equivocality — Jeff Ngan's collection of thoughts, experiences, and projects, inspired by pretty much everything
19 Feb 07

The Many Faces of Bronwen

Bronwen is my orig­i­nal muse. We hap­pened to meet shortly after I got my SLR cam­era, and ever since, she’s my pri­mary model when doing pho­to­graphic tests and experiments.

These were taken over the course of about a year. From before we started dat­ing to passed the break-up.

Every angle cap­tures a dif­fer­ent side of someone.

Thumbnail: Dark and brooding
Thumbnail: The hoodie attitude.
Thumbnail: Against the wall
Thumbnail: Classy cleavage
Thumbnail: Cute mode
Thumbnail: Emo.
Thumbnail: The trustworthy companion look.
Thumbnail: The innocent look
Thumbnail: Bronwen revolution.
Thumbnail: The porcelain doll look.
Thumbnail: The cozy look.
Thumbnail: Trusting

Looking back on these reminds me of how much I miss it when she had red hair, which she dyed for me (but didn’t like to admit it). Too bad I can’t con­vince her now to do it again.

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05 Feb 07

A Few Updates

Wide angle fun

Thumbnail: Wide angle me.
Thumbnail: Wide angle Bronwen.
Thumbnail: 15mm boots
Thumbnail: Wide angle computers.

The Canon 15mm proves to be a com­pli­cated addi­tion to the lens arse­nal. As a pho­tog­ra­pher, you really have to under­stand how to han­dle the dis­tor­tions, even when it’s on a 1.6 FOVCF body. It’s obvi­ously not meant for por­traits; faces end up being com­i­cally dis­pro­por­tion­ate. It’s great for con­text shots though, when the sur­round­ings say more than the subject.

Contract

I got a con­tract under my per­sonal busi­ness, my first. It’s made my sched­ule rather busy. There isn’t much time to just laze around on the week­ends any­more. I have to plan my fun.

Tai Chi break

Tai Chi classes have been sus­pended indef­i­nitely, as the teacher’s wife has just been diag­nosed with can­cer. While I miss the relax­ing two-hour ses­sions, I don’t miss wak­ing up at 5:30 in the morn­ing on Saturday to make class. With the extra time, I flirted with the idea of pick­ing up piano lessons again, but I’ve decided that it would too much of a com­mit­ment right now. I still need some form of phys­i­cal activ­ity, in addi­tion to the Tai Chi Yang form prac­tice on my own, so I’ll prob­a­bly be going to table ten­nis again.

Nail in the coffin

I’m off to New Hampshire for two weeks next month, for indus­try job train­ing. I had to find my pass­port, issued five years ago for my trip to Hong Kong/China/Macau, with my dorky glasses and hair parted down the mid­dle. In addi­tion to my old address, my mom was listed as con­tact in case of emer­gency, but I changed it to Pat. It would have been John if he wasn’t so far away. Pat’s also a good per­son to go to in a cri­sis; he’s the one who always keeps it together.

I miss my music source

Ever since Trolley moved out, I don’t get intro­duced to awe­some new music any­more. The lat­est find (on Jeff’s recommendation) is Wicked Wisdom, fea­tur­ing Jada Pinkett Smith as the front­woman. I never would have believed a band with Will Smith’s wife would be so good.

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22 Dec 06

Photo Wrap-up '06

I was going through my pic­tures and real­ized that there were quite a few I haven’t posted, so I decided to do an end-of-year wrap-up. Most of these are pho­tos I like but they didn’t fit any­where, or were made redun­dant by other pic­tures telling a story.

Thumbnail: Bronwen with our drinks at Moxie's 
Thumbnail: Model home wall art 
Thumbnail: Smiles around the cabin in Tremblent 
Thumbnail: Metal beatle 
Thumbnail: Karen plays with Chaos 
Thumbnail: Tremblent cabin 
Thumbnail: Blood oranges 
Thumbnail: Dolly goes for a treat in the hand 
Thumbnail: Me and Bronwen waiting for the bus 
Thumbnail: Just A Taste brownie 
Thumbnail: Maneki Neko, the beckoning cat 
Thumbnail: Eating yoghurt 
Thumbnail: The treats of Chinese vendors 
Thumbnail: Paper cranes 
Thumbnail: Stunt rider 
Thumbnail: Nala in my room 
Thumbnail: Jenn and Karen 
Thumbnail: Bottle of Miracle by Lancome 
Thumbnail: Steph's cat 
Thumbnail: Gerry's view 

Since we got bought out by a pub­lic com­pany, the pur­chas­ing pro­ce­dure has changed quite a bit. Some of the top brass from the head office in Boston flew in this week, and I made it a point to thank the CFO for per­son­ally approv­ing the pur­chase of a new Canon Rebel XTi, 100mm f/2.8 macro lens, and 50mm f/1.8 lens. After the pres­i­dent intro­duced me, he told me I did a fan­tas­tic job with the pic­tures in the com­pany cat­a­logue, and it really made my day.

I think I’ve really devel­oped as a pho­tog­ra­pher in the lit­tle time I’ve owned my first SLR cam­era. Looking back on a year of pho­tos has made me real­ize that I’ve learned a lot, not only sim­ple pho­to­graphic the­ory, but famil­iar­ity with my cam­era and post-processing as well. I still have a lot more to learn though, espe­cially with expo­sure and meter­ing, as dig­i­tal cam­eras make it easy to get good shots with­out really need­ing to have an in-depth understanding.

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20 Oct 06

The Gerry Project

Thumbnail: Gerry 1

Thumbnail: Gerry 2

This is Gerald, or Gerry as he prefers, an alum­nus of my high-school, Upper Canada College.

Gerry was born in Germany, but being a German-Jew, he soon moved to Holland in the years lead­ing up to the Second World War. “My father was rather pre­scient”, he put it. Eventually, he came to Canada. For four years, he attended UCC, grad­u­at­ing in 1940. I was in the class of ’99. After a year at uni­ver­sity, he vol­un­teered for mil­i­tary ser­vice at 19.

19?”, I asked in dis­be­lief. With a smile on his face, he told me, “You grow up fast”.

He began as a com­mis­sioned offi­cer for an artillery unit. Responsibility of the lives of many men under his com­mand was some­thing he didn’t want, but his knowl­edge of German, Dutch, and English moved him to a more prefer­able posi­tion as an inter­ro­ga­tion offi­cer. His supe­ri­ors would send him co-ordinates of intel­li­gence to gather, some­times behind German lines, some­times in a downed tank, and a pri­vate would drive him in a jeep to obtain the information.

He sur­vived.

From left to right, his medals are:

His proud­est accom­plish­ment is the Maltese cross he wears on his chest — The Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem, pre­sented by the Governor General her­self. Even though he’s a com­man­der of the order, sec­ond only to knights or dames, he’s extremely mod­est about it. The framed award pre­sented to him lies in a pile of assorted things in his bedroom.


I first met Gerry a few days ago, after find­ing out about him from the bi-annual newslet­ter pub­lished by UCC. The newslet­ter, called Old Times, is a way for alumni, called Old Boys, to keep track of the goings’ on at the College. There was an arti­cle about the school’s prized Victoria Cross medal col­lec­tion being pre­sented to the new Canadian War Museum here in Ottawa. These were the same medals I walked by in the front hall dis­play case every day at school, too young to appre­ci­ate their his­tor­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance. Gerry was one of the vet­er­ans invited to attend the pre­sen­ta­tion ceremony.

However, my inter­est in Gerry stemmed from a dif­fer­ent sec­tion in the same issue of the newslet­ter, announc­ing a photo con­test open to all past and present stu­dents. The con­test seemed like a great project, not only as a way to prac­tice my pho­to­graphic skills, but to test myself as well. I would have to find a sub­ject related to the school in some way. Gerry, being an Ottawa-area Old Boy, was my clos­est con­nec­tion. Taking pic­tures of some­one, let alone some­one I had never met before, was a daunt­ing idea, and I would have to step out of my com­fort zone to do it.

After look­ing up his name in the phone­book and gath­er­ing up the courage, I called Gerry. He was happy to meet.

I’ll be sub­mit­ting the sec­ond photo.

Update: Here are the results of the project.

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30 Aug 06

A Few Portraits

Thumbnail: Bronwen in the darkness
Thumbnail: John on the bench
Thumbnail: Lacey on the couch
Thumbnail: Darren in the park
Thumbnail: Don Pita
Thumbnail: Chaos looks
Thumbnail: Jenn as the thunderbolt

A few por­traits taken over the sum­mer. Most are taken with the 24–70mm f2.8, which has come to be my main por­trait lens, instead of a prime like the 50mm. I find that I can take advan­tage of the wide end of the lens to come up with some inter­est­ing dis­tor­tion, such as the first one that really brings out Bronwen’s eyes. Unfortunately, it’s so heavy that it’s dif­fi­cult to hand-hold steadily, so most pic­tures are taken with bright ambi­ent light or a flash.

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19 Mar 06

New Lens Path

Thumbnail: Current lenses

Thumbnail: 70mm long

Thumbnail: 16mm wide

So I’ve devi­ated from my pre­vi­ous plan to wait until the new Canon 17–55mm f/2.8 IS came out before mak­ing any lens pur­chases. Aside from the fact that I would have had to wait until the sum­mer for reviews that may be less than favourable any­way, the main rea­son is that my two dream lenses, the Canon EF 24–70mm f/2.8 L and the Canon EF 16–35mm f/2.8 L were being sold refur­bished and used respec­tively. I make it a habit to check one par­tic­u­lar pop­u­lar online retailer every morn­ing in case of any such deals, since they update their stock some time around five in the morn­ing and most lenses are gone by nine, L glass espe­cially. Although I had no plan on buy­ing either lens (I had yet to see either up for sale until this month), I couldn’t pass up the oppor­tu­nity. It saved me close to $2000 in total.

Now I have my ideal focal range cov­ered with a lens that goes as wide as 16mm for my envi­ron­men­tal and land­scape shots, and another one that goes as long as 70mm for por­traits. Both have ring ultra­sonic motor focus­ing sys­tems, which makes aut­o­fo­cus­ing beau­ti­fully slick, smooth, and quiet, with sup­port for full-time man­ual focus­ing as well. They also go as wide f/2.8, which is per­fect since I do a lot of low-light, indoor shoot­ing, and the extra aper­ture blades pro­vide but­tery smooth back­ground blur.

The trade-off is that both lenses are heavy, one heav­ier than the cam­era body itself. This comes from the fact that the con­struc­tion is rock-solid and weather-sealed, being made from metal and ground glass. There are sto­ries of peo­ple drop­ping their L lenses onto asphalt or rocks and sur­viv­ing with only cos­metic scratches.

After all the money I just spent (more than twice as much than on the cam­era itself), not includ­ing the extra hand-strap/bag/filters that went along with it, I’m try­ing not to think of my next pur­chase. In the back of my mind I know that I want a macro lens or a full frame body, but I think I’ll be sat­is­fied for the next lit­tle while.

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27 Feb 06

So Now Then...

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10 Dec 05

The Canon Speedlite 430EX

Thumbnail: Dolly saucer 1

Thumbnail: Dolly saucer 2

The Canon Speedlite 430EX flash lets me take advan­tage of a 1/200 X-sync speed, which means that high-speed shots such as these are now pos­si­ble in low light­ing con­di­tions. I picked one up this week, so most of my free time has been spent learn­ing the capa­bil­i­ties of an exter­nal flash unit. The tilt-and-swivel head means that I can bounce the flash off a ceil­ing to soften the light, or take advan­tage of the sur­round­ings, such as bounc­ing it off my stove (the pic­ture on the left) or off my fridge (the pic­ture on the right). There’s also a low-profile AF assist beam that’s a huge improve­ment over the seizure induc­ing on-board flash unit.

I decided to go with a Canon brand flash so I could have full E-TTL meter­ing sup­port (which fires an unde­tectable low-powered pre-flash for eval­u­a­tive meter­ing done through the lens) to match the Rebel XT shell. One of the coolest things about the 430EX is that a set of motors auto­mat­i­cally adjust the zoom range to match the lens, and it can be used as a slave unit that can be opti­cally (which also means remotely) trig­gered from a mas­ter unit for up to four light sources.

Even though there are tons of other acces­sories I’d like to have, such as a Sunpak hand strap (which would be a good com­pro­mise between the safety of a neck strap and the con­ve­nience of no strap), some Kenko exten­sion tubes (for macro pho­tog­ra­phy), or a portable micro­drive, I thought that a flash would cur­rently best serve my needs. This isn’t even to men­tion the options for some sweet glass, like a lens with image sta­bi­liza­tion, a tele­scop­ing range, or even some­thing from the L series which I’d have to put a sec­ond mort­gage on my house to afford. I think that I’m only begin­ning to under­stand how expen­sive a hobby pho­tog­ra­phy is.

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