Asparagus soup, based on a recipe found on the internet and optimized by me

Ingredients

* 3 lbs asparagus (white preferred, green works too)
* 1 large yellow onion, chopped (white onion works too)
* 3 Tbsp unsalted butter
* 6 cups chicken broth (careful that it's not to salty!)
* 1 cup heavy cream (or more is always better...)
* Salt and pepper
* Nutmeg
* A great portion of love for your friends
* a spatula to defend the food against hungry kids. The bigger the better

Method

1 Cut tips from 12 asparagus 1 1/2 inches from top and halve tips lengthwise if thick. Reserve for garnish. Cut stalks and all remaining asparagus into 1/2-inch pieces, discard the ends. If it's white asparagus peel it first and

2 Cook onion in butter in a 4 or 6-quart heavy pot over moderately low heat, stirring, until softened. Add asparagus pieces and salt and pepper to taste, then cook, stirring, 5 minutes. Add broth and simmer, covered, until asparagus is very tender, 15 to 20 minutes.

3 Purée soup in batches in a blender until smooth. If you want a very creamy texture, you can put the purée through a food mill or press it through a sieve. Transfer to a bowl (use caution when blending hot liquids), and return to pan. Stir in cream. Season with salt, pepper and nutmeg to taste. Drop tips in it and cook for another 5 - 6 minutes on low temperature. Keep warm till served and do not reheat it afterward!
(Hand blender works too, if you use a plastic cocktail blender let the soup cool for 5 - 10 minutes, with a glass blender rinse it under hot water for a couple of minutes)

well tonight we celebrated my welcome back to davis at kims place.

Well to short say, we made some great food:

- asparagus soup (made by me)
- cod in some kind of sauce (kim)
- chicken in some kind or sauce (kim)
- tri-tip steak, pan fried which was amazingly good, but different (made by me)
- california roll (kim)
- crepes with pears (flambe) and vanilla ice (filling/flambe by me, crepes by kim)
- feuerzangen bowle (made by me, organized by kim)
- shrimps (kim)


I also start to figure out how to use the damn razor without cutting my self... Well slowly, but facial scars are supposed to make attractive, but how much attractiveness does a men need...

well my hones arrived and now I try to learn honing razors and knives.

The first test is the standard honing pyramid:

3/1
3/1
1/3
1/3
1/3
1/5
1/5
1/10

which resulted in some first results, but nothing to get crazy about yet. Well I just need to practise.

still waiting for the hones, which should arrive on monday and afterward I'm going to hone a cheap knife first for practice reasons.
Maybe I can find a barber here who can hone the razor for me, so I learn something.

on the other hand, my room has now some drapes and start's to look better, but boy it's tiny...

I also ordered yet another sonicare toothbrush, since I can't manage to get my old one running again after the 8 weeks without use. This is now the 4th? toothbrush in 4 years...

ok it turned out that I stropped into the wrong direction and this lesson cost me another 120$ for a set to now sharpen the razor....

220/1000 grit stone
4000/8000 grit stone
SiC flattening stone

first shave with the new razor:

disappointing, major skin irritations, uncomfortable

I need to practice a lot and it might needs to be honed or I did something wrong during stropping and messed something up.

mhm, maybe it works better tomorrow, at least I smell nice now...

Yay Christmas in germany with the family.

You just don't need a flash sometimes, but higher iso would be nice...

one of the worst pictures I ever took, but the stuff was so tasty and my fingers were shaking from the cold...

a chocolate shop in Potsdam :)

I'm happy to announce that my website now allows comments and has a guest book.

...And Saint Attila raised the hand grenade up on high, saying, "O Lord, bless this Thy hand grenade that with it Thou mayest blow Thine enemies to tiny bits, in Thy mercy." And the Lord did grin and the people did feast upon the lambs and sloths and carp and anchovies and orangutans and breakfast cereals, and fruit bats and large chu ... And the Lord spake, saying, "First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin, then shalt thou count to three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it." Amen...

I guess I watched too munch monty python lately, but I just LOVE this part!


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Knight_(Monty_Python)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Hand_Grenade_of_Antioch

On this day 10 years ago I told a woman

I love you

and her response was, what does this mean for you. This question surprised me in a way that I thought was not possible and I was not able to answer this question in any way.

If she would ask me the same question now, what does

I love you

mean, I'm still not sure how to find the right words to describe such a feeling. But this time I would actually have a rough idea and would understand why she asked this question in the first place.

I think sometimes in live people ask you questions which you are not able to answer, but leave you with a better understanding of your self and you can only be thankful for things like this. Sadly this woman disappeared 2001 from my live and I was never able to reestablish contact since them.

well, well, well

now that radio popper finally sells the radiopopper juniors, well I got a little dilemma.

It would cost me 350$ for a set of 2 x transmitter, 4 x receiver and I would loose TTL (which I just don't care for) and high speed sync (kinda sucks), but get radio controlled slaves.

what does this get me?

• each camera has a small transmitter now, no more swapping the SB-900 from a --> b
  
• all my sb-600 get's a receiver
• my sb-900 get's a receiver
• friends just buy a transmitter and can use my flash and other way around
  

so I can control all flashes from all cameras all the time

AND

I could add alianbees to the bunch \o/ and use all my speed lights

AND

I can use my SB-900 now as flash instead of master which doubles the power of my little softbox \o/

...I guess I have to go shopping soon...

2 x $99 JrX Transmitter + JrX Receiver Basic Kit
2 x $59 JrX Receiver Basic Individual

funny I'm out of the states since close to a month now and all the readers of this blog disappeared and I have maybe 1 hit a day instead of 50 something...

I get the message I will write more as soon as I find time for it, latest in january when I'm back in davis.

I live in the us now since over 4 years and whenever I get home the first thing I desperately need and want to eat are:

• smoked salmon on white bread
• a soft boiled egg
• senfgurken (cucumbers pickled in mustard and vinegar)
• good Italian food (bruschetta,carpaccio basically antipasti in general)
  
• good vodka...
  
• thueringer bratwurst
• met broetchen (ground raw park with onions and spices on white bread)

I'm done with the first 3 things, the 4th comes tonight and the rest comes in the next couple of days.

ok once it is not raining Finland is actually very nice...



so yes it was fun to take some pictures there today and I start to understand why claudia would sell a kidney to be there!

Finland is:

- cold
- dark

conference was:

- interesting
- learned something

getting a nice picture:

- priceless

why does F/2.8 work here and the other eye looks great



but the same F/2.8 does not work here




just frustrating, not enough light for F/5.6 - F/8 and not enough DOF for this. But I still love the lens and it was so much fun to work with her.

well the workshop at Preston castle is done and it was just an awesome experience to work with so many photographers. Explain things to them, give them ideas what to do with the models when they felled unsure. Pointing out interesting lighting situations. And the best was that the instructors just let me do my thing, since I seemed to get it right more or less.
I did not had the chance to take many pictures and directed and assisted more.

Things like,

• why don't we put her in the front of the window and you see how the sun shines over her shoulder and gives it this nice rim light effect? Now we put the reflector in front of her to bring her face on the same level.
• or if we move these models about 3 feet more to the left, well this gives you less clutter in the background

It was also nice to see the differences between the models and how they acted around the photographs, how they got excited when people actually showed them the pictures they took. Just to treat them as humans and not as subject.

For me it was a great opportunity to work a day without a flash and rediscover the use of ambient light and a reflector. But for this you always need an assistant or be able to hold the camera with one hand very still. Which was my biggest issue, most of the pictures I took are blurry, since the flash did not freeze the motion and you really have to keep your shutter speed high.
And boy the D200 sucks above iso 400, it's just a nightmare an you loose all details in the eyelashes.

You can find the gallery of my pictures here

And here are the best shots from today,

The differences between getting it right in camera and getting it right with post processing.

I took this picture over a year ago when I got the D80 and spend several hours to improve it with photoshop and to make it perfect. Adding layers, blurring parts of the skin adding several contrast curves to make it look 'professional'



And it was taken with just a single SB-600 and an omni bounce directed at the ceiling on camera

Now let's look at this picture



It has a similar look too it from the black and white conversion and I spend like 2 minutes on it post processing. Basically adjust the contrast and convert to black and white. Done

The difference is not the camera or the settings. They are more or less comparable. F/3.5 (90 mm) vs F/5 (200mm) gives a similar depth since the distance was more important in this case. The 200mm had maybe a bit more DOF since I was a a bit farther away since I wanted to get the shoulder in the picture.

The shutter speed is 200 vs 250. Which does not matter since the ambient light is basically knocked out in both cases.
Now the big difference I that I now have a rough understanding of what I'm doing (I still have a lot to learn) and that I used much bigger light sources which softened the skin for me. I still use a SB-600 speed light (2 actually), but thanks to the use of the umbrella (40") and softbox (28"x28") which are placed about a foot away from the model, well the skin is much softer and we have this big reflections we all love so much.
You can see the exact setup in her earrings (second picture) or in the eyes (first picture)

The first copy I got of the 17-55mm F/2.8 was pretty bad and just didn't work for me. But the ebay copy if got for so much cheaper is just amazing. I did not do any landscape with it yet, but the results I get from it pretty much speak for them self. It does help to have a pretty subject.






I also feel less and less the need to buy yet another lens. Can it be that I'm at the stage were I'm happy with what I have and actually concentrate more on taking pictures?

This would be truly awe full...

I would trade my D80 for another D200 in an instant. Now I have two cameras and today is shot like 300 pictures with the D200 and only 60 with the D80. I actually swapped lenses between the D80 and D200, since it just felt so much better to shoot with it.