Spent some time messing around with my macro lens, taking detail shots of some stained glass I have. I need to sort out a better rig for this sort of thing — after 70 shots leaning over a glass table with a not-featherweight camera, my lower back was killing me. All in all a fun experiment.
Rob and I went to the camera store today, after I did some research on wideangle zoom lenses. Ended up buying a Sigma 10-20mm F4-5.6 wideangle zoom and a Sigma 70-300mm F4-5.6 telephoto/macro zoom. And filters. And a camera bag.
I really am a big fan of wideangle shots. This and the 18-70mm will be my standard “walking around” lenses, and the telephoto and my fixed focal-length macro will be for special occassions.
First things first, some photos. I took around 400 photos while I was there, and about 1 in 10 are decent as-is. I might be able to save another 1 in 20 with some judicious photoshopping. I really need to learn how to be a better photographer. My excuse is that I was almost incessantly on the run when taking photos, so conditions were not optimal. Also: I really do need a better than point-and-shoot camera. The Nikon 5700 is a great camera, but if you put a filter on the damned thing, it starts vignetting like a mofo. No good.
My future camera will be a Nikon D70 or D70s or whatever the next proper Nikon DSLR turns out to be. I really, really want a proper DSLR. The time will come eventually.
Amsterdam. Tons of fun, met lots of great people, had a ton of good food, walked more in a week than I probably have in the past two months combined. Gorgeous weather, great hotel (facilities, at least…the staff was a bit off, but more on that in a moment), utterly phenomenal coffee.
Europeans seriously know how to make good coffee.
On service: I’m not sure whether it was just a bad week or something, but the staff at hotels and restaurants we frequented during our stay in Amsterdam was pretty universally sub-par. I’m not sure why this is, but we just got generally lousy service every where we went. Some folks were ok, and everyone was generally friendly, but, really, servers at decent-or-better restaurants in Canada are, on average, just much better at what they do. In one Amsterdamian restaurant our waiter was so in-your-face that I found it distinctly uncomfortable.
Whatever happened to Zen Waiters? The basic premise I work under is this: the less I notice the service I’m receiving, the happier I am. If a waiter spills wine on me (yes, this happened), or if I have to flag a waiter down for a second round of drinks (this also happened, multiple times), or if I have to physically back away from a waiter because he’s a total close-talker (also happened), or if I wait for my food long enough that I check my watch (happened), or if I have to physically walk around looking for someone to give me my bill (slight exaggeration, but close to truth)…guess what? The waiter sucks.
The best waiter I’ve ever had was at Acton’s Cafe in Wolfville, Nova Scotia. Quiet, efficient, unassuming, brilliantly experienced, and extraordinarily talented waiter. We sat and ate several courses happily, never once having to ask for anything (water, wine, food, dessert, coffee, bill, whatever). My soup, as I recall, simply showed up like it fell through a tiny hole in space-time. I never once noticed the waiter until we were finished and I realized, all at once, that I never once noticed the waiter. I love service like that. I also, I’ll have you know, tip extraordinarily well for service like that.
If I ever end up walking away from this whole interweb thing and go back into food service, I think I’ll make it my life’s work to be that good a waiter. Really talented waiters who take their vocation seriously can make extremely good money. The problem, I think, is that most waiters think that they’re too good for what they’re doing — most high end waiters probably fancy themselves as a maitre d’, or perhaps as an underemployed sommelier. My god, the in-your-face guy was just unreal. He put me off so badly in the first five minutes we were sitting at the table that I simply didn’t want to talk to him again, and avoided it as best I could. What a piece of work.
Um…anyhow, that rant aside. I had a great time in Amsterdam, waiters bedamned. Oh, and the bartender at the hotel. I mean, seriously dude, if someone asks you “what scotches do you have?”, it’s not an invitation to play 20 questions. WTF?
Unrelated, here are some more photos, but not of Amsterdam.
Somewhat on a whim, I decided to make an extravagant dinner yesterday. Three courses, four people, five bottles of wine (of which we drank four). First course was a simple shrimp ring with tangy seafood dip. Third course, dessert, was even simpler, being naught but fresh strawberries. The second course was the star of the show, being a prime rib roast with corn and potatoes.
Here’s a picture of the roast before cooking:
Three of the bottles of wine:
The recipe I used was scribbled hastily on the back of a receipt:
The last line got cut off, but says, “meat therm to 120″. The actual cooking time was closer to 90-100 mins, and I turned the oven up to 375 about 45 mins in because it was just taking too long. This did no harm at all, and the roast was absolutely perfect.
Here’s a picture of the meal part way through the feeding frenzy:
All in all, it was an ideal meal. Excellent food (if I do say so myself), fantastic wine, and good company. The aftermath was a somewhat destroyed kitchen and a slight hangover, but it was totally worth it.
Yum.
The stock.xchng is pretty slick. There are lots of really excellent stock photos on the site available for use with various licenses. It’s a really interesting site.
This photo, for example, is available for use with no restrictions. Nice stuff. Yay for sharing and stuff :)
I dunno. It just made me laugh. The best part is the article it’s attached to:
Not really much to say, that picture (from BCC News) is just awesome. I’m really not sure what the hell’s going on over in the Ukraine, but apparently there are a lot of people who are extremely pissed off about the whole thing. I think I’ll go read about it.
“Tens of thousands of opposition supporters, who say the vote was rigged, have surrounded the commission building in a third day of protests.”
This just in: “Secretary of State Powell says United States does not accept results of Ukraine’s presidential elections, due to reports of fraud.”
Recent Comments