GRIZZLY PEAR

written snapshots

Month: October 2009

  • A work week of Pepper butts

    so here is some fruits of procrastinating from studying…enjoy =)

    Crouching Pepper Hidden Badger

    there's a world out there...

    chillin'

    hoppin' on a log

    whew!

  • Chinese Restaurants on Flickr

    I had an idea to take lots of picture ala Ed Ruscha when I was running around the USA during my Thesis travels. Nothing really came of that (or to be honest from the travels in general). However, I did end up with some random pictures of Chinese restaurants here and there.

    I woke up a couple nights ago with the brilliant idea of starting a flickr group and using that as a platform to publish these photos — many of the individual shots really aren’t that good but I thought they might stand nicely together as a group.

    BUT like most things on the internet, this area has been staked out already — and by people who are much more intense and dedicated to the task then I ever would be. In any case, here is the group “index”. Everything is listed alphbetically by geographic location. Its really quite something — there are some amazing chinese restuarants in places and configurations you’d never imagine — even if you just look at the Texas Coastal (houston) section.

    DSCN1228

  • Three versions of Peppercorn and a Badger in Blue

    I spent some time just working a picture of Peppercorn and I thought it would be interesting to upload all three. The first one is the original shot out of the camera. Since I shoot raw, I never mess with white balance — especially since I spend most of my time just figuring out my exposure since so few of my lenses meter on the camera.

    090324-d40-1744.orig

    The first attempt was to try a drastically horizontal and centered composition. I spent quite some time trying to get it balanced right, however, I think in the end, it still had a Pepper head floating against the carpet.

    090324-d40-1744.horiz

    After taking a break, I took another stab at it and I think I am much happier with this. I realized that the colorful stuff in the background helps anchor the image in space and I think keeping it at a relatively normal aspect ratio kept it in the “photograph” realm as opposed to entering the “graphic design” realm (at which point I would need to do a lot more processing). I must add that shooting in RAW, while a bit heavy on hard disk space, gives you so much extra control over the post processing output that I unequivocally recommend it to anyone who plays with their shots after they upload it to their machine.

    090324-d40-1744.vert

    In general I do a lot of processing on the photos — sometimes the come straight out clean, but usually I do tweak a lot of little things here and there. For this photo, clearly more of a blurry composition, I did push the blues and I did push the highlights on Badger’s back as well as from the bottom corner. I’ve never really subscribed to the sanctity of the initial image — though I do try to avoid pushing things so far that they look like digital paintings (even if the photograph has been pushed and pulled a tremendous amount).

    090325-d40-1789

  • A Map of Houston Hits.

    My friend is thinking about coming to Houston around rodeo time and she asked me about any good websites about Houston and things to do here.  Unfortunately I don’t know of any such sites, but I did find an old google map of my favorite places in the city which I had put together when Dongwoo came to town.

    I spent a couple hours updating it and here it is!

    I gotta say that my most interesting places are really just eateries.  But there is a reasonable helping of odd ideosyncratic places and wacky moments.  If you have anything you think I should add, ding me.  Otherwise, here is a snapshot of my mental map of Houston.

    Blue is places of interest
    Cyan is Eateries
    Magenta is places I still need to go visit

    Houston according to Justus

    If you click on this link that takes you to google maps, you’ll see a sidebar with all the places listed.

  • SPECAIL

    090919-d40-8272.specail

    From the Golden Palace Supermarket in Bellaire.

  • 189 Movies I wanna Watch

    I wonder how if Picasa 3.5 could work with prawns?  In any case, I have been having a lot of fun messing with the facial recognition on this latest release of Picasa.  It works quite nicely thought it does have a share of mistakes.

    So decided to make a list of movies I want to watch. I ended up with alist of 100 movies that I knew that I wanted to watch/rewatch and then threw in all the Fred Astair/Ginger Rogers collaborations, Hitchcock movies, and Jason Statham movies.   And this doesn’t include any asian action flicks I’d want to check out…yikes!

    Of course, until I get netflix (and a lot of free time) I doubt I’ll watch that many of them, but it was fun imagining how cultured I’d get if I actually saw these films!

    1920

    1. Cabinet of Dr. Caligari 1920
    2. Nosferatu 1922
    3. Number 13 1922
    4. Always Tell Your Wife 1923
    5. The Pleasure Garden 1925
    6. The Mountain Eagle 1926
    7. Downhill 1927
    8. Metropolis 1927
    9. The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog 1927
    10. The Ring 1927
    11. Champagne 1928
    12. Easy Virtue 1928
    13. The Farmer’s Wife 1928
    14. Blackmail 1929
    15. Sound Test for Blackmail 1929
    16. The Manxman 1929

    1930

    1. An Elastic Affair 1930
    2. Elstree Calling 1930
    3. Juno and the Paycock 1930
    4. Murder! 1930
    5. City Lights 1931
    6. Mary 1931
    7. Rich and Strange 1931
    8. The Skin Game 1931
    9. Number Seventeen 1932
    10. Flying Down To Rio 1933
    11. The Gay Divorcee 1934
    12. The Man Who Knew Too Much 1934
    13. Waltzes from Vienna 1934
    14. Roberta 1935
    15. The 39 Steps 1935
    16. Top Hat 1935
    17. Follow the Fleet 1936
    18. Modern Times 1936
    19. Sabotage 1936
    20. Secret Agent 1936
    21. Swing Time 1936
    22. Shall We Dance? 1937
    23. Snow White and Seven Dwarfs 1937
    24. Young and Innocent 1937
    25. Carefree 1938
    26. The Lady Vanishes 1938
    27. Jamaica Inn 1939
    28. The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle 1939

    1940

    1. Fantasia 1940
    2. Foreign Correspondent 1940
    3. Rebecca 1940
    4. Citizen Kane (w/ commentary) 1941
    5. Mr. & Mrs. Smith 1941
    6. Suspicion 1941
    7. Casablanca 1942
    8. Saboteur 1942
    9. Shadow of a Doubt 1943
    10. Aventure malgache 1944
    11. Bon Voyage 1944
    12. Laura 1944
    13. Lifeboat 1944
    14. The Fighting Generation 1944
    15. Spellbound 1945
    16. Watchtower Over Tomorrow 1945
    17. Notorious 1946
    18. The Paradine Case 1947
    19. The Barkleys of Broadway (1949) 1949
    20. Third Man 1949
    21. Under Capricorn 1949

    1950

    1. Stage Fright 1950
    2. Sunset Blvd. 1950
    3. American in Paris 1951
    4. Strangers on a Train 1951
    5. Singing In the Rain 1952
    6. I Confess 1953
    7. Dial M for Murder 1954
    8. Rear Window 1954
    9. The Trouble with Harry 1955
    10. To Catch a Thief 1955
    11. The Man Who Knew Too Much 1956
    12. The Wrong Man 1956
    13. 12 Angry Men 1957
    14. Vertigo 1958
    15. North by Northwest 1959

    1960

    1. Psycho 1960
    2. Manchurian Candidate 1962
    3. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb 1964
    4. Goldfinger 1964
    5. Marnie 1964
    6. Good Bad and Ugly 1966
    7. Torn Curtain 1966
    8. Graduate 1967
    9. Play Time 1967
    10. 2001: A Space Odyssey 1968
    11. Easy Rider 1969
    12. Topaz 1969

    1970

    1. Dirty Harry 1971
    2. Frenzy 1972
    3. Enter the Dragon 1973
    4. Exorcist 1973
    5. Chinatown 1974
    6. Jaws 1975
    7. Monty Python and the Holy Grail 1975
    8. Family Plot 1976
    9. Taxi Driver 1976
    10. Star Wars IV 1977
    11. Big Sleep 1978
    12. Alien 1979

    1980

    1. Raging Bull 1980
    2. Star Wars V 1980
    3. Das Boot 1981
    4. Indiana Jones, Raiders of the Lost Ark 1981
    5. ET the extra Terrestrial 1982
    6. Rambo, First Blood 1982
    7. Thing 1982
    8. Tron 1982
    9. Star Wars VI 1983
    10. War Games 1983
    11. Indiana Jones, and the Temple of Doom 1984
    12. Aliens 1986
    13. Big Trouble in Little China 1986
    14. Blue Velvet 1986
    15. Full Metal Jacket 1987
    16. Raising Arizona 1987
    17. Robocop 1987
    18. Untouchables 1987
    19. Bull Durham 1988
    20. Die Hard 1988
    21. They Live 1988
    22. Indiana Jones, and the Last Crusade 1989

    1990

    1. Robocop 2 1990
    2. Reservoir Dogs 1992
    3. Groundhog Day 1993
    4. Clerks 1994
    5. Hoop Dreams 1994
    6. Swingers 1996
    7. Grosse Point Blank 1997
    8. Cowboy Bebop 1998
    9. American Movie 1999
    10. Being John Malkovich 1999
    11. Fight Club 1999
    12. Ghengis Blues 1999
    13. Goodfellas 1999
    14. Matrix 1999
    15. Office Space 1999
    16. Run Lola Run 1999
    17. Sixth Sense 1999

    2000

    1. Remember the Titans 2000
    2. Turn It Up 2000
    3. Ghosts of Mars 2001
    4. Mean Machine 2001
    5. Spirited Away 2001
    6. The One 2001
    7. Hero 2002
    8. Red Faction II 2002
    9. Spider-Man 1 2002
    10. The Transporter 2002
    11. Lost in Translation 2003
    12. The Italian Job 2003
    13. Alien Versus Predator 2004
    14. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy 2004
    15. Cellular 2004
    16. Collateral 2004
    17. Crash 2004
    18. Donnie Darko 2004
    19. Napoleon Dynamite 2004
    20. Samurai Jack 2004
    21. Shrek 2 2004
    22. Spider-Man 2 2004
    23. Transporter 2 2004
    24. Batman Begins 2005
    25. London 2005
    26. Mirrormask 2005
    27. Revolver 2005
    28. Sin City 2005
    29. The Pink Panther 2005
    30. Chaos 2006
    31. Clerks II 2006
    32. Crank 2006
    33. In the Name of The King a Dungeon Siege Tale 2007
    34. Shrek 3 2007
    35. War 2007
    36. Be Kind Rewind 2008
    37. King of Kong 2008
    38. Rush Hour 3 2008
    39. Synecdoche, New York 2008
    40. The Bank Job 2008
    41. Transporter 3 2008
    42. 500 Days of Summer 2009
    43. Crank: High Voltage 2009
    44. Hangover 2009
    45. Hurt Locker 2009
    46. Up 2009