"May Books Be Always with You"

Nice talk!

Mosquita y Mari

A pretty good coming of age story. Though my own background had nothing in common with the two protagonists, some of the scenes felt like the director had read my teenage diary and stole a few pages.

The Fish Child

Years ago director Lucia Puenzo's debut, "XXY", made a strong impression on me. Raw, emotionally disturbing, it was a movie that kept me thinking for days. So when I noticed her new movie, "the Fish Child", I made a mental note to check it out (even though the movie's posters and trailers had the look of a badly executed lesbian porn). Last week I finally watched it on Netflix. I took me a while to recognize one of the main characters was played by the actress who also played Alex in "XXY". How she had grown. What a happy surprise!

The movie itself, however, was a bit of a let down. Though it's not the director's first movie, it felt more like a debut than "XXY". The story telling was less fluent. The "magic realism" often failed to translate (a surprise, since I always thought it would be easy to show magic realism in movies). Some characters didn't feel fully developed. However, even with all its flaws, there were still a few things I found interesting. 

One was the movie really captured the class differences between the two characters, the gap between the rich and the poor, the main stream (the Argentina) and the border (the Guayi). (The main/border theme also showed in "XXY", but felt much more poignant in "the Fish Child".) It was a constant theme in many South American movies, but it was the first time I finally "got" it. 

The coming of age of the character Lala was another theme I especially liked (I am a big sucker for coming of age movies, I sometimes wonder if it is because I have not grown out of it myself). In the beginning of the movie, we saw her escaped to Paraguay, after (spoiler alert) perhaps accidentally killing her father. At that time, she was just a spoiled teenager who had a crush. She was passive of her own fate. As her journey went, she went through a few transformations. Her decision to come back to Buenos Aries was the first one, a turning point. Then she cut her own hair, it was both an initiation ritual and a symbol that she had created her own identity. From now on we knew she would be the author of her own destiny, and we eagerly waited to see if it reached a happy ending. (You  would find it out in the end.) 

I had to watch "the Fish Child" a couple of times to piece together the whole story (probably not the best use of my time).  Though it was flawed, like "XXY", the movie kept me thinking (and even write this blog). And that, perhaps, is a quality worth seeing.      

This is when you know you have too many camera equipments

Live view is a god send for doing manual focusing, but it also consumes more electricity. After realizing how useful it could be, I decided to order an extra battery for my D800E. As usual I went to Amazon. To my surprise, the web page showed that I had bought an extra battery, last year, in July. Really? How come I didn't remember it. Where was it? I went through my camera bag, lo and behold, it was right there, in the compartment I put memory card and stuff. At this moment, I realized I had bought too many camera equipments, so much so that I didn't even remember them. I immediately decided no more photo purchase this year. It's time to take the camera out and shoot.

Under a Power Pylon

Some Photographic Fun (An Outing with a Fisheye and a 35mm Lenses)

Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.

The dynamic range of D800 is truly amazing.

My Zeiss 35mm f2 was my first Zeiss and one of my favorite.

Haven't been using the lens for a while, I almost forget how object can look floating with a f2 aperture.

After watching this very inspiring video on how to use the fish-eye lens as a creative tool, I dig out my fish eye lens (which had stayed in the closet collecting dusts for a while) and headed for the Stevens Creek trail. Lately I had been shooting with my cell phone a lot so it took me quite a while to get used to my D800E. I found live view was really a great help this time. I set everything to manual, turned on live view, did a few adjustments, then took the shot. It was way more easier than the shoot-and-adjust approach I was used to. How come I didn't try it earlier!

This is one of the reasons I like photography. No matter how long you have been doing it, there is always something new to discover, whether a new way to see things, or a new technique you can try (for example, I have been thinking about doing time lapse series for a long time). Like London, when one is tried of photography, one is tired of life.