Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/8, 1/55 sec, ISO6400 “Browsing” Cedar Park, 2016
こんばんは！How’s it going?
This evening after dinner I took my two sons to the library to get some books. 📚 Koa borrowed a couple volumes of his favorite manga, “One Piece”, while Bay picked up several travel books. Next summer we are planning on taking a trip ✈ 🚄 to Morocco, Spain, France, and England so we’re doing research on things to see and places to stay. The planning stages are getting exciting!
The most up-to-date information is online, but it’s fun to borrow the travel books to look at maps and get ideas from more reputable sources, like good old Frommer’s and Lonely Planet. It’s also nice to curl up in bed and leaf through a paper book, especially a travel guide, where you can let your wanderlust take hold. 🗺
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/8, 1/30 sec, ISO6400 “On the Way Out” Cedar Park, 2016
When we left the library, nature surprised us with a lovely magenta sunset. 🌇 Love it!
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/8, 1/75 sec, ISO3200 “Sunset” Cedar Park, 2016
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/4, 1/110 sec, ISO6400 “Homemade Indian” Cedar Park, 2016
こんばんは！How’s it going?
Tonight, Mariko and her friend Kumiko cooked a delicious Indian meal of Chicken Tikka Masala, Saag Paneer, and Naan. 🍴 It was completely homemade, with fresh ingredients brought home from the Indian market, and everything tasted so much better than the store-bought versions. Thankfully, they made so much that we’ll be able to enjoy it for a couple more nights. 😄
I’m very happy that our kids like to eat all kinds of different foods, even spicy types. Life is a lot more interesting if you have a willingness to try new things, isn’t it? It’s good to be adventurous!
Speaking of being adventurous, I’m happy that Bay has an interest in traveling ✈️, just like I did at his age. And I am thankful that my parents also like to travel… my dad took me to Paris 🇫🇷 when I was young, and they even let my brothers and I travel to London 🇬🇧 on our own. How fortunate that my mom worked for a major airline… that had a big influence on my family!
Looking back now, those early travels had a big affect on the way I live my life now. And of course when I traveled to Tokyo with them, that REALLY changed my life… I wouldn’t have moved to Japan 🇯🇵 and then gotten married to my wife if it weren’t for that trip! So I guess I am a bit biased in that I encourage people to travel.
Of course a huge part of traveling is sampling the local cuisine. That is one of the highlights of any trip we go on. And it doesn’t have to be fancy… I think it’s important that the food is local and authentic. Besides being delicious, the local hangouts are usually inexpensive as well. Win-win!
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/4, 1/125 sec, ISO5000 “Chowing Down” Cedar Park, 2016
Well, today’s post was a bit of a ramble, but oh well, that’s me. 😆 I hope you had a nice Tuesday!
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/5, 1/7 sec, ISO3200 “Nikon AW” Cedar Park, 2016
こんばんは！Good evening!
Today’s photo is of a 1986 Nikon AW (All-weather) film camera which we have used for underwater photos a long time ago. I believe my wife got this camera back in the mid-’90s (before we met) but the history of it is still kind of murky since she doesn’t even remember buying it. It could have been a previous boyfriend’s camera… who knows?
At any rate, I thought it was a cool camera, so I kind of adopted it. 😊 It’s ugly and chunky and heavy, but it has a mutant rangefinder aesthetic which I find oddly attractive. It also feels great to hold, and when you carry it by the hand-strap, its weight makes you feel like you are carrying a deadly weapon. How’s that for personal safety!? 😆
Unfortunately, when I ran a roll of film through it a few years ago, none of the pictures were exposed correctly. I’m not sure if the motor is messed up, but I was so disappointed when I received the negatives, that I put the camera away for good. Plus, I had a new digital waterproof camera, so that pretty much marked the end of the Nikon. 📷
Maybe someday I’ll see if I can troubleshoot what is wrong with it, but I have so many other cameras, I honestly think the chances of that happening are close to zero.
But, it did have a great life, and we used it on a few vacations. If I didn’t have that camera, we would have missed many shots. Here are a couple of the photos from snorkeling in the Bahamas way back in the year 2000. Ancient history!
Photo info: SONY SLT-A77V, 35mm, f/2.4, 1/10 sec, ISO800 “Trusty Camera” Cedar Park 2016
こんばんは！
It’s my second day back from vacation and I am back in the swing of things. I’ve also been going through my vacation photos and having fun picking out my favorites and editing them.
505 photos made it back to my hard drive, and maybe 10 of those were joke photos when my brother hijacked my camera as I took an afternoon nap. At first I thought that was a lot of photos for a vacation, but then I figured that there were a few events where I was taking lots of photos that I knew are bound for our family’s Facebook page. It was more like I was doing event photography rather than travel photography! Fun stuff. 😃
When I am taking photos, I will do a lot of culling in-camera. In a series of photos of a scene, there is going to be one that is the best. I’ll find that one, and delete the rest. Sometimes I may keep the two best ones, but I try to keep it down to one. I don’t like having all the duplicates!
I have to say, my Fujifilm X100T proves itself to me each time I use it. It is so versatile. At the events, it was discreet, quiet, and quick. At the beach, the Velvia film simulation made the colors pop. And I got several comments about how cool-looking a camera it is. Lots of people thought it was an old film camera. And a few even wanted to try taking photos with it! I never got those kinds of comments while using a dSLR.
And of course, the HUGE benefit of the X100-series cameras is their size/weight. It is small and light enough that I was able to hit the dance floor with the shoulder-strap across my body! 💃
Anyways, if you already have one of these amazing cameras, well, I’m preaching to the choir, aren’t I? But if you are curious at all about the X100-series cameras, rush down to the camera shop and try one out!
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/2.5, 1/500 sec, ISO12800 “Cat vs. Converse” Cedar Park, 2016
こんばんは！Hello, how’s it going?
Well, I’m back at home (arrived this morning at 1 AM) and back in the swing of things. That means I am back to work and also I have a few days of just myself and my three girlfriends. In the photo above, you can see one of them playing with my shoe. I think the shoe will be okay – Converse hold up pretty well against cat claws… so far at least! 😾
It’s funny, but I’ve only been gone a week and the kittens have grown so much! They look like small cats, not kittens anymore. 😵
While I was on vacation for the past week, I didn’t have time to keep up with my daily blog posts. Most of the days when I returned to my cabin on the ship or to the bed at our guest house, I was too tired from drinking and partying with the family. 🎉🍹 However, I did take plenty of photos. 📷 Now I need to go back and write those posts, which I will back-date.
I’m not sure how they will appear in rss feeds, but at least they will be ordered correctly here on my blog. But, just so you know, the blog posts from July 24-31, 2016 will be back-dated. 📆
I hope you had a nice Monday… at least as nice as Mondays can be. 😜
All good things must come to an end, and so it was with the 2016 Leesang Family Reunion… our group all left Miami today and flew back home. Some flew to Los Angeles, some to Honolulu, and I returned to Austin.
I think all of our flights got delayed and mine was about 40 minutes late into Charlotte, where I exited the plane and literally walked right onto my flight to Austin. That was cutting it close!
I arrived back at home at about 1 AM, tired but with a smile on my face. Looking forward to the next reunion, especially because I will be joined by my wife and kids for sure!
The final day of our visit to Miami was wonderful. It started out with a leisurely morning with our cousins playing games and then half of us split off to do some sightseeing at Coconut Grove, and the rest stayed at home. I opted to stay home, and helped get ready for the evening party. I went with my mom and cousin to deliver food, extra chairs, and set up tables at the nearby church’s dining hall which we rented out for the party and because I got a preview of the party-to-come, I was pretty excited!
As is typical with our family, the party involved dancing, drinking, and lots of yummy food. There were patties, curry, stew peas, rice and peas, oxtail, jerk, etc… And of course we had to spice it up with fresh Scotch Bonnets! 🔥 Plenty of Red Stripe was also consumed. 🍻
I mentioned before that the Leesang family likes to dance and tonight we had an instructor teach how to do a couple different dances at the beginning of the party. Check it out below!
Our family is also pretty into the Pokémon GO! craze too, and there was a gym at the church so several people had fun outside battling to take over the gym. Another fun family activity, actually!
It was a lot of fun hanging out with the extended family and taking lots of photos (I shared them in our private Facebook page) and I have to say the X100T was perfect. I got a lot of people asking me about the camera too… many people thought it was a classic film camera. 😄 What I love about the camera is that it is so fast and discreet. I had people smile, took their photo, and it was over in a split second and we were back to partying. That was such a great feeling… to not have the camera be such a big deal. The “snapshot life” is a great place to be.
Anyways, the party was a blast! We ended up leaving at around midnight and then the party continued back at the house, with the younger generation playing boardgames til the wee hours of the morning, while a few of us opted to go hang out in the pool.
I finally hit the bed at around 2:30 AM… it was a great day!
“Photos” Miami, 2016
“AF Assist” Miami, 2016
“Pokémon Trainers” Miami, 2016
“Yet Another Cake” Miami, 2016
“Such Good Food” Miami, 2016
“Family Portrait” Miami, 2016
“Morning Games” Miami, 2016
Note: This post was written on 8/7/2016
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I use a Fujifilm X-series camera for most of the photos on this site and my Instagram. Why not pick one up for yourself?
