Tmunot

Meta Videos

2008-10-07T21:53:00.000-07:00

A comedic twist to my previous post -- here's a "meta video" to accompany my Lower Ottoway Lake group photo. Photography is a dangerous job... just ask Robert Capa.

Meta Photos

2008-10-06T00:27:00.000-07:00

People like taking pictures of photographers in action, and so sometimes, thanks to a friend being in the right place at the right time with camera in hand, I end up with a "meta photo" to accompany my own. These meta photos add a new dimension to the story -- they not only provide context, but also transport the viewer to the scene in ways the original photo cannot. And it is often this context, be it in the form of a meta photo or an accompanying essay, that enables the original photo to leave a lasting impression.

The following photos were taken during a three-day trek through a remote part of southern Xishuangbanna, China.

Backpacking in Southern Yosemite

2008-09-14T21:32:00.000-07:00

A few weekends ago I went on a three-day backpacking trip through Southern Yosemite. Our group of eight started from Glacier Point and hiked all the way to Lower Ottoway Lake. The nights were freezing and the 33 miles grueling, but all in all it was an awesome trip.

One of the many beautiful scenes we saw along the trail.

Stretching out.

Lower Ottoway Lake -- simply stunning.

Julie warmed up on sun-heated rock after swimming in the frigid lake.

Charlotte's natural blow drying technique.

Despite three long days of hiking, we made it back to Glacier Point in good spirits.

Alan's feet took a beating.

Panorama from Glacier point.

Bathing in Sunset

2008-08-27T02:30:00.000-07:00

This past Sunday I went on a short walk through the Stanford Dish area around sunset. Suffice it to say, there's a reason why they call it the golden hour.

The sparse, misshapen trees made for great subjects.

The same scene can be captured in so many different ways. Reducing clarity in ACR added a touch of surreality to this image.

Full force.

Something a little more abstract.

I wasn't the only one taking pictures. Thanks, Julie!

Grand Yosemite

2008-08-26T01:03:00.000-07:00

In March 2008 I went on a cross-country skiing trip to Yosemite with a bunch of friends. I carried my camera equipment throughout the trip, but somehow didn't end up taking any pictures of the action. Fortunately, I did manage to get a few shots from Tunnel View on the way back.

The last rays of sunlight illuminate Bridalveil Fall.

Half Dome bids its valley good night.

Julie

2008-08-03T19:59:00.000-07:00

It took me long enough, but finally, a few portraits of Julie. These were rather spur-of-the-moment, taken as we walked along Old Page Mill Road on a Saturday afternoon. I have never really thought of myself as a portrait photographer, but I must admit that it's more fun than I expected :).

Where the Rivers Meet

2008-07-05T15:33:00.000-07:00

I've realized that I want to post more photos to this blog than I currently do but am often put off by the daunting task of weaving words with pictures for the sake of entertaining my audience. Photos are meant to be seen, though, so something's gotta give. Since I am inevitably lazy, I guess it'll have to be the word-weaving. Starting with this post, I'll try to post more frequently and less verbosely. If you want to know more about a photo, please leave a comment -- I like comments :).

Geneva, Switzerland. Bridge where the Arve and Rhone rivers meet; one carries water from the mountains, the other from Lake Geneva.

Villagers of Xishuangbanna

2008-06-22T22:45:00.000-07:00

In late December 2007, I went on a ten-day trip to China with a friend from Stanford and one of his high school buddies, a Harvard chap who was doing a Fulbright in Beijing. Because the three of us were all rather busy with our day-to-day lives, we relegated much of the planning to the days, hours, and minutes before decisions had to be made. And although this spontaneous approach landed us in what we think was a brothel for one night in Kunming, on the whole it certainly proved its worth.

When faced with the decision of whether to travel to northwest Yunnan, to the historic cities of Dali and Lijiang, on the fringe of the Tibetan plateau, or south to the lush tropics of Xishuangbanna, we consulted our guidebook and our lungs (which were already tired of breathing frigid, polluted Beijing air) and chose to forgo the northern "tourist trail" and instead see just how close we could get to Malaria.

Xishuangbanna was just what we expected -- a steamy, jungly region in the southernmost part of China, right on the border with Laos and Thailand. We weren't far enough from civilization yet, though; it took a few rickety bus rides and a fearless trail guide to get us to where we really wanted to go. The following series of four photos were taken in two villages we visited (and slept in) while on a three-day trek through a remote part of southern Xishuangbanna.

This couple greeted us as we entered their tiny jungle village. The squatting man was actually quite talkative, but I didn't understand a word he said (he was speaking in some local dialect). After standing and listening to him helplessly for a few minutes (while squeezing in a photo here and there), I decided that he must be smart enough to realize I have no idea what he's saying, and that he was just having a little fun. I returned the favor, saying things like, "you have no idea what I'm saying but I'm just going to keep moving my mouth and emitting English words that you do not comprehend and creating the longest run-on sentences I can muster without starting to laugh as I listen to your mumbo-jumbo."

Priceless expressions.

A new day in the village.

The old lady in this photo immediately struck me as a captivating subject, but as I started taking pictures of her, she decided to make things even more interesting by calling over one of her young relatives. I wish I could give her this photo as a token of gratitude.

Day trip to SF

2008-06-10T01:52:00.001-07:00

A couple weeks ago I visited the San Francisco Legion of Honor museum to see the Annie Leibowitz photo exhibition (it was amazing). The museum also had a couple of Chihuly works on display.

For this photo, I wanted to highlight the contrast between the vibrant Chihuly sculpture and the gray, lifeless columns, floor, and sky. As I was framing the shot, I noticed the father and daughter bickering in the foreground, and decided to include them -- I'm glad I did.

Another Chihuly, this one inside the Legion of Honor. I don't like this photo as much as the previous one, but the ultra-wide angle does give it a rather unique look, so I decided to include it.

After walking around the Legion of Honor, I paid a short visit to the Shakespeare garden in Golden Gate Park (Julie wanted to scope it out for a wedding she was shooting the next weekend). Once I saw this flower resting on the bench, I knew what I'd be doing for the next fifteen minutes or so of my life. As with the first Chihuly shot, this one really emphasizes contrast in color; perhaps this post has a unified theme after all :).

Dan Janzen in the ACG

2008-04-19T22:27:00.000-07:00

At the end of March 2008 I traveled alongside several biologists and about 20 other Googlers to Area de Conservacion Guanacaste (ACG) in northwest Costa Rica in order to explore potential collaborative opportunities between Google and the International Barcode of Life (iBOL) project and to learn about the first stage in the workflow necessary for sequencing and identifying organisms at scale.

There, we were met by Dan Janzen and his wife Winnie Hallwachs, an incredibly inspiring (and inspired) pair of biologists who have dedicated their lives to documenting biodiversity within Lepidoptera (an order of insect that includes moths, butterflies, and caterpillars) in Costa Rica. Their goal, as Dan puts it, is to make sure that all of the species that currently reside in the ACG will still be there in 1000 years.

I won't go into more details on the trip itself (you can read more in Alon Halevy's blog), but I will share some photos. I think there were at least fifteen digital SLRs on this trip, each taking hundreds of pictures of the beautiful scenery around us, so I decided to focus instead on developing a different theme in my photos; my goal in this series of ten photos was to capture the passion of Dan Janzen, world-renowned biologist, in the place he loves most.

17 Mile Drive

2007-10-11T23:29:00.000-07:00

A couple photos from a trip to 17 Mile Drive (near Monterey, CA) in September. I used a Canon SD600 for these, and I'm pretty happy with how they turned out.

The famous Lone Cypress tree stands proudly on its pinnacle. I was lucky enough to catch a line of birds flying right above the horizon. Taken about ten minutes before sunset.

A cool sunset silhouette. I took many similar photos in which the tree dominated the foreground, but I think this one, with its expansive sky and small subjects, does a better job of conveying the scene.

SF conservatory of flowers

2007-09-08T23:03:00.001-07:00

I'll post more photos from South America in due time, but for now, here are a couple of my favorites from a recent trip to the San Francisco conservatory of flowers. For these, I used a Nikon 105mm f/2.8D macro lens rented from Keeble & Schuchat in Palo Alto... it was my first venture into the macro realm :).

A particularly vibrant flower.

Edge of a lily pad and its reflection.

Faces of Peru

2007-08-21T00:51:00.000-07:00

A few days after Stanford graduation, I flew off to Lima, Peru and traveled alongside four other Stanford graduates through the Andean regions of Peru, Bolivia, and Chile, ending up in Santiago three weeks later. Over the next few weeks (or months) I'll post pictures from my adventures in these amazing countries; for starters, here's a series on the people we saw (and, in some cases, talked to extensively) during our nine days in Peru.

As we waited to buy bus tickets from Ica to Arequipa, I noticed this very Peruvian-looking lady sitting in the bus terminal by herself. She was (perhaps) not too keen on being photographed, but her features pronounced themselves so much to me that I felt I had to try to capture the scene.

Walking through the streets of Ica, Peru, we'd frequently see tiny side-shops like this one. Sometimes it'd be a television repair store with piles of broken TVs scattered throughout and screwdrivers strewn across the floor; other times, a street-corner electronics store with wires and tools hanging from every shelf in sight; in this case, a tiny barber shop with a tiny barber. The only words I could muster were, "photo, por favor?" He happily obliged.

School children from Ica comprise a large fraction of the visitors to Huacachina, a desert oasis ten minutes away. As we sandboarded through the surrounding dunes, we spotted this group of kids taking turns riding a single board.

After an exhausting couple hours of sandboarding, we headed back to the center of Huacachina and were quickly surrounded by a horde of Ican school children. My Stanford mates handled the Spanish communication while I took countless photos; the kids were thrilled to see the results on my camera's display.

This girl, whose name I've forgotten, was the chief representative of a group of girls who seemed to think hearing American college grads try to speak to them in broken Spanish was an ideal way to spend the afternoon at a desert oasis.

Another member of the Ican horde.

Eduardo is the restroom guard at the bus terminal in Ica. In addition to providing us with toilet paper and instructing us on how to flush the toilets, he also helped us find a place to shower and made sure we adequately protected our belongings so that they wouldn't get stolen. Eduardo let me photograph him in a number of poses, and I've emailed him this particular portrait, which I feel captures both his facial features and personality pretty well.

A policeman manages the traffic flow in a busy intersection in Ica. The streets were full of tiny, three-wheeled taxis with incredibly annoying horns whose sounds ranged from loud, scratchy buzzers to high-pitched police-like sirens. You can see a few on the right and left sides of this photo.

After a day of sightseeing in Arequipa, Peru, we wandered into this hole-in-the wall restaurant in a small side street near our hostel. Although the place seemed run-down, the service and food were both outstanding. We ate a full meal (beef stew, salad, chicken, rice, veggies, and fruit juice) for less than a dollar per person and, on top of that, got to watch the u-21 world cup final on TV.

As we wandered the streets of Arequipa we'd often see bakeries with beautiful cakes on display. Here, we randomly happened across a couple of workers loading a taxi with cakes from their bakery; they graciously allowed us to snap a few photos before taking off.

A little boy looks at a photo of himself on John's camera (Cabanaconde, Peru).

From Cabanaconde, we hitchhiked for about a mile through grazing fields to reach the trailhead of the trail descending into Colca canyon. The scenery around us during this stretch felt genuinely Peruvian; the photo above serves as an example.

A Peruvian woman sells handicrafts at Cruz del Condor, a scenic point along the ridgeline road connecting Cabanaconde to Chivay, Peru. Every Peruvian woman we saw during our travels through this region was dressed in traditional garb.

Three Peruvian women rest on some steps in Plaza de Armas in central Cuzco, Peru.

A lone sentry sits at the gate to one of the main churches in Puno, Peru (taken at sunrise).

From Puno, we took a half-hour boat ride to the floating reed islands in the north part of Lake Titicaca. The Uros tribe, which predates Incan civilization, has lived on these man-made islands for many hundreds of years. Sadly, the islands that we were allowed to visit were clearly tainted by tourism. Above, a teenage Uros boy.

A young Uros girl wearing a Bolivian-style hat.

An Uros girl peeks out from her reed-built home.

Several representatives of the first Uros island we visited sing us a farewell song as we depart for another island.

The Photographer

2007-08-18T20:57:00.000-07:00

Taking a picture of a crouched-human-sized condor near Cuzco, Peru.