| On Saturday
the 19th of August, I went over to the Golden Pita for my usual
saturday lunch. I took my new macro light set to show my friends.
When I arrived, I found Anwar and Roy outside, sitting at a table
in the driveway to the underground parking. As I was showing Anwar
my camera, I took a few shots of the ashtray on the table. The lights
certainly did their job, giving me enough power to keep the image
sharp through most of the photos. |
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| The lights
also come with an attachment that will hold a colored filter, and
here I was experimenting with a red one on my right-hand light. |
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| Anwar volunteered
his eye for a shot, and I obliged him. Here's what I got. I've still
got the red filter on the right-hand light, but I've got a color-balance-correcting
green filter on the light to the left. This gave him a big case
of red-eye. |
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| That shot
was the uncropped, scaled-down version. The detail on the full-sized
image was quite good, so I'll show you a few details. Below is the
part to the left of his pupil. You can see all sorts of neat stuff,
like little blood vessels, some texture on his lower eyelashes (note
how the red isn't reflecting uniformly off them), and the reflection
of his eyelashes in his eye. |
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| And here's
another detail showing with the pupil in the centre. I really liked
being able to see the patterns of the blood vessels in his retina.
These patterns are unique to individuals, and that's why retinal
scanners are used as security devices. Of course, now that you have
this photo, you've got a head start if you need to make a retinal
scanner think that you're Anwar. |
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| Soon my
hunger reached the point where it overpowered my urge to hang around
outside, and I went in for my lunch. There I found myself at a table
with several friends, holding my camera when a plate of tabouleh
arrived. There was only one thing to do. |
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| For those
not familiar with tabouleh, those are tomato chunks with minced
parsley, and the little white things are grains of bulgur. Since
the tomatoes turned out a little pink (I had checked the photo on
the little LCD on the back of the camera), I tried again with the
red filter on one of the lights. That really turned the tomato red. |
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| Another
part of lunch that was soon to arrive was a big bowl of Foule, a
yummy stew-like creation which is composed principally of fava beans.
This was shaping up to be a fabulous meal. |
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At this point, I put
the camera down and did a lot of eating. I didn't remember the
camera again until it was dessert time. Sadly, for medical reasons,
I can't have the dessert at the Golden Pita, but at least this
time I had my camera to fool around with and didn't have to watch
my friends downing scrumptuous sweets while all I could do is
sip on my coffee.
I commandeered one
of my friend's pieces of kanafeh and got a couple of shots of
it before it got retrieved and started disappearing.
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| In the meantime,
everyone had started their desserts and there were no more good
food photos to be found at the table. I wandered the restaurant
a little, and eventually noticed a couple of things near the cash
register that I thought would look nice up close. Here's the first. |
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| In case
you weren't able to tell, those were plastic stir-sticks for coffee.
The second group of items should be easier to recognize. |
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Yes, those were drinking
straws, on a reflective plastic surface. I really liked the way
those last two photos turned out.
Anyhow, that was it
for the restaurant; I really just took a few shots and was thinking
of it more as a few experiments rather than a serious photo expedition.
In my next entry, though,
I'll be starting out on a very serious photo expedition...several
days in the wilds on and around Vancouver Island.
Full of foule,
Tom
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