2026-05-06

Hello!

As I write this, a weird light is coming from outside my bedroom.

Oh wait, that's the moon. Damn, I'm up late tonight.

This is a different kind of pollution to the cans of trash littering the campus. I'd argue that this is worse, because it's liquid and difficult to clean up.

It's reasonable to ask someone to pick up their trash, but when a car drips oil, no one gets the towel and mops it up unless it's in an indoor repair shop to prevent slipping hazards.

And a towel probably can't handle the giant oil spills that happen from the extraction efforts around the world.

Finally, a video from Physics Girl. And it's about a photograph, too! For three years, Dianna from Physics Girl, has been away from producing science YouTube videos due to long COVID, but she's back now to explain a special picture of the sun.

Cheers,
David

2026-05-05

Hello! First, a technical note: the homepage now only loads 30 images instead of 50 images. It used to have an infinite limit, but I'm on Day 88 now and I really don't want people scrolling so long — it probably causes accessibility nightmares. As always, a linked-text list is available for all articles.

Okay, an actually short article today. Although, instead of studying for exams, I'm wasting my time learning basic coding at dingusberry.com with as little AI as possible; you can check out my latest experiments there :-). I took a short class in school on web design, and we started with HTML and CSS, ending up with learning Bootstrap, which I quickly discovered was overkill for anything I wanted to do with it.

Jargon, the set of industry-specific vocabulary words and phrases, always seemed weird to me. Until I started learning jargon of my own, and repeating it without a second thought. Finance and economics is probably the worst offender here; it's so loaded with acronyms and abbreviations that no one outside a college economics course would understand.

Photography has those jargon words too. I'll list three of them: bokeh, exposure triangle, and pixel peeping.

No, I'm not explaining them. Instead, I'll link to a great glossary on Wikimedia Commons that has definitions for these terms and, like, a hundred other.

Finally, John Tinkelenberg reflecting on the revival of a local creek is a great short story, if nothing else. It pulls on the right emotional strings and has a great beginning and end, and I wish I could create stories like that — the kind that moves you to think. Not today, though!

Cheers,
David

2026-05-04

Hello! You know, given that today marks the start of exam week, I should be giving myself an excuse to write shorter articles so I can really crunch on my study materials. I forgot what a capacitor is, and I still don't know if Jim Crow is a real person. Off to a great start!

Anyway, this article might be the longest one I've written ever. The longest one so far has been of this tailgate bench from York, Pennsylvania. If you count all the default text that goes with every article (like the technical info, for nerds), that article was 789 words long. I'm going to aim for one thousand words today.

The university had some sort of alumni weekend, I think. People of age were handed cans of alcohol, and the graduates proceeded to drink the night away. When I walked around the day after, cans and scraps littered a central green area, as if a light tornado had picked up a trash bag and scattered it across the entire field.

Here, the cans were collected in one central location, in the middle of a circle of chairs. I can only assume a group of adults had a long chat served by light beer. They must have dumped their waste onto the ground in one pile, thinking that it would be easier to clean up. To be fair to them, the nearest trash bin was, like, thirty steps away. That's too far(!)

Alternatively, they could have been day drinking and I saw the mess mere hours after the party. But I wasn't that late in the day (my records show about two o'clock in the afternoon), with the sun shining in the bright sky. I can't imagine people would start their day drunk, especially if the alumni weekend had a grand ceremony the night before with alcohol.

I don't actually know what happened. The campus was pretty empty when I was walking around, so I can only speculate based on what makes the most sense: a multi-day event organized by the university to attract their alumni with parties and alcohol. The guests were probably herded to a central auditorium or other building by the time I came around to stare at the mess, floating and rolling across the field.

I can't drink; the US has a high legal drinking age compared to other countries with a minimum age of eighteen. The reasoning behind that has been covered in various internet videos and articles, but it doesn't affect me. Soda has been harmful enough to my body, and I can drink it just fine :-).

I'm glad the mess seemed to be isolated to this area, though. When I left the field and continued my walk, I proceeded as normal, humming Turn to Stone by Electric Light Orchestra along the way (an artist who I bought a CD of a week or two ago). Wandering through the university, I found myself at some back roads and nearly thought I was in a staff-only area when I saw high-voltage equipment and accompanying signs.

This is another photo where I try filling the frame and keeping the entire photo of one repeating subject — in this case, a bunch of alcohol cans. I didn't move anything around to stage a shot, especially since local police were walking by and I didn't want to look odd (I didn't expect to be required to show my papers to a government official!) so I just took a photo from a reasonable distance and calmly walked away. The photo was edited in post to show the glistening silver of the cans and the colors printed on the cans' exterior.

This photo is special because I was on a walk and I wondered how often I could take photos that were keepers? In other words, what could be my personal best rate for interesting photos per unit of time?

I don't know. As soon as I left the library, I forgot. Taking a walk allows my mind to wander, and so I'm not concerned with quantity. I'm not particularly concerned with quality either, but that's a different story. Based on no evidence whatsoever, I think I could get a keeper photo every 2.35 minutes for an hour straight.

Don't hold me to that, please. I've got to get back to my studying. Theodore Roosevelt and the gamma rays are waiting for me.

Finally, a web game. Messenger by Abeto got a surprising amount of online coverage, and when I first sent it to my friends, they thought there must be a jumpscare. There isn't. It's just a peaceful browser game where you pass on letters and learn the village's stories.

Also, a preview into the future: I'll be exploring the intersection of food, culture, and games. I don't know what photos I could pull from that experience, but I'll have lots of stories to tell about the antics I get up to in the coming weeks.

(Hey, I've reached exactly one thousand words. Only took me, like, three tangents or diversions.)

Cheers,
David

2026-05-03

Hello! First, a technical note: I bought a third domain name, and I already regret it. Come check out dingusberry.com and tell me what I should do with it.

When you use a shallow depth-of-field (something like f/2.8) you are able to separate the background from your subject, with a decent falloff and blurriness that can help eliminate busy distractions.

But if you want everything to remain in focus — especially for architecture photography — a larger depth-of-field (something like f/8) is required. Because of physics, less light comes to the camera sensor as a trade-off.

This photo is in f/16 — everything should be in sharp focus! ... Including the dirt spots that are stuck to my camera sensor or lens. I don't know how to get them off.

Now's a reasonable time for me to disclose the state of my equipment and what's been going on. As always, the technical info, for nerds is below.

I purchased my camera from eBay for less than a third of the original retail price. I bought it before the AI-driven economic crisis of current-day, and the used market for my camera demands higher prices than what I got it for, despite the camera being positively old today ($1200 new body-only, bought used for $450 in a bundle with two lenses, now going $500 body-only due to crisis). To be fair, I got lucky in the used market. The camera also came with two lenses and I was the only one who put in a serious auction bid. Score.

The lens used for this photo was bought separately, and also purchased from a used market for about a third of the original retail price. I bought it at the low point ($200 new, bought used for $70, now going for over $100).

Buying used is worth it. Unless you have a job that pays well enough to demand new gear, used gear allows you to experiment and tinker without having to baby your camera — it already has scuffs on it, and I think it adds character.

But over time, my camera has accumulated two issues. One is the dirt spots seen above. These small bits of grime are extremely distracting, and I'm sure a quick cleaning solution combined with a how-to article could fix it. When I get around to doing a deep clean, I'll post my results on this website.

A more pressing issue is that my display is struggling bad. Ever since the Lunar New Year festival of late February this year, I've noticed a crack on the lower-right of my display. I don't know the inner electronics of this camera, but I can only assume that power to the display has been damaged, as the pixels are not able to show their red or blue.

I've got a screen with basically one-third the resolution now, only showing green. It looks straight out of The Matrix.

Repairing it would be too expensive, and I don't need to use the screen for anything important. I can take images just fine (at wide-open apertures due to dirt) and so long as I nail my focus, I don't need to check them again on my broken screen.

Besides, the green effect looks novel and interesting. I just need to remind myself never to show my camera to anyone in the professional world, whether that be a client or another photographer. Hell, even my teacher volunteered to take a picture of a group of friends with my camera before handing it back and muttering "I think it's broken".

Finally, the internet TV. A nostalgic way to find small websites without an algorithm, it's also a cool way to see sites filtered through an old TV display. What does my site look like?

Cheers,
David

2026-05-02

Hello! A reference to the Disney movie Mary Poppins Returns, my favorite movie.

I love when things line up like this. Trees on both sides, the gray sidewalk almost straight to the horizon, with slightly hilly landscape. It might be a bit weighted to the right, since the bright gray road on the right is a bit distracting. But it's still hidden behind some tree leaves and nature so I don't mind.

Everything is green! While a bunch of flowers have bloomed, many trees have regrown their leaves and the grass has bunched up to cover the brown soil and dirt. It gives everything a warm and healthy glow.

I can't remember if I squatted low to get this angle — I don't think I did, but I think I should have. I imagine that would help exaggerate the sidewalk foreground and separate it from the background, making for a more interesting image.

In comparison, an image taken from eye-level is something that anyone would think to capture. It's more conventional.

Finally, Tim Cook is retiring from Apple, being replaced by John Ternus in September. The article I linked provides a camera-based point of view to the whole change, and so far, there's not much to say; Apple's a huge company, and one changeover won't affect things too drastically.

Cheers,
David

2026-05-01

Hello! It's May now!

Last night, I performed at a school concert with a jazz band, where everyone gets to watch me struggle with my cheap old electric guitar. Seriously — the thing's nearly a decade old at this point and the plug is loose; no amount of tightening seems to stick for more than a day or two.

The idea of soloing is confusing and I don't remember how I learned to do it. This is a perfect example of things that are easier said than done, because the only description I've got on guitar / piano solos is: know which musical scales sound right for your solo section, and fit a bunch of stock phrases that sound coherent together. This requires listening to a lot of jazz music. And knowing your scales.

The last time I was playing for a music performance, I learned thirteen songs to play background music for about an hour. This time, I only needed to know four songs (some of which overlapped with the previous setlist), but it's an actual concert where actual people are actually paying actual attention to you, actually.

Despite all the busy goings-on of the art world, I go on simple photowalks around town and take pictures of anything interesting. This photo is from one of them! I walked a lot further than I should have (I was rushed for time by the end of it) and I even got myself lost once.

I think I should get myself a pedometer — those simple and cheap things that latch to your belt and count your steps. I wonder how many steps I would have collected during a music performance.

Finally, badly-drawn horses. It's great to see weird and unconventional websites. I wonder if my horse is still riding off into the sunset.

Cheers,
David

2026-04-30

Hello!

The title comes from my high school English project, where we made a "short film" in the style of La Jetée — still pictures, mostly black and white, with one section of motion picture. We could have made our own original story, but I got lazy and copied the story from Ray Bradbury's There Will Come Soft Rains.

The story has no humans, and is just the day in the life of a futuristic, automated house of robots. The only living being, a dog, froths at the mouth and dies.

I'm not showing the video project, because I'm not the only one who worked on it, and it doesn't feel right to bring a shared school project onto this website. But I supplied most of the pictures for the film, and one of the coolest ones is of this house in a field. All the photos I took were then stripped of all color / saturation, creating about one hundred monochrome photos.

I took a lot of photos with the intent of using them in this project, and I set up a few angles that would tie the whole thing together. But this photo came from a regular walk, and the view just appeared without me realizing it. As soon as I saw this house in a field, I knew it would be perfect for the project (whose deadline had crept up sooner than I thought...!)

Finally, some more birds. I promise that colorful kingfishers bonding and mating in Central Bohemia is more interesting than it sounds — and it sounds pretty damn interesting on its own.

Cheers,
David

2026-04-29

Limited permission was granted to use photos taken for these events on this site.

Hello!

Mahmood, musical producer and school classmate, represented his country of Bahrain by singing his own music. He competed against student representatives of several other countries, which I've organized alphabetically by the second letter of the country: Canada, Mexico, China, Colombia, Spain, and Australia.

This is part of a continuous (but unofficial) relationship with the school, taking photos of cultural and arts events that go on after school hours. Today, I'm photographing a different event during school hours, which makes my schedule especially packed as I need to rush to my next class right after it!

The school also asked me to take video of the event, but I'm not a videographer, so a friend helped me set up a tripod and keep a different camera stationed in the middle of the room. I did not prioritize video, and I don't even know where to start in that world. I've attempted making YouTube videos for years, but that's a story for a different time.

During each country's performance, I was roaming around with my camera capturing shots from multiple points of view. I hate doing that sometimes, because I wind up blocking other people from seeing the performance, or my movement becomes a distraction, but I wear dark clothing and try to be discreet. It's much better when the performance (or the audience) are engaged and noisy, because a quiet hall is so much more sensitive to my camera clicks and noises.

Finally, the convenient idea of "one country, one cuisine" fails in China. Sure, you can get Chinese takeout at a restaurant... or you can get sixty-three cuisines from one giant country. This giant article, with a boatload of pictures, is a long list of unique Chinese dishes that define their region.

Cheers,
David

2026-04-28

Hello!

In comparison to yesterday's photo of a laboratory, this one is much more realistic.

The outside of this building was... well, just a regular building from the looks of it. No fancy glass walls, no fancy bright colors. The first laboratory wants to make a statement and be admired, while this one just has people getting stuff done.

I can't tell what stuff is getting done in this room, but definitely stuff!

The university here let me walk around the campus, with certain doors unlocked for the day. The science building was one of them, and I visited every floor. There were maps with pins pointing where each of their grad students were from, upcoming events listed on the wall, and weird smells.

I used manual focus for this photo in case the camera's autofocus would detect the glass window separating me from the laboratory, focusing on the reflections instead. You can see some faint reflections on the left, but because I'm so close to the glass pane, most of the light is coming from the other side.

On my way out of the building, I took a science magazine. It was on the table of "free books", so I'm not in trouble...

Alright, I wish I could have come up with an actual street photo worthy of this final link to a very thorough street photography guide. I'm glad I found this, because it's so different to the other photography YouTube videos out there. Without the typical self-ego and fast-paced editing, this is a long and informational video on how a working professional sees the world through a camera. It's just amazing.

Cheers,
David

2026-04-27

Hello! I'm just realizing that the amount of readers viewing through a RSS feed probably outnumber the readers viewing through email. That's unnerving, because I don't know who any of you are. If my posts have been aggregated somewhere, let me know! I don't know you exist unless you email me.

Anyway, I need to add SPAM meat to my "do not eat" list. I had some sliced SPAM for hot pot a few days ago — the only time I ever have it! — and it's just so fatty and salty. I might want to try it on musubi, but this American war food really has an awful aftertaste and is leaving me feeling icky for so long. This has nothing to do with today's photo, but as I write this, I'm still feeling a bit nauseous.

I took just under twenty photos in one day, stopping to capture any interesting viewpoints. I don't have a style, and if you scroll through my website, you'll know that anything goes. That will extend to the next few weeks as I get through my final exams and projects; unless something really cool pops up, photography will be on the back burner.

This is still pretty cool! I walked through a university and found this architect's dream of a laboratory building. All the sources for the design of this building seem to be by the architect themselves (creating an obvious conflict-of-interest) so I won't link them here. But apparently, the big orange louvers on the left can turn based on where the sun is in the sky.

I waited at this spot for a few minutes for someone to walk by. I set my focus point on them and captured the image.

... How the hell do I transition to today's final topic? It's gonna have to be a hard pivot, because now I want to talk about BeepBox.

BeepBox is this music creation website. It's like Google's Music Labs, but better. You can play around with different sounds, make your own sounds, and sketch out great melodies. I've experimented with it for a few months, but I find myself sitting in envy at the huge archive of other music creators. Give it a try, and if you make something you're proud of, send it my way.

Cheers,
David

2026-04-26

Hello!

Yesterday, my article on volunteering for Earth Day events was published late. There's a few reasons for that, both technical and personal, but they should be addressed now. I'm preparing for something awesome for Day 100, but my exams are coming up, so my life is yet again thrown into a chaotic mess.

But you know what's more important than all that? Little birds that I got to hold in my hands :-) they're so cute and I really hope my handling of them was gentle.

Remember how yesterday I mentioned that little animals have feelings of their own? The therapy bunnies of an Earth Day event panicked after a swarm of children came down upon them with no restriction. The chicks of today also dealt with a similar problem.

Although they didn't have to deal with the sheer volume of numbers the bunnies did, the chicks were newborns and I assume overstimulation caused them to poop in someone's hand and jump out after a child handling them screamed. Ay. At least their diet only consists of corn and their own yolk.

The photo itself serves as a nice reminder of why I keep my camera with me at all times. Exciting and interesting things happen all the time, and the convenience of a smartphone's camera does not outweigh the quality and creative exercise of a full-body camera.

A friend near me suggested I take a photo, so I ran out, grabbed the camera in my bag, and came back for this shot. I didn't have my phone in my pocket at the time, so if my camera was left at home, there would be no convenient way to capture the memory. I guarantee that, after a year or two, this photo (and possibly this article) will be the only way I remember the twelve chicks that hatched.

They're bright red in the photo because the chicks are lit by an infrared heat lamp, by the way. Physics!

Before I go into today's "finally", I've got a request. A request for comment on my writing. In late March, I tried using a special writing tool to eliminate my unnecessary adverb usage. It worked for one day, and... well, I don't use that tool anymore.

I get that this is a personal website with journal-styled posts, and I get that writing at all must have some improvement day over day, but English has always been one of my weakest subjects, and even I think I'm a bit too rambly. So if you see potential in my writing style, and have constructive feedback on how my ideas and thoughts can better connect with brains (a mental image I pulled straight from CGP Grey), get in touch.

Finally, I was sent way too many Twenty One Pilots songs. I listened to them all :-). I once played ukulele for a musical in high school, and I think the ukulele is an inherently funny instrument. Like, imagine if I performed Lee Ritenour's Rio Funk on a nylon string ukulele! ... Oddly specific.

Anyway, Tyler Joseph of Twenty One Pilots is more known for playing ukulele than guitar, but he turns it into an instrument for good rather than silly like me. TØP's song, Paladin Strait, is dramatic and electronic, and the music video is downright odd, but it has ukulele. This instrument's got range.

(For those not in the know: I did actually record a performance of Rio Funk on the ukulele as a joke. It earned me some heart emojis over text message and some concern from my band teacher. Worth every minute. No, I'm not showing it to you.)

Cheers,
David

2026-04-25

Hello! Let's address the elephant in the room: yes, this article has been published very late. It is less likely to happen in the future now that I've made some changes. Just pretend it's Earth Day.

Happy Earth Day! A few days ago, I volunteered for two environment-related events: an Arbor Day at a local park, where we showed kids a map of the park and encouraged a scavenger hunt for stamps and stickers, and an Earth Day party near Main Street of the town, with food, activities, and disco dancing.

The Earth Day party lasted four hours, and all kinds of groups came down to host booths and take part in events. Political advocacy groups, schools, a club from the university nearby, and local businesses (serving as food vendors).

Also: therapy bunnies. So cute. Probably not the best decision to bring them in, considering that kids swarmed around them and frightened the bunnies half to death with their erratic movements, loud screams, and pulling. They probably needed therapy of their own after that — which would make a hell of a satire story, now that I think of it. Animal lovers and creative writers, go for it. Send me a link, would you?

Earth Day doesn't seem to take up the mainstream news in the current day, but it was a big deal in my elementary school, and especially in my third grade. I still have the tree slowly growing in my backyard that I planted all those years ago.

Elementary school teachers had us realize the individual consequences of our human impact on the environment. While the idea of a carbon footprint is merely propaganda from oil company BP, individual improvements can be a worthwhile change. So they had us do an experiment.

I did this experiment a few times because I couldn't believe the results. Take a big bowl (whether it be a plastic wash basin or whatever) and put it in your sink, under the faucet, blocking the drain pipe. Then, open the faucet just the tiniest amount — about the same as a plain ol' leak. Now leave the leak overnight and let the drops slowly accumulate in the bowl.

Come back when you wake up tomorrow.

... Cool, good morning. How much water was wasted from a simple leak? Depending on how big your collection bowl was, it might be overflowing. This is a long and winded way of saying that "small things add up", but it was a real eye-opener for me to actually visualize that. One night, one leak. Enough water to drink for a day or two.

Seal up those leaks, and you can conserve a sizable amount. Water leaks tend to be the more harmless type of home leaks anyway — you might want to get your gas pipes checked.

Finally, a reminder. I've talked my short piece on ethical wildlife photography more than two months ago. I feel that it's about time for a repeat of that reminder, especially now that I'm preparing for a trip in the wild. This article on landscape photography ends with a paragraph on the environment, and your impact as a photographer. Take nothing but photos, leave nothing but footprints, and disturb nothing but the air.

Oh, and a note that I'm sure will age poorly in the near future: I'm planting several flowers in my small backyard garden, and I have no idea what I'm doing. Tulips have died from cold shock and squirrel digging or biting. The whole area is covered in leaves and weeds, and I'm waiting for a dry day to wipe away the gunk. Flowers planted a week or two ago haven't sprouted yet, but I think that's me being impatient. I just hope they're doing alright.

Cheers,
David

2026-04-24

Hello!

I fell asleep in the middle of a call again... this keeps happening. I didn't have any work to do anyway, and at least I woke up early to attend today's "booking day" at school.

Many friends of mine are pursuing arts degrees in college, and arts careers beyond college. I'm not one of them, but I showed up to the event to clap and congratulate them. From technical theater to game design, it was wonderful to see the diversity of arts subjects available in current-day education.

Just before heading to school early in the morning, I ran out and took a photo of the golden trees. Sunrise had passed, but the morning color hadn't faded entirely yet. I was not thinking about composition or color at all; I just took a photo and got in the car in a rush.

I'm also writing down a story of my childhood for tomorrow. I wanted to get the article out on Earth Day, but it slipped my mind.

Finally: how do you actually Google something nowadays? I use Google for a lot of things (like Youtube, Maps, and Messages) but I'm fortunate enough to have switched away from Google search. If you're unable to escape, harnessing the search engine and using its tools effectively will be worth it in the long run.

Cheers,
David

2026-04-23

Hello! I've been posting a lot of recent photos to the website this month, and I'm keeping the old ones just in case I'm not able to get out and about that day.

I took this photo yesterday, out on the water in Raritan Bay. I'm not able to ID this lighthouse with confidence, but I'm pretty sure it's the Great Beds Light.

I could talk about the several antics that I got up to that day, including a few silly games with a deck of cards (seriously, play Go Fish or Solitaire without shuffling the deck ever — it's hilarious), but I'd like to talk about my heavy editing process.

Every time I publish a monochrome photo, you're seeing the result of heavy editing. It is stylized to emphasize texture and shading, not color. Other photos, even if they seem otherwise normal, will have the lens vignette and distortion reduced (or eliminated) through editing.

Today's photo is recolored, because the original photo showed a dreary scene of rain and fog. That's accurate, sure, but it's not what I saw, and it's not what I felt.

The image in my head a split second after taking the shot did not look like the original file out of the camera. It never does. So I edit it to look more how I imagined it. Any program can do this, but I sometimes choose different programs depending on the style I'm looking for. A lot of times, I prefer the free software over the paid options!

Anyway, I've shown three versions of the same image. The first (left) is as close to "raw" as I can reasonably get — very little contrast, just a big file of data for any editing software to look at and say "I can do something with that". It's not really in a viewable state at first. In the middle is some default settings applied to make it look more reasonable. But on the right is the stylized and recolored image that I've created by pushing a few buttons and moving a few sliders.

Despite all this, I don't actually recommend heavy edits as a go-to for photography. There's something to said about accuracy and preserving image integrity. Where you draw that line in the sand is very subjective (and people tend to put that moral line just beneath their own work to justify themselves).

Some people take it right out of camera and present it then and there ("straight out of camera", or SOOC). Some people use algorithmic behavior to blur parts, erase distractions, and some use AI to generate new backgrounds and new subjects. The line gets very messy indeed. There's no right choice.

I'm joking, of course. Don't use AI generation.

Finally: photography is not boring. This YouTube video gives tips on how to take great photos in boring places, and it's one of those videos I'm glad to have found early on.

Cheers,
David

2026-04-22

Limited permission was granted to use photos taken for these events on this site.

Hello! The event went well! I organized a photo walk with a school club, and we took photos of flowers, leaves, and the sky.

I didn't take this photo myself; I gave my camera to one of the participants who was really excited to take photos of anything and everything.

I'm out on a quick trip, and I forgot to bring my computer. Writing posts on a phone is too difficult, so I'm going to stop now. See you tomorrow!

Cheers,
David

2026-04-21

Back at the gardens...

Hello!

I walked into this desert exhibit, with loads of succulents both tall and small. One of my common struggles with photography is that I don't fill the frame enough. When I take portraits, I walk back and get full-body photographs. If I take pictures of a flower, I'll surround it with context. The technique of continuous patterns, and close-up subjects, still requires conscious effort.

So that effort comes through in this photo! There was a large field of these green (blue?) succulents and I found the one spot where I could fill the frame with just these plants, and without any empty spots or obtrusive obstacles.

The exposure settings are all terrible — I could have added more depth of field so you could see the plants in the back, and I didn't need to keep such a tight shutter speed — but it still looks clean and acceptable.

Today, I'm setting up for a photo walk with my school. An hour or two after writing this, I will be leading a small group of students around the buildings so they can experiment with composition and exposure. I've even got a disposable film camera that they can use, if they trust themselves enough not to waste the shots inside. No idea how I'm supposed to process those, though... we'll see if I'm allowed to post some of those shots on this here website (probably not, since I'm not taking film photos).

Finally, Xikipedia. In-person, I'm an advocate against the current-day digital marketplace of attention and data, going as far as to read an entire book on it a while ago. This pseudo social media feed, stylized as X, is a good example why. A commentary on social media feeds, it shows that all you need is a simple algorithm to keep people hooked. And, if you take it a bit further, all you need are a few tweaks to that algorithm to reflect developer biases and project misinformation.

Cheers,
David

2026-04-20

Hello!

As soon as I heard about a free event for students to experiment with crazy camera gear, I reserved my ticket and cleared my calendar. This kind of opportunity doesn't come often, so it's important that I try and make it.

New York City seems to be the place for all the portraits, because that's where I went for this event! I found this side door that anyone else would probably pass right by, talked to the security guard, took the elevator up, and landed on the top floor to sign in.

Except they struggled to sign me in, because I wasn't on the list? They gave me a pass anyway. I exchanged my ID for a really expensive Sony camera and lens, went outside, and started exploring. As always, the technical info is there for nerds to criticize at the bottom at the article.

The camera and lens is so dang heavy! Bigger, modern cameras seem to prioritize durability and robustness, but that requires heavy materials. My older, cheaper camera is still heavy when the right lens is paired onto it, but it's manageable. I imagine I could find an alternative neck strap that could distribute the weight more evently, but I don't know.

There's a few awesome portraits I got from that event — the images are so detailed! — but the files I saved are huge in size, and it'll take me a long time to edit them to the level they deserve.

Finally, a monochrome photomosaic. Monochrome, as in "shades of one color", and photomosaic, as in "one photo made from many small images". Photomosaics are really hard to get right, and oftentimes, people cheat in different ways. So when a good photomosaic is sent my way, I appreciate it.

Cheers,
David

2026-04-19

Limited permission was granted to use photos taken for these events on this site.

Hello!

I found the flash button!

This event was incredible, representing a portion of student life that's alive and thriving: the arts. While I can get similar group shots of sports players, it's not the same. The joy and acceptance of everyone, casual artist or commission veteran, keeps my heart beating.

The lighting in this room is awful after sundown. All the lights have an inconsistent green tint that I can't get rid of without serious editing I don't have the patience for, so I was forced to use the flash button. It charges a bunch of energy to the on-camera flash and it goes off in a huge burst of power at once.

I usually don't use flash, because the direct lighting coming from the same direction as the camera has a characteristic look that I want to avoid. This time, I think it's cheesy enough to flip around and become a good decision again. I've never used it, even when I probably should have at the celebrity banner and my summer job, but I have some ideas on how to tone it down and modify it for future use.

I keep pulling into my bag of tricks, as I said yesterday. I'll reveal two of those tricks that are specific to taking pictures of kids, teens, or families in this kind of atmosphere.

• Count people down. Let people know that you're about to take a photo so they can freeze or quickly reorganize themselves. If you're loud enough, you can get people's attention and get them to look at the camera. Of course, you should always use the Official Countdown Standard.
• Take multiple photos with different prompts. I'm sure the rule of threes has something to do with it, but I tell people to pose for "a serious photo, a regular happy photo, and then one that's seriously silly". In this case, that second regular photo would be them posing in-character for whatever cosplay they had dressed up as. For me, that allows for a set up, a main photo to publish for the school, and a fun punchline that they can keep. On the off chance that my settings are screwed up (which happened a few times!), I can catch that at the first photo and quickly fix it before taking the two other photos that they'll actually see.

These tips don't work so well with older or serious folk, but I'm not as interested in them anyway. They act too much like me :-).

Finally, I've been doing some research into the arts. Art deco, Japanese yokai, and Chinoiserie are taking up space in my mind and I love it. Over the next few days I really want to highlight some amazing work and hopefully put my camera through some artistic experiments. So while I don't have a link for today, I do want to leave you with this: the arts are amazing and are waiting out there to be discovered, not by the world, but by you. It's up to you to find them again.

Cheers,
David

2026-04-18

Limited permission was granted to use photos taken for these events on this site.

Hello! This busy week still hasn't ended yet; I've still got a few more events to get through.

I love this photo for so many reasons. First, the silly reasons: the photo hides a lot that you don't see. I've done a pretty good job at keeping my face off this website for now, so you don't see just how sweaty I am in this week of thermal heat, jumping around and capturing the best moments. But oh my god I'm ready to sleep now — and I just woke up to write this.

I'm able to photograph and archive a perspective that no one else will see. If I was attending this event as a regular participant, I would never get behind the host's table and capture this angle — it's not where a spectator should be.

But I snaked my way around some chairs, ducked under the new school videographer, squatted right in front of the trivia panel, and took this photo when everyone raised their hands to answer a question, hoping for a chance to claim a prize.

The camera takes photos for others to observe a moment closely. But it also allows me to look closely at artistic composition and challenges me to capture action and feeling in a single image, in a way words can't.

Still, I try to transcribe my feelings into words here on these posts, but lately I've been failing at that. The downside of the camera becoming a natural extension of your eyes and arms is that photography becomes a more subconscious habit rather than an intentional undertaking.

That subconscious habit means that I'm not trying anything new. I'm reaching into the bag of tricks I've collected and pulling out the same stuff I've done before. Different subjects, different events, sure. It's still enlightening for others to see. But it's not challenging me.

I want that to change. I want to resume looking at life closely and discovering new things, and I want to allow the photos to leave a deeper impact on me. Otherwise, it would feel like anyone could take this photo. And I hope that not to be true.

If you want a more eloquent telling of a similar story, the New Yorker let Leise Hook sketch the intimacy and importance of photography in the form of a comic — appropriate for today's photo, I'm sure.

Cheers,
David

2026-04-17

Limited permission was granted to use photos taken for these events on this site.

Hello! I'm realizing that so many things I use are coded with artificial intelligence. Especially with Anthropic's Claude, which was caught destroying millions of books in the name of science, and which was defended as being legal, despite knowledge of other non-destructive techniques. Ay.

With my eyes heavy and the bed oh-so-tempting, I should recount the music all throughout the night.

I have experience playing music for shows and events, where I learn hours of music for public entertainment. This night was that and more; I learned thirteen new songs, played them at a gig, and then drove back to hear thirteen more at school.

This photo is from the latter half of that chaotic and music-filled night. I offered to be the photographer for the school's Fireside Recital, a small but formal performance of guitar, flute, piano, drums, string instruments, and lots of singing. It's the event where you hear Laufey's Dreamer and then also Bach's Invention No. 4 in D minor BWV 775 within a few minutes.

I always worry that my camera's snappy shutter sound disturbs the performers, particularly in a small room like this where the acoustics make my camera a lot louder than it would sound outside. But they would be more upset with me if I didn't get good photos, so I figure the tradeoff is worth it.

Before the Fireside Recital, I was at a senior living complex performing music of my own pickings, as part of my band class. Yes, I'm a band kid in high school. Should probably have mentioned that by now for those who didn't know...

There were complicated jazz pieces (where the school plays boatloads of money to Hal Leonard for sheet music) and well-known tunes from decades past (... also bought from Hal Leonard). People especially loved Beatles classic Can't Buy Me Love, and the staff were singing along to Neil Diamond's Sweet Caroline.

For those who care: I like Henry Mancini's Moon River best, and our arrangement was over-the-top weird. Not Jacob Collier weird, but weird.

Right, enough links to music. Put on headphones and have some fun.

Finally, a web game. Extremely simple concept, extremely simple execution. Michael Coorlim developed Head Gamez in a few days and I really enjoy it. Dodge the heads as they get faster. The subtle attention to detail (like walking animation and sound effects) are silly and fun.

Cheers,
David

2026-04-16

Limited permission was granted to use photos taken for these events on this site.

Hello!

My school hosted a Greek Night, a cultural festival with circle dances, egg dropping, and lots of food. I didn't know how much I would like pastitsio :-).

I'll be honest, I think this event was a bit much even for me. I've been a bit out of it recently, as growing pains in my life become more apparent.

Getting this photo required lots of attempts, where I would pull around a folding chair and stand on it to get some height advantage. When I hold my camera up to look down, I can't see through the viewfinder or any display, so I just hope that the camera is focusing correctly. Most times it doesn't, so I keep trying. It's inefficient, but I don't need a hundred photos anyway. Just one.

Finally, a brief window into my childhood. After reading The Comics: Since 1945 a few weeks ago, where I rediscovered the characters of Popeye and Charlie Brown, I also rediscovered Harold and the Purple Crayon, an imaginative children's bedtime story. Reading it again, it felt a bit lonely, but had a peaceful ending that still let you dream creatively. What other childhood classics have been forgotten? Octonauts, probably.

Cheers,
David

2026-04-15

Hello!

The title is a bit inaccurate; it's more a curated botanical garden, but since they have exhibits for different flower types and labels, it feels like a museum! It even has a ticketed entry.

I ought to be talking about my photographic process, but in all honesty, I'm not sure I had any thoughts for this specific photo. I wanted to fill the frame with blooming flowers and create an abundance of color, so I got up close to a bunch of orange flowers and took the shot.

Not much more to it than that.

The spring season comes lots of natural beauty, but a lot of busy work. Exams are approaching and I have yet to set my affairs in order as I make a big move in my life. A lot of words I wish I said by now, a lot of places I wish I went to.

Obviously, I could have done worse; I explored multiple US states this year and reached higher emotional highs and deeper mental states than ever before.

But I can't shake the feeling that I could have done better; I would have liked to bring someone along to the gardens (or tag along with them to see their botanical garden of choice in New York).

I have less than eight weeks until I lose the connections I've made. I'm not ready, but the flowers help calm me down for some reason.

We should peel away the reasons why we like vegetation and plants, in places that otherwise would be full of manmade waste. Seems obvious — flowers are colorful and smell good (sometimes) — but there's a few more subtle points to unpack.

This article on biophilia, the human tendency to connect with nature, is complicated and exposes a lot of surface-level human behavior. Worth reading.

Finally, I found the music I was looking for. I found Celeste's album Not Your Muse, hoping to get a comprehensive list of music used in Apple commercials. I find that the kind of tracks playing in Apple events and commercials help me blaze through a bunch of busywork, but I didn't know the genre name until now. Thanks to a comprehensive list of Apple ad tracks, I've discovered that I'm actually a fan of the UK garage music they use.

Oh, and by the way: I haven't been reading books in a while. But I have three books on my desk right now, just waiting for me to pick up in a moment of boredom.

Cheers,
David

2026-04-14

Hello! My first ever panorama photo!

I have a couple of ideas on what to talk about floating around, but none of them fit a certain photo. So today, let's talk about Christmas.

We're about as far from the Christmas craze as we could be today, so it's a perfect time for me to recount a story from Christmas 2025.

I'm not sure if it was from my annoyance with ads in music streaming, my short-lived obsession with physical media, or an itch to do something funny, but I ended up buying a stack of blank CDs and a CD burner in the fall. I had no purpose for them yet, but I knew this could lead to something interesting.

That opportunity came when my friends at school started talking about their gift shopping, and ideas were going 'round on what people liked. I thought that a CD with Christmas music would be unique enough to stand out, so I decided to start collecting music.

For the next few weeks, as I listened to music, if any thoughts popped into my head on funny Christmas tracks, I would find the accompanying YouTube video (or Spotify track, or Bandcamp link) and bookmark it. By December, I had collected too much music.

I realize that reading and writing to CDs is not supposed to be some arcane magic, but it is to me! I'm still not sure if I bought the right CDs for the job — apparently there's, like, seven types. But I knew that I could only fit so much music onto one disc, and so the process of filtering began.

I ended up with 15 tracks, including such classics as: A Christmas Miracle leading right into a mashup of Mariah Carey and My Chemical Romance, Jingle Bells by Hampton the Hampster, Mr Blobby's 1993 reveal for the blissfully unaware Americans, Vulfpeck's Christmas in L.A., and Al Yankovic's tale of when Santa Went Crazy. Also a few other songs that weren't nearly as funny.

The night before gift-giving was to commence, I was up until midnight learning how to quickly burn music to my discs. When I had eight copies, I grabbed a marker and drew simple holiday symbols unique to each disc. When passing them around to friends at school, I quickly realized I'm not the only one too young for CDs — most people didn't have a CD player, and the rest could only play it in their old car... and they didn't trust me enough to blast my choice of music to their parents on the road (a smart decision, I'm sure). Oh well.

While a few people listened to the tracks (especially after I sent out a digital folder of the songs) and laughed, it didn't get the punchline I was hoping. I've forgotten about it since. A digital copy of the songs live on my computer, untouched for months.

Until now. A friend recently dug up a monitor and CD player, and texted me that they were finally listening to my gift, months late. I promptly stopped what I was doing, pulled up my own copy of the songs, and listened to the playlist one more time.

Man, the grin on my face...

Cheers,
David

2026-04-13

Hello! I said I would go on a screen detox, but that didn't work out.

Hermitcraft, which I consider to be an all-ages TV show free on YouTube themed around Minecraft, has hosted their annual charity event. They've raised more than $1,100,000 USD, breaking previous records.

It's wonderfully chaotic and attracts me like catnip — as it's trending on Tumblr, I've used the social media platform more this weekend than the past year combined, probably. Sorting by new is an overstimulating firehose of crazy.

None of that has to do with this photo, which is a quick shot I got looking out the car window in Delaware.

Finally, a web game; it's been a long time, and I don't have much to say today. If you've played the classic Minesweeper game, you'll understand Kevin MacLeod's Hexsweeper. Along with making Creative Commons-licensed music, Kevin builds web games as well. This might be a bit easier than the traditional Minesweeper? I'm not sure, but I completed the board first try.

Cheers,
David

2026-04-12

Back among the starry night sky...

Hello! Every so often, I cycle through a regular process of building a high ego over something stupid and having it crash down. I wonder if this blog is unintentionally becoming an ego thing.

Anyway, enjoy an article of me praising myself on how clever I am.

The effect of star trails spinning around a central point was done in-camera; I don't even know how I would do this in editing.

I forgot my tripod, so the camera was set on a fence post. I took several shots of the bright stars at night, but none of them captured the special feeling of starlight that I felt that night. I've lived through thousands of nights, and I've seen the stars often, but never this many! Without light pollution, they really show up.

But they're dots in the sky, and hard to capture with a camera. I had to let the camera open the sensor for a longer time, exposing it to thirty seconds of starlight. I figured that I could make any motion blur seem intentional, so for some shots, I moved the camera on purpose.

This was the only time it worked. The camera faced the stars, and I slowly turned it on the fence post. Stars in the center of frame haven't changed much, but as you go further to the sides, the arc of star trails increases in length. Wonderful.

I wonder if, despite all my explanations of the photography process in detail, photography and art comes across like drawing an owl: there's not enough detail in between start and finish. I had the benefit of taking a short course on photography in school, but I knew the course material already and just used the class as a space to experiment. The theory is self-learned, which means there's no end in sight; I'm always still learning, and no end-of-school degree will mark the completion of my search for photography knowledge.

Cheers,
David