The Journey to Nine Mile Jamaica

Being the HUGE Bob Marley fan I am, visiting the House of Marley in Nine Mile Jamaica was an item I had on my bucket list for a very long time! (Glad that's one item crossed off) The drive to the compound took about two hours from where we were located. The roads were rough and consisted of narrow lanes that ran along the mountains of Jamaica. I loved every minute of it! What's not to love when you're in a bus filled other fans just as excited as you are, and all singing to the tunes of Bob Marley?!? Good times, good times... and now for the photos:

The view from Mt. Zion A photo of Bob Marley's meditation rock. Of course had to get a photo with our guide. I tell you, I was so excited/happy to be in Jamaica I was choppin it up with everyone! Nothing but love! Jerk chicken, pork with red beans and rice! These dogs definitely have the right idea... feeln' irie!        "The Sun is Shining" ~ Until we meet again Jamaica

Don't Be Scurrred!

Don't be scared! Shake things up and embrace change! Once you set your mind to something everything will fall into place. That's what I told myself when I decided to pick up the new iPad Pro 256gb with plans of using it as a laptop replacement for my travel photography workflow. Yes the concept is a bit hard to accept, especially if you are the type of person who has traditionally taken photos, copies them to a computer to edit, backup and share to various social media sites. I've been doing that for years! There was a time when I used to go on trips carrying a 15" MacBook Pro along with a DSLR and a handful of lenses and never once complained about it. So why change?  Well thanks to technology we now have amazing mirrorless cameras and tablets that weigh almost nothing. I'm tired of traveling with all that heavy equipment, I like to keep things as simple as possible and move freely from place to place. (Bad experience when country hopping in Europe)

Here is a description of what I had in mind for my new workflow. While traveling (to other countries hopefully) I'll take either my Fuji X100T or Fuji X-T10 (both have built in wifi) then I'll select the photos I'm happy with and WiFi them over to my iPad. Once on my iPad I'll create an album to organize them, then do some photo edits if needed. By doing that I'll have photos organized edited and ready to post to my blog. Usually if I don't do that during my downtime on a trip it will take forever for me to get the photos online. Now on my memory card in the camera I will have a copy of all the photos I took in jpg and raw format while the iPad will have a backup of the selected jpg files I'm most happy with. Once I get back home I can then backup my memory cards to my external hard drives and cloud using a computer. No doubt it will take me some time to get adjusted to this new way of doing things, but if I can get it to work out the pay off will be huge for me.

As for my iPad setup, I got the 256gb iPad Pro, with an iPad Air 2 rooCase Origami Slim Fit shell/Smart Cover (smart cover feature doesn't work on the iPad Pro) along with a Microsoft Universal foldable Bluetooth keyboard. Funny that the keyboard is made by MS but it works great and feels just like the keyboard for the Surface Pro just no backlight. Oh and if you're wondering why I didn't just go with a Surface Pro? It is because I just don't really like it, I have ran into all kinds of strange little issues with it while testing. By the way, the blog post I created called "Fuji X-T10 x Canon FD 28mm mashup" (http://http://andrewwongphoto.net/?p=2488) was completely created with the iPad using the workflow I had described above. Using the iPad Pro will be great a great tool as long as I embrace what it can do and not worry about what it can't.

Fuji X-T10 x Canon FD 28mm mashup

More fun with vintage manual focus lenses! The Canon 28mm f/2.8 FD lens is another favorite of mine that stays on my X-T10 80% of the time. I was able to pick one up from eBay dirt cheap several years ago when I was looking for a wide angle lens for my Canon AE-1 film camera. Since the Fuji has a 1.5 crop factor the lens basically becomes a 42mm lens.

Here are some photos I recently took with this setup. 

The Fuji Film X-T10

(photo of a Russian Helios 44-2  lens mounted on a Fuji Film X-T10 taken with the Fuji Film x100T)

Recently I decided to pick up a Fuji Film X-T10 (body only) with the sole purpose of shooting with old vintage manual focus lenses. I really loved the picture quality that my x100T produced so going with the X-T10 was a no-brainer for me. Why these old vintage lenses? Well for one thing, they are dirt cheap and still produce excellent quality images. For example I was able to get the Russian made Helios 44-2 58mm F2 lens pictured above from Amazon for lens than $70.  The Helios is known for creating some wild swirly bokeh. Below are a few photos I took with that setup:

andrew@andrewwongphoto.com

24 Hours in Milan

24 hours in Milan Italy, the Fashion Capitol of the World. Unfortunately not by choice, we were unexpectedly booted from our flight shortening our stay in Milan. Normally something like this would be pretty upsetting to me, but it was all part of the journey. Besides the only goal I had was to explore and get lost with my camera, nothing makes me feel more alive than that!

The obligatory selfie in the hotel lobby. (Hotel NH Collection Milano President)

Hey Siri! One of the best things I did in preparation for this trip was to rent an international MiFi hotspot. If you plan on traveling abroad I highly recommend using one on your trip, unless you don't care about using public WiFi with the chance of getting your data compromised. I went with a company called XCom Global which only charged me $15 a day for unlimited usage.

An interesting restaurant sign to come across when you're actually an American.

Another good reason for getting the international MiFi is so you can use Yelp when you're starving! Here are a few dishes from Mozzarella e Basilico, first meal in Milan and it was damn good!

Sausage pork with potato puree

Saphron risotto with prosciutto

The "Double Malt"

The signature risotto dish

Calzone wrapped with prosciutto

Milan definitely has their share of interesting street performers. Although I did find some of the street vendors to be a bit annoying in the tourist areas. These were the types of people who would walk right up to you and nag you to buy a "selfie stick" from them.

Duomo di Milano

For dinner we heard good things about Da Vic – Ristorante Guerrini so we decided to call and make reservations. Good thing we did! We saw a few visitors like us get turned away because they were all booked, they even mentioned it was their last night in Italy. Da Vic turned out to be a great choice, the Chef/owner came out to greet us and talk to us for a bit which was really nice. I can't say enough about how great the food and service was. It's always a special feeling when you feel welcomed when you're so far away from home.

Loved this dish so much I had to order it again.

This octopus was amazing and super tender! I don't take octopus for granted at all! Whenever I'm in Hawaii I'll spend my time spear fishing and free diving for these guys.

Goodbye Milan it was a great experience, until next time!

andrew@andrewwongphoto.com