Posts in category "Photos"

Baby Face

Baby on shoulder

Thumbnail: Baby pout
Thumbnail: Baby furrow
Thumbnail: Baby yawns
Thumbnail: Baby wants beer
Thumbnail: Baby glances to the side
Thumbnail: Baby pensive
Thumbnail: Baby sleeping

Babies seem to have a dif­fer­ent expres­sion every sec­ond, and the expres­sions are so inno­cent. They hide noth­ing. I like to think each expres­sion reveals the drift­ing thoughts going on in their tiny lit­tle brains. Rather dif­fi­cult to pho­to­graph because the face they wear when you press the shut­ter release but­ton is invari­ably dif­fer­ent from the one you get.

Rosella here is half-Persian, half-Caucasian. Aside from being so cute you could chew her cheeks off, you can already tell how beau­ti­ful her mixed blood is going to make her.

The Eyes

The eyes

The first thing I notice about a girl is her face, but the eyes are what hold my atten­tion.

Especially eyes like this.

Big, round, and pure. They’re the ulti­mate sign of fem­i­nin­i­ty, because they con­vey inno­cence, youth, vital­i­ty.

Sometimes, the most inti­mate and per­son­al thing you can do — from hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion to mak­ing love — is make eye-con­tact.

Ellen and Ziny

Peace sign

Thumbnail: Ellen laughing
Thumbnail: Ziny smiling
Thumbnail: Girls back-to-back
Thumbnail: Ellen serious
Thumbnail: Ziny laughing

Some more prac­tice with pho­tograph­ing cou­ples. Ellen and Ziny are both med stu­dents who used to be room­mates. They hap­pened to be in Ottawa at the same time for intern­ships at dif­fer­ent hos­pi­tals, so it was the per­fect oppor­tu­ni­ty to get them both togeth­er for a few shots.

Getting black hair and clothes to show up against a black back­ground is very tricky. I sus­pect dark­er tex­tures need their own ded­i­cat­ed light source to increase the expo­sure.

Tattwo

Part of The Tao Tattoo Series

  1. The Meaning
  2. The Experience
  3. The Background
  4. Tattwo

The tao tattoo

Concept

Some peo­ple ask me whether I feel more Chinese or Canadian. While some first-gen­er­a­tion Canadians say that they’re nei­ther, I feel like I’m both, because I appre­ci­ate and under­stand things from both cul­tures. I have the best of both worlds.

I already have a the hanzi char­ac­ter for “tao” on my right wrist, so I got the word “tao” on my left in English. This tat­too serves two pur­pos­es: as an expres­sion of this dual her­itage, and as anoth­er reminder for me to fol­low the tao.

The Operation

I went back to Jay at New Moon, who did an awe­some job on my first tat­too. When I walked in, he had the lat­est Mars Volta album on, which I did­n’t even know was out until that day. Most of the time was passed com­par­ing them to Tool, two of our favourite bands1.

Can you tell when he’s going over my artery? (Hint: I start to swear)

Typography

tao typography

The three-let­ter word is writ­ten in Avenir. As the Humanist, sans-serif type­face designed by Adrian Fruitiger (also used for the title and menu of this site), it’s my favourite font. Clean, sharp, min­i­mal­ist, and leg­i­ble. The most dis­tin­guish­ing part, as with most good fonts, is the dou­ble-sto­ry “a”, which increas­es leg­i­bil­i­ty.

I had over a dozen vari­a­tions, at dif­fer­ent point sizes, kern­ing val­ues, and weights. I want­ed the weight, size, and posi­tion to bal­ance with the one on my right wrist. In the end, I went with one that was 63.78 points, and the 35 “light” weight.

Continue read­ing “Tattwo”…

  1. Tool was a favourite until Lateralus came out, and I dis­cov­ered Dream Theater. Ænima remains one of my top albums though. [↩]