Highline and the Ice Rink (WEEKLY HIGHLIGHTS)

With the rate of these coming out, I think it would be reasonable to say that ambientAspect is going through weekly highlights at a somewhat consistent rate. Due to the change of routine, I'm changing these "Quick Highlights", into a proper series of "Weekly Highlights" as they should have been since the beginning.

This week's highlights come from the Highline (as it turns out, the highline is pretty empty at around 10AM on a bitter cold Saturday morning), and the ice rink from the Winter Village at Bryant Park. Sadly, it was a relatively short picture-taking session, so I'll be sure to get more pictures next week!

Click on the READ MORE text for one thousand shards of ice.

Holding your breath

First Autumn (QUICK HIGHLIGHTS)

We've done it! Despite only delving into photography for about ~ months, we're still alive (and I haven't sold my camera)! In respect to that, I dedicate this album to my first Autumn of photography, with great personal significance. Primarily, this was one of the first Autumns where I had the opportunity to go into the city and see lines of colored trees in-person. It's a strange thing to say that I've never seen yellow-orange-red trees bundled up together beyond the occasional Brooklyn tree that managed to actually turn any other color than brown.

Now, I'll be the first to admit-- I really enjoyed my outing this week (~3 hours). It wasn't as much as "lets go out and take pictures", as it was going out and enjoying the day-- which is what I essentially, should be doing.

Click on the READ MORE text for more images!

Black or Color? (QUICK HIGHLIGHTS)

I actually got to go out this weekend! During my 3-4 hour excursion into the city, I took about 50-60 shots, with only 10 of them serving as my favorites.

On a complete tangent, over the past few months (almost 7 months now!) that I've been running this blog, I've been trying to find a equal compromise of professionalism and inclusion. What I mean is, I've been trying to find a way to share my journey through photography with the world without turning this blog into a 2004 text-heavy photo journal. So as of today, I plan to really re-think how I present these images through both my posts, and blog itself.

Getting back to photography (and away from marketing-- which is what that is pretty much), the photos below gave me one of those great photo-feelings where you're completely unsure of how to treat the colors on a photograph because they both work so well. As a result, I put both versions in the post below (for only the images that I couldn't decide on), and I hope I can get some feedback on the "best rendition".

Click on the READ MORE text for six boards of wood and a nail

I think that while this picture wouldn't work "on-paper", the distinct boldness of his figure from the background makes the image stand out.

Interim Update (QUICK HIGHLIGHTS)

Just a small photographic update here. If you're out of the times, I haven't posted in the past few weeks due to recent fluxes of schoolwork and tight schedules (college is hard). While I try to get out at least once a week for photos, I haven't had the time to go through my pictures and select the ones that I like the most.

In addition, I've been finding that as much as photography is a fun hobby, it's also a real "mental chore". While I love it to death, it's really difficult sometimes to get into the "mood" of looking for good pictures and  take enough initiative to actually get down and get the best angle when your mind is somewhere else (hopefully, I'll adjust to my new college life and I'll have a bunch of wonderful pictures to share next time).

Click on the READ MORE text for ten thousand magnificent honey bees

First Try at Studio-Esque Shooting! (Leica Summaron 35mm f/2.8) (QUICK HIGHLIGHTS)

Hey, Norman here. The following is actually one of my first attempts at doing studio-esque shots for the fun of it. Now before anything else, let me say the following things:

1. I should have scrubbed down the lens more (dust and cameras are a unforgiving combination)
2. I should have adjusted the white balance on-camera or in post production to make the images uniform
3. I should have balanced the exposure better so that the images are consistently exposed
4. I should have shot in RAW for better image quality and flexibility in post production (JPEG here for convenience)

With my snide comments to excuse my laziness/inexperience aside, the following set of pictures are from a "product-shoot" I did on Saturday. I knew someone that was selling one of their vintage lenses, and I asked if I could take some pictures of it before they sent it off to the cold harsh world.

After about 40 test shots, I finally narrowed it down to the following ten shots. All in all, I'm pretty sure I learned a great deal (though still not enough) about studioish shots.

Here's what I used:

• Nikon D90
• Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G Lens (This is the only lens that allowed me to focus close enough. Luckily, it comes with most cameras. I was actually surprised on the
• Cheapie Sunpak Tripod (In order to use such a dark lens and take sharp pictures, a tripod is NECESSARY)
• Powerade Fruit Punch Variant Sports Drink (for holding my background paper up-- very important that you use this flavor of sports drinks; safety not guaranteed for any other type.)
• 11x14 Sketchpad Paper (used for a solid-color background)
• Leica Summaron 35mm f/2.8

Click on the READ MORE text to see completely unprocessed, out-of-camera JPEGS!

The warm lighting is provided by my Samsung S3's flashlight with toilet paper used as a light dampener. Turns out the flashlight actually emits a soft summer yellow when bouncing off its own diodes.

Gone Bye (QUICK HIGHLIGHTS)

Of course, as explicitly said in my previous post, I haven't had much time to go out and take work on photography recently. However, as an insurgent of conventional time management, I've gone out a bit and taken a few shots here and there for old time sake. Along with that, while I was processing my images I realized that there were still a few pictures that I haven't put up yet. Due to the scope of this betrayal, I've decided to put up this post in hopes of achieving redemption. Please accept the following set of highlights from my previous week, and months before as a gift.

Click on the READ MORE text to see some oldies/newsies.

Taken with my first "real" camera, the Olympus PL2.

Running Out Of Time

Disregarding the hyperbolic exciting developments on my video debut yesterday, I've come bearing more gifts! Below are actually some current/past pictures that I've been saving up for a good day. I decided to put a slightly different approach on the comments, and see if anyone mines if I write a bit more about each image. It's the challenge between telling a bit more about the background of the story (and most importantly, making everyone feel a little more involved), and detracting from the overall image by removing the mystique of it all. I'll find the balance eventually.

Slightly more importantly, I'll like to announce that I'll soon be posting less images on the blog due to school coming back up. There's always a sense of nostalgia and anxiety when something like the summer ends, and college first begins. While I hope to be able to continue what I feel to be a great hobby, I'm not sure if I'll ever have the time that I used to for maintaining this blog, taking images, and working on mini-projects among other things. But in a optimistic's note, there's always more time until there isn't and by then, it doesn't matter anymore.

Click on the READ MORE text to see some of my favorite pictures!

Was waiting awhile to post this one. I was waiting for someone and noticed that there was a great scene here-- albeit missing a subject. I mentally laughed about how great it would be if someone walked/ran through, right as I took this picture just as she ran up the stairs. I'm really happy how it turned out, with it's levels of dimensions, lighting, tonality, and even the subject getting right where I needed her to be. One of my favorite no less.

Two Days (VIDEO)

And it's here! As some of you esteemed guests have probably guessed, the project I've been working on was actually a video. I spent the last few days experimenting with the video features on my camera and decided that I could probably throw a video together in a pinch. 

Of course, the footage took place over two consecutive days of going out (albeit raining, they were supposed to be "shooting days"), and the post processing took another two days to sort things out. As it turns out, you really need to know what you're doing behind the scenes to get the most out of your image.

If this video is any type of successful, I hope to be able to create more videos in the future with a bit more fineness and ideally, some type of story.

I'm proud to say that I got permission from the artist of the track I used in the video, so I'll give special thanks to Evgeny Grinko for his fantastic "Other Child Room" in the album, Winter Sunshine EP.

Without further ado, feel free to watch the short I made by clicking the image below (I decided not to embed it because Vimeo doesn't allow HD playback on other websites without paying a monthly fee).

Two Days (TEASER)

Heatwave Hiatus (Part 3)

Apparently, this post didn't go up when I intended it to go up-- looks like I'm going back to full manual control again. Anyways, here's the final part of the set I made. I was pretty happy with pretty much all of the pictures in this set, save the fact that I missed the focus point a few times here and there. Along with that, these will be the last pictures that I put with from the Sony NEX-6. From now on, we're going back to my trusty old Nikon D90.

Click on the READ MORE text to see the last of us.

Heatwave Hiatus (Part 2)

This set was mainly taken around several "Chinese" communities around where I live or in the city. As I was putting them up in Lightroom, I also found a bunch of photos from a few months ago that I really liked, but forgot to post on the website. So I decided that, rather than let the photos die a silent death in the digital decay of individualism and society, I would post them all up in a single post right after I'm done with this series.

Another thing that I thought I should address is why I always take so long to put up my photos after I've taken them. The main reasons is, I really dislike (hate's a strong word) looking back at my images after I've taken them (other than to check the image to see if I need any adjustments). It's just a quirk that I have where it makes me feel as if I'm exhaustively stepping back into my own day-- I'd rather give it a few hours/days before I take a look at them again.

Click on the READ MORE text to see more images, and the final heat death of the universe!

Heatwave Hiatus (Part 1)

Aside from getting brutally stabbed by a group of slow cheetahs, the main reason that I haven't been posting images is due to the fact that it's been getting too hot to wander around outside, and because it's realistically unreasonable to ask me to connect my camera to the computer. I'm only human after all. Along with that, I recently tried out a new camera under the guise of replacing it with my current camera. Sadly, it turned out that the camera (Sony NEX 6 w/ Sigma 35mm f/2.8) wasn't quite for me, and I returned it recently.

Disregarding these unfortunate issues, I'm back with more images to throw at you! Now just as a small disclaimer, most of the images below were taken with the camera that I was previously considering, so be wary of impressively better image quality.

Click on the READ MORE text for ten thousand more images of umbrellas.

One of the first images that I took with the new camera.  I really liked the well-defined distinctions.

Split Tonality (Part 3) - Waters and Pleads

So here's the last set of highlights that I'm willing to post before I go for an outing again. I think that I have one picture in this set that really symbolized my new willingness to go out and "capture" life in the city. Overall, I would call it a pretty "successful week", and I'm looking forward to going out again and getting more things to share at another time.

Click on the READ MORE text for the last of the benevolent butter creatures!

Split Tonality (Part 2) - Highline

Here's the second set of image highlights. From looking back at them, I've realized that a majority of them are from the New York High Line. These pictures are from a outing I had with my friends; we had a good time.

Click on the READ MORE text for some more images!

On the way

Split Tonality (Part 1)

So apparently, I forgot to post up to two weeks worth of photos, in the past two weeks. Uncanny how these things turn out, right? Anyways, I've picked out about 60/300 photos that I thought were worth mentioning, and I've provided them below. Since they're in a assortment between two weeks, I can't be very descriptive in the overall set, but what I can say is that I really enjoy the experience of going out and taking photographs. It was always my dream in the far future to get a camera and snap away, but to do it right now, is a different experience entirely.

Click on the READ MORE text to see [REDACTED] and [REDACTED]

Vivid People and Decision (Black and White Galore!)

Aaaannnnnd, we're back again today with a second set of pictures. In this particular set, I tried to experiment a bit with black and white photography. I thought that some of the images I took last weekend were really great (loosely used here) in the terms of shadows and contrast. However, I didn't think that they would really benefit from some of the colors, since I felt that they were frankly distracting from the scene in certain situations.

Click on the READ MORE text to see vivid nightmares and commentary from me.

I actually took this same image about 5 times resulting in different lightning and exposure. A little exposure value change fixed it right up.

The Low Dragon - Falun Dafa Parade (Accompanied by guessworkPhotos)

On May 18th, a photographer from guessworkPhotos and I, went into the city together for a leisure street shoot. Initially wandering around in Chinatown, we found ourselves in a Falun Dafa parade/rally staging ground. We ended up sticking around and taking some shots while enjoying the overall atmosphere of the whole ordeal. Below, are the highlights of our journey, with some very nice guest photos attached to the end.

Click on the READ MORE text to see completely irrelevant visual stimuli, and commentary from me.

The start.

Harsh Lines and The Artist (Part 2)

Comrades, here is the final part of yesterday's set. I think that putting them in the opposite of chronological order (I'm pretty sure there is a term for that, I just can't figure out what it is at the moment), puts a different "whiff" of mood in the whole ordeal. Instead of recognizing the passage of time and space, we're going backwards.

Click on the READ MORE text to see less inverted giraffe patterns.

Harsh Lines and The Artist (Part 1)

It's been too long! Sadly, for the past week or so, I've been unable to go outside and take photos due to unforeseen events. Thankfully for the present, I'm finally free to do as a I wish, unconstrained by the realities of the boulder during Sisyphus' walk down the hill. Also, I now have less work to do.

The following photos are from some unposted sets from less than two weeks ago, and the rest are from a single trip to the city about 6 days ago.

Click on the READ MORE text to see more inverted giraffe patterns.

Substantial Softness

I was pretty happy with the results of the images that I took a few days ago. So much so that I've thrown them away in sheer disgust, and moved on to taking the images in this post.

In all honesty though, I was pretty excited to see how some of these images turned out on the computer monitor after taking them. Specifically, I really liked how the subjects and lightning turned out for the first three or so images.

Click on the READ MORE text to see the whole set of giraffe gradients.

The future's so bright

As the common saying goes; the future's so bright, I've gotta coat my eyes with a microfilm of UV-resistant liquid solution.

I took some of these images on my walk towards, through, and out of the Brooklyn Bridge. On a photograph-related note, one thing that I'm really starting to learn is the fact that I shouldn't shoot the lowest aperture possible for every single picture. While the shutterspeed and depth of field is nice, it might not be worth missing those one in a thousand shots due to the focus messing up. (Larger depth of field giving me more room for errors, and adding more to impromptu "landscape-y" shots.

Click on the READ MORE text to see the whole set and more!

Assortment of Ink

I was digging into some of my old photos the other day, and I found a small group of pictures that I thought deserved some light of day before I ultimately archived them into the deep expansive abyss of my shared terabyte hard drive. It's strange how looking back at chronologically ordered set of photos really puts you back into the moment. Anyways, here they are (unordered of course, this isn't a photography blog or anything):

Click on the READ MORE text to see the whole set, you silly sapient creature

Round and Shapes

Somewhat in a continuation to the last post, here's the last of the highlights for the week before. A lot of these photos were taken on my passage out of battery park, and around the area for a few hours.

Click on the READ MORE text to see the whole set.

Ambient Reflection (QUICK HIGHLIGHTS)

I took a brief trip to the lower side of Manhattan, and I took a few pictures, below are some quick highlights of the images.

Also, please remember that each POST contains more than one image. Click on the Read More text, or the title of the post to see the whole thing. I've found that a bunch of people skim the site and assume that I've only taken two or three shots altogether. This makes me -single tear- all the time. (I believe that is the correct term)

Bonus Number!

I just realized that I missed a few photos that I originally intended for the first post. Of course, this being a frightful sin against man and nature, I naturally decided to post the following three as perhaps, a supplement for your daily visual stimuli.

Daisy's Knowledge

I spent another day in the city again. This time however, I stuck around the China Town area for some unspecified, temporal reason beyond my ability to control.

Anyways, as a result of today's passage, I've picked a couple highlights that I liked the most out of the bunch: (Click on the READ MORE text to see the whole set.)

Number One

Finally getting around to making this blog, I present to you all, the finest created entity since the publicly acclaimed methodology of physically detaching and transforming measures of bread between a shared plane of existence. Also, here are some pictures I took last Saturday: (Click on the READ MORE text to see the whole set.)

Feel free to comment on the harsh shadowing of the second picture's watermark, or offer any thoughts or criticisms-- those are welcome too.