Photography Musings

Haven't written anything for a long time! Most of my time now is consumed by MCAT as the test date gets closer and closer... However, I decided to get a small point & shoot camera to document my life as I'm lazy to bring a huge DSLR with me around all the time. And I bought this at Amazon  Olympus XZ-1, it's on sale at Amazon for an amazing price, given the capabilities of the camera, this is a must buy if you're looking a small backup camera to your large DSLR. So I walked around campus yesterday, capturing the colors of my favorite season: Overall, I'm quite satisfied with this camera.  Some of these pictures are taken at ISO 400 & 800, and being a small camera, theres some noise present.  However, the large aperture on this camera is just unbeatable! Another side note is that the jpeg processing engine in this camera tend to apply a lot of noise reduction which kills the details of a photo.  Therefore, it is best to shoot R...

I entered the college photo competition hosted by Photographer's forum about a few months ago.  And 2 days ago, I got an email saying that one of my photos I submitted received honorable mention! I'm glad because it's another step beyond finalist, which I got the previous 2 times I entered the competition. The photo that got chosen was a photo of the lamas getting their haircut at Gyudzin Tantric Monastery in Ladakh, India. Link:  Winners Gallery: 2012 :: Best of College & High School Photography sponsored by NIKON » COLLEGE Honorable Mentions » Ju-Han Yao I took this picture a few days before I left India.  The lamas get their head shaved every month, and I had the opportunity to see that :D The young lama to the right of the photo kept saying, "the wind is bad, I'm so cold" as I was taking photos.  The next day, some of my friends and I decided to get our head shaved as well.

I believe, everyone of us... should spend sometime, contemplate, think about what you're doing, what's your goal, what's your life.  Everyone occasionally gets lost in all the responsibilities we have to fulfill, deadlines we have to make. After a week of midterms, I finally got some free time amidst all the school work.  Tonight I was going through all the video projects that I made over the years, and I suddenly saw the documentary video made by a videographer on the month that we spent in Ladakh, India. It felt so far away, far from reality, yet the trip only happened 7 months ago. Watching the video, all of a sudden, I can remember the smiles & laughs of the young lamas.  I can feel the harsh wind blowing dry sand, piercing through my skin.  I can smell the masala in metal pots.  It is as if I can relive the moment. I can still remember standing on the roof of the monastery, taking in all the sun, wind, scenery, knowing that I was literally ...

Haven't used the little darkroom setup that I have in my house, so I dug out a few rolls of B&W films, shot some photos over the break and tried to develop the films & see how much darkroom stuff I still remember from high school! Apparently not much... The results weren't great, maybe it's the expired developer... but my films always come out grainy & in some cases underexposed (maybe underdeveloped?) Looks like I need to take a darkroom class again to have better results. Anyways, the photos below were shot with expired Kodak Tri-X 400 @ ISO 400, Developed with Kodak HC110-B @ 5:30 min at 20 degree Celsius. Used a Zeiss Ikon ZM with Leitz Summitar 5cm / F2 & Zeiss Biogon 28mm / F2.8

My first attempt at making a photo book with Blurb! "Joolay" means hello in Ladakhi. These are some photos I took in Ladakh; I'll post more photos of Ladakh in future posts. But enjoy the book! JOOLAY, LADAKH INDIA by Eric Yao | Make Your Own Book