Behind the San Diego Convention Center atop a couple of extra-wide breakwaters are the Embarcadero Marina Park. On the south side of the southern breakwater is a little fishing pier, and on that pier there are often a bunch of pigeons. And fishermen and buckets and fishing rods, but I felt a little too intimidated to take pictures of them.

Technical info: Shot with a Nikon D40 and Nikkor 50mm f/1.4G lens, in manual exposure mode. Aperture f/1.4, shutter 1/4000 sec, ISO 200. Post-processing: cropped; pushed recovery adjustment; two curves layers to reduce exposure and add contrast.

Thoughts for improvement: The main thing for this one is to do a better job getting the exposure right in camera. Either waiting for better light or using an ND filter would be good for that.

This is the other reflection shot I took on my downtown shoot two weeks ago. I'm not sure this one works quite as well as the one I posted on Monday, but I still like it. I'm definitely going to have to develop a real series around this idea.

Technical information: Shot with a Nikon D40 and Nikkor 50mm f/1.4G lens, in manual exposure mode. Aperture f/1.4, shutter 1/1000 sec, ISO 200. Post-processing in Aperture 3: cropped in close; several curves layers for highlight recovery, black point, and contrast.

Thoughts for improvement: For a couple of reasons, I wish I had gotten in much closer. First, I don't particularly like the fence and the man's shoulder in the foreground. Second, I ended up cropping out about 3/4 of the image, which makes for a much lower resolution final image.

This one is a "B-side" from a quick shoot back in November. I had a really hard time deciding between this shot and a similar one when it was time to post. I ended up going with the other one because I liked the action of the wave and the textures in the extra rocks, but I've always liked the sparseness of this image and the roughness of the water. Which do you think is better?

Technical info: Shot with a Nikon D40 and Nikkor 55-200mm VR DX lens, in manual exposure mode. Focal length 200mm, aperture f/5.6, shutter 1/250 sec, ISO 400. Post-processing in Aperture 3: yellow filter BW preset; several curves layers for contrast and exposure adjustment; desaturated yellows; burned over the seal; intensify contrast brush over the water; added vignetting.

Thoughts for improvement: I can't decide if the vignetting is too heavy or not.

This shot is from my morning outing downtown a couple of weeks ago. I don't know what it was that made me stop for this shot, but the more I look at it, the more I like it. I like how the window in the reflection frames the model's eye, and how it almost looks like she's holding up the building. But beyond the individual elements, there's something compelling about it, but I can't quite put my finger on what. You might think that this diminishes the value of the shot, since not even I know what's good about it, but I find that these little accidental moments are one of the best parts of photography, especially since it invites me to investigate the ideas I stumble across in future work.

Technical info: Shot with a Nikon D40 and Nikkor 50mm f/1.4G lens, in manual exposure mode. Aperture f/5.6, shutter 1/50 sec, ISO 200. Post-processing in Aperture 3: levels to darken shadows and brighten highlights.

Thoughts for improvement: I don't really know what I could improve about this particular shot, but I think that in general what I can take away from it is an opportunity to further study what in it works for me and how I can use that in the future.

I didn't get a chance to get out and shoot this weekend, so this week we're taking another trip through the archives.

I took this photo in August at the San Diego DSLR club's group shoot in Belmont Park. It's not an ideal technical image, what with the lens flare ghosts from pointing the camera straight into the streetlamps. I keep coming back to it, though, because I think it represents a turning point in my approach to photography—this was the first time I ever approached a stranger and asked if I could take his picture.

Technical info: Shot with a Nikon D40 and Nikkor 35mm f/1.8G DX lens, in aperture-priority exposure mode. Aperture f/1.8, shutter 1/40 sec (+0 EV), ISO 1600. No post-processing.

Thoughts for improvement: As I mentioned, the ghosting is a little awkward. I should probably also have toned down the lights in post a bit.

I'm all out of new pictures for the week (actually, I ran out on Tuesday), so it's back to the archives. This one is from the trip we took to Legoland back in October. This house is part of a Duplo-themed toddler playground near the back of the park. It has stairs up one side and a slide coming down the other, and I think it may have been Jason's favorite part of Legoland. Which made me extra glad that our tickets were free.

Technical info: Shot with a Nikon D40 and Nikkor 35mm f/1.8G DX lens, in manual exposure mode. Aperture f/4, shutter 1/500 sec, ISO 400. Post-processing in Aperture 3: brought up midtones slightly with curves; burned over everything except Jason, himself.

Thoughts for improvement: I could probably stand to crop out a bit of the bottom.

I probably wouldn't have picked up another Sanderson novel so soon after finishing the Mistborn trilogy, but a coworker loaned me this one thinking that it was the third book in that series so I had it on-hand. Still, it made for an interesting comparison, since Elantris was Sanderson's first published novel, and Mistborn followed soon after.

Elantris is the name of a huge, once powerful and beautiful city. For hundreds of years, the city was populated by a race of benevolent demigods, each of whom was at one time human but was transformed into an Elantrian through a mysterious process called the Shaod. But ten years prior to the beginning of the story, the Elantrians' magic failed, causing their city to crumble. More than that, though the Shaod still takes people, instead of becoming powerful, near-immortal magic wielders, they turn into shambling wrecks, unable to die or even heal—any wounds suffered by a new Elantrian remain painful forever.

The story opens with Raoden—a prince of Arelon, the country formerly ruled by Elantris—waking to discover that he has been taken by the Shaod, on the morning he is to be wed to Sarene, a princess from across the sea. Like all those transformed since the fall of Elantris, he is banished into the rotting city, and the rest of the world is told that he has died suddenly. Sarene is left to find her way in Arelon on her own, while Raoden discovers the depths to which life—if it can be called that—in Elantris has sunk in the past ten years. Into this scene comes a third character, Hrathen, a warrior-priest intent on subjugating Arelon for his dark masters, and Raoden and Sarene must work to discover the secret of Elantris' downfall before Hrathen achieves his goal.

All in all, the book was decent, but in comparison with Mistborn, it was easy to see that this was the earlier work. Like a lot of speculative fiction, Elantris is built around one central idea. In this case, it's the mystery of the Elantrians' downfall. The problem is, that idea was a little too central for my taste, leaving me feeling in the end that the book was just too long for what it was. Which is not to say that the book is boring—Sanderson does a fairly good job of keeping things going from scene to scene—it's just that much of what happens, especially in the first half, ends up feeling digressive by the end.

Still, I do have to give Sanderson credit for coming up with an interesting concept. The characters were fairly well-crafted, too, even if the world they inhabited felt a little simplistic to me. What worked the best for me was actually not so much the plot but rather the time spent with Raoden, exploring the ruins of Elantris. Both the descriptions of the city, itself, as well as the survival-of-the-fittest culture that arose there were quite evocative. (As a side note, it made me wonder how much influence was drawn from Mervyn Peake's Ghormengast novels—I haven't read those yet, but reading this made me bump them ahead in my queue a few places.)

I don't know if Elantris is quite worth the praise it's gotten from critics and readers, but it was nevertheless a pretty entertaining read. It's out in paperback at this point, so you should be able to pick it up fairly cheaply in your local bookstore.

Started: 2010-12-09 | Finished: 2010-12-16

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All I can say is, dang, Juliette is a lucky woman.

Technical info: Shot with a Nikon D40, Nikkor 35mm f/1.8G DX lens, and Nikon SB-400 flash (bounced off the ceiling). Manual exposure mode, TTL flash mode (-2 EV). Aperture f/1.8, shutter 1/40, ISO 200. Post-processing in Aperture 3: WB adjustment; +1 exposure; curves for contrast; slight overall desaturation; further desaturated reds and yellows; retouched a sit on the side of my nose.

Thoughts for improvement: I've never been able to decide whether or not I like the fact that the auto-focus picked my glasses instead of my eyes in this one. But, honestly, the main thing I wish with this photo is that I had done something about my nose hair beforehand.

I took this photo at 9:08 on a Sunday morning. I came back at 9:13, but they weren't back yet.

Technical info: Shot with a Nikon D40 and Nikkor 50mm f/1.4G lens, in manual exposure mode. Aperture f/1.4, shutter 1/1000 sec, ISO 200. Post-processing in Aperture 3: levels to brighten highlights and midtones, darken shadows.

Thoughts for improvement: Nothing comes to mind. Other than, you know, taking a picture of something more interesting.

I wasn't sure, when I finished this novel, whether or not I liked it. Having had seven weeks to mull it over, I'm still not sure. That doesn't happen that often for me, but it appears to be where I am with The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith.

A big part of my ambivalence stems from my difficulty in figuring out just what the book is about. It is, as the title suggests, a personal story. Tristan Smith is born with grotesque deformities that isolate him for the rest of his life—he can barely speak, only walks with difficulty, vomits when upset, and is so hideous that most people can't stand to look at him. So, on one level, it is a character study of a deeply marginalized and alienated person—we see the roiling internal life of a central figure who is effectively cut off from the world around him.

But then, it's also clearly meant as a political allegory. Tristan is born and grows up in the country of Efica, a fictional island nation whose beginnings as a penal colony recall author Carey's native Australia, but whose language and culture rather bring to mind South Africa. (Or, at least, the loosely formed image of South Africa that I have.) Tristan's mother is an emigrant from Voorstand, another fictional country whose cultural hegemony and cloak-and-dagger espionage agents are an obvious reference to the United States—though Voorstand's Dutch-influenced dialect is also reminiscent of the Boers.

The interplay between Efica and Voorstand colors every aspect of the novel. Tristan's mother is the founder of an agitprop theater company, and much of the first half of the novel is spent in the company of that theater group as they work and tour and speak against Voorstandish influence in Efica. Tristan grows up both despising Voorstand and entranced by its flashy culture. (The lie is later put to that flashy impression when Tristan visits Voorstand and sees, instead, a landscape of inanity and social decay.) Seeing Tristan's world as we do, through his eyes, we're given a glimpse at the other side of first-world relations with the third world.

The political aspect might seem overbearing if it were completely earnest—and I'm not sure it's not overbearing anyway—but there's also a fair amount of satire. Of the world superpowers, of course—Voorstand's feared intelligence agencies are depicted as almost farcical, and the country's society is based on what amounts to a literal worship of Disney characters. Conversely, Efica—especially the artists surrounding Tristan and his mother—are portrayed with such self-importance that it's hard to imagine that Carey isn't making fun of them, as well.

On top of all of that, the form of the book leaves me wondering how much, if any, can even be trusted. The story is told in Tristan's own voice, complete with footnotes on fictional history and cultural explanations, presented as a memoir or confessional. Throughout the book, Tristan addresses the reader directly, imagining us to be Voorstandish citizens who see him as a terrorist, and imploring us to understand his perspective. It's reminiscent of Humbert Humbert's repeated asides to the "ladies and gentlemen of the jury." Between that allusion and the fact that so much detail is included in scenes where Tristan was either not present or was too young to remember or understand, it seems at times that the reader is invited to wonder just how much is being made up or covered over to further some other agenda.

There's a lot going on in this book, and it's clearly a skillful work. But despite the fact that I can appreciate, even marvel at the craftsmanship, there was still something holding me back from really connecting with it. Maybe I'm simply too American or too bourgeois. I don't know. I'd love to get another take on it, though, so if any of you out there do read it, let me know what you thought.

Started: 2010-11-23 | Finished: 2010-12-07

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