This is my number 21 shoe.

While out on Mother's Day in pursuit to do some mad shopping for the Mrs., I ended up buying more stuff than her. Included with the purchase is a Nike 6.0 sneakers.

I was originally looking for some skinny jeans. (hahahaha, no, but seriously). We went to various stores and for some reason ended up in Pac Sun. I used to love Pac Sun due to the shoe collections that they have available in the store. For some reason, some lame leadership decided that "we'll just concentrate on clothes". Nice move asshole. So I stopped going, until yesterday. Looked around... looked around some more... and looked around some more. Wait, what is this, shoes? In Pac Sun? Green Nike's? Me = In love. Bought.



Now, I might have lied to someone when I said "I have 25 shoes." Technically it's not a lie. 21 is not counting my sandals. I am not talking about flip flops from Wal Mart. I'm talking about them leather bound ones that is madly used in the streets of Waikiki. I have three of those. Then again, 21 is not counting my work shoes either. God knows how many boots I own, maybe he doesn't. Try Googling it.

I will shoot some more of my other shoes in the near future. For an additional Ipso Facto, all 21 of them is on rotation and being worn on a very frequent basis. All of them has battle scars of some sort. Like my Steve Madden that got ran over by a freak go kart accident that I would've swore would've got my legs amputated. That story is for some other time.

Watch out for some more of my shoes in the near future.

Edit: with the said skinny jeans.

Eskuche Headphones

I often try to make a statement whenever I purchase something. I usually try to steer away from the things that is commonly seen on the streets. People started buying beats by dr dre headphones awhile back and hip hop fans went crazy on it. Not only does it offer a tremendous amount of bass, it is also not bad looking. I opted for another route.

Eskuche 33 1/3.

33 1/3 is based from the rotational speed at which a vinyl is played. Again, I opted for a color that will not be so oblivious to others, Rose Gold.

The headphones are actually comfortable to wear due to the nylon strap on top. It does have a few downside. First, the on the ear design. I had to make sure that it doesn't squash any part of my ear or I will have hot spots after an hour or so. Second, even though it does have a mic support and pause/hang up function remote that is included with, it does not have volume control handy when listening to your ipod/iphone/whatever you use to listen to music device.

The bass hits pretty hard on this bad boys, but don't get me wrong, don't expect to be using these when recording a multi million dollar deal.

I purchased this to be different. It shows me. If you'd rather not get any wise comments, I'd suggest you stick with your old fashioned plain black head sets.

$65 will get you one of these here Official Eskuche Store.



To see the Strobist info click here.

Flying Cebu Pacific this month?

If you are planning on doing a trip around the Philippines and decided to take Cebu Pacific, browse through the inflight magazine, Cebu Smile, and check out some of my older pictures. They are featuring drifting in Japan.

It's been a while since I have been in the scene but that didn't stop the magazine from contacting me. It was a message by the editor in chief on my flickr that really excited me during my stay in Qatar. Asking me if they can publish some of my shots. I agreed to it and finally after a few months, it's published. I wanted to write the story as well but due to timing issues, that went away as well.

It has been over 5 years since my work has been published and I'm happy to say that I will try to make a come back, one way or the other.

Check back for more updates in the near future.

This puts back a smile on my face.

Check out their story and other articles that they might have.

http://www.cebusmile.com

 

Travel: Hundred dollar night in Doha, Qatar

The other day, we decided to have some Turkish food in the vicinity of Doha. In the midst of the city, we found this restaurant called Turkey Central Restaurant. Sounds authentic to me.

 

So we walked in and first thing that you will see is the shawarma meat being shaved off the grill. We're off to a good start. Walked in and went upstairs to dine in.

A glossy paper menu is given with half written in English and the other half in Arabic. There was a lot of food to choose from. From hummus to shawarma to BB-Q'd meat. We chose to share appetizer so we ordered the Maza appetizer which consists of Tsiziki sauce, hummus, olives, and a lot more. It is then served with hot, freshly baked pita bread.

Excuse me while I wipe my mouth, still salivating while I picture the things that they had to offer.

 

 

The service was not the greatest, mostly because of the language barrier, but they are attentive.

Here is the picture of the bread with the Maza getting scooped down. It is delicious.

Here is the meat plate. It's an orgy of the mouth.

Shawarma Plate. Fries and meat hiding under the seasoned bread.

 

I wish I can tell you guys about what the food consists of and all that jazz about it, but I am really no expert when it comes to this. From what I can tell, it's one of the best Turkish food I have ever had. Even one of the guys that was with us, confirmed that everything that they offer in this restaurant tastes the same as the ones offered in the streets of Turkey but in a lot cleaner environment.

 

To top it all off, we paid QR (Qatari Riyals) 167.00 for the whole table. That's $47.00 to feed five big full grown man. Trust me, we had a lot of left overs. Well worth it.

We then walked down the street to purchase some baklava from Pattiserie Sweets. I bought half a ki of pistachio baklava for QR 35. Close to $10. It was, again, delicious.

To end our night, we decided to go down the souqs to hang out, enjoy a cup of coffee and smoke some hookah. We sat there for about 2 hours, I had a cappuccino and ordered strawberry mint shisha to smoke. For the 5 of us, it costs around the same amount of money we spent to eat. It was QR 160 for coffee and shisha.

One hundred dollars to feed five person and enjoy the scenery of downtown Doha was a budget compared to other city America has to offer. When you get the chance to visit this country, hopefully around the winter/spring timeframe due to lower temperature and comfortable weather to cruise around town, try these places and explore others. Thanks Doha!

The view where we were sitting at while smoking shisha.

 

Oh flickr, you are so smart, touche on Explore

So the other day, I posted a picture on flickr. I posted it in a lot of group, to hope for a shot to have it featured in "Explore". For those of you that doesn't know what that means, it's basically 500 pictures that flickr deemed to be "interesting" that day.

I got a lot of comment from the groups that I have posted it in, 140 to be exact, 267 views, and 30 faved the picture as well, in a 24 hour period. That's pretty damn good, I would think. A sure shot to have it in "Interestingness".

I was wrong.

I searched for some of the ones that did make it. It had way less than what I have. Like this one for example. It was #42 on Explore.

But, flickr knew what I was up to. It knows that it was "rigged". Even though the picture I posted was worth to be on Explore.

Touche flickr... touche.

Click here to see what Explore is.

Interview on Photogrill

I have been getting a lot of praise from the picture I took with scattered clouds. I got a comment on the blog itself to be invited for an interview for a website.

It's called Photogrill. It's basically a website where pictures get selected and basically dissected after it's taken. It's a pretty cool concept to learn about the photographer and why and how the photo is taken. It definitely earned a bookmark spot on my browser.

Check out PHOTOGRILL photo shoot debriefing

Another F-18 Shot with HDR Fusion

This one is taken on a different day and during a sunset.

I figured I liked the "Slow Shutter Cam" so much that I tried another app from the developer. It's called HDR Fusion.

Here is what I came up with.

It almost look similar to my last shot due to the angle but I was amaze by this result. You can actually see the glow of the sunset and the darkness (supposedly) from the jets shadow. I had to put a bit of saturation to make the picture pop, but nonetheless, it came out really good in my opinion. I need to take more shots on this app before I give it a proper review, but I hope you guys like this for now.

Weird flickr view spikes

I know I am not a very popular choice on flickr and I am not really ashamed to say that I only get about an average view of 120 and a few favorites. What I just want to know is the weird fluctuations that I get from time to time. It'll just spike up like some sort of a viewing surge. Yesterday it spiked up to 443 and the last one was 495.

Another weird ones are the ones with thousands of views but no comment, like this picture.

Actually as I just now gazed upon my "Popular" link. It's saying that this now has the most view. Which I can totally see why.

Nonetheless, it's kinda weird how these phenomenon happens, maybe somebody is stalking me?

When lightning strikes

Tried to capture some lightning shots with the Slow Shutter Cam app for the iPhone.

There is a fault. It takes it per frame and tries to stitch it. Not complaining, just a tad disappointed.

Nonetheless, It performed. A really nice addition for in the go photographer and all you have is your phone.

Here's what I got.




The lightning is sitting on the clouds so it's a bit difficult to capture the strikes as it goes. Edited with Photoshop Express.

Tell me what you think.

Scattered clouds edited

Scattered clouds, a photo by Yukio Kawasaki on Flickr.

Here is another version. Edited on Photoshop Express and Best Camera app on iPhone. Go ahead and check out the rest of my flickr account.

Click here for black background.