Hard Drive Hunting in Limerick! {Day 6}

The walls of this hostel is quite thin.  I woke up to moans and love grunts.  Seriously at 6 am?  I mean wow!  Either they are real early birds or they went on for…

Thankfully, yesterday, I bought cereal bars, bread, orange juice, and cheese.  A pretty light breakfast, which was fine with me.  I dressed up in my typical cargo khaki pants and Orange Princeton tee.  Today looked like a good day to explore, well like every other day.

Time to go!

I met Tim downstairs, he was checking out and flying back home. We walked all the way to the roundabout when we parted ways.

I went towards King’s Castle, absorbing the really gorgeous day.  Bright blue skies with some clouds up there, it was really a great day!  I walked around the castle since it was still closed, checking out the cathedral that was near it and around getting a sense of the location.  I went back to the castle to wait for it to open.

When the door finally opened, I entered and used my Princeton University ID card for a discount.  hehe!  I love my PU ID!  With my PU ID I got my discount and free pamphlets!  :D  And toured I did!  I was able to go through all the rooms and caverns underneath to scope out the castle.  It looked more like a fort to be honest.  I climbed to the top of the towers to get a better view of Limerick.  It was fantastic!  The view on top of the towers was a great sight overlooking Limerick!

I went back down to the picnic tables, to eat my apples and snacks that I brought with me.  Mmmm… food!  While I was taking a break I looked at my map and went to the dig site.  I’d like to go down there to check it out.

On my way out, I went to the souvenir shop to check out some stuff.  I bought Eric cap, a necklace, and some post cards.

When I left the castle I headed towards this lemon shop.  Can’t remember the name of the shop, but I got a vegetarian sandwich which had mayo in it.  Crap!  I don’t like mayo!  It started raining so I stayed inside for a little bit.  Ahh… I am really not a fan of mayonnaise especially since it has eggs in it.  Oh well.  I am just going to have a lot of….

When the rain stopped, I went around to look for an external hard drive.  HMV told me that I would need to go to Maplin’s, but I would need to call a taxi since Maplin’s was a good forty minute walk away.  Before I left for Maplin’s I called my parents to talk to them.  My mom was set to go to Vietnam.  I told my mom and dad about my journey so far and wanted to know how my mom was doing with her leg and all.  But it sounds like it was feeling better so going to Vietnam wouldn’t be an issue.

Happy knowing that they are doing well, I found a taxi right outside of the phone booths.  Nice!  The taxi driver dropped me in front of the store and I paid him 6 Euros.  I was a little worried on how I would get back, but I needed to find an external first.  I found one, a Seagate FreeAgent, for 96 Euros which was about $120 in USD.  It was a necessary purchase, even though I mentally debated myself about it, buying it was a necessary purchase.  Used my credit card and never looked back! ha!

On my way back to the city centre I asked where the University of Limerick was.  I heard there was a good vegetarian place to eat there and wanted to check it out.  But it was on the other side of the city and pretty far.  Maybe tomorrow.  I continued to walk to look for a coffee shop.  Neeed coffee…

It started to rain, and then the sun came out, and then it started a huge rain storm.  In that order.

It stopped raining and I left my rain cover, the trees, to get to the info place to ask where I could find knit sweaters.   I would have to look for an Irish hand crafts store.  My mom asked me when I called home if I could find a knit sweater for her.  I’ll have to keep that in mind, but my priority is coffee.  Walking in a circle, I found a Carlton Coffee shop to get a mocha.

The mocha was … alright.  Since it started raining again, I pulled out my newly acquired external hard drive.  My plan for tonight was to prepare for my trip to the cliffs of Moher tomorrow.  I saw this promo for it and was told I could take a bus there tomorrow.  I’d like to do some night shots, but I am afraid I would get mugged.  My hostel is really in the outskirts of town and along the high way.  Just a good thing, that my bags are torn up and beat up looking.

I started to head back to the hostel at 4.  I had to go to the bathroom so bad on the way back!  I didn’t use the toilet since 7 am!  Oh boy!

When I finally relieved myself I went back to my room to rest up and transfer some more photos to the new portable hard drive.  I can take more photos without worrying of losing space.  Eighty gigs is a good size for me to use.  I don’t think I will use up that much for one journey! ha!

 

Rested up, I left to go back out to get some food to eat for dinner.  I went back to the Apache pizza for dinner.  The guy who told me about Dunnes, asked me if I found my external hard drive.  :)  I told him that I did and that I found it at Maplin’s.  When I finished my pizza, I left to go to the train and bus station to inquire the times I would need to be there to go to the Cliffs of Moher.  Turns out that I have to be there at about 6:30 am.  Alright, just leave my hostel at 5:40 am.

When I left the station, it was still drizzling out.  Taking out my umbrella, for once, I went to this park to take some photos.  Going around and shooting these bright red monuments I some how lost my umbrella.  I didn’t realize that I lost it till after I got off the phone with Eric and Vincent.  I didn’t feel like going back to look for it, so I went back to hostel to get ready for the cliffs.

 

My hostel at night

 

 

Specter of the Past

I remember my father’s obstacles and tribulations as he worked his ass off to be the best damn mechanical engineer.  Along the way, he had us, his four kids, a loving wife, and lots of lay offs.

My awesome dad. Sure he currently has “issues” to contend with, from before and after his devastating car accident, from high blood pressure to his brain injury.  He’s still my pops and I love him to bits.   Of course actually telling him that is a little different.  I guess I am not very openly expressive..

(My first watermark… pretty ghastly huge I know.)

My father’s path and the obstacles he had gone thru, is I guess, one of the implicit motivations to keep pursuing my career(s) no matter what.  Currently, Princeton Unversity will be conducting a large scale layoff of its employees to help further weather the economic storm.

Which is the reason for this blog entry.  I, and I am sure many individuals, would not like to hear that they got laid off.  I particularly like the place where I currently work, for my day job.  Enough for me to want to create my “base” for my photography business.  Why don’t I just take that oppurtunity to go full time?

Well because I like having a day job and photography on the side to cover two sides of a coin.

I know that I am going to have hiccups on my way, I already had some during my course of my photography pursuit, and god knows how many hiccups I had on my way towards my grad. school pursuit.

Meandering around Princeton University

So after work, I didn’t go to the gym since today was my off-day, I went around Princeton to check out the area for good potential eSession spots.  I really really want to do an an eSession here!  Well here are some photos that I took today.

This caterpillar was huge!

There are some definitely awesome places to do eSessions near and in the university!

Testing out the 135mm L

I got my 135L lens rental from Glass and Gear a truly awesome camera rental shop!  I use them for all my rentals!  And let me tell you, this lens … it is going to change my shooting habits and lens purchases!  It is absolutely the sharpest lens Canon offers, I am not the only testifying that, check out all the reviews!  And it is only $900ish.  $900…

Well here are some samples from around the university!

So all in all, I love this lens and Margot and Chris are going to love the results from their rehearsal dinner on Friday!  I can’t wait for it and to buy this lens!!  Donations are accepted!  :D

200th post! Giant Recap!

I have been a faithful blogger since 2004 using Xanga.  Sadly, I no longer have that account on Xanga.  I was Random_Pepperhead and then the great mango (which is still there I think…)  Then I switched to Blogspot for a little while.

My first blog entry was this: My trip to Ireland

I blogged entries from my travel journal to start with.  Then I moved to WordPress and imported all the entries.   And was so much more happier with the design and ease of use of wordpress.

Over the course of the years, since 10/19/07 (start of blogspot), I traveled to California twice, Seattle, and Italy, prior to that it was Thailand and Ireland.  And my camera gear has changed as with my shooting habits and styles!  It is quite interesting to see how much I have changed.

I went to California with my brother, sister in law, and nephew to see Yosemite, Mojave desert, disney land and some other places in between.

My very first portrait session was … for lack of better terms a “failure.”  It was with this one guy I contacted on craigslist and it just didn’t go so well and the photos ended up … bleh.

But a little afterwards I was contacted with these two friends and I did much better with their portraits.  I am a quick learner so all the mistakes I did in my first session I fixed for this one.

Yeah.. I totally overdid it with watermarks….  don’t stone me!!

And right after that I photographed my first wedding!

The thing with that wedding was that the bride and groom are my parent’s friends and knowing that I wanted to get into weddings they told me to bring my camera gear!  So

But right afterwards, another family friend gotten married and wanted me to shoot the wedding.  My first two in one weekend wedding!

Because I had FF miles, I flew off to Seattle for a week.  And had a coffee and Thailand food delight!

Then a little bit later, I worked with a singer/actress from around work and tinkered with my portrait and lifestyle photographs.  I did tone down my watermarks!

Although it is fair to say that, I still need to work on controlling people’s expressions, at this point.   So it was fair to also say, that I was more of a candid photojournalistic style shooter.

By the time I finished working with her photographs, I was following Vincent Laforet’s blog and usage of the new Canon 5D mk II!  And was stunned with what he did with it!  Little before the camera came out, I purchased a 100 mm macro lens planning to get the 5D Mark II much later.  But I happened to have walked into a best buy, that had the body in stock.  At that time, hardly any retailer had one in stock!  And then and there I picked one up!  My most unplanned purchase!

Stoked with both the 100mm macro and the 5D2, I also signed up for bludomain for my own site.  www.tednghiem.com.

And then … I stumbled upon a wedding site and got some eSessions!  My first eSession was with Kara and Bryan

I did more eSessions afterwards, but in between those eSessions and my boudoir, I went to Italy!

I had the time of my life out there in Italy!  Two weeks of pure gelato and exploring bliss!

Then I did some boudoir!    I did two prior to this next show, but they did not want me to show their photos.

Boudoir

Right afterwards, I went to Florida to spend time with my brother, sister in law, and nephew in Disney World.

I came back refreshed after having a ton of fun with my nephew, brother and sister in law, to get right back into another boudoir.

Then a little later, I was in contact with Pat Furey to 2nd shoot for him!

So within 200 blog posts, I was able to accomplish this much!  I still have ways to go to be an awesome wedding and travel photographer, but i know I will only keep getting better!

Surely I should wait to make this post when the year ends, but 200 posts is a pretty big number!