I bought myself an e-reader this month and I cannot believe I hadn't thought of getting one before. The model I got is a Kindle Keyboard (Kindle 3) with 3G and Wifi. It really makes reading a lot more convenient. What I am constantly in awe with is the e-ink technology. When I'm reading, I forget that I'm reading words from an electronic device because the words look so much like it's printed on paper.
Another thing that I love about it is that I don't have to constantly flip on pages because when I read a traditional book, I constantly need to use both hands to hold the book open as well as flip pages. With the Kindle, I can just press the turn page buttons found on both the left and right side. I can also increase the size of the font as I like.
This is just what I need since I've been dying to get back to reading books and minimize staring at a computer screen almost all day.
But I will still enjoy reading the traditional books. In fact, I also got myself a few Penguin Popular Classics (orange covers, yes! yey!) which I've been really dying to get.
By the way, here's me flipping through a book a few nights ago. I look like a ghost. I know.
I also added a page where you could find my virtual bookshelf in Goodreads.com. If you want to follow my reading updates, you can add me as friend.
I honestly am not used to taking self-portraits. If you have been following my blogs, you will rarely see photos of me. Rarely. But recently, I have been really thinking of giving my photography a slight make-over. I feel that I want my photos to be more of art than just pictures. Though I will always love travel and photographing places and landscape would always have a special place in my heart, I'm now experimenting on more creative portraits and some really inspiring series.
So, I am starting my creative portraits with some of my own. They are nothing great and these have gone through post-processing (overlaying photos and turning them into black and white). Please excuse if you find some poses awkward, I am not a model.
I actually took a gazillion shots and am only posting these as I find them the most presentable.
I am also working on a project, a series inspired by the Weight of Objects. I am naming it "Sentimental Value" and now currently thinking of the first few participants. It is really a lot like the Weight of Objects in concept and I am hoping that it's alright that I make a series of my own just like theirs. I am thinking of ways to make the project more "me" though so it doesn't end up exactly the same as theirs.
Anyway, here are the self photos I took today. Good thing I got a remote trigger a year ago, or the focusing would just have been impossible.
I am still in the middle of this quarter-life crisis (think I've had this crisis since I finished school, why does it ever go away?) and I have been doing a lot of thinking in terms of my personal growth, career growth and whatever else that i should have accomplished today as a human being.
So many times I wish life could remain so simple so that I could still go out and experience the world as it is, more exactly, as how i remember living it as a child.
I have also been thinking so much about my photography and how i truly want to put more thought into my work. What brought about this thought is having watched "What Remains: The Life and Work of Sally Mann". I realize that the reason I've been having a withdrawal on my photography recently is because I finally know what I want my work to be, which is to be something inclined to being an art rather than being inclined to commercialism. I want my work to speak volumes, trigger emotions.
I want to be a changed person because of it, and not just snap at anything randomly. Nothing wrong with that because I went through a long time doing that, and I still do until now but I'm feeling the need to improve and put more meaning into images. Although snapping "randoms" helps a lot, there's really something else in it that's in a higher level than what most people see and understand.
I am also rethinking what I'll be doing next year, in terms of career. Right now, I'm a teacher but i'm really not happy doing it anymore. It never really has been my dream to be a teacher but I'm truly grateful for the things I've learned while being one. It just doesn't get me thinking that I can do it forever.
I also do not dream of becoming a professional photographer as what most people around me think. I just really want photography to be something that I do to express and for it to inspire me to do my dream job, to live life as it's supposed to be lived.
I have just been feeling really down lately. I'm not a religious person but I try to seek a little help from God, 'cause maybe he knows where i'm supposed to be going.
I hate to be all dramatic and thoughtful, but, you know, there comes a time in a person's life when there's a need to think things over, the serious things in life.
Sometimes, I just feel like i want to stare into space for hours and sleep.
I've been watching Friends reruns to cheer myself up a bit. Now, Friends is also making me wish I had great funny friends and room mates. Sigh.
On a side note, I hope Saibh is enjoying her vacation right now.
I hate that I cannot often use Instagram because of the limitations of my mobile phone so to continue this series, I am still using the Android App called Vignette.
I managed to take some photos using my handy dandy toy camera, which I like to use whenever i get to travel because it's so light and it doesn't catch a lot of attention. What I really do mostly is just point and shoot at things hoping I get decent shots when I finally see them after processing.
The panoramic photos were shot using the same camera, where there's a feature to take fake panoramas where black plastic plates cover a third of the top and bottom edges of the frame. I'm not quite happy with the colors on this one, maybe I'll stop using this camera for now and use the SLR. But I think it could be the scanning. I never really trust the scanning jobs of local labs but I don't have a choice as I don't have one that gives good results. Gosh, if only film photography does not cost much.
I really haven't got new photos recently, but I found some of the ones I took from my vacation last year at Bintan, Indonesia. I went there to photograph a friend who works in Singapore. Bintan is an island in the territory of Indonesia but it's only an hour away from Singapore via fast ferry. We took the trip late in the evening and planned on returning to Singapore the following day.
We decided on a sunrise shoot so while waiting for the sun to come up, I got some snaps of the beach at Bintan Agro resort. I wouldn't say it's the best beach I've been to but the yellow sun definitely made the place look a lot more special.
