Archive for July, 2005

Saturday Sailing

Published
by
Danny
on July 31, 2005
in Fun and Travel
. 3 Comments

SaturdaySailing25

Yesterday I went out sailing for the very first time. My buddy Tim loves sailing, and he invited me, Chris (one of his co-workers), and Megan (Chris’s wife) to go sailing for the day. Tim had invited me a couple of times before, but I had prior engagements. I definitely wanted to take advantage of it this time, because I knew the weather was going to be nice and I really didn’t want to spend the day at home.

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We started at Shilshole Bay Marina at around 9 AM and slowly made our way across Lake Washington to Eagle Harbour. The weather was very calm during the morning, so we moved along using only the motor. The lack of wind was actually a good time for us to get acquainted with the boat, learn to move around without falling in the water or tripping over ropes, and (for me at least) to get some photos of everyone.

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We arrived at Eagle Harbour around lunch time, and we spent quite some time looping around looking for a place to dock. After circling around for what seemed like an hour, we finally found an opening on the guest mooring. We tied up the boat and then headed into town to grab some lunch at the Harbour Public House. I had pork quesadillas and ice tea, a very refreshing combo for a day that was getting progressively hotter.

We strolled around town a little bit to walk off the lunch and do a bit of sight-seeing before heading back to the boat. The wind was starting to pick up a bit, so we decided to prepare the sails. Once we got out on the main water, we raised the sails, turned off the motor, and started to sail.

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The wind still wasn’t very strong, so we didn’t go very fast, but it was a great opportunity for Tim to teach us more about how to to actually sail. Megan had learned how to sail when she was little, but Chris and I were complete newbies. We had a couple of stumbles as we tried to get things working, but no one fell over, and we didn’t break anything, so it was all good. I did bump my head on the boom once and hit my calf on some sharp points, but there was no permanent damage.

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As we were sailing, we had a few tense moments as we tried to get out of the paths of cruise ships, the ferries, and a very large container ship. There was also one sudden gust of wind that put all of us on high alert. The sails picked up so much wind that it leaned to one side very abruptly and had all of us scrambling to hold on. I was sitting near the middle of the boat and had my legs hanging into the cabin. The sudden shift in orientation threw me off balance, and the only way I kept from falling over was wrapping several ropes around my legs.

After a bit of struggling, we managed to kill some of the power to the sails when Megan had the sense of mind to lower the front sail (I can’t remember what it’s called). After we righted ourselves, Chris remembered that the boat was designed to not tip over. We all felt kind of stupid panicking so much.

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Everything after that was pretty much smooth sailing. The wind got stronger as the day went on, so we had some great sailing weather. There was also more splashing as we hit larger waves and picked up more speed, but there were no more stressful moments. We eventually made it back to Shilshole Bay Marina around 7:30 PM and finished up my first sailing experience by cleaning up the boat.

Yesterday was an incredibly fun day. I got to spend time on the lake, I got to be in the sun, and I learned how to sail. That’s a hell of a lot better than sitting indoors all day. The only mishaps for me were a bump on the head, a relatively sore bruise on my leg, and a tiny bit of sunburn on my scalp. Not too bad considering I’ve never actually done any sailing.

Finally, what day out for me would be complete without my trusty D70 in hand. I was extremely trigger happy when I wasn’t working with the rest of the crew, probably to the annoyance of everyone else on the boat. But I did get some fun photos. The full set of images is available for viewing up on my Flickr photostream.

Tim’s Birthday

Published
by
Danny
on July 31, 2005
in Food and Fun
. 1 Comment

Dinner at Brouwer's

Friday was my buddy Tim’s 31st birthday. Scott, Tom, and I took him out to dinner and beer at Brouwer’s Cafe in Fremont. Sort of like it was with my birthday, this was a very last-minute thing. I think only Scott knew it was Tim’s birthday and sent out the email announcement only the night before. “Last-minute” doesn’t mean much with our group though, since we tend to play events the day of.

Tim recommended Brouwer’s Cafe for the evening, and it was a very good choice. It has a Belgian-inspired menu and a massive beer and wine list. Being located in Fremont, it definitely had a trendy feel to it, but it was still very nice and comfy being there.

The food was quite tasty. We had kaas croquettes with cheese and bacon for appetizers. Croquettes are essentially battered and fried balls of gooey cheese. Incredibly decadent and not very healthy. I had the cod and frites (translation: “fish and chips”) with an aioli dipping sauce. Unlike most other fish and chips dishes I’ve had, the 2 pieces of cod on my plate equaled about 6 standard pieces on other menus. It looked like I actually had 2 whole fish on my plate. My beer for the night was Stone Arrogant Bastard, a tasty amber. I think I ordered it just for the name. :)

After dinner, we all headed back to Scott’s place and vegged out in front of the TV. The latest episodes of Battlestar Galactica, Southpark, and The Dave Chapelle Show were our entertainment for the evening. Definitely a nice relaxing way to finish off the week.

Photos from dinner can be viewed in my photostream. They’re a bit dark because of the dim lighting, but you’ll get the main gist of things.

More On Cross Processing

Published
by
Danny
on July 29, 2005
in Photography
. Closed

I realized that I didn’t show any before and after images in yesterday’s post about creating a cross-processed look in Photoshop (Pat kind of hinted at it in his comment regarding the post), so here it is:

Cross-Process-Demo

Here’s a link to a full-image rollover comparison: Cross-Process Before and After.

I can probably push the look even further by adding even more saturation and a bit more contrast and maybe some green tinges in there, but I like it how it is for this particular image. That’s the beauty of doing the cross-processed look in Photoshop – I can easily tweak the look to my liking for each individual image and not have to rely on someone else developing the film. Not to mention, I don’t have to deal with scanning slides or film.

Cross Processing in Photoshop

Published
by
Danny
on July 28, 2005
in Photography
. 1 Comment

Soak Up The Sun - 4

The climate control system at work went wacko this afternoon, and the temperature shot up to the point where my palms were sweating without me actually doing anything. It was difficult to focus on work and very uncomfortable sitting in my cube. I figured if I was going to be exposed to that much heat, I might as well do it outside where it was sunny and warm. So, I took a break mid-day and went out for a walk.

It was quite refreshing to get outside for some fresh air and a bit of exercise beyond walking to the break room. Naturally, I took my camera with me just in case I saw something worth shooting. There were some pretty harsh shadows from the afternoon sun, so I didn’t find many things that had good lighting. I did come upon some flowers that were wide open and soaking in the sun and decided that they would be good subjects for my mostly-daily photo katas.

Today I shot with the intent of heavy post-processing in Photoshop. I didn’t care so much about proper exposure and white balance and focused instead on overall composition. I didn’t even pay much attention to sharp focus as I simply held the camera low for some shots. I did meter off the sky anyway, just to make sure I didn’t have too many blown out highlights.

Soak Up The Sun - 1

As can be seen above and in my photostream, the post-processing in Photoshop yielded extreme contrast and heavily saturated colors that can be seen in Lomos and other cross-processed images. The images out-of-camera were nowhere near as saturated as the final versions. In fact, they were downright dull by comparison. However, shooting in RAW mode gave me the flexibility to tweak to my heart’s content in Photoshop.

The digital cross-processing workflow is really quite simple. I used an S-shaped curve in a Curves adjustment layer to push the shadows and highlights further to their extremes. I tweaked the curves for the individual color channels until I found the color balance that I liked. I also increased the saturation by +25-35 units depending on the image. Finally, I applied Photo Filter adjustments using Cool or Blue filters to push the sky color a bit more.

At some point, I plan to create an Action that will apply all the adjustment layers that I use. I may even create different variations for cool images, warm images, bright skies, deep shadows, etc. The adjustment layers can then be edited as needed on a per-image basis. I need to do some more experiments with a wider range of images, but I think I’m settling on a basic set of adjustment layers to create a cross-processed look. I’ll write more about the whole process when I have things figured out.

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