Sosena and I went for our last shoot in the sneaker culture series and captured DJ Excel at his house in North Philly two weeks ago. Since I just bought two speedlite flashes I was eager to experiment with my new equipment. I have long been a fan of David Hobby, whose philosophy is to use small portables flashes. So inspired by his shots I set out to create some dramatic lighting with harsh shadows. I used two lights, one behind the subject to create a rim light around his head and separate him from the background, as well a light up and to the right of me on a light stand. With a snoot I’m able to tunnel the light of the second flash toward his head or upper part of his body. Perhaps I went a bit overboard with the lighting contrast but overall I’m pretty happy with the results. Special thanks to Sancha who let me use her as a model to calibrate my lighting.
While working at Willow Garage, Matt and I and some others pulled a prank on our good friend Sachin using Robopong (a machine that shoots ping pong balls) and our CKbot modules. In a nutshell, we created a hatch in the ceiling we could open and close remotely. Through this hatch we could fire ping pong balls at Sachin. Of course it’s all captured on tape for your entertainment. The video still needs some editing, mainly I still have to add some music before I upload it to our lab’s YouTube account but I thought I’d let out a sneak preview. Enjoy.
I’ve been helping my friend Sosena with her documentary on underground sneaker culture in Philadelphia by doing the photography for her. You can find more about her work here. I haven’t gotten to see the whole movie yet but I heard it’s awesome. See trailer on the right. My photos here. She’s had a couple of screenings, one of them at ubiq where it got rave reviews. I got to meet some pretty cool people that way with the funniest stories. People that own hundreds of pairs of sneakers and collect them in their basement, all in pristine condition wrapped up in boxes. I loved Brian’s stories who owns Sneakervilla and used to design at Puma. Vans made him a special edition pair to get married in. He has an even better story on how he coughed up the money for the ring. Read more about that here
Willow Garage provides us with free Odwalla juice. The drinks are all different flavors of fruits and vegetables. I like the carrot juice one but most people in the company find that one ‘nasty’. Actually, I think I like all the nasty ones. Anyways, we got CKbot to succesfully fetch us some Odwalla juice from the Willow Garage Odwalla fridge. We’re using 18 modules here. The whole operation is teleoperated. Note that the modules could barely open the fridge door, even with significant cheating. We had to prop the door open cause the vacuum in fridges makes it really hard to open.
So I was biking in San Fran the other night and realized I didn’t have a blinky light on me. The *ahem* responsible biker that I am I decided to ride on the sidewalk. Out of nowhere two rats ran right in front of me. I desperately tried to swerve but just couldn’t react fast enough and so I could not help but run over one of them. As I felt the little bones crunch underneath my tires I was both disgusted and horrified of what was happening. I turned around to check on my little hairy friend, and as I got to him I noticed he was still twitching. Not knowing how to save him, nor wanting to touch a rat for that matter I stood there awkwardly not knowing what to do. “What is the right thing to do here?” I thought to myself. Thankfully it quickly stopped twitching and I assumed it had passed away. So no moral obligations left for me, right?
Palo Alto is a cute little town with little shops and restaurants. There’s one place in particular that caught my eye: Stanford theater. First opened in 1925, they only shows classic movies from Hollywood’s Golden Age (think Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Marlon Brando, etc.). It’s quite popular with the senior citizens and I see a line of grandpa’s and ma’s line up during the weekends. It’s a pretty cute sight to see.
Tartine is small bakery located in the Mission District neighborhood of San Francisco that is so popular it always has a line. They have the most delicious almond croissants, croq monsieurs, quiche, morning buns, lemon tart, bread pudding, and my favorite gougere with gruyere cheese and fresh herbs. I can vouch for this since I personally tasted all of it. Down the street is Bi-rite and they make the best ice-cream with flavors such as honey lavender. I had to taste that too of course.
So I’m interning at this robot start up company called Willow Garage. They are in the process of building a 200 lb. lifesize humanoid robot to do the dishes, cook and clean, etc. In other words, a robotic maid (think Rosie from the Jetsons). I suppose it wasn’t designed for Roshambo.
My friend Sue told me about this secret beer garden out on Mount Tamalpais. To keep this place unspoiled by tourists they don’t advertise, they make it hard to find and worse, you can’t call ahead or look up whether it is open or not. You just kinda have to go there and find out. Since it’s secret and hard to find, of course I had to go there. So I rounded up a crew and off we were on a bike ride over Golden Gate Bridge, through Sausalito, then a 740ft. uphill climb on Mount Tamalpais, and this whole time we’re not even sure whether this place will be open or not. A good 3 hours of pedaling later we manage to find it! Beer never tasted this good. Where is this magical place you might ask? Well… I’m letting that remain a secret.
I’ve been working as an intern (company bitch) this summer at Willow Garage based in Palo Alto, California. Palo Alto is a cute little town but honestly it can be seen in about a half a day. So I’ve been exploring San Francisco in the weekends whenever I can. I have to say I’m in love with this city. A metropolitan city surrounded by just incredibly beautiful outdoors. Here’s a picture of this awesome planet called San Francisco. It’s home to the crookedest street (Lombard st.), the steepest street (Filbert st.) as well as the gayest street (Castro st.). Not to mention this is also where the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz and the Governator live. How can you not love this city?
