this series is also courtesy of the selfie stick. The front facing camera sucks, but the payoff of extreme perspectives is well worth the tradeoff at times.
-
windows (otp98)
a couple windows from China, one being the view from my bed, the other in line for roasted chestnuts.
-
perspective (otp97)
Sometimes when mulling an assignment you stumble across just the right place. Even so, I still end up shooting the heck out of it. I grew up with film but I got into photography after digital so I’m not good with limited shot counts.
This is a wall for a school outside aunt’s apartment in Hangzhou.
-
morning routine (otp186)
There was a certain frustration with this China trip because we managed to pick about three straight weeks of rain out of the four we were there. But then again, where could we really go with a 19 month old? Aside from maybe picking up some buns in the morning, our morning routine was a big pile of steamed yams and corn, which our daughter absolutely loved to eat.
-
tools (otp185)
I went digging around Grandma’s little enclosed porch and back yard for a couple shots.
-
new place (otp183)
The place itself wasn’t new per se, since it was in between a supermarket and TJ Maxx we frequent…but this was the first time we actually walked between the two places.
-
twisted (otp182)
I was surprised at how nice the light was with just a single desk lamp in that shot of my wife’s origami hobby.
Origami -
absence (otp181)
Had a rough one with this one also. But the supermarket seems to often be a great cure-all.
-
On Boardgaming
I was asked on a photography forum to say a little more about the boardgaming hobby. Here was my response:
How do I start? Well, one could go to the website boardgamegeek.com, but that place is UI disaster until you get used it (totally designed by engineers!)
The best way to describe modern boardgaming is that it is an outgrowth of a lot of European (especially German) boardgame design from the 90’s and 00’s. Key features include a limited time length, no player elimination, and controlled interaction. In a word, anti-Monopoly (especially Monopoly as with its common house rules).
The top standard of German family boardgaming is a prize called the Spiel Des Jahres (SDJ) and which judges games at a medium light weight level of complexity. Unfortunately the crowd in hobby sites (like Boardgamegeek) tends to favor niche stuff so their database rankings favor heavy complicated stuff (similar to how photographers lust over L glass even though most other humans would be more interested in the latest bedazzled iphone 6s case).
Even though I consider myself a “serious” boardgamer, I personally don’t enjoy complicated fare. I grok the joy of a good brain burning puzzle, but I prefer the elegance of a pared down game where the interaction is the emergent outgrowth of an carefully curated set of simple rules.
Modern classics for people looking to get into the hobby would be Settlers of Catan (the big hit kickstarted this whole eurogame trend), Carcassonne, and Ticket to Ride (which got me back into the boardgaming hobby after a decade long hiatus). I would also want to point out Pandemic and Hanabi which are both excellent cooperative games (where everyone plays together as a team to beat the game system).
