I am Paul Singh

My favorite uncle and babe #2 celebrated their 25th anniversary — congratulations to them. Now that all the aunties and uncles have heard about daalandroti.com, I’m sure we’re going to start to see them hanging around the blog a little more often. (So let’s try to keep all the topics and comments clean ya’ll!)

Anyhow, here are the photos from last night. For all you newbies, click directly on the link below and you’ll be taken directly to the photos where you can see all the slideshows you want.

Enjoy!

Here are the pictures!

As a self-professed photo geek, I refuse to use camera phones even though I carry two around all day, every day. (No, I’m not that popular!)

Digital Photography School’s Blog has an article explaining some recommended “best practices” when shooting with your camera phone. Some favorites:

Get Close - One of the most common mistakes with camera phone images is that their subject ends up being a tiny, unrecognizable object in the distance. Camera phone images tend to be smallish due to low resolution - so fill up your view finder with your subject to save having to zoom in on the subject in editing it later (which decreases quality even more). Having said this, getting too close on some model camera phones creates distorition of either fisheye effect or lack of focus due to poor macro ability.

Avoid Using the Digital Zoom - As tempting as it might be to zoom in on your subject when taking your picture (if you have a zoom feature on your camera phone), it actually will decrease the quality of your shot to use your digital zoom. Plus you can always edit your shot later using photo editing software on your computer. Some camera phones are beginning to hit the market with ‘optical zooms’ - these are fine to use as they don’t enlarge your subject by enlarging pixels.

Full Article: 13 Tips for Improving Camera Phone Photos

I’m back from TX and Vid is married. Erin’s family was awesome, I felt like a part of the family as soon as I met them. I’ll tell ya though, those Mexicans can down Tequila like water. I got owned– to say the least.

Check out Mr. & Mrs. Luther:

Some more of my favorite pics from TX can be seen here.

This has been my fourth attended wedding of the year… I’m next. Sweet.

I’ve been neglecting PhotoFriday lately so here’s this week’s entry.

This week’s assignment was “darkness” and I took this photo in Oslo, Norway last year.

EXIF:

Original Date: 12/27/2004 2:11:40PM
ISO: 800
Shutter: 1/1000
Aperature: f20.0
Focal Length: 50.00mm
Flash: Off
Metering: Partial
Exposure Bias: 0.00

Finished up the second Century of the year… if you missed the ride report from the first one, here it is.

We finished this one up in 5 hours 34 minutes… a new record for both of us I believe. The ride went well… the views were awesome.

Here we are at the start:

100+ miles later:

And, of course, my #1 fan:

More pictures are in the Gallery.

PhotoFriday entries are going to be a new thing on this blog. I’ve been meaning to get into this for so long, so here we go.

This week’s assignment was “complexity” and I took this photo when I first started shooting a couple of years ago…

…that there are those that have gone down and those that will go down.

I’m glad to say that I got my first fall of my road bike today and it really wasn’t so bad after all.

Jack, Tommy, Mark and I went out for a ride this morning. As you probably know, it rained like hell last night and we figured it would be generally dry out there if we went looking for some new roads.

About 20 miles later, we found the W&OD trail near the intersection of Rt. 9 and Rt. 7 near Purcellville and decided to take that route home. As we came around the first corner, I failed to slow down enough and ended up letting my front wheel slide over a bit wide onto the yellow line that seperated the the two-way traffic on the trail. Man, that stuff is slick when it’s wet. I went down faster than I could comprehend.

Anyways… good thing I was wearing a helmet and sunglasses. Without them, I probably wouldn’t have been so lucky. Notice the indentation that one of the rocks left on my helmet. Other than that, a few bruises on my right shoulder, a banged up right knee and a bruised ego is all I got. Pretty sweet.

Hint: look near my thumb:

Good thing I was out there with the fellas to make sure I was OK and help me get my bike looked over for the 20 mile ride home. After that, the ride home was pretty damn quick. I’m not sure what drove us to going so fast, but it sure was fun.

Update: The only real damage to the bike was fixed with a $14.99 part from the local bike shop. Sweet. I thought it was going to be much worse when I saw the rear derailleur all bent out of shape. As for me, I’m all good to go.

I feel for this guy. I know I’ve dealt with stuff like this and it sucks.

Sometimes people need to be reminded that 9/11 happened in my country too. Last time I checked, not all brown people with cameras are trying to terrorize anyone.

Humiliated, Angry, Ashamed, Brown.

to my parents… their 27th wedding anniversary is today.

The other day, my dad asked me what I was planning to do for his anniversary… I looked at my hands and noticed no wedding rings, so I said, “Do I look like your wife?” Hehehe….

They bought each other some bling… well, honestly, I think my mom used dad’s money to buy his and her own anniversary present.

Dad gets:

Mom gets: