Nails

2009. I was testing out the Nikon 50 mm 1.4 f lens. I wanted to get some idea for the depth of field. This was shot on film.

Sauvie Island

DSCF2003
Originally uploaded by lexly87 aka Duc N. Ly

Spent a day on this beautiful island. I put this image on on ImageKind thinking that I would one day make a print of it for my wall.

In Good Company

This February's First Thursday I'll be hanging out at 23 Sandy Gallery. The gallery is hanging the ND10 Down & Out show that moved from the Wallspace the previous month. What a great way to start of the new year. There are four of us out of 42 photographers that are from Portland, Oregon. Here are the four Portland Photographers: Chris Bennett, Heidi Bertman, Duc Ly, and Jeff Krolick. Jeff's work has been feature in many place, Jen Bekman's gallery is one of them. Chris, I believe is the Director of Newspace Center in Portland SE studio, which I've been using for studio photography. I look forward to meeting these talented photographers. I'm a bit star struck, particularly because I've seen Alejandro Cartagena's Fragmented Cities, Santa Catarina. His work has been selected for Hey Hot Shots, and few others that I've missed. Pausetobegin.com has an interview with Alejandro and other photographers.

Jeff Antebi.com has been doing some very powerful work in Haiti before the earthquake.

I've looked at there work recently on the websites and admire their approach.

How do you find your subjects?

This question has been on my mind lately.

Here's some answers: Alec Soth; Two photographers talking about subject, heart, and mind.

Indian Point

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This photograph is now in a group show.

Over this last summer of 2009, I've been going on a lot of hikes along the Columbia River Gorge region between Oregon and Washington forests and mountains. I go with my friends who are expert hikers. They are my guides. They have seen incredible views of St. Helen, and other Colorado range. I'm always amazed that they rarely photograph the views. I climb the hills for the views. I've been lead up to Indian Point's secret spot. Some of the trails are hidden like this particular spot of Indian Point where I took this photograph. I gaze down and out towards the mighty Columbia River. My guides points to the opposite side of the River to Dog Mountain's peak. The ground below has signs of modern industries, cars, and damns. There are signs that the landscape is changing. I try to imagine the time when the Native Americans looked out to these majestic land before industrialization. These are some of the most sacred spots. On Silver Star Mountain trails, there is a path through huckleberry berries and brambles which leads to a sacred spot. The Native Americans build a shallow pit made of rocks. The initiate will then lay in the pit for a day perhaps night and wait for a vision. For me, the hike is a meditation of breaths, and exhaustion of body and mind. I carry my problems with me in my head and try to unpack them along the way, to work them out and wait for insights. Dropping a problem here and there and picking up new vision, insights and preserve them in my camera. I always carry a camera or two with me on these excursions. The images show a privilege view and make my physical exertion worthwhile. I carry these visions to the flat land and share them with my friends. I'm always proud of them and know that someday I won't be able to climb any more and will be glad to have the hard earned views. Photography allows me to capture the vision, a modern invention to express what has always been inside for those who choose not to share.

Wall Space Gallery

wall space seattle ND10 Down & Out Catalogue

The blog post regarding show is flatfile.blogspot.com

update: http://lexly87.blogspot.com/2010/08/friends-of-gorge.html

ND10 Postcard

ND10 Postcard

Originally uploaded by lexly87 aka Duc N. Ly.

Our 4th annual New Directions exhibition,
Down+Out
juried by Carol McCusker, curator of the Museum of Photographic Arts
is pleased to present 42 artists challenging the ideas of distance and scale.

Participating artists -
Robbie Acklen | John Aldredge | Jeff Antebi
Cordelia Bailey | Chris Bennett | Heidi Bertman
Andrew Binkley | Charles Blackburn | J. Wesley Brown
Alejandro Cartagena | Pete Cosenza | Matthew Derezinski
Kristen Fecker Peroni | David George | Colin Graham
Steve Guttenberg | Ray Hau | Nicole Jean Hill
Joshua Hobson | Adam Jaocno | Kirby Johnson
Jeffrey Krolick | Sarah Marie Land | Larry Larsen
Nathan Lunstrum | Duc Ly | Kora Manheimer
Patricia McInroy | Daniel Melo | Charles Mintz
Emily Nathan | David Jaewon Oh | Wayne Palmer | Ric Peterson
Dawn Roe | Wendy Ross | Michael Seif
Sarah Sharp | Peter Tilgner | Ronit Toledano
Anna Maria Vag | Jacqueline Walters

Here's the On-line Gallery

More information here.

Light Box

Artist, Photographers & Scrapbookers Light Box.

I am planning to get this for my sister who loves to do scrap booking!

Cool Little Light box that photographers and artist just love...and only $32

They have a cool little light box that seems to be really popular. Photographers use it to view slides and negatives and also will buy two and set the light boxes as background lighting when they want to shoot small objects with a lot of detail (watches or rings, for example). Artists use it to trace pictures. Scrapbookers use it for cutting and drawing shapes.

Yeah I use mine to view slides and do some tracings. It's really handy and safe. So check out suppliesnet.com and the lightbox.
There are also some very good items for drafting tables.

d o c t o r f o x g l o v e

d o c t o r f o x g l o v e

tfr

• 

  The Forgetting Room: A Fiction (Byzantium Book)

  Nick Bantock

I got this book from a Goodwill store during Labor day weekend. I like Bantock's combination of word and pictures. some related links: http://www.raincoast.com/feature-barbara-hodgson.html

Epson Printers for Photography

Epson inkjet printers
I have two epson printers for my at home use. One is at the studio and the other one is at the computer room. I have gotten great results from printing 8 x 11 of a tulip I photograph from the backyard. Mon requested a copy printed out for her. It was very easy to do and I was amazed at the quality. It looks just like a photographic paper!! It's great to print web pages in color when I need to print from my blog. I like the background color of my blog very much. So I prefer to print from the blog. It looks like an old parchment. The letters are crisp.

talking plants

http://www.npr.org/programs/talkingplants/features/2003/danh/index.html

http://online.sfsu.edu/~amkerner/ch/binh.htm

del.icio.us tool to organize blogger Tags

http://del.icio.us/lexly87/Blogspotart
Subject: tag blog entries. I have three years worth of writings and links, some of it good, most of it bad. My goal is to do a spring cleaning on this site. Please tolerate the mess.
I've decided to use del.icio.us as a tag organization tool for my Blogspot blog. It's hard to find a free blog site which allows me to organize according to tag. If you know of any free blog site which has tag feature to organized blogs, let me know.

Update: I found a blog which does tag and other features which I'll have to explore. One features is the RSS feed to Flickr. wordpress
I've added to my number of growing blogs tests pages. Blogger is still very good to use in conjunction with Flickr. Blogger also allows me to change the dates.



Here's the note that started me thinking.

Entry for June 09, 2006

Ideas #1

Ways of using delicious:

Research my own website and use de.lic.ious to book mark and organized the post on the older blogs that have been buried in Sunday in the days before tagged entries. I'm also using writely use tags to organize and archive my writings on-line. Tag is the next best thing to slice bread. flickr uses tags to organized photos. I used it the other day to decide my slide collection to submit to art competitions. flickr organized all of the images I tagged as nap for New American Paintings and then I can post a link or use the blogger button to show on my blog.

I posted yahoo360 the other day on delicious and found that there were 30 other del.icio.us users also using 360.

Using delicious to research blank paper notebooks that I’m interest in with the design cover.

Idea #2

Since I like the style of my Photography website, why not start another blog using the same design?

Train Train

Train Train

Owners Opinion: Panasonic DMC-FZ10: nippa: Digital Photography Review

Owners Opinion: Panasonic DMC-FZ10: nippa: Digital Photography Review

After a lot of research I decided to order the fz10 from Ritz on eBay. It's being delivered in a few days. I almost got the LC5. I am waiting for the LC1 to come down in price. My Hasselblad just arrive today. Suddenly I began to take more pictures now...even with a film camera. I have a Contax G1 and Nikon F4. I've been reading this site a lot lately and it has influenced my choice of digital camera. I've seen some very beautiful picture from the photographer Barta on www.usefilm.com He uses LC5 and the pictures are beautiful even though it's very small. The sky and blue hues are lovely. I've also read the www.washingtonpost.com article by Van Riper. He likes the Fz1 better then the fz10 because of the Imagine stabilizer. I would only get the fz1 if it was upgrade to and fz2. But the Clerk at Kitz camera said that firmware upgrades voids the manufacture's warrantees. I almost order fz2 over seas but didn't. The clerk really emphasized that fz1 can't be print to an 8x10. So there you have it...that's how I end up with the fz10. I was testing it out at the Kitz store and took two pictures of a girl that I wanted so bad to keep these pictures. I wanted to steal the 16 SD card. The next day I came back and the picture was deleted.

I thought that i would write only about what i did on sundays.

I brought my framed photographs for the doctor to see. I cut myself on the corner of the frame where it is sharp. I asked the receptionist for a band-aid. He laid the specimen on the plastic examination bed. He suggests that we walk out to my car to see the rest of the framework. I lay them out on the parking lot bumper. I looked at the gallery. It’s in the sunken atrium lobby area of a medical school in Northwest. It's apart of Linfield College. It was interesting.

we are going to watch bruce campbell's movie in cinema 21.
I'm catching the bus downtown then on 6th and Salmon ride to NW 21.

I got the uncut negatives back from camera world. becky's nudes look great. this is the first time I shoot in a studio with artificial professional studio light. the slides came out very nice.

Often I get the urge to come up to a beautiful woman I see and ask them whether or not they are interested in being photographed. Well this morning on the bus. There is such a woman...The guy sitting next to me apparent has notice her beauty as well. She as aloof, wearing a large puffy stereo headphones. Her lips are soft and exquisite. Ones that you can't resist kissing.
The fellow next to me made small talks with her. And mentions that she is beautiful. He was a loud and big guy. We get off at the same time. I walk with her for a bit and say that I would like to photograph her. After some small talk and introduction, I handed her my card with my photo-website and email. We work nearby...I say that I would like to have lunch or coffee with her. Then we depart. We'll see.

The model was a professional

I've done nudes. The model was a professional. Photographying someone is a very intimate act. If a woman does not know me well...it shows up in the photograph.
The more we go into the photo-session, the more she reveals to me.
Emma