Way back in 2002 I took a trip with my buddy Jared to Lake Pardee, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas. It’s one of the most spectacular places I’ve ever been, and I’ve got some pictures to prove it.
Archive for June, 2005
Lake Pardee pics.
Friday, June 3rd, 2005Fire Poi Pics
Friday, June 3rd, 2005Here’s some pics of myself spinning fire poi from a couple years ago, just because I’m feeling vain. These pics were taken by my brother with my cam on a tripod, with, naturally, no flash.
Pics from behind the building where I work.
Friday, June 3rd, 2005I wandered around behind the building I work in today taking pictures after I got off. It was cloudy, and windy, and this is not the best weather for taking pictures, at least not with my increasingly annoying camera. Still, I got a few that I kind of like despite their faults.
I’m going to crop all my pics to a 5×7 aspect ratio from now on, because a) Picasa won’t let me crop automatically to 4:3, which I would ideally like to do, and b) that way I’ll be forced to crop all of my pics, even if only to get the right aspect ratio.
Many of my pics are lacking a certain quality in full frame, or could use a little compositional help, but portions of them have the makings of damn fine photographs. So, if I have to crop them all, then I’ll be exploring what works and what doesn’t. I learned quite a bit just from doing these first few.
I’m learning, generally, that with digital photography, as much of what makes a great picture happens after the picture is taken as happens before.
I really need an 8 megapixel camera, which would allow me to crop a lot closer and still have the resolution for a crisp 8×10 or for print.
That’s not happening in the immediate future, although it’s right behind “getting my car running” on my priorities list. So, in the meantime, I’ll work with my crappy camera and work around the limitations. That way when I get a nice one it’ll be like buttah.
I used to have a really sort of calm, sort of Taoist attitude toward life. I need to get back to that, to being more meditative and taking life as it is given to me, to work with what I have and go with the flow until I reach the spot where I have the leverage to make the current do my bidding.
Newsflash: the 1886 cafe is still the bomb
Thursday, June 2nd, 2005Today I had an orientation at Texas Homeless Network, where I’ll be volunteering on Mondays from 9 to 5 for the next month or so.
On the way back I stopped by my favorite place to eat in all of Austin, the 1886 Cafe and Bakery. I had the burger, which I’d never had before, and their dessert of the month, peach dewberry crumble cake.
This is basically a small pie crust with almond in it, kind of glazed on the outside, filled with dewberry filling and cubes of peaches, and covered with sweet oat crumble. All this is sliced into half-moons and layed on the plate touching at one side and split at the other, with a ball of vanilla ice cream laid in the middle. A signature “confection bridge”, in this case a small roll of white chocolate, spans the two. A little bit of caramel is zigzagged artfully across the plate and dewberry halves ring the perimeter to complete the package.
Actually, they were out of vanilla, so I had strawberry. I think it was even better. All this bakery love for $5, served up by a friendly, beautiful girl named Christina. You can’t ask for more than that.
About a week ago Paul took me to the 1886 for diagnosing the problem with his car. I had the turkey BLT, which is a BLT on a croissant roll, except with a goodly pile of sliced turkey on it to boot. It’s dressed with chipotle mayonaisse. It’s hella HELLA good. You can probably get a sandwich like that for less than $10, but it would suck and you’d be a cheap bastard. For dessert I had the chocolate caramel mousse cake, which is a mall round cake where the bottom half is cake and the top half is mousse. It’s served, like all 1886 desserts, with a small scoop of raspberry sorbet that manages to be incredibly tart without crossing that fine line into sourland. The confection bridging the two in this case is a thin (think bottom-of-a-double-boiler) wedge of dark chocolate splattered on one side with what appears to be gold gild. Frickin’ awesome, man.
They’re hiring. It’s too bad I couldn’t afford to work there even if I could get hired. 
