A few days ago our friendly neighborhood UPS driver delivered my new Canon efs 60mm macro lens. Excitement ensued!
My primary lens to date has been a Canon efs 15-85mm. It’s an excellent all-around lens, and it even holdsitsown as a macro lens. But I’m already in love with the 60mm. It’s a true 1:1 macro lens that’s small and light, meaning I can carry it around easily (335g compared to the 625g Canon 100mm L). One complaint some people have is that the working distance at 1:1 magnification is only a few inches from the front of the lens, but since I do primarily plant and lichen work I don’t mind. The Digital Picture has a good review of the lens here.
Of course I just had to try out the new lens as soon as I got it. Looking around the house for items to photograph revealed one very cute and furry critter sitting next to the window.
Sniff: A closeup of Lucca's cute "old rose" colored nose.
The light was fairly diffuse room lighting, but the lens was capably able to handle it opened up nice and wide.
Yes, closeup pictures of cat eyes are a cliche, but how could I resist taking a picture of Lucca's green eyes with my new macro lens?
And, of course, it was fun to play with selective focus.
I love what happens at f2.8. This picture gives me a feeling of fear: it's like a giant cat is suddenly so close that your eyes haven't had time to focus on the iris yet.
After my fifteen minute, hand-held shoot with only sunny-window-enhanced room lighting, I’m very impressed. The lens is light, quick to focus, and sharp. I can’t wait to use it more.
Gourmet food trucks are all the rage right now in Southern California. Luckily for me, there’s a gathering of them every Thursday from 11-2pm at the Orange County Fairgrounds, which is just a short walk from my office at OCC. And there are other meetups nearby as well: SoCo Collection has food trucks Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturday at lunch and Fridays for dinner.
A colorful menu for colorful food that's different from your typical food truck sliders and quesadillas. I got there too late to enjoy their breakfast fare (that whole waking up early thing is hard).
Many trucks focus on meat, meat, and more meat, possibly with fries on the side. While this is delicious and all, there’s a decided lack of non-potato vegetables and non-meaty entrees. Don’t get me wrong; Louks has their delicious felafel gyro, Chomp Chomp has a great tofu burger, Flying Pig has their crunchy tofu bun, Crepes Bonaparte has a variety of non-meat fillings, Spud Runners has excellent grilled cheese sandwiches, and Chunk ‘n Chip’s ice cream sandwiches are to die for, but my favorite truck has to be Seabirds.
At Seabirds, their specialty is fresh and flavorful vegan burritos, tacos, burgers, soups and more. But don’t let the vegan designation scare you away: their food is delicious.
You know you want to try some of Seabirds's Jerk Jackfruit Tacos 🙂 They take jackfruit, process it so that it's somewhat meat-like in texture, and then coat it in Jamaican Jerk spices; it's delicious topped with salsa in a fresh corn tortilla.
They do wonderful things with jackfruit; the taco above is probably my favorite menu item. Another fan favorite is their beer-battered avocado tacos:
I’ve already posted about Michelle’s and my entries into the Orange County fair, which I visited about a week and a half ago. But after checking out our entries to see how we did, I had a whole afternoon free to spend at the fair. So, of course, I took pictures.
The ferris wheel was just gorgeous in the late afternoon light:
The Orange County Fairgrounds RCS ferris wheel, seen at the 2011 Orange County Fair. The cars are numbered, and labeled with "La Grande Wheel."
And an ox with a wooden yoke was being walked around, and didn’t mind a closeup:
A black and white ox at the 2011 Orange County Fair, with a wood yoke to pull a cart.
And this ride looked terrifying to me, but most of the people on it seemed to be having great fun:
Cats are carnivores: their skull, jaws, and teeth all cry out “I’m a hunter. I eat things like you (but smaller) for breakfast.” Yet cats in both the wild and captivity consume grass voluntarily.
A good friend bought our cats some wheat grass as a welcome-home-from-the-shelter present when we adopted them, and both enjoyed nibbling on it. Unfortunately, though, we recently learned that one of our cats has a wheat allergy, and the vet wasn’t sure if the allergens being tested for were in the grain or the leaves. So, we stopped buying wheat grass for them.
But wheat isn’t the only grass out there. In fact, Wikipedia reports that oats are often called “cat grass”. So, we ordered some tack oats from Johnny’s Selected Seeds and planted it last week. Both Lucca and Kira have been eying it through the window as it grew, and today we brought the pot in for them to eat (it took about a week to go from seed to cat-ready size).
Within a few minutes both kitties were investigating:
Lucca sniffs a pot filled with newly germinated (and nibbled on) oat grass (tack oats; Avena sativa).
I’m not the only person I know who entered the fair this year: Michelle also entered. She’s not a photographer; she’s a crafter, and this year she decided to enter a project into the Recycled Products Paper Crafts division.
Now, I may be biased, but her project is just awesome. She saved up security envelopes we’d received in the mail, precisely cut out 4″ squares of paper from un-damaged portions of the envelopes, and then folded these recycled-security-envelope-origami-paper pieces into a kusudama, or ball origami.
A still life detailing how Michelle's recycled security envelope kusudama (ball origami) was made. In this picture the project itself is only half finished, with two additional flowers (each consisting of five individual squares of cut out security envelope) next to it. One flower is facing away from the camera, so you can see the USPS bar code from the front of the envelope its segments were cut from. Different sizes of individual squares of paper are shown below the project.
Each individual flower consists of five segments that each started as a 4″ square of paper cut out of the same pattern security envelope. These five segments were folded individually, and then glued together into a flower. The entire project is made from 12 of these flowers glued together, and then hung from leftover embroidery floss from an old cross-stitch project. This picture shows how it’s displayed at the fair:
Michelle's recycled security envelope kusudama (ball origami) displayed at the 2011 Orange County Fair.
Unlike with my photography entry, Michelle hadn’t received any e-mails inviting her to an award ceremony before my visit to the fair on Wednesday. So, it was with much excitement that I searched out her project in the craft exhibits, and saw this:
Michelle won first place at the 2011 OC Fair for a kusudama (ball origami) project that she made from recycled security envelopes!
Congratulations, Michelle!
I, of course, took a ton of pictures. During this process a few groups of people stopped by to look at the project. All of them looked at it initially, thought the overall pattern was pretty, and started talking to each other about it (while I grinned happily inside). Then they started looking closer, read the description, realized it was made from security envelopes, and started to inquire about how Michelle must have done it. It was at that point that I had great pleasure to introduce myself and explain how it was made. It was a great afternoon, and a pleasure to meet so many friendly folks who think Michelle is as awesome as I do.
Orange County Fair: The Orange County Fair runs from July 15 to August 14 at the county fairgrounds in Costa Mesa, CA; they conveniently have a directions page here. Since I can just park on OCC’s campus and walk to the fair, I don’t know what the parking situation is like, sorry.
I entered a few pictures into the 2011 Orange County Fair’s juried photography competition, and was ecstatic when I heard that two pictures I’d taken of a flowering octopus agave (Agave vilmoriniana) had made it through the screening.
Greg, of Alpenglow Images, had alerted me to the presence of the agave on OCC’s campus, and the first picture came from a series I took with him back in March just after sunrise on a rainy morning (my Agave and Aloe Inflorescences gallery). At the time, the agave’s inflorescence was still growing, and the flowers were only buds protected by long spines:
The Future. Closeup of flower buds on the Agave vilmoriniana inflorescence.
The second picture was taken about a month later (my Flowering Agave gallery), when the inflorescence was fully in bloom:
A flowering Agave on Orange Coast College's campus strives for the attention of pollinators (and photographers).
I printed the pictures up, delivered them on the appropriate day, and heard nothing. My primary goal for this endeavor had been to just get my pictures through the pre-screening, which I’d heard wasn’t easy1, so my only remaining goal was just to see them hanging on the wall.
I’d been planning to head to the fair Wednesday (for their free admission with donation), but then just before I headed out the door I opened up my e-mail to find an invitation to the OC Fair awards ceremony! It was thus with much excitement and anticipation that I arrived at the photography exhibit, and navigated my way through the many beautiful images2 to the amateur plant category:
Approximately a quarter of the pictures in the amateur color prints of plants category at the 2011 Orange County Fair. There were many gorgeous entries.
A quick look near my image resulted in pure happiness:
Me with my winning entry at the 2011 Orange County Fair. The first place blue ribbon is so pretty! Many thanks to Nafis, who kindly took this picture of me.
I won first place in the amateur plants color category!
It was a great start to the day, which I topped off with a deep fried Snickers, the absolute best way to eat a Snickers ever.
Many thanks to the judges!
Next up: Michelle entered a project into the recycled materials division, and I had an excuse (of the blue ribbon kind!) to take lots of pictures of that as well.
1 And what I heard was accurate: of the 3,774 entries into the amateur photography division this year, only 774 were accepted (a 20.5% acceptance rate).
2 The overall quality of the images this year was amazingly high; I found many of the “amateur” prints to be equal to or better than many pro images I’ve seen. There were hundreds of images on display, and the vast majority of them were absolutely excellent. If you’re looking for a fun way to see a wide diversity of great photography, I highly recommend heading to the OC Fair this year.
Orange County Fair: The Orange County Fair runs from July 15 to August 14 at the county fairgrounds in Costa Mesa, CA; they conveniently have a directions page here. Since I can just park on OCC’s campus and walk to the fair, I don’t know what the parking situation is like, sorry.
A friend of ours recently started making chain mail. He’s weaving a shirt out of aluminum rings in a European 6 in 1 pattern. It’s gorgeous stuff:
Looking straight down a sheet of European 6 in 1 chain mail.
After talking with him, we realized that making maille is not nearly as difficult as it seems like it should be. Pre-cut rings are available online, and the only equipment required is two pairs of pliers. Here’s our friend’s workspace:
I’ve started volunteering with the Newport Beach Police Department’sAnimal Control Unit to take pictures of their dogs and cats so they can add pictures to their Petfinder website. Last week was my first session with them, and I had a great time photographing about 20 animals in one afternoon.
First up were the dogs. Many of them were super-exited to be let out for a photography session, and thus just a smidgen hyper. But this white husky was downright calm:
A white female siberian husky shakes the hand of an Orange County Humane Society worker.
And lots of the dogs had perfect “adopt me” expressions
A male brown bicolor American pit bull terrier. Beauty, a black female pit bull terrier.
There was also a regal chihuahua, and a Pug who was just adorable:
Newport Back Bay is a relatively unknown1 jewel of coastal Orange County. At only a few miles long and half a mile wide at most, this estuary is relatively small. It’s also packed in between Newport Beach mansions houses, some of which overlook the wetlands from bluffs that line it. However, there is no major development inside the majority of the back bay, which is home to plants, birds, kayakers, and lots of other wildlife.
Looking towards the eastern bluffs from a roadside stop on Back Bay Drive in Newport Back Bay.
I’ve loved going to Newport Back Bay for years. It’s a great place to bike or jog, as there’s a paved trail looping around it2, and it’s a good place to go for bird watching (though I think Bolsa Chica is generally preferred by bird photographers). What’s neat about this area is that one moment you’re driving through fully developed Newport Beach and Irvine (Fashion Island Shopping Center and UC Irvine are only minutes away), and then the next you’re walking, biking, or driving along a one-lane road that meanders along the side of a beautiful coastal wetlands.
A few nights ago I went there to watch the sunset and experiment with some post-sunset techniques. The sunset was gorgeous:
Takoyaki are a delicious treat: they’re a ball of savory fried dough with a custardy interior filled with bits of onions, peppers, and a chunk of meaty octopus. They’re often served covered in a slightly sweet sauce and topped with shaved bonito (dried fish).
Takoyaki on display in a box
I was introduced to Takoyaki by watching them being made on Dotch, a Japanese cooking show. I’ve since gotten to eat them at a couple of local Japanese restaurants (most notably Kohryu, my favorite ramen place), but had never seen them made in person.
Then, a few weeks ago, I went to a Japanese food festival at Mitsuwa Marketplace to be greeted by this happy sight just inside the entrance:
