D7000 Time!

So, I am currently broke BUT I have a new D7000 and it is totally worth the penny-pinching I'm going to have to do for awhile =)

I realize that it has been a long long time since I've posted but I thought that it'd be better to wait to post good news along with the bad and the mundane.

The last month has been pretty hectic. Teaching can be both extremely rewarding and mind-numbingly painful  all at the same time. Whoever thinks that teaching is an easy job and that they can just figure it out through sheer guesswork should go and teach a class of only 9 right before winter break.... Children turn into little hyper hellions with no manners and a lot of verbal assault. Also, I'm just going to put this out there but kids that are 2 1/2 have no place in a classroom. When they cannot yet grasp a pencil and when bowel control is completely lacking, that is the time to keep them at home taped to a toilet. This is not the time to put them with other little kids where everyone is surprised by the eruption of stink that heralds a brown gift.

I have had some success though. A little boy who could not for the life of him focus on writing a single word, let alone a sentence can now sit largely unsupervised and write and illustrate an entire short story! I've realized the trick is bribery. Every kid has his/her price and it's only a matter of time before you figure it out. His was drawing. I promised him that if he wrote five good sentences, then he could draw for two minutes, et voila! Also, a little precocious genius three year old has ceased to be as frustratingly aggravating and stubborn as she used to be! She will now go almost the entire hour without saying, "no, I will not read" once and she only halfheartedly protests, "I have a cough, I have hiccups, I'm too tired!" I definitely put these in the win pile.

Now onto the truly exciting part: I have the new D7000 and it is wonderful! I love my gift of a D5000 but the D7000 has an auto-focus motor inside of it (which is so nice because it auto-focuses with my 50mm which is a pain to focus manually!). Before I purchased it, I had been worried about all these complaints that people seemed to be having but after reading Ken Rockwell's review, I put my doubts aside and it has been glorious.

I do not have any hot pixels (shiny lights that should not be in a shot) and non of my pictures are soft (unless I made a mistake). It's really solid too! I have a sizable bruise on my head because I accidentally whacked myself with it when I was taking it out of the case... It's nice having the ISO and the WB (white balance) buttons right on the outside.

Also, I just approved a comment on one of my earliest posts which brought to my attention just how very wrong and just how little I knew about cameras when I started! As a thank you and an "I'm sorry," here is the correct info:

Whenever there is a lot of light and you are manually adjusting the ISO, the ISO number should be low around 200-250 (even lower if you like). The darker a scene or area becomes, the more ISO you will have to use in order to make it lighter for your photo. If you use flash, adjust the ISO accordingly and shift it down again. When you start hitting a high ISO (past 2000-2500 and depending on the camera, maybe even higher!), you'll have a problem with noise. Noise is the grainy, kind of pixelated look that appears in the photo. If there is not much noise, then it is usually in the darker areas of the photo. If there is a lot of noise, then you can see it across the entire photo. My D5000 would have the strangest noise because I would take multiple shots under the same lighting, same ISO, same white balance but some photos would be really noisy while others were completely fine. I'm having some internet problems at the moment so I can't post examples but as soon as it's fixed, they'll be a-coming!

The D7000 has really smooth pictures but the one issue is that it forces me to step up my game! It is just such a powerful camera that if a lens isn't great or if I don't properly set up my camera, then the photos will accordingly not look the best. But if I'm able to do everything correctly, the photos are absolutely beautiful! I'm looking into getting a 35mm lens and a macro as well (probably the 105mm) but those will have to wait.

I love my job but it doesn't leave much time for photography (or blogging!) so I'm making a preemptive resolution to make more opportunities to post and to work on my photography website:

ceciliahphotography.com *no longer up*

Check it out if you haven't! Also, I'll be going to Tibet for New Years, so I'll hopefully get some spectacular shots in there!

Hope you enjoyed this =)

Picture Time: Streets of Hong Kong

Since my last post was a ton of writing, here are some photos to make up for it:

These are just a series of photos that I took around the city! I hope you enjoy them =)

Moving to Hong Kong Advice

I've traveled around the world since I was born. Living in different countries and being surrounded by people who don't speak English doesn't phase me in the least.

Or, so I thought until I moved to Hong Kong. Yes, I speak Cantonese and people here speak English fairly well so that hasn't been an issue. What has been the problem is that I never realized just how soft, all-encompassing, and secure the State Department bubble was. Sure, there's only so much you can escape your environment, even if you are spoiled with drivers and nice cars but not being confronted with poverty isn't the safety bubble I'm talking about.

Instead, it's the little daily details like finding housing, getting an ID card, figuring out water, gas and electricity stuff, bank account issues, whether or not ATMs are going to charge you out the @$$, and making sure you have a means of procuring large sums of money to cover you because those same ATMs have withdrawal limits and people won't accept foreign checks.

It has been a hellish experience alleviated slightly by the fact that I have family here. When you have a company or the State Department to rely on, housing is provided, they pick you up from the airport, there's a host family to welcome you, all of the rent details are taken care of, and you can easily withdraw money through the company that you work for or through the SD because they will accept American checks.

This is how I've managed to survive and find a wonderful place to live and work:

1. USE A REAL ESTATE AGENT!! I can't stress this enough! I know it seems like it's a great idea to try to find housing for yourself because then you won't have to pay the commission fee (half of one month's rent), but trust me, spare yourself the headache and find yourself a good real estate agent. I spent hours upon hours of my time poring over ads (almost got scammed too!) and it ended up coming up with nothing. Apartments are snapped up too fast in Hong Kong for you to try to find one yourself. Go to the smaller agencies because they tend to not be so narrow-minded in what you can find for your price range and the time of stay. For example, I will only be in Hong Kong for 8 months (the minimum lease period here is supposed to be one year) and my budget was 10,000hk which is apparently too low for a decent place unless you decide to live in a small studio apartment. I went to a ton of the most well known companies, who had rude and snooty agents who just shook their heads and said it couldn't be done. Well I am currently living in a two room apartment with a large kitchen, sizable bathroom, and even a bedroom that can convert into a study. If you are staying for a short amount of time in Hong Kong, try out the serviced apartments but if it's less than a year but more than 6 months, try out the smaller real estate agents.

2. Open up a bank account immediately and find a way to wire money over. The issue that I ran into here was that I had the funds for a down payment on the apartment but no feasible way to access it. In order to actually sign a contract on an apartment here, you have to have the first months rent plus about 20,000hk as a safety deposit (this is in the ballpark of $3000 ish). They don't accept American checks here and ATMs won't let you withdraw that amount. So, either find a very international bank which you can easily access or open up a bank account with a local bank and find a way to transfer the money so you can write a check.

3. Start the process for your Hong Kong ID ASAP. It's needed for EVERYTHING around here and while you can get away with using your passport for a short period of time, try to finish the paperwork for the ID card within a couple of days of your arrival because it takes a couple of weeks before it's ready.

4. The other benefit to a real estate agent, especially a good one, is that she will be able to set up your electricity, water, and gas AND have them send the bill to you in English. She will also be able to help you set up internet if the apartment you find doesn't already have it.

5. Finally, as for job stuff, I have gotten extraordinarily lucky. Exhausted from sending out inquiries on apartments (I hadn't found on yet), I decided to go on to the South China Morning Post to see the job ads. There were a few that caught my eye (all teaching English) and so I sent off my resume, not really expecting anything. Well, this all happened on a Saturday. On Sunday, the real estate agent found me my home. On Monday, I get a call from one of the companies that I had emailed and she asked me in for an interview that day. I jumped out of bed and showered and changed, I rushed over and then, after a 20 minute interview, I was offered a job on the spot! It's as an English tutor/instructor in a private company here and it's been a great first real person job so far.

That's about it on my end for now! I hope that, should you ever choose to move to Hong Kong, my experiences will give you an idea of what it's like.

Hong Kong: Scams, Action Movies and Realtors

So I've been remiss in my entries and I feel guilty. So here's an update of my dealings of late:
1. I'm in Hong Kong

2. I have no job

3. I have no permanent place to live yet

4. Due to my excessive use of lightroom and photoshop, most of what I see appears slightly washed out...

5. I am inundated with realtors

6. I haven't joined a gym but the sheer amount of walking that I do makes up for that in spades

7. I'm realizing just how bad my Cantonese has become

8. Rain boots are surprisingly warm on the inside and unfortunately retain water if water makes its way inside

9. Watched the Expendables and realized how much I miss 80s/90s action movies and their stars

10. I have been delicately navigating through the tangled webs of familial responsibility

11. I have been making friends with the local butchers in order to better photograph their ghastly wares

That's about it... the vast vast VAST majority of my time has been concerned with the whole apartment thing. I never want to do this again, little did I know just how spoiled I had been when I was younger with the U.S. Embassy finding me housing. I've thus far encountered one scam (didn't fall for it though! The woman was allegedly a Swedish nurse who lives in Spain and is engaged, about to be married, and doesn't care about the rent her deceased father's apartment would generate... I think not). A serviced apartment (hotel-like existence with furnishings and cleaning service) seems like the best bet but I just can't let go of the idea of a relatively nice kitchen in which I can help save even more money by cooking.

Other than that, I went to the Peak the other night so I'll leave you with some pretty pictures of Hong Kong's nightscape!

This last one was just to freak you out! Can you figure out what it is? Told you some of my stuff was morbid...
Write back soon-ish!

Souped Up Blog!

Hello hello! This is going to be a short post but I just wanted to give a quick update. As I'm sure is blatantly obvious, I've decided to beautify my blog. The reason for this is that I am officially moving to Hong Kong on August 17th, and am currently looking for a job. Not so fun to be in Hong Kong, one of the most expensive cities in the world, without one of those... And because my current employment of choice would be a professional photographer, I am determined to put my best electronic  foot forward. I am still in the process of creating an actually gallery site in order to showcase my work, but in the meantime, I can at least work on this. If any one of my heretofore unknown readers cares to comment, your opinions would be greatly appreciated!

I leave you with two pretty pictures

Telephoto Time: Nikon 55-200mm

So I've once again lapsed in my output of blog posts... But now my internship is over for all intents and purposes (is it bad that I wanted to write all intensive purposes?) and all I have is one more session of housekeeping, so hopefully I'll be able to post a bit more often... Well, I promised a review of my 55-200mm zoom and here it is! 

I'll be completely honest, I was a little disappointed with it. It's autofocus is a bit slow and takes awhile to figure out what you want. It can be blurry when hand held unless you take extra care to keep completely still. Also, important to keep in mind is that you have to be at least 2 or 3 ft away from the subject for it to work... I kept making the mistake of stepping up really close to whatever I was trying to photograph and becoming extremely frustrated that it wouldn't take the picture! With that said, when it does work, it works very well. The pictures are crisp and the zoom is GREAT! You probably wouldn't need to go to a much higher-end mm, and for the price of $179, I'm not really complaining. Here are some shots I took with it when out by the lake!

These dragonflies were extremely good-natured and didn't mind a strange girl trying to get closer to them. This was the huge benefit of this lens. I realized my issue was that I was trying to use the lens as a macro-lens (a lens which can really magnify the subject from close up) and that instead, I should have focused on the fact that this is a really good zoom and can get close to subjects that might be a bit more antsy were I try to get right next to them. 

I think I would recommend this lens with the caveat that you shouldn't expect too much from it. It thrives best in the outdoors and can get some terrific action shots. 

I just got a wide-angle, a sigma 11-20mm lens so I'll put that up next! Hope you enjoyed the update =)

Lens Playtime: Pro-Optic 8mm Fish-Eye Lens

I hope I'm keeping you on your toes about when I'm going to post next. Now that I've got some new lenses, I figure that I might as well demonstrate what they can do! As a refresher, I have purchased a refurbished Nikon 55-200mm 1.4-5.6 f and a Pro-Optic 8mm fish eye lens (I also picked up a new carrying pack as well as a flash!).

I might as well start with the fish eye because it's so much fun! I have to admit when I first received it, I was a tad bit disappointed... I forgot that it only works on manual setting with my D5000 DX camera (I've heard that it works fine with the full-frame FX cameras like the D700). I was panicking because with every single setting, e.g. S (shutter priority), A (aperture priority), the no flash, the auto, etc, my very intelligent and fickle machine calmly informed me that there was no lens attached to its body. It was blinking at me that the very real and tangible lens that was supposedly locked in place was really a figment of my foolish imagination. Needless to say, I was disconcerted. However, in my frantic switching of settings, I finally saw that when it was on the M (complete manual) the coded message ceased its relentless blinking. Finally I was able to snap a photo! Unfortunately, I was unaware that at night, the interior of the apartment resembles a dark cave to the lens. No matter how much I fiddled with increasing the ISO and the exposure compensation, the camera obstinately refused to lighten the scene. This is the second problem with the fish eye. In my shame as a failed photographer, I deleted the incriminating dark photos so I am unable to present them for your viewing pleasure.

After this horrendous night, I was almost positive that I had just thrown $289 right down the toilet and that the only thing to do was to return the confounded object from Hades. However, I decided to give the beast a second chance (luckily for me) and try again in the daylight. IT. IS AMAZING. Despite its limitations, it is so much fun and without anything to distort it in the foreground, it works more as a ridiculously awesome wide angle. I've found that at times I actually have to work at distorting the world! Here are some takes from the camera on my wilderness romp today.

You can actually adjust the f-stops and the amount of light entering the photo with a handy little adjustment ring. Look at the difference between the picture above and the one below:

This was actually really difficult to get because it wouldn't focus and even though I was literally standing about 6 inches from the flowers, this was the view through the lens

The car shot worked a little better but there's ghosting in this shot and I heard that was a problem with this lens so I had to be very careful whenever the sun was around (which was a lot of the time, the way I found around it is just to keep aiming down).

Again, difficult to focus on the foreground when it's too close...

Doesn't the pond look a little like the actual lens?

Since it's after midnight and I have to get up early (well for me at least) tomorrow morning to drive to DC for father's day, I'll just finish up my telephoto 55-200mm tomorrow evening!