Last week, our friend cooked some food and let us tasted them. We chat while we were eating, we talked about our senses. And a topic rose, “Sometimes, we actually eat with our eyes, ears and nose”. Can you believe it?

Why we said that we use our eyes to eat? It is because sometimes we can get bloated by just looking at the “ugly” food. We won’t feel that we want to eat the food because of its colour, shape or its outlook. Our minds have been fed with the food through our eyes and we chose not to continue. In the opposite way, a food in good shape can attract people to try them, it can be said that our eye has tasted the food before our mouths and tongues taste them.

We will not eat the food if we heard a negative comment on a certain food. For example, if we hear others said that the food is disgusting, or the food can cause you sickness or the food is prepared in an unhygienic way etc. The food have been eaten by our ears before they can reach our mouths.

For me, if I smell strange smell, I will give up the food immediately. I have a sensitive nose. Years ago, when I was a kid, my parents used a box that was previously used to store soap to store the rice. I can smell the soap in the rice and I am the only one who complaint. My parents, brothers and sisters did not sense it and did not believe it until a week later after the smell got stronger. I ate only a small portion every day because the smell made me dizzy and wanted to vomit. Luckily, they believed what I said at last.

It is a need for our eyes, ears and noses to try the food first before we actually put them in our mouth. Otherwise many unnecessary things will happen such as food poisoning. Some people would not even care about what they put into their own mouth. It would be dangerous. So do not be stingy to let our senses taste the food before we eat them. Another word, we should think carefully before we eat anything, as what a famous proverb in Chinese that sounds like this, “Sickness reaches us by our mouth, and troubles come out from our mouth.” (in Mandarin: Bing4Chong2Kou3Ru4, Huo4Chong2Kou3Chu1).

There was water in the drain, but I had used my body to create a shadow to block the light from the sky to reflect on the water surface. I told myself, if I can use a polarizing (PL) filter, I do not have to do this. I took this picture vertically looking down into the drain which again the camera almost touched the water in the drain. The stones were actually in the water, did you notice it? Can you prove it from the picture?

Again, these stone were extremely small; some are less than 1 mm. You have to imagine that the actual sizes of the stones are smaller than what you now see on the monitor. This is the effect of the macro mode in my camera.

Some of the stones are orange in colour, but some are green (which actually was the moss grown on the stones). Some are big, some are small. They are arranged in random ways and having random sizes and shapes creating different patterns.

Most of the time, we ignore small stuffs around us. Should we do that?

I remember a story, once upon a time there was a higher officer (in older days, he was called “Da4Guan1” in China) visited his subordinate’s home. The higher officer found that his subordinate’s home was in a mess, dirty and has never been cleaned. He asked what the reason was; his subordinate said that he was always too busy to clean his house. The higher officer immediately admonished him to change his attitude. The higher officer said, “If you cannot even manage your own home, how are you going to manage the whole village?”

You may say that we should not waste time on non important small stuffs. But if I did not notice small things in the nature, I won’t appreciate the great Mother Nature that allow me to take so much photos. From here I have learned to appreciate what the Mother Nature has given us.

Sometimes, delegation is a good idea instead of ignoring something.

Most of the time, we do not notice even that we are breathing and having heartbeats, because we delegate it to our lung and heart. But when we have time and sit quietly and try to notice them, it is a good time to discover more about our own body and mind.

As you can see, on the right panel of ColinJong.com, we have added some widgets and icons there. We have listed this blog in some of the directories. Frankly speaking we wish to attract more traffic, as you may know that this is still a low traffic blog.

The blogged.com rated us 8.0 which gives us great encouragement and motivation to continue writing and posting. I found that one of the most popular bloggers in Kuching has lower rating than colinjong.com. :p They rated us based their first impression, update frequency, design layout and content relevance. Of course we are not the best yet, but we will try to improve the quality of this blog. Please rate us at the blogged.com.

We have also added a map, so that we can know where our visitors come from. However it is reset few times a day, and sometimes it only shows a few visitors on the map. From this service we can also know how many concurrent visitors visit our website at the same time.

We would be even happier, encouraged and motivated if there is an increase in our traffic. :p Don’t forget to come back and visit colinjong.com. Your comments are most welcome.

Recently I keep on searching for damselflies to recall my old memories. She really comes to us. I did not expect that she would appear in front of our house because there is no drain or water at all, but she did it. She dropped by at on of the slippers. Same as the damselfly we found in the park, she was shy.

I keep on thinking why she stopped there where she might face the risk of getting lost or dehydration. I hope that she could have found a place that is more suitable for her. I managed to take few shots before she stopped at the wall. I kept on shooting and she kept flying away, further and further away until she disappeared from one of the corner of our house. No, she did not disappear, but she hid herself at the corner that blocked my sight. I did not do anything; just wish her all the best. And I stopped shooting.

Recently Kuching rains quite often. There is not more than 3 sunny days out of 10 days. Everyday is either cloudy or raining, most of the time is cloudy or the sky looks grey in colour. May be the damselfly feel more comfortable to stay at a dry place because it was too moisture out there. Just a guess.

Or she wanted to become my model. She wanted to show off her beautiful clothes in green and red colours and her amazing dance. Could she read my mind that I have been searching for damselflies?

Our mind can attract things to us. Good or bad. Let us practice to use our mindset to attract good things for us and our surroundings. We should avoid having negative thinking. The damselfly proved it, and I believe it.

I did not notice the texture on the snail shell until I loaded the photo into my PC.  Although this snail is not my favorite species, but I was surprised as its texture still can clearly be seen.  My favorite is the larger snail with prettier pattern on its shell.  I have learned a lesson that we cannot look down at normal things or things that are not our favorite.

I found this snail in the drain besides our garden.  The diameter of its shell is about 2cm.  I had to use macro mode to take these shots, the distance between camera lenses and snail was less then 7cm.  I imagined if I were using a DSLR, I would not be able to take this picture, because the camera is too big, the drain is too small and the snail was crawling on the side of the drain.  Worst if the DSLR does not have the live view feature and I would have to put my head into the drain to look through the view finder.  I have learned another lesson, if I have an SLR in the future; I will still bring a SemiPro camera along, just in case it may be needed where SLR is not possible.

The second picture is the angle where an SLR can do.  Shoot it above the drain and look down through the lenses vertically.

The snail had a slow motion that allowed me to take its picture clearly.  But here comes the focus problem.  I used the largest aperture and the nearest distance which caused the depth of field less than 1cm.  I have demonstrated it in one of the entries before.  The eyes of the snail are in focus but the head is not sharp.  Look at the first picture above and you will know.  Luckily in this position the shell pattern and the eyes are sharp except the head. 

I still remember an expert answer my question 10 years ago when I attended a photography workshop.  I asked one of the speakers how we should focus on an object if we cannot make the whole thing sharp.  He said that just to focus on the eyes of the object.  I remember it until now and every time I try to applied this theory.  However, if the snail eyes were sharp but not the shell pattern, I do not think that the outcome is nicer than the first picture above.  I feel that I was lucky because the snail was crawling in a position where it showed both its shell and eyes at a same distance to my camera lenses.

Another question comes to my mind.  We can use software to apply HDR for exposure, how about focusing?  Nowadays new intelligent cameras come with multiple face detection for the focusing; I have not came across with these cameras so far therefore I am still curious whether the camera use software to do a focusing HDR or it just increase the depth of field.

Is Okay if you do not understand what I say.  Think of this question.  Is it possible to focus on the nearest objects AND furthest object but let the object between in the middle blur?  It is possible using focus bracketing when taking the photo and merge them in HDR software.  But I do not think that a camera can do it on its own.  Sorry, because I am not quite sure how the multiple face detection works.

About HDR

I am also new to HDR, but if you have never come across to this word, let me explain.  It stands for High Dynamic Range.  Sometimes if you take a picture, either the sky is over-exposed or the foreground is under-exposed.  Exposure HRD is a way to make the photo perfect where it merges same photos but with different exposures (bracketing) into the perfect picture.  However it usually looks fakes.

There is another jargon you may need to know.  What is bracketing?  Exposure Bracketing is to take multiple pictures for a single shot where the exposure is in a range for example from -3 to +3 EV (exposure value) for +1 step each.  You will have 7 same pictures but each has different exposure.  It can be done manually or automatically by the camera that have bracketing feature.  Here I use exposure bracketing as an example.  There are also White Balance Bracketing, ISO bracketing and Focus bracketing.

This is another technical post.  Hope you are not bored.  I can write quite long if I talk about photography.