This is one of my favorite photos taken at the botanical gardens last weekend. I had beautiful light while I was photographing these daffodils, and I thought I would have some interesting shots. Strangely, most of them turned out looking very 'blah'. Some were blurry (likely due to wind), and some just looked very flat, despite the good light. This is one of the only daffodil shots to turn out. It looks as though the flower in the front is posing for a portrait!

I'll let today's photo do the talking for itself.

I was off from work today, but stuck at home waiting for some furniture to be delivered. I spent the morning staring wistfully out the window thinking that the light was perfect for taking photos. Sure enough, as soon as the furniture arrived the skies opened and down came the rain. I've always liked rain, but to be honest, I have liked it a lot less since I've become interested in photography. Here's another picture from Saturday at the botanical garden... which is the last sunny day I can remember.

I have the Thanksgiving long weekend off. I'm hoping the sun decides to make a rare appearance and that I can go somewhere interesting but not too crowded with my camera.

Here is a closeup of one of the white flowers I photographed on the morning with "magical light". Sadly, it's probably the last photo I will post on my blog before the exams. I have a couple more that were ready for posting, but they're older photos (from before I left SK), and looking at them now, I really don't like them all that much.

A week from today, my stupid exams will be over. I don't work next weekend, and I intend to take the camera somewhere interesting and take a lot of photos. If I pass, it will be a great celebration. If I fail, it will be much-needed therapy. Either way, I hope to have something interesting to post.

Speaking of interesting posts, Moosh has some concerns with the picture I posted of him yawning. He worries about ending up as a LOLcat - a legitimate concern, I guess. LOLcat stardom would be the ultimate humiliation for a cat as dignified as Moosh.

This flower looks like an origami flower to me. I was never any good at origami... My paper swans and cranes end up looking like genetic mutants. I tried to fold a beetle once... The result looked very much like a beetle - one that had been squashed under someone's shoe!

Whenever I'm studying for an exam, my general knowledge is always broadened much more than my knowledge of the topic I am trying to study. I feel compelled to sit at my desk, tethered to the computer... so I find myself procrastinating by looking up all kinds of random things.

While studying for my internal medicine exams a couple of years ago, I played a lot of online chess. I can't do that now... I use Linux, which means my computer is basically incompatible with everything, unless I want to get a PhD in jargonese to figure out what people on Linux forums are actually trying to say. My laptop is also antiquated now... Most chess programs send it into an infinite, overheated spool. But I did waste a bit of time looking up chess programs for Linux the other day... I found myself reading two rather complicated articles on game theory... interesting, but over my head. Of course this meant I had to look up and read a few simpler articles. I ended up reading about the history of rock-scissors-paper.

I met someone from Lybia last week, and it occurred to me that I know nothing about Lybia. This prompted a visit to Wikipedia, and from there a lengthy jaunt around the 'net.

While procrastinating on Red Bubble, I discovered someone who does origami on a very tiny scale... I was quite impressed by these sub-centimeter ducks. After seeing this, I decided to google-search 'micro origami', hoping to find more of the same. Instead, I found things like this. You can imagine how that took me off on an entirely new tangent.

I've been feeling too stressed out and guilty to go out and take photos... but with the amount of time I spend procrastinating on the internet, some photography would be healthier and easier on the eyes!

I have been trying for a while to get a good photo of these little white flowers. For some reason, the pictures I take always end up blurry. The other day I was doggedly persistent, and took about 30 photos of these flowers, despite the fact that they were in shade and the flowers beside them were basking in glorious sunlight.

I had envisioned a dreamy photo of the whole plant with shallow depth of field; one or two flowers in the foreground sharply focused, and the others gently blurred in a soft background. None of those shots really turned out. The white foreground blended into the white background, and it reminded me of the pattern on a plastic tablecloth my grandma had when I was three.

I like this sharp picture of only two flowers better than the dreamy ones of the whole flower mass. I ended up cranking the contrast... maybe a bit too much. For some reason, this photo evokes happy childhood memories- Christmas Eve, the first day of summer vacation, photographing lizards in Costa Rica... I guess that last one is not a childhood memory, but somehow it feels the same.

This is a color photo of the flower in the last post. I actually meant to post the color photo first, but clicked on the wrong thumbnail.

One day last week, I was forced to be up early, but didn't have to work. I ate breakfast outside and took advantage of some amazing morning light. I took quite a few good photos, and I'll post some in the coming days. Many are of the same group of flowers... so I hope you don't get too bored.

These flowers don't have much color to begin with - just a small dab of yellow in the centre and the purple stamen. I kept some in color and converted others to black-and-white. I find that black-and-white is better for accenting textures and the contrast between shadows and light. I also don't seem to mind blown highlights as much in black-and-white photos.

I've experimented with black and white on most of my recent photos, but always end up preferring the color. This is a possible exception. There could very well be a B&W version of this photo appearing soon, either on Red Bubble or here.