Ricardo's Blog

Walking through Old Town Nice

Sat, 16 May 2009 11:08:23 -0400

I was recently in Nice, France for TM World's Management Forum 2009. Nice is one of the major cities along the famous Cote d'Azur at the French Riviera. I took this gorgeous shot of a lonely man walking through the narrow streets of it old district Vieux Nice. Click on the picture to see it large at its flickr page.

The Amazing Ponte Estaiada in Sao Paulo

Sat, 16 May 2009 11:02:03 -0400

The Ponte Estaiada Otavio Frias de Oliveira has quickly become one of the most significant Sao Paulo landmarks. Enjoy here a widescreen format version of it (16:9 ratio). You can click on the picture to see it in large or see more beautiful pictures of Sao Paulo.

Who says kiddie places have to be boring?

Sat, 14 Mar 2009 15:39:07 -0400

A kid's Pizza Parlor is probably one of the last places you will go to shoot great photos. Think again, there are many lights colors and movement you can capture there. Here are some pictures from my 9 year old birthday party at one such place. Click on any of them for its flickr page.

More picture to come soon.

Five people at the beach, each minding its own business

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 09:39:22 -0400

This scene caught my attention while walking through the beach at Lagoinha beach at the north end of Florianopolis. Five people, each different and each in different activities were standing close, but actually making completely different things. The kid in the front is particularly oblivious to the rest of the people playing with his board.

See more pictures of people at the beach at my Beach Candids flickr set.

Reinventing myself (and this blog)

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 09:15:52 -0400

For all my close friends that have followed me over the last few years, you know that the end of last year was a period of intense change in my life. I got married for a second time, I changed jobs leaving my 9.5 year old job at Intel and I decided to stay in Brazil instead of moving to the US with Intel. During all of this time this blog was really quiet as I was really busy reinventing myself.

Now it's time to start up again. I have joined Comptel, a Finnish Company that is a leader in the field of software to support operations for Telcos. I am running the operations for the company in the Americas. My job continues to require me to travel through the Americas and I get to experience interesting situations and capture many wonderful photos of our continent as a side benefit. I am also in much more contact with Europe, having a chance to visit several places in the old continent in the last couple of months.

I will go ahead and try to make come changes to the blog. For one thing, I will include more of my photos that have become hugely popular in flickr. My flickr pages and photos now have surpassed the 2 Million visit mark and are visited by an average of more than six thousand people per day. If you want to access my flickr page go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/carreon . I recently had a chance to visit Mobile World Congress in Barcelona so you can find many great photos there.

In summary, I am happy to restart updating my blog now with many new things to share in my life. I hope you all continue to join me and send me your feedback. See you all around.

Links for 2009-02-17 [del.icio.us]

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 00:00:00 PST

HTC's G1 Googlephone at MWC Barcelona on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
A photo of the H1 mobile phone based on Google's Android as showcased by HTC at Mobile World Congress Barcelona.

More people at the sand, Copacabana beach in Rio

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 13:10:41 -0400

I just uploaded several photos of people at the beach taken from far and above them. Please click on the picture to see this an other pictures on my flickr stream.

Greetings from Turku, Finland.

Lady with a red hat at South Beach

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 00:24:41 -0400

This picture has become an instant sucess on my flickr photo stream. It is a rather simple photo, but there are a couple of reasons that are behind its sucess: 1) the fact that the lady walkingthe beach stands tall above the crowd and 2) the irresistible red hat on her head. I hope you enjoy it too. Click on the picture to access its flickr page.

Obama leading 5 to 1... on Twitvote

Sun, 02 Nov 2008 11:33:35 -0400

This is a very interesting on line poll by Twitter, the very successful micro-blogging social network. Registered Twitter users can come and vote for Barack Obama or John McCain and their vote gets posted on twitter automatically. Go and check it out for yourself at: twitvote.

Washington Apples at Pike Place Market

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 00:50:43 -0400

Gorgeous Washington Apples under a beautiful light at one of the little fruit stores at the Pike Place Market in Seattle. Pike Place is a market like no other in the United States. It is esentially a large Farmer's Market that is permanently set up in a series of very old, historic buildings. A place you cannot miss when you visit Seattle, Pike Place has 10 Million visitors every year. Click on the picture for its flickr page.

Word Cloud of Michelle Obama at CNN´s Larry King Live October 8th, 2008

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 11:07:12 -0400

Click on the picture to go to its flickr page and see larger sizes.

It should be fun to watch the Obama-McCain debate with Twitter tonight

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 18:12:04 -0400

I watched the VP debate between Sarah Palin and Joseph Biden in CNN. They had a real-time graph on audience sentimant with focus groups on swing states. The truth is it was more or less meaningless. Yes, you could see the graph going up or down as the audience approved or disapproved the different remarks by Palin and Biden, but it was so fast and so distracting that I think it did not added much to the debate watching experience.

On the other hand, you can get a good sentiment about what is the buzz about Obama and McCain by turning to twitter. Twitter is a social network where people communicate by posting short messages, similar in lenght to SMS (each message can have up to 140 characters). Some people are calling this micro-blogging given the small size of each post. In each post you will typically find interesting phrases and links to content all over the web.

Now the interesting thing about watching the debate with your notebook tuned in on twitter by the side is that you can see real time the sentiment that each presidential candidate is getting out of the audience. This is a much richer experience that simply watching a meaningless graphic go up and down.

To check out the Twitter coverage of the debate, go to twitter at 9 PM EST (or whatever your local time for the debate is). And then tune into Election twitter. On this site, twitter shows real time what the millions of users of the site are saying about Barrack Obama, John McCain and other campaign related topics. You can actually go there anytime and not just at debate time and see what is the buzz on each candidate as people react to speeches, press articles and other types of information.

So watch it out and let me know what you think. My twitter account is http://twitter.com/ricardocarreon

SNL Video of Tina Fey as Sarah Palin

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 10:21:57 -0400

This is hilarous. For the NBC Original, just click here.

US Elections 2008: VP Debate Word Cloud

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 15:26:10 -0400

Click on the image to go to its flickr page, where you can see it in large size.

This is the word cloud of the Presidential debate of last night. It includes both Palin's as well as Biden's remarks. You can find some interesting facts like the repetition of John McCain's name, which was actually far more mentioned than Barack Obama. You can also see the words that were repeated by both sides, like "change" by Senator Biden and "maverick" by Governor Palin.

The Word cloud was created with Wordle, a fantastic toolo to create word clouds out of plain text.

Nebraska's abandoned teenagers

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 13:59:57 -0400

Talk about the law of unintended consequences, or about parental irresponsibility.

Republicans kill the bill, their candidate and the President

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 17:54:56 -0400

In a surprise move, Republicans voted in an overwhelming majority against the bailout plan of the Bush administration. The Republican vote was 133 to 65, which is roughly two thirds against the plan.

But the real question is, Why did they chose to take the bill down when McCain placed so much on getting the Bill approved? McCain himself stopping campaign to get the bill done is likely to get a lot of heat for the outcome of the vote. So, why did they chose to give his candidate a huge black eye when he has been struggling to Obama?

I guess there is a vacant seat labeled "leader" at the GOP.

Links for 2008-08-18 [del.icio.us]

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 00:00:00 PDT

APOGEE PHOTO MAGAZINE: White Balance and Color Temperature
A very well explained and simple way to understand how to use the right white balance settings when shooting digital.

Links for 2008-05-07 [del.icio.us]

Thu, 08 May 2008 00:00:00 PDT

Top 10 Pro Stock-Photography Tips | Crestock.com Blog
AN interesting article by star stock photographer Andres Rodriguez on what makes good photos to sell online.

Links for 2008-03-28 [del.icio.us]

Sat, 29 Mar 2008 00:00:00 PDT

10 Killer Internet Companies That Want To Pay You to Write
A nice article about companies who pay for articles.

Links for 2007-08-23 [del.icio.us]

Fri, 24 Aug 2007 00:00:00 PDT

A Primer on Image Histograms and Curves
Very nice article on historgrams and adjustment curves.
using curves in photoshop - Photoshop Free Download swicki - powered by eurekster
A useful swicki of links about using curves in photoshop to adjust luminosity, contrast, colors.

Links for 2007-06-11 [del.icio.us]

Tue, 12 Jun 2007 00:00:00 PDT

Flickr Leech
A nice net app that displays 200 flickr pictures at a time instead of the 20 or so flickr displays. Allows for a super fast browse through other people's stream. It can also display ALL pictures on Explore for a given date.

Links for 2007-04-13 [del.icio.us]

Sat, 14 Apr 2007 00:00:00 PDT

Flash Photography with Canon EOS Cameras - Part I.
A great primer on flash photography for Canon EOS cameras.