( photo things + living life)

Thursday, June 24, 2004

Nob Hill Dawn

6:00am... San Francisco... I don't know why, but I wake up. My couple is still sleeping... I go to the window of our hotel, and I'm amazed with the view. I put some music with my headphones (if I remember well, it was Largo by Brad Meldhau), take tripod and camera, and shoot. While taking photographs he awakes (I'm not so quiet :P) and we both see hand by hand one of the most beautiful cityscapes I've seen in my whole life. The rest.... is another story.

Monday, June 21, 2004

On the Threshold to Liberty...

In our personal search for liberty there are always walls we must jump... I just wanted to play with lines, DOF and my shadow. I pushed the color limits in PS. This is just a homage for the wonderful musician Mark Isham.

Polis - Online Exhibition

I've prepared an online exhibition under the theme Polis, Our Cities. I did it for a submission in a Photography Magazine. I don't know if they will include my photographs or not, but I had a good time creating it. Click on the image to go to Exhibition Web Site. Thanks for your time, and, please, write your comments and opinions in this post.

Wednesday, June 16, 2004

The Other Side

A try in the low key (or low light) format. Originally taken in a railway station in Vienna I found the elements in the photograph attracting so I shot. Then I added some multilayered colour effects, some new lighting conditions and digital vignetting (which I really love) to better match the effect.

Tuesday, June 15, 2004

Rain Drive

Yesterday I had a bad day. I remembered this shot of some weeks ago, before good weather arrive Madrid. So, I find it a very visual expression of my yesterday mood.

Monday, June 14, 2004

MovieWorld Madrid Self Portrait

This is one comes from Movie World Madrid Theme Park. The colour combination and the idea of a distorted mirrored reality (the one you perceive in the imaginary worlds of a theme park) combined to take this shot.

Friday, June 11, 2004

Recycling...

Taken in the Forum 2004, this one comes from an exhibition explaining how we can recycle things, and the benefits for our world. Let's recycle!.

Monday, June 07, 2004

Sky #2

A new shot taken last year with my DSC-U10 camera. In the last times I've found Neat Image very useful to clean up noise and JPEG artifacts and give my shots this wonderful look. Don't you think this photograph seems to be taken with a much more expensive camera?. I would like to test 2Mp DSC-U40 camera. It must be just great. If you have one of these, please share your comments with us :).

palmOne Zire 31 review


Hi everyone,

last week I had a problem with my Sony TJ-35 PDA... I lost it. It was a good machine and I've been using PDAs for more than 5 years now so I cannot live without one. Last friday I went to FNAC shop to buy a new one. I didn't want a new Sony handheld because Sony is going to close their Clié Handhelds line in less than a year and I didn't want to spend again lots of money, so I thought what I basically do with my handheld:

1. Save my account, credit card and other confidential information using an encrypted wallet application.
2. Take some notes using the Memo Pad application.
3. Read some ebooks.
4. Some ocasional playing, only puzzle or slow paced games.
5. Some MP3 playing.
6. From time to time have my bills, accounts, etc... organized.
7. Read news using AvantGo.

With this in mind and my two big constraints (no more Sony handhelds and not pay lots of money for a new replacement) I finally decided to buy the new Palm Zire 31 in spite of some bad reviews I read in 1src.com and other web sites. Those reviews complained basically about the bad quality of the screen in the Zire 31. After playing with it the whole weekend I'm more than happy of my new acquisition. These are my reasons,

1. Quality/Price ratio... price is REALLY low, build quality of this unit is superb, it's really fast, small, only problem being the 160x160 pixels screen. Not comparable with a new Hi-Res 320x320 screen buuut, continue reading...
2. It uses standard mini-usb connector to synch data. Some people complain about this but I find it really good, because it's a standard connector. Universal Connector used by other Palm Units to connect to their accesories (like keyboards) is no longer needed because this unit supports SDIO cards (for Wi-Fi connections, for example) and keyboards can be used using the infrarred port. PalmOne sells a really wonderful infrared keyboard for only 70€. Now if I forget my cable at home, I can connect in the office using any standard miniusb cable. Great!.
3. Battery life is simply amazing... I charged it last friday... I've been playing with the unit all weekend and battery indicator is still almost full. (Even playing some MP3s and ATRAC3 files).
4. It comes with the latest PalmOS release... great!. Now I can use categories for my appointments (so I don't need to use DateMate application for my birthday reminders anymore), standard Photos application comes in ROM (no more spaced needed in SplashPhoto), as well as RealOne Player (sound quality with a pair of Sony headphones is just fantastic!), I can place alarms for my tasks, etc... lots of improvements over the PIM applications that came with the Sony unit.
5. I can still play Bejeweled with the same speed than before. The 160x160 screen doesn't affect my playing. Astraware games work wonderfully with this unit (at least puzzle games... action games suffer some ghosting because of the STN screen).
6. I can still read my ebooks, read avantgo or use Plucker with all my RSS feeds without any problem. Reading experience is basically the same I had with Sony unit.

So, my conclusion is:

for those of you that only make standard use of a PDA thinking on a change ... put on your list of possibilities this new unit by PalmOne... it's a really small, lightweight, well built, full of possibilites and it's price is very very affordable!!!.

Thursday, June 03, 2004

Clouds Go By...

Taken last summer and forgotten.... Yesterday I was reviewing some photographs of my photo backup CDs... and I found this one... Amazingly it was taken with just a Sony DSC-U10, the first ultracompact camera from Sony, just 1.3Mp -enough for a 10x15 print-, and with almost no manual control over the shot... well!, some tricks could be applied in order to get the camera work the way you wanted. I've always liked this model. Superb lense quality, reeeeally fast startup time and shutter lag, plenty of space with just a 64Mb Memory Stick, and long battery life with two AAA batteries. Last year I used it almost whole vacations because of its size and fast response. No zoom can be used (about 40mm lense in 35mm eq.) so you must force your imagination to find good compositions for every situtation. Comments are welcomed!.