Tag Archives: Bokeh

March overview, trip to Osaka/Kyoto

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So, I’m back from Japan, again. March was quite eventful actually. At the beginning I attended an Ortho course, now quite eager to do some braces. I went on a trip to Osaka and Kyoto, came back to HK safe and sound. And when I was back, I had more driving practice sessions and took the driving exam, and now I’m officially a licensed driver. 

Oh, one more thing. We met our dearest Eugene, after four long years since his last visit to HK in 2010. We spent a fun afternoon like when we were teenagers — eat, play, making fun of MK, you name it. Q1 of 2014 wasn’t completely wasted, I’d say. 

Osaka/Kyoto Trip
Japan was still very Japan — clean, polite, but this time, there was also cherry blossom. It wasn’t the best season when we got there, but thankfully we still managed to see some. The whole trip was about photography, and I took quite a few of them — 25GB of photos to be exact. It’ll take 30 years for me to get them all processed, i.e. when I’m retired. My dual m43 setup proved quite useful. I got enough focal lengths, enough sharpness, enough bokeh, and at the end, great photos. A few years ago I said my blood type was coffee. Now I think I’m a mixed blood type — coffee/photography. 

Two things I’ve learnt from this trip. One, when you go to chain restaurants like those for ramen, never go to the branch stated on the travel book. Instead try looking for other branches, and you’ll end up suffering less from waiting time, if at all. Two, most tourist spots have two train stations, which are often operated by different railway companies. Try to arrive at one station, go to the tourist spots on a planned route, and leave at another station. This way you don’t have to walk back to the original station. 

[TBC]

Lost focus

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Once again I’ve lost focus in life. I’m not in particular determined to study, nor am I interested in indulging myself in other interests, such as photography, blogging, and so on. I feel like a machine, going to work routinely, and punctually, every day, doing the same kind of dutiful things which often are of low return, and when I get home, I get dead tired and go to bed early.

That’s not the typical stylish life K.Chan used to live. In the old days, K.Chan also got up early and go to school on time, but when school finished, he’d go to a Starbucks to enjoy an evening sip of coffee, sometimes reading a dental article, sometimes working on materials for an English tuition he was about to give, and sometimes just meditating. And when he was back to where he lived, he never went to bed early. He poured himself a small glass of wine and thought things. Not until 2-3 am would he finally get tired and go to bed. That’s how one should consume life.

And even if work confines one’s lifestyle, such that one needs to behave like a machine, one should choose to work like a beautiful old Leica camera — to execute things with aesthetic, precision and proficiency. But now, the way that I work, the life that I live, is no different from a crappy, poorly made Pentax Chinese point-and-shoot.

So, my focus is lost; my pride is in jeopardy. But perhaps I shouldn’t feel too upset, because in photography while most of the time we really want razor-sharp focus, sometimes it is the out of focus area, the bokeh, that truly appeals to others. And yes, a beautiful old Leica camera doesn’t have auto focus. You have to focus manually. The same applies in life too. If you’ve lost focus, you refocus for yourself.