've cleaned it up a bit here:

My Story

I am an Austin Car. Whenever I watch the speeding vehicles on the road in front of the Rail Museum, I always remember my days: I was born in England in 1925 and brought to India, where I served several owners till I became unserviceable.

A kind-hearted railway man bought me at an auction and resurrected me from the scrap by providing rail wheels. This metamorphosis from a car to a rail motor made me a Super Star, carrying officers on inspection on the railway track. Still I can carry.