27. Using a DSLR Camera: The Exposure Triangle

While many people are accustomed to using a point-and-shoot camera for quick images, using a DSLR (digital single-lens reflex) camera is another story, as I learned this week. My father explained the basics of the “Exposure Triangle”– aperture/F-stop, ISO, and shutter speed– that are essential to producing high quality images. By controlling these features of the camera, which are effectively digitized versions of traditional camera parts, one can change the depth of field of an image, the amount of light the camera takes in, and the speed with which the camera takes the picture, respectively. Below are my first attempts at manipulating the aperture and ISO:

About the set-up: This is a statue that my grandfather carved. In the background is a curtain that my mother was ironing. I thought the folds in the fabric complemented the folds in the dress, adding just enough visual interest without overwhelming the composition.

This image is “underexposed,” meaning there is not enough light. This can be fixed by using a higher ISO or a wider aperture/F-stop (lower number). However, note that lowering the aperture/F-stop number also changes the depth of field, and can make the background blurry. Using too high of an ISO lets in too much light, so the image becomes grainy, like pictures from a cellphone camera. Even though this image is dark, the effect is dramatic.

The image above is “overexposed,” so the colors are washed out.

Firsts this Week:

• Played around with a DSLR camera and learned about the “Exposure Triangle”

26. Halfway

Half a year has gone by since I started this project, “Something New 52.” I started out with the intention of writing for myself, hoping that having an audience would keep me accountable for seeking out new experiences. Today, twenty-six weeks after beginning this project, I have both succeeded and failed.

I began this project in the summer, when I had more free time to expend on adventuring. On a whim, I could pick up my bicycle and explore a new place that I had never seen. Now, I find that the new things that I do are usually variations on an old routine, and that it’s a struggle to continually be inventive. Most often, Monday arrives and I sit for a few minutes reflecting on what I’ve done, trying to determine whether something counts as “new.” On these types of days, writing is merely an exercise in documentation. With each entry, I attempt to make something out of the minutia of my life that is enjoyable for the reader. Trying new things requires planning, and in the coming months I hope to utilize the resources that I have to truly explore. Not only is it more interesting for me, but it also makes for better pieces.

However, trying new things has changed me. Looking back, I realize how even a small change in my routine can impact me. In the past six months, I’ve fostered a love for tango music, found a new favorite ice cream flavor, danced in a field, and learned to program a robot. I’ve tried new recipes, seen a number of plays and other performances, applied to college, got my license, and rode up and down an elevator for a physics project. I can play a four chord song on the guitar. I’ve visited museums and worked on my own art; I’ve skimboarded and skied. And the list goes on. In the words of Thoreau, I’ve been “living deliberately,” and I’ll remember these firsts. They may not be monumental milestones, but these are the little things that enrich a life.

Firsts This Week:

• Halfway through “Something New 52”
• Began my final semester of high school

25. Gunstock Mountain Resort

After a Saturday night making molten chocolate lava cake (yum), I woke up early on to go skiing at Gunstock Mountain Resort, in Gilford, NH. My friends and I had been planning since seventh grade that in our senior year of high school, we would go skiing together, as sort of a last adventure in our final chapter. I always thought this trip was something we would talk about, but never actually have the initiative to make happen. So this weekend, not only did I actually follow through on a daydream, but I did something new with a spectacular group of people. It was everyone’s first time at Gunstock, so we were all excited about the prospect of exploring a new mountain.

The first day was bitterly cold, with a high of 13 degrees Fahrenheit. We started on the blue trails, to regain a sense of how to ski. Skiing is like riding a bicycle, so after a warm up run, I am ready to tackle the mountain. The second day, while icier, had better conditions overall. The weather was perfect, and after gaining confidence on Sunday, we decided to be daring and try black diamond trails. We skied down Trigger Steeps, Redhat, and Tiger, admiring the view of Lake Winnipesaukee below. At that point, I felt myself merging fluidity with control. I let the movement inhabit my body; my brain turned to instinct. With tired quads, we trudged back to the lodge. We returned home weary, but blissful.

Firsts this Week:

• Kept up my tradition of making chocolate lava cake. This time however, I actually made the candied walnuts for the garnish. A small change, but something new nonetheless.
• Skied at Gunstock, and crossed off an item on my bucket list.
• Played NH lake trivia. Did you know? The lake with the highest elevation in NH is the aptly named Lake of the Clouds, which is 5012 ft above sea level.

Being a Lost Child in a Big Supermarket

My favorite time for spontaneous grocery runs is on Friday nights. Few people go to the supermarket at this time, so I can usually get in and out reasonably quickly. However, tonight I was a bit off. On the occasions that I go to Stop & Shop, I’m usually there to buy only a few items (in this case, the necessary ingredients for this molten chocolate cake recipe and popcorn). However, this particular grocery run turned into a long and arduous ordeal. My mission was to procure three items: butter, popcorn kernels, and semisweet chocolate.

My first mistake was to challenge the system by traveling in a counterclockwise direction. The supermarket is designed so that patrons travel clockwise from produce to frozen food and then back to the cash registers. I decided to make a beeline for the refrigerated section. After traveling along the long line of cheeses and milks, I ended up in the butter area. In front of me were at least ten different types of butter and butter-like products. There was store brand butter, organic butter, all-natural butter, 40% vegetable oil butter, 60% vegetable oil butter, butter spread, margarine, butter in a tub, butter in stick form, you name it. And all were SALTED. In this whole display, not one of the offerings was unsalted. Thinking I had misread, I decided to go find popcorn and tackle the butter display later.

I ventured to Aisle 9, which proudly displayed “POPCORN/ NUTS” on the purple sign overhead. Much like the butter display, there were a vast number of choices, none of which suited my purposes. In my family, there’s only one way to go with popcorn, and it’s good old-fashioned stovetop popcorn, the kind that comes in a four pound bag of golden kernels. After searching unsuccessfully among the myriad microwave popcorn options,  I asked an employee for some assistance. She suggested I try the organic section. Of course, the popcorn was not to be found there. At this point, I was frustrated and decided to break the news to my father that I failed to find the popcorn. “Ziv,” he lectured through the phone, “America operates on popcorn. If you cannot find the popcorn, you might as well shut down the supermarket and leave America.” Failure, apparently, was not an option. If I can’t even manage the supermarket alone, how will I succeed when I need to be completely autonomous?

I wandered through the store hopping from aisle to aisle, alternately checking the butter and popcorn sections to see if the items had magically appeared. After all, Friday night is restocking night. I probably covered 3/4 of a mile meandering through the store before I decided to start at the beginning, in the produce section. Lo and behold, I found the popcorn around the corner next to a lonely box of prunes, hiding behind the huge boxes of groceries waiting to be restocked. I paid for the popcorn and headed for Trader Joe’s.

Not counting the conversation I had with the friendly cashier at Trader Joe’s, it took me longer to park than to find the remaining items I needed. Overall, my whole Friday night grocery run took me an hour, forty minutes of which I spent at Stop & Shop.

 

24. I Say Tomato, You Say To-mah-to: Cultural Differences in Food

On Thursday, someone came to our house to fix our kitchen sink. My father was in the kitchen talking to this man, who happened to be Brazilian. One thing led to another, and the conversation turned to avocados. My father started explaining how we use avocados in sandwiches, salads, and guacamole, much to the astonishment of this gentleman. Avocado is a technically a fruit, and in his native country, they treat it as such. Rather than mixing in salt, pepper, olive oil, and lemon juice, as I often do, his family in Brazil cuts the avocado in half, sprinkles sugar on top, and then eats it sweet.

I decided to try this on Saturday, when the avocados in our house had finally ripened. I was a little skeptical, much as the man had been when he heard how we eat avocados. I took about a quarter of the fruit and mashed it up with some sugar in a small bowl. I’m not a big fan of sugary things in the first place, so I wasn’t too excited about eating the slightly chunky mixture. Initially, I hadn’t added enough sugar, so the avocado just tasted bland to me. Overall, it wasn’t bad, but it was still hard to get used to. Second time’s the charm?

Curious to see what my friends thought, I brought up my experiment during lunch. Most of them gave me quizzical looks, but my friend who comes from an Indonesian family was accustomed to eating sweetened avocado. “In Indonesia,” she explained, “we get avocado ice cream and avocado juice.” The “avocado juice” is made from pureed avocado, condensed milk, and chocolate syrup, then served cold.

My mother also makes a recipe combining avocados and chocolate, which seemed more reasonable to the man who fixed our sink.

Avocado Chocolate Spread (adapted from Dr. Oz):

• One half (1/2) of an avocado
• Four (4) level tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
• Six to eight (6-8) pitted dates (add to taste)

Place ingredients in a food processor, and blend until the mixture is smooth. The result should be spreadable. The avocado provides creaminess, but should not be overpowering. Add dates as necessary; they are used for sweetening the mixture. I prefer medjool dates, but any type works. Please note that these quantities are approximate and it takes some experimentation to find a balance between the bitterness of the chocolate and the sweetness of the dates.

Firsts this Week:

• Experimented with avocado recipes.

23. The Last Week of 2011

Since I had the week off from school between Christmas and New Year’s, I was able to try a lot of new things this week. A summary:

1. Movies: I finished “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner”, and watched “To Sir, With Love”, “No Strings Attached”, and “Mean Girls”. I’ve been having a bit of a Sidney Poitier moment since I discovered his films, and I’m excited to watch more.

2. Art: My family and I went to the Museum of Fine Arts to watch Christian Marclay’s “The Clock”. I first read about it in the New York Times a few months ago, and was thrilled that it was coming to Boston. “The Clock” is a 24-hour film that focuses on time. Marclay culled scenes from various films that depict the hour, whether on a wristwatch, grandfather clock, or alarm clock, and edited them together to show a continuum of time, albeit with a broken narrative. What’s interesting is that the time shown on the screen matches the time zone of the place the film is being shown. I watched from 4:12 to 4:45. I was fascinated by the way Marclay edited the pieces together: a shot of a clock as a horse race begins merged into a different scene of galloping horses, which then cut to another scene entirely, such as a person dialing a phone number. In the next scene, someone would answer a telephone, and so on, all while telling the story of time in a frenetic and perfectly disjointed manner. It was well worth the hour-long wait outside the small viewing room.

3. Dining: Today I spent the day in Boston with friends and ended up in California Pizza Kitchen for lunch. We decided to be adventurous and try a Vegetarian Pizza with Japanese Eggplant, as well as Crispy Mac and Cheese. The verdict: the Japanese eggplant pizza was delicious, although I can’t really tell the difference between a Japanese eggplant and a regular one. The Crispy Mac and Cheese was a fried, breaded, gooey mass of mac and cheese that was hailed as “so good, but so bad for you” by the resident mac and cheese expert at our table, while I just thought it was bad.

4. Recreation: In Boston, it is practically a rite of passage to skate on Frog Pond in Boston Common. Bring your gloves, hats, and be prepared to wait in a long line for the opportunity, but it was worth it for the experience. I also did my first exercise of the year by taking a Pilates class at Endurance Pilates and Yoga.

5. Leisure: I completed a 500 piece puzzle. While this may not sound that impressive, this puzzle has had a long history in my family. Every year on Yom Kippur, we pull out this puzzle, which features the Mordillo characters. In our fasting and tired state, we have never finished it, since it boasts a lot of background space that is uniformly colored. This week, with the help of two other friends (who are master puzzle solvers), We finished the puzzle in three hours. Alone, I wouldn’t have been able to finish it, as I don’t have that kind of patience. Then, we played Taboo, which I have discovered is an excellent game.

6. And that other new thing… the new year. Happy 2012!