Lens cap
As I climbed into bed, exhausted and realising that I’d forgotten to take this day’s picture, I promised myself I wouldn’t make it too difficult and that I’d take a picture of the first thing I saw the second I took my lens cap off:
D’oh. I know.
-M
Lampshade
I have been really slack about keeping up with this blog. In my defence, I have been working, celebrating my birthday and working some more. On this day (What should have been the 20th of Feb) I was working the Gulf Food expo and when I got home, was really just too tired to take photos of anything particular. So please enjoy this lampshade:
-M
Eyeshadow
Today, I worked. It’s a promo job, which means I had to apply make up. Here’s a picture of an eyeshadow palette:
Promo jobs also mean lots of standing and smiling. Every ounce of my blood is exhausted. Goodnight.
-M
Shoes!
Went out and purchased some shoes a while ago… They killed my feet just by wearing them around the house for fifteen minutes. So yesterday I went and bought a new, more expensive pair. They didn’t kill my feet, but the damage was already done. These are my new, prettier, comfier… but slighly more costly shoes:
I wore them for around nine hours today. Nothin’ like breaking in a new pair of shoes on a first day of promo work. My poor feet think they’re being punished for something bad they’ve done. I wish I could talk foot and tell them that it’s not their fault.
-M
Minutes to Midnight
The other night I went out to karaoke… I took my camera along with me, but then found that I left my memory card at home in my computer. I angrily snapped crappy cell-phone pics at stupid things like wilted roses thinking my picture of the day would have to be one of those. I arrived home, and realised there was still time to get a picture:
See what I did there?
-M
This day in history saw me at the beach with a friend of mine. It was a sailing club beach, so we got to lounge around in privacy, read books, soak sun and just chill with absolutely no interruptions. Unfortunately, I was so chilled and forgot about pretty much everything in the world, including the fact that I had to take some kind of picture and this was literally the only one I snapped all day, except for one almost exactly like it:
I then got home and babysat, rendering me almost entirely unable to focus on picture taking at all and forgot once again. Oh well, not every day is a decent photo day.
-M
Psychedelic lantern thing
There’s this really huge psychedelic lantern/chandelier thing in Dubai Mall, it changes colors and it’s pretty cool. I snapped it during one of my favorite color combinations of pinky purples, hints o’ turquoise & sea-foam and blues!:
No joke, though, it really is huge. Like the size of a really small house.
-M
Fairy Lights, City Lights
My sister set up the most amazing valentines night for her boyfriend and the rest of our siblings whilst my parents racletted with our neighbours downstairs. We had a table under a gazebo with fairy lights, it was pretty magical:
Ain’t she the thoughtfullest?
We had Chinese and it was delicious.
-M
Key in the parking lot
I found this on the ground of the Mall of the Emirates parking lot today:
One or two people stared at me funny when I was photographing it.
A friend and I grabbed CPK (California Pizza Kitchen, don’tchaknow) for the second time this month and I gotta say that the busier restaurant at Mall of the Emirates compared to the one in DXB Mall (Which I somewhat reviewed a few days back) gets my vote. Food is just as good, service is better. The lighting is different, though (no, there’s no picture.)
I actually spent about 6 hours at the mall today, now I know why girls who like shopping are generally in such great shape. I.am.exhausted.
-M
Fondue is so passé
Here is today’s picture:
On a completely unrelated note, ever heard of a raclette? The dish, the cheese & the grill. Wikipedia explains it well, but if you’re not down for clicking long story short is it’s…
1) a swiss cheese, which, as I discovered today, is super potent in its regular state- but then the second it’s melted it’s this delicious and fairly mellow warm soft thing of yum. Not that I don’t think potent cheese is delicious, ’cause I do; the contrast between melted and not is just so different. Interesting stuff.
2) a swiss dish, where the raclette cheese is heated and then *scraped onto a plate (traditionally) accompanied with small firm potatoes, dried meat, pickled onions and Gerkins.
*the word ‘raclette’ comes from the french word “racler” which means “to scrape”, hence the name and raisese, to me at least, a new philosphical question: Which came first, the dish or the cheese?
3) a raclette is also the name for a table-top, fondue-type grill used to heat up such a cheese for such a dish.
My mom recently purchased one and we all overdosed on raclette, (breaking the rules here) halloumi and cheddar. Except ours was a little more rebellious because, though it included potatoes, our version was served with steak, chicken, guacamole, lettuce, tomatoes, croissants, flat bread and probably several other completely untraditional accompaniments. Never the less, it was delicious.
These raclette grills are awesome for family lunches, dinner parties- there are even little grills out there for just two people.
On top of that, the posibilities are endless, who said cheese was the only thing you could scrape? If I hadn’t completely overdone it with the cheese I’d probably still be at the table, grilling and scraping chocolate onto strawberries, bananas and marshmallows. Endless posibilities, I say- endless.
-M
Lunch at Spur
Lunch today was had at Spur:
(That’s the menu, if you hadn’t guessed) It’s a South African restaurant which I’m not really a fan of (except for their AMAZING onion rings and pink sauce, yum), but it was nice to hang out with a few friends. Service was awesome and if big servings for decent prices and a super friendly atmosphere is your thing, then Spur’s the place to go.
-M
Britney at the front door
This is my sister’s dog Britney, at the front door of our home (Now the title’s prettys self explanatory, ey?)
I’m not at all that proud of the picture. It seemed like a cool idea at the time. Even though I took about a hundred pictures yesterday, honestly, this is the only one even close to okay enough to post. Seriously, it’s either this or a picture of my toes with faces permanent markered on, and all that’s going to do is make people tell me to get a pedicure (to which my response will be “BUY ME A PEDICURE AND I WILL”) anyways, you’re going to have to settle for the little dog at the front door and that’s that.
-M
CPK Lights
Yesterday I had lunch at the California Pizza Kitchen in Dubai Mall. I got the ‘club pizza’ because I couldn’t decide between a salad and a pizza, so I got the Hannah Montana version (Best of both worlds, baby) and my pizza arrived with a mountain of lettuce covering delicious toppings which topped the most amazing pizza bread ever. It was the perfect combination of Crunch vs. Softness. How do they manage to get that dough so right?
Anywhooooo, the food was great but the service was terrible (we were kept waiting for numberous things, the one that mostly ticked me off being the bill… 25 minutes. Srsly?). At least the lighting and decor was pretty cool:
I like the texture of the bricks.
-M
C’est moi
Here is a self-portrait:
I originally shot it for a portfolio for some promo work I plan on doing; it wasn’t meant to be a 366 picture at all, but I really didn’t shoot much else today. At least this one is better than my first self-portrait.
Goodnight, world of WordPress
-M
The City from Suburbia
So, after playing around with HDR for a while, I’ve finally produced one or two images that I’m not completely ashamed of:
Be gentle, if you have any criticism to offer; I’m new to this.
I’m pretty happy with myself for the time being, but I honestly hope I can look back on this in a few years and go “Ohgawsh what a n00b. How absolutely appauling and embarrassing that I ever thought this was decent.” Then again, I think that about some of the photos I took last week- except replace “thought this was decent” with “posted this on the internet for other eyes to look at”
But then, I don’t want to wander on with negative notes… Let’s live in the now: Look at the pretty city!
-M
The reminder.
Yesterday was painful. This was pretty much all I saw all day, bar my few trips downstairs when hunger struck:
I make no excuses, the picture is as crappy as I felt. This picture is a reminder of the lesson yesterday taught me about alcohol consumption. Next time I am coaxed out to a ladies night, I need only to glance at this page, risking petrifying flashbacks, and remember how much everything hurt at this very moment.
-M
DSF Fireworks
I delayed posting the 5th’s photo, because I desperately wanted to attempt HDR processing. I fail’d miserably, so settle for this unspectacular photo of the Dubai Shopping Festival’s closing fireworks:
I did try, but the image came out a noisy, oversaturated, overcooked ball of mess. I don’t think the photo was right for HDR and I was without a tripod, so it’s certainly not the sharpest image. Sadfacesadface.
On that note, my birthday is coming up. Any really nice, rich anonymous strangers want to post me a nice tripod/wide angle[/]macro lens?
No? I suppose asking favors of strangers on the internet isn’t the safest game to play, anyways.
-M
Burj Khalifa, a window view
Dubai’s most current architectural achievement, The Burj Khalifa (currently the world’s tallest building at 829.84 m/2,723ft), from my bedroom window:
If you click on the image and view it larger, you’ll see that there’s a double image near the top of the building: Considering my camera was on a tripod and was still the entire time this shot was being taken (and it took a while to take), I’m guessing that the ghost image is from the sway allowance, which the internet says can reach 5.5ft… Although considering the distance, that looks a little more than 5.5ft to me– my camera seriously didn’t move once, so that’s the only explanation I can come up with (but in all honesty, I really didn’t look into very many different explanations… at all).
I should probably take my camera outside of my room more.
-M
Bowl o’ Spoons
This is my collection of spoons:
That’s a lie, actually, the one with the kettle on the end is a fork. Anyone wanna donate awesome spoons to me? ’cause ya can.
-M
Gold n’ Blue
The sky was super pretty this afternoon:
It feels a little cut off to me, but all the buildings and the streetlights were in the way of a full glorious sky picture. Sadface. A better photographer would have tripped down to the beach, alas, the buddy I was traveling with had a full bladder and I absolutely know how unimpressed I’d be if, on the way home and bursting for the lavatory, my friend decided to take a quick detour to the beach and snap a few pictures of the pretty sky. I’m pleased that I got this one at least. Hopefully there’ll be other impressive skies this year. Hopefully when I have a wide angle lens (omgwantsobad).
-M
Penny-Farthing
I have a little Penny-Farthing on my chest of drawers, it’s by far one of my favorite ever embellishments and I hope I get to keep it forever- If not, at least I have a fun-angled picture of it, to remind me of the cool PF miniature I once owned:
I wish everyone still rode around on them. Normals bicycles are so boring– functional and safe, sure, but not nearly as fun to look at or, I’m sure, attempt to climb on to.
-M
[Go] Green Caterpillar
I recently purchased myself a glass bottle to drink out of around my home (and, I mean, it’s not really that heavy I do take it round in my bag, too). I decorated it with a fluffy green caterpillar sticker and I think it looks kinda neat:
I always used to use plastic bottles… I’d try to re-use them, but after a while they got a funky kinda smell to ’em and to boot they shed manhood & other hormone-targeting chemicals into the water that you then drink (google: phthalates). Yuck. Do you blame me for being put off of plastic water bottles entirely?
I’ve never been much of a fan of plastic… It’s always appeared cheap & tacky to me. Granted, inexpensive and lightweight were probably what they were going for when it was invented, but long-run wise we can hang on to our glass ones instead of spewing out a constant flow of slowly degrading plastic into our landfills.
I did type out a mahoosive rant about how disgusted I am with plastic and what it’s doing to my pretty planet. I deleted it because, in the end, if you do care then you’ve probably already heard it all and are one step ahead of me, environmentally (heck- you’re probably a level 8 enviro-vegan, living in an earthship [in which case can I come and live with you, if I keep the carnivoring down to a minimum?]), and if you don’t care then you’ve probably already heard it all before as well and continue not to care because that’s just the kind of person you are- I can’t tell you who to be, but behind the anonymity of the internet I can call you names, you selfish, lazy & ignorant poop-head. Besides, I’m not actually a scientist (Shock. Horror), I don’t really know exactly how long plastic takes to break down, it’s always changing; recently the plastic in the ocean is apparently breaking down much faster than originally thought…. except that it’s slowly poisoning it, so that was a short-lived hurrah.
So yeah, go out and getcho self a long-term drinking vessel and stop using plastic. As you already know: it’s bad mmm’kay?
-M
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