Let's talk about Lomography

With technology ever advancing, man has progressed from using typewriters to electronic tablets, gas burners to induction cooktops, fossil fuels to solar/wind/nuclear power, all in the space of just several decades. In fact, in recent times, the acceleration of technological developments and the increased average living standards in developed countries, coupled with the younger generations strapped with more dispensable cash, paved the way for larger consumer markets, which meant that some things that used to only be available to the professionals are readily available to anyone who can afford them. One professional tool that is no longer only possessed by those who use it to earn a livelihood is the SLR camera. The general public, with a bit of practice, can now take photographs with blurred backgrounds, special effects, and sharp detail. Furthermore, they can use Photoshop software, which can be easily downloaded online or purchased, to touch up pictures, all of which is enough to give professionally trained photographers a run for their money.

Then there is a sub-culture out there that likes to challenge modernity and trends; revive things once long lost in the past; rename them; and ironically create another trend through this process. Lomography is one of them.

Lomography can be described as artistic experimental photography, using low-tech and/or high-tech analogue cameras. Plastic toy cameras from many years ago, such as the Diana and Holga, have been brought back into the market scene, as their basic image capture without light adjustment and focus produces an image with unpredictable effects, such as 'dream-like' blurring, which, while were considered to constitute inferior photo quality in the past, are now considered to be artistic.

Some of the toy camera models have been revamped to allow enthusiasts to have more control over the image they want to produce, with optional accessories available (usually sold separately) such as flash, fish eye lens, and colour filters. Although photographic film has become progressively less readily available since the digital revolution, it is still the main recording medium used in lomography. In fact, the film component can become an artistic tool in itself, being produced by lomo brands in different colours options and varying degrees of colour saturation, which are designed to create colour contrasts and influence the sharpness and brightness of the images.

Like all hobbies that have experienced a resurgence in popularity though, such as card-making, knitting, and jewellery making, this revived hobby does not come at a cheap price. Despite toy cameras originally being intended to be inexpensive novelty items, the ones that are produced now, which target professional and amateur photographers, have massive overheads. The basic Diana model, for example, was available to retailers at a wholesale price of 50 cents US per unit, back in the 1960s, according to Wiki; the price for this camera with its low-quality plastic lens, today, costs over US$50 (US$53.60 on lomography.com, as at 14/1/12). Costs for the camera, accessories, and film aside, an ongoing expense would be that to get the photos professionally developed; that is, if you can even find a place that offers this service. Nowadays, few photo counters do this on site, so it takes at least a week to obtain your photos. Of course, for the impatient few who can afford it, there are home photo developing kits available online for purchase.

Being an avid photographer myself - though only in the love-taking-photo-at-every-opportunity sense, and generally of food (the true love of my life, as you know :P) - the idea of lomography wrapped me in its spell and had me longing to try it out. So naturally, when I saw a Japanese toy camera on sale at Kinokuniya (a massive bookshop in the city - think Borders, but with a larger variety of stationery and odd things (like the toy camera I found) and books/magazines from Japan and some other Asian countries) on one of my Melbourne trips last year, I had to buy it. It's the 'special limited edition' Vanilla Biscuit Camera, which comes with the Love Toy Camera Vol 2 bookazine by e-mook (filled with presumably photo-taking tips, a lot of which I can't really understand with my mediocre Japanese language skills):

Vanilla Biscuit Camera

As you can see from the picture above, the toy camera is simple and pretty small and light, fitting into the palm of my hand (and my hand is quite small, I'm told). It has a key ring attachment, so you could even use it as a bag charm and even smuggle it into camera-free venues (not that I'm advocating for that sort of conduct *cough cough*)! The neat thing about this little guy is that although it is a toy camera, it is fully digitalised; that is, it is a W58.7 x H41.7 x D15mm toy digital camera. The limited memory capacity only allows it to take up to 25 pictures on the highest quality setting (you could get more pictures if you select the poorer specs option - but I wouldn't push it), but there are some of the functions you'd expect on normal digital cameras: a self-take mode; continuous picture taking mode (up to 3 shots); you can select landscape or macro mode (though I have yet to try it out); you can cancel all taken images or delete the last image; and, get this, it can also record videos! No, really. Only for like 17 seconds and without sound, but, hey, it's a toy camera, what more would you expect from it? Another cool feature is that it can be attached via the included usb cable to double as a webcam. Not bad, huh?

This Biscuit Camera runs on a single AAA battery, and, because it has no removable/replaceable memory card, you have to be vigilant about transferring the photos to your computer (via usb cable, through the file transfer program you have to install with the included CD-ROM (Windows-compatible only, I believe)) or the pictures will be lost as soon as the battery runs out - which is very fast. I've only used my camera to take some snaps several times, and I've pretty much used up a pack of batteries already. Here are some of the photos I've taken with this cute little gadget:

High Tea at Palazzo Versace (Gold Coast)', New Years Day 2012 - Silver teaware

Orchids

Surfers Paradise Beach - Foot prints in the sand

Landscape + people

Timezone, Surfers Paradise - DDR - active movement

Food - Day time, indoors, direct natural light exposure (next to window)

Food - Night time, indoors, enclosed space with indirect medium intensity artificial light

For a tiny plastic thing that's intended as a toy camera (though obviously marketed towards lomography fans, as the magazine suggests), I'm actually quite impressed with the picture quality. From the pictures above, it's plain to see that it performs better in bright backgrounds, obviously due to the absence of an integrated flash. The lack of sharp focus and light filtering functions produces an aged photograph look, which is quite interesting.

What I don't like about it is that, due to the fact that the lens does not communicate with the viewfinder, what you see through the latter is not necessarily what is snapped. That is, if you centre an object in the viewfinder, it will probably end up being off-centre (like the orchid picture above). The size of the object that is taken in by the lens is also unpredictable, so I guess it is advisable to take photos from a far enough distance, so that the object lies in its completeness in the middle-ish of the view finder.

Overall, I think that it's a useful little tool for taking random pictures that have a unique, rustic look. I really like it, and am still intrigued by how a little hollow plastic casing can support so many functions! Although, I find it puzzling - quite paradoxical - that manufacturers should want to incorporate unrefined, basic photo-taking function with modern digital technology. The tiny memory space and high battery drainage means that it's obviously not something you'd want to take with you to an event where you want to simply point-and-shoot and have clear pictures that capture a lot of detail. But that's not the purpose of lomo cameras anyway, is it?

My sister went ahead and bought the chocolate version of my camera at a similar price from a different place, and it looks absolutely delicious, moulded into the shape of a block of chocolate! She hasn't been using it though, because she has a Mac. I can't wait to get my hands on some other lomo cameras - there's so many out there with different functions and special effect-creating accessories! Perhaps I'll have to wait until I have the disposable income to support this expensive hobby though...

February update.

Ok, so it's been ages since my last post, but so much has happened in the last few weeks, so I a) didn't get a chance to blog, and b) wasn't in the mood for it anyway.

I'm sure no one is interested in my sorrows, so, in a nutshell, my cute pomeranian - our littleist family member - got run over by my sister, and after a week and a half of hospitalisation and false hopes, we had to let him go. I think I finally know what it feels like to be heartbroken. I realised during the hour we were making that critical decision in the hospital that the vet was largely responsible for little Teddy's fate, because, after asking the vet about anticoagulants to dissolve his leg clot, she seemed to hesitate, then told us afterwards that they couldn't have given him anticoagulants during the week he was under hospital care, due to his extensive bruising. And there we have it. The evidence of negligence. Such utter nonsense. Even humans get enoxaparin/heparin injections every day while being immobile in hospital, to address the increased clot risk; why would it be any different for animals? It is because he had extensive bruising that it's even more necessary to keep an eye out for clots. But what's the use of pointing the finger now; Teddy won't come back. I just want him to rest peacefully now.

The crematorium is delivering his ashes back to us on Friday, so he'll finally be returning home again. I need to do more research about the most appropriate flowers to plant over his resting place in our yard - I want those that are pretty - those that Teddy would like to play amongst - and those that will flower in all seasons and are easy to maintain. Preferably they will be of a shallow root variety so that the roots don't grow downwards too far and strangle Teddy in his wooden memorial box.

I have 4 days to think about it, and, as I will probably be the principal person executing the burial (rest of family are rather more detached), I will need to really think fast. Atleast Friday will be the last day of my 30 straight day work block, so I will have some more time for gardening.

On a brighter note, I have pulled myself together now, and will be able to blog about my other loves soon - knitting and cooking!

Diary of a Wimpy Kid

So I did end up going to a Korean grocer today, and did see 2 different brands of yuja preserve; but, since my Korean is limited to just being able to read Korean characters, without actually understanding 99% of it, I didn't understand the description and the differences between the two. As such, I decided to leave it for the time being. (Seriously, from watching Korean dramas and listening to Korean music, I've only really learned the words for 'hello', 'goodbye', 'I love you', 'bad man', andddd a sound which means the 'sh-' word. All of which probably won't get me too far if I was lost in Korea.) A Korean friend of mine has volunteered to go with me to some Korean supermarkets when we meet up for lunch next week, so that's the yuja choice problem solved.

I've kept a diary since I was in primary school, and I used to write in it religiously up until I started uni. Diary entries decreased in frequency, and ceased almost altogether a few years ago, when what I saw as my living nightmare started. I was physically unable to keep it up, and then when I was well enough to, I had too many emotions and thoughts going through me, and.. I guess it's just hard to try to recap on all the events that have passed in a reasonable length of time, without sacrificing depth. Since the point of keeping a diary is to record everything as you remember it at a certain point in time, I didn't see the point in doing it anymore, if I wasn't going to be able to do that.

Now where was I going with this? Ah, yes; some where along the lines, I started to read the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books, by Jeff Kinney. I know, I know, it's a kids' book, but I still find it amusing, and the silly cartoons and childish humour manages to make me laugh. They really are enjoyable reads, when I have nothing else better to do. As an indication of my fan level, I have all the books in the series, both the 'Do-it-yourself' books, the first 2 movies on dvd, and my sister bought me the 'Movie diary' for Christmas. Ok, so maybe I should have kept that to myself, but don't judge me until you've read the books for yourself. Maybe you will enjoy them as much as I do.

Anyway. Despite stopping diary writing for quite some time, during the 'off-time', I still have been buying notebooks that I think would make a suitable diary. My most recent purchase was from Kinokuniya in Sydney:

The front cover caught my eye, and flicking through the book made me laugh out loud.

Every 2 pages, there is a quote designed to inspire your entry/complaint for the day. To top it off, you also get to rate your day at the end of it. Quite the selling point, I must say. Tell me this isn't the coolest diary you've ever seen.

The Diary of a Wimpy kid has inspired me to start writing again, as has this awesome new diary. Writing is a good creative, as well as emotional, outlet, and I encourage everyone to try this, if you aren't diary-writing already.

Yuja-cha!

I just came home from shabu shabu-ing with 2 highschool friends, and made a food discovery -yuja tea! This shabu restaurant is Korean-owned, hence the Korean name.

In Japanese and English, the fruit used is known as 'yuzu'. From googling and reading up about the beverage on the know-it-all source that is wikipedia, I now know that the tea is a traditional Korean beverage that is consumed particularly in Winter, to comfort and to remedy colds; sort of like what salty cumquat tea is to the Chinese, and what lemon and honey is to everyone else. I don't like drinking honey and lemon tea or cumquat, but I actually quite enjoyed the yuja tea. But maybe because I had it ice cold, and found it rather refreshing. My friend had the hot version, and she didn't like hers as much. I'm sure the benefits are still there with the cold version, so I will stick with that, I think. So anyway, the benefits are derived from the fact that the fruit is jam-packed with vitamin C - according to google sources. The fruit is also used in perfumery, alcohol, desserts, sauces, and what have you.

Now, as the fresh fruit is not readily available, most people use the honey and sugar syruped version in glass jars at Korean grocers (apparently you have to mix it with sugar anyway, if preparing the fresh fruit, as the fruit itself is quite bitter/sour). I'm sure the tea I had before was made from this marmalade-looking preparation.

While googling about this product, I came across a website where the blogger tried using yuja-cha paste in a chiffon cake, in a cheesecake, and in a savoury sauce (http://www.anncoojournal.com/2011/04/yuja-korean-honey-citron-tea-cheesecake.html). Although I don't think I'll try any of these ideas, I'm inspired to use this ingredient to create my own unique dishes. So without further ado, it's off to shower now, facial mask (if I can stay awake) and then off to the Korean grocers tomorrow morning to get my hands on a bottle of these!

A New Year!

I know it's the 2nd day of 2012 already, but I just wanted to say Happy New Year anyway, to all the visitors of my humble little blog.

With the new year comes new, or in my my case, additional, resolutions, and one of them is to try to keep this blog up-to-date! My excuse for not blogging for the last few months is that I've been on a hiatus from knitting and (a lot of) cooking, due partly to work, and partly to the intolerable Summer heat. It's still so strange to me how we Southern Hemispherers grow up reading about White Christmases and people snuggled up in warm blankets next to the fireplace at this time of year, when, in reality, here, most of us spend our Christmas and New Year holidays splashing around on the beach, or around the barbie. For this reason, I stop buying magazines in Summer, because I feel hot just looking at the covers, which feature models all wrapped up in big scarves and wearing thick clothes, beanies and boots. Nonetheless, I managed to finish making up my Gatsby Dress on New Year's morning (I know, took me long enough!). I'm sure I would have finished it ages ago, if I didn't leave it for so long, untouched. I'm blocking the picot edging on the back of the neck trim again - it's almost dry now - because it was still forward-inclined after blocking it from the front yesterday. I will post pictures once it's all done. I'm keen to model it too and take pictures, but I have to buy a nice white cotton skirt, or similar, first to wear underneath it. There's no rush, I guess, since I probably won't be wearing it until closer to Autumn, when the weather becomes cool enough for woollen garments!

I went for an afternoon run/brisk walk today, which made me feel good afterwards. One of my New Year resolutions is to increase my fitness level, be it one baby step at a time, so perhaps I'll try to make the walks a regular thing. I'm afraid to do it alone though, because nowadays, it's not 100% safe to be out and about alone on foot, even in your own neighbourhood. Gone are the days when people didn't even have to lock their doors at night. Heck, I don't even know the folks living on my street, besides one of my immediate neighbours. Yes, ONE. I know of the man living on the other side of the fence, but never speak to him, because he's a nasty man (very nasty, for someone who is like, 80) who, in his middle-aged days, threw eggs against our door and walls, and buried dead chicken with their feet sticking out of the ground, and in his old age, does nothing but ask people to do things for him, and in return, reports your pets (whatever we have at the time (we've had ducks, chicks and dogs over the years)) to the city council for anything and everything (eg noises that are not heard by, or don't bother, anyone else).

In brief, my other New Year's resolutions, include:
1. Doing all the projects that I've bought yarn for already (7 that I can remember off the top of my head, but I'm sure there's plenty more to add to the list!); working on 1 WIP at a time; use up my hefty stash, or at least reduce it to a reasonable size (considering the amount of money I spend on yarn every year);
2. Starting an etsy shop, after talking about doing that for the past year or 2;
3. finding out about Winter charity knits programs abroad before submissions deadline, so that I can actually participate in them;
4. finding another local hospital to knit premmie beanies for; one that doesn't tell you the beanies go directly to the premmies in the ward, but in reality actually gets sold to people for like $8-10/hat through the hospital foundation, and you aren't informed of this until the second batch is donated, and wouldn't have been, if they didn't need to make a special request for a certain design to be knitted, as they sold better. *breathe* Seriously, if I knew this to be the case, I'd rather donate money to the hospital, than have my effort - love and well wishes in each stitch, with so much thought put into each design - wasted and put together with a dollar value. and $8?? Really???
5. Sleep earlier (11.38pm already, so that's not going well);
6. Try my best in my studies, and not forgo opportunities to do so when in the presence of others, just because I'm too afraid of failure; failing when people know how much you've tried and want to succeed;
7. Have the courage to try new things; learn as much as I can, without the need of a known use for it;
8. Turn tears into pearls of wisdom.

Have a happy, prosperous 2012, everyone!

Of pies and dresses

Having finally managed to find a supplier for Australian bush spices and get my hot little hands on quite a few of them, I decided that today was the day I tried them out. I also wanted to improvise a dish, rather than spend ages (which I tend to do) flipping through recipes books and getting distracted by every yummy picture I come across. For lunch, then, I made a vegetarian pot pie, which consisted of a creamy potato mixture, mushrooms, and a tomato relish with a bit of spice and tang. I don't know why the puff pastry (shop bought) didn't puff up fully, but the dish was otherwise quite alright. While the individual elements tasted good, I think they probably didn't go extremely well together, since they have their own characteristic flavour, and the tomato relish was quite robust in flavour. Next time, I'll either omit some of the spices from the relish, or make the potato mixture more plain. Here's some piccies to tickle your tastebuds:

No cheesie toasties for me, coz I'm sick at the moment, and didn't want to exacerbate my cough.

Back to my knitting, I finished knitting the whole back of my Gatsby dress last night :D I only have 3.5 balls or so left for the front half of the dress, and frankly, having started with 10 balls, I'm a bit worried.. The online yarn store, from where I bought the yarn originally, doesn't even stock Rowan yarn anymore (if I am remembering the name of the shop correctly), and even if I can find the yarn from a different shop, the dye lot will be different, so I may potentially end up with a dress of 2 different hues of blue :'(






The bind-off instructions for the neckline was a bit weird.. Normally, patterns just ask to BO stitches at the centre and then decrease along the neck edge thereafter, but this one called for 2 lots of BOs at the neck edge after the main centre BO, which requires yarn to be cut and joined a few times. Of course, in my case, I just left a long end and secured this through a few stitches at the back, before bringing it up to use again for the next row.






The little lace details keep the design an interesting knit, except I'm not sure of the value of having the eyelets under the bust line. The knitted fabric is most certainly opaque enough to be worn on its own, but I'm not sure it would look that good with a spotty row of naked skin showing through... I guess if it looks bad, I could thread a matching ribbon through the eyelets or something.





I actually did knit a gauge swatch this time (haha, I know, surprise!), but....don't you reckon the dress is looking a bit narrow? Even the double-rib waist band, when manually stretched across my waist, reaches its elastic limit when thus manipulated. I hope I still end up with a wearable dress when I finish the whole thing!!

Sick days = more knitting days

So I've been sick since last Thursday, and the fact that I've been sick in bed/moping around the house for the past few days means that I've been able to get more knitting done (not that I'm glad to be sick or anything, but it's nice to know that I can still be doing something productive/fun when I'm too sick to do much else). It's good to be able to catch up with my knitting, as I've had done a few errors here and there at the start with the hem, which sort of put me off a bit. Of course, I promised myself to aim to reduce WIPs and UFOs, so perseverence is the key. Anyway, I took a few pics, so you can see what I mean:

Back Hem Take 1:

Spotted an error (dropped stitch or incorrectly corrected dropped stitch - a ghastly huge loop that stuck out like a sore thumb, either way) while I was knitting the st st section above the ladder stitch lace panel. Tried to create a "life line" and rip back, but didn't quite work out, and the yarn was all twisty and knotty when I was unravelling, so I ended up having the use my sewing scissors to cut the knitted fabric, which took ages to do (mainly because I've been watching dramas while knitting), to remove all the yarn until I got back to just the hem bit :( I think I wasted at least 1 ball of yarn, which is worrying for me right now.

Take 2: I focused this time, without watching dramas, and made sure I kept my wits about me.

...et voila! Parfait!

I've almost finished knitting the full back of the dress now *phew!*. This is where I'm at:

I shall continue this tomorrow, after I see the doctor, and hopefully get this baby finished soon!

Good thing before my cough and overall health got really bad, I attended Bill Granger's instore book signing for his latest release, Bill's Everyday Asian last week. Lugged 2 books from my Bill collection with me to get signed too! I would have liked to take my whole collection along to get signed, but the books (8 altogether, excl. newest) are wayyyyy too heavy for my one man band. Oh well, I'll eventually get it all signed, a few books at a time!

As always, Bill was very chatty and lovely, and this time round, I actually got over my nerves and started a foodie conversation with him :) It's so nice to be able to exchange opinions on things with one of your fave cookbook writers, and to get cooking ideas from him, that aren't from the books. Got a pic with him too, which was great :)

I eat Asian food often enough, but I don't dabble in Asian cooking much myself; however, I will definitely dip my toe in, just to try out Bill's interpretation of various Asian cuisines :)