Hue/Saturation in Photoshop

Every Sunday I post there will be flowers.

These flowers were manipulated in Photoshop.

Only one manipulation was made.

I oversaturated these flowers by +78 on the Hue/Saturation(Image>Adjustments>Hue/Saturation) slider.

Buddhist Monks from Myanmar

There's trouble in Maynamar. We hear in the United States that the military government is shooting monks.

The U.S. media is getting fewer reports over the Internet than it had been over the past few days, because it says the goverment of Myanmar has shut the Internet down.

The media also can't report on how many monks have been shot, but they do say some have died.

The image above is of some monks in Myanmar. They wear orange robes and are very calm and seemingly peace-loving people.

Governments all over the world have been condeming the government of Myanmar, but none is doing anything to help resolve the indifferences that the people of Myanmar have with the goverment.

If violence continues will there be a coup? What's the United States going to do?

Hey Bush, there's more to the world than just Iraq.

Condom Store

Some things are just better said in English. Take prophylactic, for instance. In Japan they dare not translate that word to their language, at least on a store front, anyway. Don't know why, really. Guess that'd take a class in advanced Japanese culture to find out.

At any rate, just when did the condom come about? I mean, what's the history behind the rubber?

In 200 A.D., they painted sex scenes where men had their penis covered.

In the 16th century, syphilis was widespread, so scientists came up with a linen wrapping that was said to help prevent it.

In the 18th century, Casanova was using a condom.

Goodyear started manufacturing rubber in the 19th century, so that the condom could also be made in a factory.

Latex came next in the 20th century, after which AIDS came and everyone knew about and was warned to use the condom.

Flamingos at the Singapore Bird Park

Flamingos are pink and just luscious to look at. This batch lives at the Jurong Birdpark in Singapore. I have another post that shows birds falling in love from the bird park.

There are 8000 birds in the park. With 1001 flamingos, the park has the largest collections of flamingos in any zoo or park.

This is definitely a day-long excursion. Bring a small towel to wipe yourself down, because the humidity is horrific.

Myanmar

Myanmar, a land fighting a brutal dictatorship, is a beautiful land.

Read and view images about it here.

Buddah Boy

Here's a clip of a story about a boy from Myanmar, the current hot spot of trouble in the world.

I wrote it after a boy, about 8 years-old, showed my friend and I the Yangon zoo.

Buddha Boy

North Americans had called him Buddha boy, a name he received during his daylong stays at the Mandalay zoo. Today was to be a fresh start, no more hippos nor elephants or apes, but now only mediation, a tranquil path to adulthood.

Buddha boy quickly got up and grabbed some sugar cane from the long tubes that were piled in the open-air kitchen of his house. He looked at the tubes, and then shuffled along the dirt floor to a large teak cabinet where his father’s machete was kept, a large knife that twinkled as he hacked the tubes into shippable slivers for the long trek to the monastery. After, he gathered fruit—papaya and citrus—and put them into a loincloth. Adroit slaps of the cloth enveloped the fruit inside the rough fabric, for the long haul to the monastery.

Buddha Boy’s day was a long one from dawn to beyond dusk, a time when he must cross a river to get back home, a shallow wade though thick mud and grass. Upon exiting through the cavernous hallway that led to the street in front of his house, he bid goodbye to his siblings and parents who’d been in the other room finishing breakfast. He paused briefly, to adjust the sack on his back so he could make a full stride when on the windy, slippery road uphill.

Min from Mandalay stood next to the sward for a moment as it dug a tiny hole in the dirt from the weight of his body on the handle where he leaned measuring up his strength to that of the tool with which he was about to chop. A lizard sleeping on a wagon wheel just outside watched as the boy took the tool and hacked at the cane tubes, hacking, then tossing each sliver into a hand-knitted cloth bay (knitted by his great-aunt as his mother and father were lost in a great flood).

Long ago the aunt—Aunt Ming Ming had left starting on her early rise to bring forth fabric to the people of the world, looming threads in a hot factory for 12 long hours before she’d show up back at home to feed Min Min. After the chopping was a success—Min Min had over fifty pieces of sugar cane tubes to take with him, as he was a missionary in his own rite on a mission to his most special holy place.

But before he begins his two-mile trek, Min (as I will refer to him) must check in to the temple, which could be seen from his home about a mile away (in the other direction to where he would end up). The stupa glistened in a pattern that set the surrounding rice paddy fields flood waters into a checkerboard of silver spirals.

After the boy wrapped his maroon robe around him, threw the sack of cane (into which he had slipped his fruit lunch also) onto his back and sauntered down a dusty road laden with smoke from passersby from trucks to bikes and people among wagon wheels pulled by horses of varying ages sorts and sizes, the younger ones traveling by furiously at the whips of their owners as the older ones lagged behind.

Min passed his neighbors, each meeting him with a friendly “mingalaba” a tropical hello of eternal warmth. In the distance he could see the orange gates making his gait grow more important, his head held up high and the pack on his back bob up and down with increasing speed.

Behind the orange sign that read “Zoo" the rhinos held their mouths open wide under their thatched canopies as if they were expecting a visit from some high animal authority one who knew of their pathos, those that went beyond mere hunger and thirst. The orangutans belted a tune that to some seemed ominous, but to the small Buddha boy down the road a sound that could be decoded pitch by pitch as a meaningful slogan of connection to the earth’s riches—the green of the tree’s leaves, the brown of the bark and the yellow of the sun above them. In fact, all of the animals sensed the boy, his enthusiasm, his wonder, and his love for them and with this before he entered the orange gate, each paced back and forth in anticipation.

The boy’s gait soon took off to a leap then a bound and before one could say mingalaba he took to the air. The horse’s heads, both old and young alike, tilted upward at the draping maroon that hung from above. The older horses moved faster keeping up with the younger ones. Swooping down the boy opened the gates to each cage, the blue gate of the rhino’s cage, the red gate of the orangutans and the yellow gate of the tiger as the animals stopped their pacing and moved outward onto the zoo grounds.

Sunday when the zoo’s attendance was up and the crowds mingled among the cages had never seen anything like a Buddha boy overhead and animals lingering about apart from their cages, roaming around the zoo’s gardens like they do. Alarmed they were not, surprisingly, and instead of running about in panic, did nothing as the animals did the same as they’d knew they were in the special small hands of the Buddha boy, the boy who visited the animals every day. And the boy who guided the people too, seeing that each animal and each human shared a memorable minglagaba.

Min took to the ground as all of the animals and people gathered round. “Ming,” he said as his smile widened seemingly the length of the zoo’s garden itself. “GA” a chorus of animals whispered. “LA,” the people said and with a BA the lion roared sitting calmly among the Sunday crowd, a crowd that whipped from near and far in each corner of zoo happy that the boy had showed them such a good time.

Mystery Crab

Where is the colorful crab found? That's my question for the day.

Hint is here.

Spaceship Remodel

Looks as if this spaceship hit the ground too hard when it landed.

The last time I photographed this far out piece of architecture it was doing fine.

This building is home to the Encounter Restaurant. Now that it's 46 years old, it's undergoing a bit of surgery.

Beep Beep

This is a road runner in case if you were wondering.

Brings to mind the Road Runner cartoon show, a show that had a road runner constantly running away from a coyote.

The coyote in the cartoon is Wile E. Coyote. The show was formulaic. Wile E. wants to catch the road runner, but nothing seems to work because he's too fast (when he takes off he goes beep, beep).

I was lucky to catch this bird, as as soon as it saw me it took off, not flying, but running.

Look at this bird, it's a beauty; go ahead, compare it with this one.

Shooting for Color

Geeze, take a look at that color. Here's how I got those vivid robin's egg blue.

1. When I was in Antigua, Guatemala, I looked for buildings that were painted bright colors, that were in direct sunlight and that had some patina (aging marks).
2. I set my camera to Av mode (the mode where I determine the aperture and the camera determines the shutter speed). I set the aperture to f/8 (my camera reads 8 for that setting).
3. I set my exposure compensation (see your camera's manual to find yours) to -1 EV to deepen the colors (underexposing your shot in bright sunlight will deepen color.
4. I shoot : )
5. I download my shot to my computer.
6. I tweak the levels slider (Image>Adjustments>Levels) to lighten photo up a bit (slide right slider inward).

Viola, that's it!

Ocean of Motion

In this image the car looks as if it were moving. Other than that's what it was doing in real life, catching it doing so can sometimes be tricky in photography.

Here's what you do:
1. Find a low lighted spot with moving objects to take your picture.
2. Place your camera on a tripod or window ledge, anywhere really, just so it's still.
3. Set your aperture to a high value in Av mode (that's the mode where you decide your aperture and the camera decides the shutter speed).
4. Shoot your picture.

The trick here is that if you set your aperture to, say, f/22, the shutter will stay open longer because the opening of your camera will be very small. Stationary objects will stay clear and moving objects will, well...move.

So Bad It's Good

There's just something about a chair stuck in some corner of a third world market. I can bet that you've never seen arm rests like this. The chair is made of tightly stitched vinyl over a wrought iron skeleton.

Note also that nothing really matches in this image--the imitation wood floor tiles, the corrugated aluminum that's painted brown in the background and, of course, the chair.

It's so bad it's good!

Oil Well Photography

The oil industry was part of the turn-of-the-last-century development of in Orange County. The first successful wells were drilled locally in the 1890s along the northern edge of the county. Oil was found in La Habra, Brea Canyon, Olinda, Placentia and Huntington Beach.

This is one of the oil wells still pumping. It's in Huntington Beach and was placed there in 1920.

Graffiti Saturday

I put graffiti on here so much, I've decided that I'm going to set a day of the week for it--Graffiti Saturday. Please comment, If you were to scrawl on a wall somewhere, what would you write? Put in comments section. Don't be shy. In the meantime, here's all my graffiti posts so far:

Paint Running Effect
Paris Graffiti Art
Bienvenido a Miami

Well...that's the writing on the wall for today! Happy Graffiti Saturday!

Programmatic Architecture

Whenever a building is shaped like something with which we are familiar, it's called programmatic architecture.

Symmetrical Architecture

A nice piece of symmetry for today as I long for order.

Looking at this Columbian architecture (pic taken in Cartagena);

I'm calmed for some reason. It's so simple.

When I think about it, though, most architecture is symmetrical.

Wedding Chapels in Las Vegas

The good ole Las Vegas wedding chapel. I mean, isn't that the place to get married?

1. The Viva Las Vegas Wedding Chapel looks like fun.
2. What if you're gay? The Gay Chapel of Las Vegas is the place. They have an Elvis chapel and can get an Elvis impersonator to perform. Oh what fun!
3. There's a Little White Chapel, too.
4. If you're really into flowers, there's the Little Chapel of the Flowers.
5. And, supposedly the best wedding chapel in Vegas (according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal) is the Little Church of the West Wedding Chapel.

Beach Silhouette

Newport Beach, CA

Indoor Photography with Natural Light

Natural light is beautiful light. You can do wonders with a wide angle lens in natural light conditions if you shoot in Raw with a dSLR camera.

Here's some examples from a house in Desert Hot Springs, CA.

The Stones of Machu Pichu

Up in the Andes Mountains of Peru is Machu Pichu, the ruins of the Incas. The ruins were built in the 15th century AD.

The stones of the ruins are made of granite and fit so tightly together that not even a knife can fit through.

Pan Am--Learning from Postcards

Great shot, isn't it? I like it because of the angle; it looks as if it was shot from another skyscraper and not from the air or ground.

Postcards are a great way to see fine examples of good shots, and retro ones, like this one of the old Pan Am building, come with a great deal of nostalgia.

One of the great airlines of all time was Pan American World Airways. This was their corporate headquarters in New York City.

Pan Am began in 1927 with flights from Key West, FL to Havana, Cuba. The airline provided the first jet service between two cities in the late 50s. In 1991 the airline was no more because of financial problems.

'60s Counterculture--Here to Stay

Photo of photo from Nixon Library in Yorba Buena, CA

The signs of the times are everywhere--flower power, hippies, peace, love, bellbottoms, black is beautiful, day glow, draft dodger, flashback, far out, flipping out, flower children, groovy, Hare Krishna, tripping, joint, mellow, laid back, munchies, rip off, score...and...

The Summer of Love

Forty years ago we had Nixon for president and hippies invading the Haight Ashbury with long hair, a mellow yellow attitude and flowers in their hair.

Today we find what they brought to that street corner in San Francisco still hangs on in our culture today, from the 60s tunes you can hear bringing on the conservative talk show hosts on A.M. radio to the slick commercials about baby boomers' retirement years.

The '60s counterculture just won't go away!

What's the Best Place I've Ever Visited?

I think by far the most interesting trip I've ever taken was to Mayanmar.

Check here for all the postings on this exotic land.