words to live by..

..for the next couple of weeks at least.

i still can't decide whether or not i should be offended by this plate, but it's true nonetheless. gotta get back on the grind, so i can get my tan on.. in a bathing suit! dun dun dun.

stairmaster, i hope we meet again.. soon.

FINALLY.

finally.

i got it right.

or as right as i could hope for.

and i didn't even have to embarrass myself to get this shot.

all i know now is that the 50mm f/1.4 lens will never fail you.

so without further ado, may i present to you my lovely corner at RBC NYC. it's not one of the cutest cafes in new york, but you could never tell from this picture. i love love love all of their espresso-based drinks here carefully brewed on their infamous Slayer machine, but i craving something cold this particular afternoon. i couldn't bring myself to get one of their non-coffee drinks seeing as i was at RBC. it's like going to levain bakery and not getting a cookie. you just don't do it. so i settled for a cold brew.. or iced coffee as 99.9% of the world refers as it to. in retrospect, a latte would probably have been a better aesthetic choice, but whatever, i'm just happy i got the shot right. on FILM, no less.

checklist at trendy tribeca cafe? moleskine, double check. (film) dslr, check. thick plastic frame glasses, check. holier-than-thou attitude, ALWAYS check. sebastian tellier blasting through monster turbine pro headphones, check. fringe bangs, can finally check this one off (see below)! i think i had an american apparel v-neck on then too.. check.

it's not rocco's best picture as he definitely looks a little cracked out, but i look ok. i forgot photo booth's ability to make everyone look good, and the fact that these bangs shaved 10 years off my face doesn't hurt.

and i finally started a flickr! it should be easier to manage than a blog, and i thought it was about time that i stop creepin' around there..

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tracyang/ 

when tracy met photoshop..

ok, not my first foray into photoshop, but the first time that i've spent an extended period of time in there for a while. i've been trying to cure my levels/curves/color balance addiction, but stressful monday means too much in photoshop. hopefully these are the you-can-tell-i-post-processed-in-photoshop-but-it-was-totally-intentional kind of look. i know i could've been more concise with that, but wordiness is my thing. anyway, i'm getting nervous my paragraph is getting too long as i am prone to more grammar/spelling errors the more i write. so that's it for now. fyi, i can speak/write properly.. my typing is just horrendous, haha.

scenes from dc | union square greenmarket | cappuccino from la colombe torrefaction

more from brunch at untitled at the whitney.

gonna get my developed film from this sunday tomorrow which means hours of spot healing brush time in photoshop. i.am.excited.

my colorful sunday.

all digital! in color!

one of the wonderful things about the dslr is the instant gratification that you get from being able to see your picture milliseconds after your shutter goes off. even better, you get to fix it if/when you fuck up. it helps me a lot. anyway, picture-heavy post because i am pooped from today (sorry, none of my lame commentary). i tried to make up for the fact that i did nothing yesterday.

untitled at the whitney.
top: huckleberry pancakes. loved these more than clinton st's. blasphemous..?
bottom right corner = heaven in the form of sea-salt honey pie from four & twenty blackbirds.

central park.
upper right corner: notes on my film pics, haha.
bottom right corner: muddy puddles where my flats sunk in.

cortado at cafe grumpy.

left: PB&J macaron from bouchon. favorite.macaron.ever.
right: tulip bouquet because i complained that i was going to have a bad day.

tadaaa.. no pics of rocco.. shocking i know. waiting for wednesday. disney on thursday!

still a film newbie.

shitty weather outside means tonight's going to be a CSI:NY night. my least favorite CSI, but they always have good music, e.g. they have DJ shadow playing while they track some prints in the sand.....? i don't know, it make no sense sometimes.

there is probably a reason why my f100 came with an instruction manual (and instructions from the agent  at b&h to read the instruction manual), but regardless, i still haven't touched it. proooobably would really help my pics, but oh well, still kinda like these. grainy but i guess it's kind of part of their charm? haha just trying to make up for the fact that i can't use this camera properly. so until i actually read the manual, i guess y'all will just have to deal with my "intentionally" grainy/blurry pics!

jar of sunshine on film / dc landscape / trinity church juxtaposed.

i should probably spend tonight reading the manual since i'm not doing anything.. but that fact usually precludes any chance of productivity. only goal for tonight? finishing off my smoothie and mint chocolate chip ice cream, and finally listening to the thom yorke/four tet/burial collab (guaranteed to be legittt)!

feeelin' laaaazy..

feelin' lazy and feverish, so just a quick update. some random scenes from this past weekend.. although not really indicative of my weekend at all. haha, oh well.

top 10 reasons i know i love my puppy.

1. i probably say "i wuv you wacco" at least 20 times a day. yes, in a baby voice. you know how it is. i think any girl that's ever accosted rocco in the street (and there have been many) reverts to the highest voice in their vocal range.
2. i don't get jealous by the other girls that give him attention, butonlybecausehelovesmethemost.
3. i'm okay with the fact that he left a shit stain on my pillow. true story, it happened when i came back from work today.
4. i skip the gym to be back that much earlier to be with my puppy. seriously. huuuge sacrifice. a sacrifice i've been willing to make consistently for the past two months.
5. for the most part, i always share my food with him. i couldn't say that about anyone/anything else in my life.. ever.
6. i make up excuses for the ('love') bites/scratches he gives me.. "what happened to your arm?" "oh, i walked into the door." "oh, again?" sad part is that the latter scenario is also entirely plausible and probably half true any given morning. if you didn't get the former part of this joke, then you are a good person or i make lame jokes.
7. he would be the first thing i grab from the apartment in case of an emergency. blackberry and macbook are second and third, respectively. yup, i would take him before my bb!
8. because he loves me! :)
9. and how do you not love the cutest puppy in the world?
10. umm i'm sure there's more.. buttt he's on my macbook and ready to play!

testing 1, 2, 3..

REVELATION!

i had been wondering why my pictures were coming out so pixelated when i uploaded them into blogger. of course, it was because they were compressing my 4000x6000px pictures into a tiny little 500x600px (i made up both those dimensions for reference). so yeah, duh, as if anyone needed any more evidence of my retardedness.

so here i am testing my appropriately-sized pictures:

they still came out a little weird, very hard around the edges.. but i'll figure it out later. going to READ a physical book finally, with dvorak's new world symphony playing in the background. i like to class it up sometimes.

and just for good measure:

 how do say no that face? i don't. i can't. it's impossible. thankfully his puppy metabolism keeps up with the amount of food i feed him.

april showers bring may cherry blossom flowers.

i went to the cherry blossom festival this past weekend in DC, and i got hail, rain, and extra bright (not the nice kind) sunlight all within twenty minutes, annnnd now i hate cherry blossoms. however, i took most of my pictures on film, and by virtue of that fact, i will hate them a little bit less.. even though my pictures came out really, really blue.. oh well, practice makes perfect..decent..good-enough-to-justify-buying-this-camera (i have low standards).

despite my newfound hatred of cherry blossoms, i did have a few revelations (re: only revelations to me) this weekend:

1. there are no cherries on cherry blossom trees. i don't know much about flowers, so you know, this was quite a revelation to me. i think flowers are nice once in a while, but generally, they're kind of boring and weird-looking, especially when you stare at them for a long time. something about their reproductive organs being out in the open also freaks me out.
2. i need to learn how to focus my pics. wearing glasses (in the rain) does not help any. plus, manually focusing and refocusing each shot over and over again was nauseating, and the fact that it was an endless sea of white flowers did not help my cause.
2a. did you know that cherry blossoms are white?! not only are there no cherries, they are not pink as i had previously thought.
3. japan gave these trees to the US as a sign of their nascent friendship in 1912 (only one of two cool revelations/facts i learned this weekend.)
4. the US almost gave up on aviation in the early 1900s, but it was revived as a result of the US postal service using it to send mail. (second cool fact i learned this weekend.. obviously the nerdier of the two - courtesy of my brief foray into the national air & space museum.)
5. my title is technically incorrect since cherry blossoms bloom in early spring, but i liked my lame title too much.
6. i.love.jelly.belly.sours.
7. i know every rest stop between NJ and DC. i can't help my small bladder.
8. exposure is tricky, tricky thing. i couldn't sleep one night and ended up reading about it from 4-5am.
9. asian tourists will always have a bigger, better camera and lens than you. always.
10. there are cherry blossom trees all over DC. like everywhere. even in front the the shitty apartments on the outskirts of dc. i don't know why i subjected myself to the boredom, nausea, and hunger walking around the tidal basin for two hours.
11. i don't know much as is evident by the fact that i am having revelations every 10 minutes apparently.

ok, enough rambling for one post i suppose.

can you tell that the sun finally came out in the last picture? haha, and unblossomed cherry blossoms definitely resemble cherries. a little..?

a jar of sunshine.

just because. :)

monday.

this picture basically reflects how i feel right now.

the high line.

everything's hazy and unfocused. just struggling to stay alive above the fray.

ok, maybe not so dramatic, but it's still monday and it sucks.

i love film! like true love.

eeeeep, i finally got my film developed and scanned, and it only took a month! i don't know what else to say except that it makes my post-processing a lot easier (as in i didn't edit at all). i should shoot film more often since i'm mostly trying to imitate it on the dslr anyway. even when the picture's not focused, it produces the noise that i love so much. this is especially perfect for me since i can't focus for shit. yeahh.. little else to say - for once - except that these are from a while back. just a bunch of random shots from central park. some of them are underexposed since i adjusted it unknowingly midway into the film (hey, it was my second day ever using a film camera!), but that's okay because it looks intentional..ish. so here they are in all their underexposed glory! can you tell i'm excited by the sheer number of exclamation points in this post?

last one look familiar? haha just snuck the last one in there because i like the vignetting. i was just trying to finish up the roll of film, okay? and i happen to like that picture too, haha.

an ode to impressionism.

i think one of my favorite things about photography is its ability to allow me to creative without having to physically draw something. my hand-eye coordination just won't allow for it. like any good asian child, i took art lessons for five years, but unlike every other good asian child, i don't think i improved much over those five years. i'm as impatient now as i was then. i just remember sketching and painting a lotttt of still life, most of that still life being bowls of fruit, which especially pissed me off since i just wanted to eat the damn fruit after staring at it for so long. so long that i swear i could see them ripening.. which would then fuck up my shading! ugh, anyway, i just thought of that after seeing this pic i took at the flower show at macy's herald square (which was basically arranged flowers on top of the macy's counters). it kind of reminds me of an impressionist painting, no? excuse the yellow, fluorescent tones.. i didn't realize the flower show was going to be indoors.

your weekly depressing pictures..

my title is lame, and this is not going to be a weekly thing. it's kind of hard for me to write any sort of title or commentary to go with these pictures as i stare out my window to an incredibly sunny landscape (even if it's all concrete buildings). these images were taken at the terezin concentration camp in the czech republic, and i didn't really post the more depressing pictures because.. well, i didn't even really want to look at them. i'm not going to get into the extraordinary high and lows that the human spirit experienced here because what the hell do i know?

this one is an unfocused shot of their communal bathrooms. it resembled the ones you see in the prison until you realize where you were. i liked this shot since it kind of captured the chaos that occurred in there.

i guess i liked barren trees even back in the day, but the focus is actually the concrete wall where they used to line up prisoners to be executed by a firing squad. crazy.

a day out with the holga lens in new jersey.

here is the story (but really just a haphazard collection of images) of my first day out with my new holga lens for the dslr. i really need to learn more about it.. seeing as i just googled it and found out that it's a fixed 60mm/f8 lens. hmm, probably would've been good to know that during the day. i only figured out that i could change my ISO around 3pm. oh well, i still have to figure out how to focus the the images (the holga lens' ruler ranges from one person to a bunch of people.. to a mountain.. and i'm supposed to figure out distance from that.) whatever, that's my disclaimer since all of these pictures are straight out of the camera. no editing since the holga lens' distorts the pic enough as is and because i'm tired. but mostly because i'm tired.

testing.. 

more testing.. still didn't know i could change the ISO..

obviously this lens requires a lotttt of light. luckily, today was extremely sunny, and i was able to take rocco out to the dog park for the first time with some very inappropriately dressed people/dumbasses. it was 32 degrees out and extremely windy. one was dressed in a thin blazer, knee-length cotton dress, and tights, and the other in a thin sweater and jeans. of course, i snapped away in my winter jacket and sweats.

nervous puppy.. he didn't want to play with the other dogs.. 

extremely staged picture of rocco socializing with other dogs. he probably ran away two seconds after this picture was taken.

loneeeely puppehhhhh.... :(

surburbia 1.. "farm with no cows"

suburbia 2.. "dirt mound"

suburbia 3.. "lonely tree"

like my titles? i was trying to keep up with the hipster holga/minimalism-but-not-thus-ironic theme. ok, i just made that up. i'm not very creative.. but anyway, east brunswick is not as desolate as i made these it out to be in these pictures. i'm not even sure if the first place is a farm, but this is probably the only open plot of land left in this little over-developed town of mine. every other acre of land has pretty much been bought out by developers (they're a little slow to adjust to the economy here.. i kid.)

if you can't tell, i really liked taking pictures of trees with this lens. empty, barren trees.. i guess that they forgot it's spring!! but then again so did i. this weather is reeeeee-deek-cue-luss.

standard brooklyn photos.

anyone with a camera whose ever ventured across the brooklyn bridge has pictures of it's incredibly photogenic, symmetric steel suspension wires. so here are mine.

and just a brief note on proofreading:

ok, i think it's pretty obvious that i don't proofread my posts. i kind of just ramble and hit "publish post". i just hate re-reading my own thoughts because it would force me to confront my own awkwardness. you think i'm awkward in real life? well it's 10x worse in my head. or maybe i'm just too lazy to organize my thoughts. it's probably a combination of both.

conclusion: y'all are just going to have to fill in my missing prepositions/words by yourself.

ps. i couldn't even get my brief intro correct. i missed the "bridge" in brooklyn and wrote pictures twice, and it took one very obnoxious proofreader and probably five minutes for me to find the former and probably five hours to find the latter.

i need a brief respite from Machete.

currently watching Machete. danny trejo as the ultimate BAMF, steven seagal as a mexican drug lord BAMF, robert de niro as an uber-conservative texan senator BAMF, cheech marin as a double-fisting-gun-toting BAMF priest.. what more do you need in a movie? it's your typical kitschy robert rodriguez film, guaranteed to be filled with gratuitous bloody machete-d limbs flying everywhere (his titles kind of say it all), so i just thought i'd pop in some happy pictures from this past weekend for my own sake.

here's a picture of my new "plant". just sayin' since i asked a new plant, and this is what i ended up with. i'm not really complaining, but i really just wanted an herb garden to water every day on windowsill. is that so much to ask?

apparently orchids are pretty easy to take care of. they don't require too much sunlight and only need to be watered 10-12 days.. but that can difficult since i have trouble remembering things i have to do on a daily basis. oh well, let's see how long they last..

annnnd just because he's good eye candy:

look at how big his ears are now! i think he's looking a bit skinny though.. which inspired by new diet plan. whatever i eat, i give him some to make sure i don't end up eating everything, except it really work when i eat out (99% of my meals) and he definitely doesn't help out with my addiction to pretzel m&ms. i'm almost done with the 2 XXL bags that i got two weeks ago. that's 29 servings each. yeah, it's kinda serious.

the good life.

everyone has their own version of the good life. mine just happens to include dinner at ai fiori which just so happened this past friday night, and the place did not disappoint. the decor definitely reflected its food, modern yet traditional italian fare, and it is definitely my favorite michael white restaurant to date.

pictures are a little out of order for formatting purposes. the flowers in the last picture should really be first since i got them before dinner, (thanks, i appreciate.. haha) and the amuse bouche before the egg.. and the wine before food.. but i digress. [ignore my poor photoshop skills. if only i could do the food justice!]

table decor | uovo slow poached egg

nuits st. georges charmois

squash shooter amuse bouche..but i don't really remember.

ostriche poached wellfleet oysters

trofie nero | gnochetti

self-explanatory.

creepin'.

bouillabaisse

astice butter poached lobster. on par with le bernardin lobster??
i totally forgot what this one was called..
torta di olio olive oil cake with an amazing espresso gelato.
sgroppino grapefruit
sgroppino spiced pear
petit fours
bar at ai fiori
flowers :)

pretty wonderful meal. only slight hiccup at the beginning when i had trouble reading the menu.

"cominciare/pasta or risotto/pesce or carne/dolce" [for a four course prix fixe]

who wouldn't confuse that for only three courses? i think i repeated "why would they make you choose between meat and dessert??" like five times until the waiter had to come over to clarify. as he said, "it's just a part of my job." i also happen to be retarded