The new Mario Bros is so awesome. And my favourite character, Yoshi is back! Wii!

I also picked up a sweet new blue DSi and instantly got hooked on the musical game, Rhythm Heaven. It is the silliest game I've played since WarioWare Smooth Moves for the Wii, which is definitely cool in my books. As you may have guessed, I'm a wee bit strange. 8-P

Last week I visited Nintendo Canada & Mario at their Vancouver offices to check out some of the new games and gear that they announced at 2009's E3 conference. It was loads of fun. Especially when I beat Nintendo game guru, Matt Ryan at Swordplay. Ha! Well... he may have won best 2 out of 3, but I gave him a run for his money!

Also, my arms were so stiff the next day that I could hardly type. The new Wii Sports Resorts kinda kicked my butt a little. *starts to head to gym... grabs a donut instead :P*

Stay tuned for Part 2. Even more embarrassing moments playing the new Wii Fit Plus & Super Mario Bros and an inside look at the new DS games! Oh boy!

PS I'm actually pretty ace at frisbee. It was that darn Wii Mii dog that couldn't get his act together.

The last time I was in San Francisco, I was determined to go to the zoo to catch some wildlife shots to add to my growing collection of animal portraits. I had such an amazing time at the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary in the Gold Coast of Australia with the roos, koalas, and attack emus and I was excited to get up and close with some other cute, but ferocious beasties.

But as usual, there were several things that prevented me from acquiring some awesome animal portraits.

1. I arrived at the zoo, one hour before closing. Nice one, sleepy pants.
2. It was literally so foggy that I nearly walked into a giraffe.
3. My camera battery was 1/4 from deadzo. Sweet.
4. I forgot my memory cards. Not a single one. Uh. How does that even happen when you have like 10.
5. All the lemurs, gorillas, and cool animals were hiding, asleep, or had made an escape earlier that day.

I may have cried a little, but then I realized I had the lovely little Sony DSC-T500 with me, so I decided to capture some "moving pictures" instead. I shot this at 720p and it looks fantastic.

Also, after visiting this park, I really felt morally torn about zoos and animals raised in captivity. The animals just seemed so cramped and sad and annoyed at the screaming bratty kids. I certainly love seeing these animals up close, but seeing their faces behind bars made me so very sad. Maybe I just don't know enough about how zoos are run, and maybe I am just naive about what life is like in the wild for these creatures. Basically, I just want to hug each and every one of these animals, even the prickly ones.

What do you think? Zoos: Good fun or just plain mean?

So many people whine about the iPhone's camera quality and say that it can't take good pictures. It's my strong belief that you can take great shots with any camera, even a 2 MP iPhone camera. It's definitely a greater challenge to get a good exposure on an iPhone vs a 5D MkII, but it's not impossible.

If you are up for the challenge, here are 5 apps that will help you take smashing iPhone pictures:

1. Blurry photos? Use Fast Tap Camera $.99

Fast Tap Camera snapped my awesome new scooter trick. :P 

Shaky hands = shaky picture. Unless you are going for some motion blur, or light painting, then you probably want a sharp picture. The problem is the camera button is so fracking small and awkwardly placed, especially if you are taking a photo from any other angle other than straight in front of you. That's why you need Fast Tap Camera. Press anywhere on the screen and snap! Excellent for narcissistic twitpics of yourself. :P

2. Photos are too dark? Use Photogene $2.99

Easter eggs in a supermarket never looked so good.

The exposure is locked on the iPhone, which means that you can't change it. There is a way to mess with the exposure by focusing the camera on a dark spot and quickly shifting it into the light, and snapping the shot almost simultaneously. This technique requires serious ninja skills. If you aren't quite at a black belt level with your iPhone camera like  Chase Jarvis, you may need a little post-production help.

Photogene allows you to adjust levels, exposure, colours, saturation, among other things (cropping, adding text, speech bubbles, etc.. I use this app more than any other. It's well worth the $2.99.

3. Low light photos look crappy? Use NightCamera $.99

 
NightCamera gives Buena Vista Park, SF  a little boost.

You shouldn't really have high expectations for iPhone shots taken in a dark restaurant. They are always going to look noisy and fairly crappy, but using NightCamera makes them slightly less crappy. Yeah! My suggestion is that you try using NightCamera any situation where the light is low, like the forest in the above picture.

Either way, NightCamera has a neat accelerometer assisted camera mode where the shutter fires when the phone is steady, and a timer mode. You can also prop up your iPhone on a table top or against a wall to keep it steady. If you are really gung-ho, Joby makes a gorilla pod for mobile devices called the Go-Go. 

4. Photos need a little something extra?  Tiffin's Photo fx $2.99

I used the Center Spot filter to fake the LensBaby effect around my mum and I.

Add an optical filter of pizzaz to your shots by applying one of the 26 filters in Tiffen's Photo fx. This is one of my favourite apps for making photos pop. Add a colour gradient to make sunsets more punchy, a polarizer to make skies richer, vignette to make faces stand out. You can even layer a bunch of filers on top of each other for a super cool effect.

5. Photos all look the same? Use CameraBag $2.99

This boat house looks extra derelict with Camera Bag's Helga preset.
 
CameraBag is the easiest photo apps to use, and one of the coolest. Choose your photo and scroll through the 8 presets. I like the Helga (faux Holga) & Lolo (faux Lomo) settings the best. I find that the Fisheye setting never really comes out and the Infrared setting is just plain weird, but experiment with your own shots. You never know what you'll come up with.

Photos don't have to be perfect to capture a memorable place, scene, or moment, but they do need to be taken. So shoot with whatever you've got and make it spectacular!

Do you have a favourite iPhone Photography app? Share it in the comments!

1. I missed an early morning Fedex pickup for an iMac that I needed yesterday because I was sleeping and didn't catch the phone until the last ring, so I ran down to the street after the Fedex guy in my pajamas, and literally missed him by a second.

2. I gave myself whiplash as I was running down the stairs to catch the Fedex guy and couldn't turn my head to the left for about 3 hours.

3. The hot water in my shower ran out as I was trying to alleviate my neck pain.

4. I DROPPED MY iPHONE IN THE TOILET when I was calling the landlord from the bathroom. I hit my funny bone on the tap which caused me to "ow ow ow" and kurpluk! Right in the bowl. (Remarkably, due to the fact that I had the Griffin Clarifi case on it and I have reflexes like a cat, it didn't get completely wet and still worked. For a while).

5. The entire side view mirror on my crappy 1995 Pontiac Firefly fell off as I was driving downtown.

6. I got stuck in rush hour traffic for 50 mins and missed two appointments because I had to stop the car and retrieve the side view mirror wreckage from the road.

8. Returning to the car, I realized that I had lost my car & apartment keys. This was of course when my iPhone died, so I had to use a cafe's phone to call for help. After retracing my every step for 3 hours, I did not find my keys.

9. Then I got a parking ticket for $60. 

What can you do but cry, laugh a little, and sob until snot is running down your face? Thanks to Ry & Paz for helping me find my way home.

Worst. Day. Ever.

Have you ever had a really bad day? Tell me about it in the comments.

I will give away a Griffin Clarifi case and a big online hug to the best answer. If you don't have an iPhone, or you also dropped your phone in the toilet like me, or the bathtub, then I will find some other fun prize to send you.

Follow me on the Twitters so you can find out who won!

I snapped a shot these two Canada goslings or “geeselings” as I like to call them, on Granville Island. I had to lie in geese poop for about an hour to get this shot. I basically had to become one with the geese, a part of their family, to be accepted enough to get super close. Every so often a bratty kid would come running at them, whooping and waving plastic toys and the geese would go berserk hissing and flapping their wings and I'd have to wait for them to settle.

Here's some behind the scenes footage of me shooting in goose poop:

I'm always looking for new ways to create cool things with my photography. Last week I saw a couple of really sweet photographic stop motion video of NYC by Cdow and an experimental series of Japan by Dave Lee.

I thought it would be cool to try an experimental photographic stop motion video of Vancouver at dusk highlighting moving bokeh. So I took a late night drive from China town to Kitsilano and snapped a ton of photos using my Canon Xti with the LensBaby composer & heart-shaped aperture disk. I compiled 300 images at 10fps in Adobe After Effects and then edited it with FCP.

I was a bit disappointed with the compression once I'd uploaded it on Vimeo, but it still looks pretty cool.

Yesterday we were shooting an iPhone app commercial all afternoon out in Point Grey. It was a supremely gorgeous day and we wrapped at about 5pm. The light was so golden and yummy that I had to shoot some photos of our actor, Derek Pante.

I have always wanted to do a spontaneous photo shoot with bubbles, so I keep a bottle of bubble mix in my car.

Derek was awesome and blew a bunch of bubbles even though the mix was about a year old and the soap tasted super gross. I crouched down and waited for the perfect POP and voila! Bubble magic hour POP!

And then something totally weird happened...

Animation by Pasquale D'Silva, Voice by Me, SFX by Ryland.

I was on my way back to San Francisco from recording a rather silly TWiT episode at the cottage in Petaluma and I spotted a field of cows bathed in the most glorious golden magic hour light I had ever seen. It was similar to the light in that scene in Transformers where minxy Megan Fox is slinking down a dirt highway and Shia is looking perplexed, anxious & slightly constipated. Like that only cows instead of beads of sweat on Megan Fox's sweaty cleavage. < -- I'm going to get so many google search hits for that. Stats score!

Anyway, I jumped out of the old gelapi of a rental van I was in and ran towards the field to catch the beautiful light. This was my first mistake. You see there was a new & very protective mother cow with her new baby calves. And as you might imagine, Mama Cow was not too happy at me for charging towards her kin with a huge sniper lens. Maybe she was shy about her post pregnancy baby weight or something? So I slowed down, pretended to shoot some flower macros on the side of the road and sneakily approached from the side.

Well, I guess Mama was no fool because as soon as I was close enough to take a shot, she let out the most horrific 'Moo' I have ever heard. This was no Fisher Price barn opening moo, but a "I will bore out your eye sockets for fun" sort of Moo. I saw death in that mama cow's eyes. Skull n' cross-bones death, I tell you.

This is when I realized there was a large barbed wire fence between me and Mean Mama, so I snapped the shot of her boyfriend, stuck out my tongue, and skipped away.

Explore is Flickr's Daily Artist Showcase. Every day Flickr admins choose 500 of the most interesting images determined by "interestingness".

Being chosen as one of these elite few can mean a huge increase in your photo's views and the number of comments and favourites you receive. Land on the front page of Explore, Flickr's home page, and magical things happen, all of which having to do with increasing your ego, none of which actually leads to earning money as a photographer. But who cares, when you are royalty on Flickr for a day. :P

I'll admit to feeling proud like a peacock when my mum first spotted my photo on the Explore home page. Within minutes, the comments and praise flooded in from the Flickratic. I began to pump out more quality shots and I continued getting Explored. I felt like my photography was finally reaching people. It was a great feeling, like a really perfect high-five or winning cookies. It also pushed me to try new techniques and really perfect my images before putting them up on Flickr.

A lot of people have asked me if there is any secret to getting Explored. The most obvious thing is take a great photo. But, beyond a great shot, there seems to be a definite pattern in which photos get Explored. After all, photography is art and the personal taste of the Flickr admins does impact the photos that are chosen. Using my keen intellect and the power of the internet, I have compiled a list of power tips on how to get your photos Explored and because I've been a lazy, good-for-nuthin' blogger as of late, I'm going to share these with you.

Here are my top secret tips for getting your photos Explored on Flickr:

1. Mo' Bokeh

Bokeh of street lights created with a LensBaby and the star shaped Creative Aperture disk.

By far the most popular type of bokeh photos on Flickr is that derived from taking out of focus pictures of small clusters lights, like on a Christmas tree. If you haven't heard, the phrase Bokeh, "a photographic term referring to the appearance of point of light sources in an out-of-focus area of an image produced by a camera lens using a shallow depth of field", then you probably haven't been on Flickr for very long - because people are nuts about bokeh. Those little out-of-focus orbs of goodness can give a photo a magical, almost surreal quality. And the hip Flickratti are pumping it out faster than you can say, "Ashton killed twitter". I mean... ahem. What?

How to get this shot:
Crossing your eyes is the easiest way to find cool bokeh. Snicker as you may, but seriously try it the next time you are out at night on a street with street lamps, stop lights, restaurant twinkle lights. Practice this technique in moderation and definitely not in combination with making a funny face because that would seem unprofessional and may weird people out.

Once you've found a cool bokeh source like a row of street lights, set your camera's aperture wide open (>f/3.0) or >f/3.0, >f/5.6 if it's a telephoto focal length (ie. 200mm at f/5.6) and set your lens to manual. Now pull it almost completely out-of-focus until you see nice fuzzy bits. That the good stuff. Now snap!

Shaped bokeh i.e., stars, hearts, is also really hot right now and companies like LensBaby are making it really easy to do with inexpensive Creative Aperture Kits. If you can't afford a LensBaby ($100-$270), you can even make your own bokeh shaper lens hood with some black paperboard.

2. Lens Flare

Lens Flare of sunlight streaming through Brisbane Eye Ferris Wheel.

I love lens flare, Michael Bay loves lens flare & so does Flickr. Go ahead. Break all the rules and point your camera at the sun. Within reason of course. Like don't burn your eyes out or anything. Aim to head out during magic hour (1 hour before sunset) when the sun is low and golden and play with different angles of flares. Also, make sure you've got a UV filter so you aren't damaging your camera's lens.

3. Hot Chicks

Hot Chick & Musician, Kylee Epp. See behind the scenes shots here.

Like most people, Flickr love pictures of hot chicks. Pretty much any photograph looks better with a hot chick in it. Think about it. A nice still life shot of a bowl of fruit? Boring! A nice still life shot of a bowl of fruit with a hot chick holding a banana? Shizzam! A breathtaking image of a white sand beach? Meh. A breathtaking chick in bikini on a white sand beach? Explored!

It probably won't surprise you that one of the most commonly explored content is pictures of hot chicks.

More often than not, they are beautiful young photographer/models AKA "modelographers" who have taken their exploration of narcissism to the next level with daily self-portraits called Flickr 365. They are blessed with looks, talent, and a passion for photography, and they are the new power elite on Flickr.

I have to give these young modelographers credit, because they produce near professional quality fashion-esque images of themselves nearly everyday and they are not afraid to try new and creative methods to light, take, and process their images, including film, toy cameras (lomo), strobe. Their photos are edgy, trendy, painful, naked, and oh so indie. They will often get a friend to do makeup or approach young designers whose clothes they or their other young hot chick friends can model. I am constantly amazed and bemused by the sheer number of beautiful images they create and the community wide adoration and respect they receive on Flickr.

How to get this shot:
If you happen to be a young hot chick with a camera, perfect your photography skills by snapping photos of your self and your friends, because the world has never been more open to the idea of a 16-year-old female fashion photographer.

If not, then take a lesson from these young photographers, go out and find someone to model for you, someone hot that looks like they could be in a fashion magazine and all of a sudden your photos go from 2 views to 2, 000 views. Need some tips on finding models I have a post on that :D

4. Cute animals

Lovely Koala taken at the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary in QLD, Australia.
If you can't get a hot chick, a cute animal is your next best bet. Everyone loves a cute animal, especially when it's displaying seemly human characteristics. Ooh, that's one angry squirrel! Aww look at those fuzzy ducklings. Ooh, a rare hummingbird!

How to get this shot:
Find cute animals. Pets are a good place to start. Zoos are great. Check your backyard, or the park. Go out and find cuteness. I suggest you take shots of animals at eye-level. Take different angles, use different lenses, get creative with these shots. Take a shot of your pooch's nose close up with a wide angle. That always looks funny. Flickr loves animals in action, animals with personality, and whimsical cat/dog photos.

5. Soft Flower & Plant life Macros

Leaf found in Queen Elizabeth Park on a damp Vancouver afternoon.
Flickr loves soft flower & other plant life macros like leaves and stuff. It's as simple as that.

How to get this shot:
Find some blossom, blooms, pedals, leaves or flowery things. I am quite the botanist, can't you tell? Choose an interesting angle, probably one where you are lying in mud. Bring a water sprayer and lightly mist the flowers do they are all dewy. Open your aperture up to f/3.5 and lower so you get some nice background bokeh and you are money.

6. Photos with interesting and tragically bohemian titles

I call this, "Oh love you have bewildered me with your absence".

You won't just get explored simply for a title. But, it definitely takes the artistic merit of your shot up an notch and will increase your chances of getting noticed. Even if you are not exploding with photo titling talent, anything is better than IMG_9807. Here are some tragically bohemian titles to get you started:

Simple
*broken flight*
insomnia
humble
where's my freedom?
love is a trap
my peace is gone, my heart is heavy

Ahh, I poke fun, but you get the idea. The point is, there are types of photos that are more likely to be Explored than others, but there is no easy way in. You have to take great shots. And to take a great shot, you have to be out in the world taking shots. Take risks. If you always go on a photo walk to the beach at sunset, go in the opposite direction and take some urban landscapes. If you always snap pictures of your cat Mookie, turn the camera on yourself and do some self-portraits. Keep your work fresh and keep posting your best shots on Flickr and one of these days maybe it will be your shot on the front page of Explore!

Got any tips and tricks or great photos you've taken that you'd like to share? Add them in the comments!