I was lucky to see a lot of great live shows this year, and even luckier to be able to shoot most of them with my Nikon D5000. Although I am decidedly an amateur, I think I ended up with some pretty decent shots, so I decided to create a “best of” style compilation to wrap up a great 2011. Continue Reading…
I finally had a chance to pull together a full re-cap of my trip down to SXSW last week.
Check it out: SXSW 2011 Recap at Live Music Blog
I thought I’d post some photos from our fabulous vacation in Maui and Kauai…
Last week, I had a nice opportunity to test out my brand-new DSLR camera — a Nikon D5000 — in a more difficult setting: a Brothers Past concert at Brooklyn Bowl. Although I’m still getting the hang of the thing, I was able to grab a few decent shots.
If you want the full round-up of the show (with setlist and video), head on over to Live Music Blog. Otherwise, check out a few of my favorite shots below…
I’ve been toying around with a few image-editing programs. I just downloaded/installed GIMP (aka GNU Image Manipulation Program), which seems to be the closest open-source program you can get to Photoshop. It’s very cool and quite robust. I’m a total novice with this stuff, but I think I managed to put together a decent photo collage of some favorite (mainly) concert photos:
It’s just a draft so it’s a bit rough around the edges. But I think I kinda like it that way. In fact, I decided that this should be my new twitter background.
I still had a few fun food photos left on the camera from the end of the summer, so I thought I’d do one last summer photo round-up for the site. Yum:
Perfect Pastrami from Katz’s Deli
A Crab Boil in NYC?
Heirloom tomatoes w/basil (from Vermont):
Homemade pizza:
Southwestern Veggie Chili:
Linds and I finally went back to NYC mid-July for the full apartment search. As most people will say, the apt. search in NYC is a whole different beast than it is in most other major U.S. cities. We’ve dealt with searches in Boston, Chicago, etc… but we knew we really had to gear up for the worst when dealing with NYC.
Luckily, we did our research and really honed in on a couple of key areas during a separate trip where we basically walked half of the city (well, maybe only a quarter, but it sure felt like half on Sunday!). It may have been a bit excessive, but I am really glad we made the scouting trip. Upon our return to the city, we were able to focus our apt. hunt on just a few areas of Brooklyn, including Cobble Hill, Boerum Hill, and Park Slope.
I couldn’t get enough of the fresh salsa we made a few weeks back, so I went for round two. It’s such a simple recipe, but is worlds beyond anything you can buy in a store:
Ingredients:
Ripe tomatoes (I like plum tomatoes the best; they’re usually pretty cheap and don’t have tons of seeds/pulp)
Onion (I prefer vidalia; sweet and not too over-powering)
Fresh Cilantro (absolutely key; dried doesn’t even come close)
Jalanpeños (2 or 3 sliced/diced/de-seeded)
Fresh Lime juice (limes are cheap and c’mon, it’s not that hard to squeeze your own)
Salt to taste
Optional ingredients: fresh ground black pepper, cumin, and granulated garlic
(I like to add a few pinches of each of these)
I don’t think I’ve ever measured out anything for this recipe. I’d say you want about 2-1 ratio of tomatoes to onions. The cilantro and other ingredients really depend on your tastes. Do you want it hotter? Add more Jalanpeños or kick it up a notch with habañeros instead (you can also use cayenne pepper if you don’t have fresh peppers). Add salt and lime to taste, but keep in mind that it needs to sit a nice 15-20 minutes to let the flavors combine. Serve with your favorite tortilla chips.
This is great for Spring/Summer pot luck parties, and it goes perfectly with a light beer w/ a lime wedge. The time this takes to make is far outweighed by the impression it can make on your friends. Enjoy.
I am a bit of a foodie, so it’s natural that I’ve recently started taking a lot more photos of good grub. After uploading a few recent food photos from my digital camera, I realized I had a pretty decent archive of food pics already up on my flickr page. So, I compiled all my food photos into one flickr set and grabbed a few samples to post here. It feels a tad odd, as it’s kind of a way of fetishizing what one eats, but it’s also just kinda fun to capture good grub on camera. Check it out:
Okay, now I am officially hungry!
An old friend recently posted some photos on Facebook from our Camp Echo days that reminded me of all the photos I had but never took the time to scan in as digital prints. Although I “wasted” away a solid Saturday afternoon with the scanner and my flickr page, it was really fun to re-live some of those great summer moments. I especially liked digging back through the photos from my Sea Kayaking Trip in Alaska. It may not have cost as much as a KNOLs or Outward Bound trip, but it sure was just as a amazing.
Here are a few of my favs:
At one campsite, we found this enormous rock jutting out of the ground. My friend Andy and I took turns just settin’ on this thing and embracing the Alaskan summer. I think I may have even tried to write an essay about being on that rock because it was such a powerful natural setting…
Here’s the entire photo set.