I created this using DaVinci Resolve. Have I ever spoken about how annoying it is when a handful of names are over used. Ex. Newton, DaVinci, Lincoln, Tesla, Ford, Washington and so on At this point, I don’t even think of the person. I find myself associating the name with the company or product. If I ever become supreme ruler of the universe, I’d force these companies to rename themselves!

Side bar, Instagram is a lier sometimes. I sized everything for a square frame. But depending on the device, IG will choose whatever it feels is best. Sometimes that’s square, other times that’s rectangular! Second call to action when I rule the universe is to fix crap like this! I’m sure there are other more pressing problems but I’m sure it’s fine if they wait a little bit longer.

Spent the day carving a bowl. This was a 10/10 class-everything was setup perfectly and run by a great teacher. I couldn’t have asked for anything more. @melanieabrantesdesigns A skill that I’ve wanted to gain for a number of years is sketching, specifically the ability to see a curve in my mind and then recreate it in real life. I’ve taken many classes and I’ve gotten to that point where I need to put a hundred hours into this skill if I really want to progress. While wood carving is obviously not sketching, the act of creating the line is similar. The wood we used in this class was soft enough for beginners. Each slice brought me get closer to the curve in my mind’s eye. Since the slices were shallow, I could adjust how I was carving the wood. This feedback loop is very similar to sketching many soft lines to find the true line. Overall, I’m incredibly proud of the curve between the feet and bowl. I wanted a flat but a continuous curvature, and I was able to achieve it! Tangent #1 This has now made me very curious to how the cave people made bowls. This took 4 hours and we had great tools. Would they spend a day working on a single bowl? Tangent #2 Also, I want to say that this is the last video I make on iMovie but it likely isn’t. iMovie absolutely sucks, but it’s free, and they make it easy enough to cut videos like this together. If anyone has a recommendation on a free and lightweight video editing tool, I’m all ears. Thanks Zona for taking the video of me! #woodcarving #imovie #oakland

1 stunt plane, 2 parachutes, and an aerobatic pilot is all it takes to have an amazing experience! There’s a long back story… like most of my instagram posts but the most important is that I trusted the pilot. Mark is a wonderful person that truly enjoys all aspects of flight. He was incredibly professional and knowledgeable about his work and his aircraft. Trust me, I got very technical during the pre-flight! The only way to top this experience is to fly in an actual fighter plane! @mpaviationdotcom #extra300 #aerobatics #flycoolshit

Well, I spent the day inside. I’m recovering from the covid and flu shot. Also the air outside is smokey. So I setup my camera on a tripod, laid on my couch, and used a remote shutter to take photos of humming birds. These little dudes are fun to watch. They seem to hangout on the tree near my home and whenever they feel thirsty, they fly over. I’m sure there’s more going on but this is what I’ve been able to glean so far. This is one of the rare moments where I can see the limits of my camera. To get the depth of field right, I had to go up to F8 to F10. To get sharp images of the wings, I had to go up to 1/1200 to 1/1600s. So I was left with an ISO around 2500 to 3200. So the images came out noisy. Oh and I know what you’re thinking, Ateev why didn’t you clean the lid of the mason jar! I know, but I’m lazy. If I were to do this again, I would set it up earlier in the day. I need all the light I can get! #hummingbird #hummingbirdfeeder #sonyalpha

There's nothing quite as exciting as applying a finish to wood only to realize its not as dark as you were hoping for. :/ When I made my living edge desk, I used Odie’s oil and loved it. It was exactly the kind of finish I was looking for. I tried using it for my bay window shelving and was pretty disappointed. I think it’s better suited for naturally darker woods. The thing about Odie’s oil is that it’s the right level of lazy for me. I’ve used other finishes in the past and they need extra care to prevent over or under saturating the wood. Regardless, I’m glad I did it. The wood is now much more water resistant and this forced me to totally improve the layout of all of my gear! I’ve come to realize that my aesthetic comes from a desire of functionality. Functionality is king in my book. The last time lapse is of me finishing some of my exercise gear! Anyway time for some hashtags #odiesoil #baywindow #customshelves #functionality

Been playing around with some color lately

#donate #redcross

Today is the first day of my fourth decade. Enjoy my favorite photos from New Zealand and of the Sydney Opera House #SydneyOperaHouse #sonyalpha #Newzealand #urbanphotography

Back in 2019, @kharnack94, Chris, and I sat down and planned our perfect #australia and #newzealand trip. We planned to visit in the summer of 2020. Obviously that didn’t happen. We patiently waited. Fast forward to the end of 2022 and the air was freshening up. So we rebuilt our spreadsheet for the summer of ’23. Not only did we have each major activity planned out, we even planned in rest days. A very important lesson from our National Park road trip. Anyway, I hope you enjoy my attempt at presenting the beauty of the world down under. #rawtherapee #sonyalpha #landscapephotography

Ok, I promise I’m not one of those crazed vinyl people. The whole reason I own this is because of #hellointernet. They put one of their episodes onto vinyl and I’m such a super fan that I had to get it. 😅 So anyway, I bought a record player. I used once and then proceeded to leave it in my closest for years. So here I am. Instead of throwing it out and buying a new one, I decided to make it more my style. I also thing cgpgrey would also like it! If you look closely you’ll find a lot of flaws. I have a weird relationship with woodworking. I love the material and the look but I struggle with how imprecise of a material it is. I enjoy building with metals and plastics because of how tightly you can design everything. Anyway, the OSB with wood veneer looks great but it splinters which makes it even more imprecise.🙄 #recordplayer #diy #woodworking #osb #paintitblack

We built a water cooled air conditioner! Quick background, normal ACs create cold air and hot air. The hot air is exhausted outside, hence the loud and ugly box in your yard. We created an AC that instead creates hot water that can be reused or recycled.  The full writeup is on my website (Link in bio) but suffice to say, it did not create enough cooling to be a viable product. 🙁 Still an absolutely amazing project. I learned so much along the way. I wouldn't trade that time for anything else.  1st: Final Prototype 2nd: Cold air measurement 3rd: Summary of the machine 4th: Where it all began I worked on this project with Chris, who doesn't have an IG #prototype #thermodynamics #heatpump #refrigeration Holy crap, you've made it below the hashtags. Thanks for reading this far. We officially closed down this project in Aug '22. Personally, it was hard for me to let this project go but the laws of physics are ruthless. "We haven't figured out a way around the laws of physics. Yet!" Steve Jobs Anyway, it's time for bigger and better projects!

I'll let the photos do the talking... but here are some obligatory hashtags #vibrantflowers #flowersandmacro

My third attempt at moon photography. Turns out, the moon is hard to photograph. I’m now understanding why phone’s are faking the moon photography. The issue is multivariable… like most things in life. Focus, stability, and stacking are the primary variables that need to be tuned. #Stability Imagine if you will, a tiny sensor, not much larger than a postage stamp. Its viewing an object 240k miles away. A tiny movement of the sensor will cause the object to fly across the sensor and result in a blurry image. To execute on this well, the tripod needs to be setup with the center column at its lowest setting and the lens needs to have built in stabilization. The one variable you can’t control, is the wind. All you can do is pray. #Focus Lenses are designed for photograph up to a few meters away. The moon is a little bit further than that. Tuning focus involves a very sensitive touch of the focus dial. There is no room for error here. Aperture also has a huge impact on focus. Too low of an F-stop and it’s impossible to hold focus. Too high of an F-stop and the image is soft because of diffraction. #Stacking Once everything is set right, it then becomes a game of taking a bunch of photos and stacking them together. I found this focus stacking tool on GitHub (https://github.com/PetteriAimonen/focus-stack) that uses an amazing wavelet algorithm to stitch the high sharpness regions together to give me the best parts of all of my photos. This was 10x easier and better than what is built into photoshop and Lightroom. This honestly surprised me but the results speak for themselves. The third image is when the focus stacking goes absolutely haywire. I thought it was elegant enough to keep :D Anyway, I think I’m done photographing the moon for a while. I've realized that this is like buying a fast car. You can always spend more money to improve your 0-60. #moon #moonphotography #fullmoon #borrowlenses

New Glass, Who Dis? I rented the Tampon 28-200 lens last week and I’m kind of liking it. It’s so much better than the cheap lenses I picked up from eBay but I’m already seeing the limitations in it. The lack of stabilization means I have to keep the shutter speed high. The sharpness has a drop-off that I’m well aware of. You know, I wouldn’t have noticed these issues if I didn’t rent that couple thousand dollar lens a few weeks ago to photograph the moon. That lens has ruined all other lenses for me. The lens was wonderful for photographing the moon but the world was not on my side that week. Soon I'm going to give editing those photos another shot. The major thing this lens has going for it is that it’s super wide range. It’s really a solid travel lens! Oh and if you’re wondering, I really do like Sutro tower. I feel like a huge percentage of my photos are of it. I’m still unsure if I’m going to buy this lens #sutrotower #sanfrancisco #sonyalpha #coyote #sfparks

The beautiful #sunset view from outside #alcatraz compared to the tiny window the inmates got to see #sonyalpha6400

I honestly have no idea how I took this photo but I love it!. I need to figure out how to recreate it. I've been shooting on some vintage manual focus lenses. They are fun but I'm quickly reaching reaching their equipment limits. I'm planning on upgrading soon. I'm so happy there are lens rental stores all around me! #mtsutro #sonyalpha #paintingeffect #sonya6400 #whiteflowers #flowergram

Throw back to 2018 when my family and I visited Iceland. If I ever become a multi-millionaire with the funds to have multiple homes. I'm totally getting a secluded cabin out here. My experience of Iceland was blissful, the noise the world seemed to disappear. #icelandtravel #shotoniphone #iphonex #sólheimasandur

Went for a little hike and started playing around with a polarized and macro filters. Apparently this spider is an Zygiella x-notata and it's known for vertical webs with a pizza slice missing from the pattern. TIL arachnologist's study the orientation and pattern of webs... I guess I shouldn't be surprised but here I am 😅 Anyway, why are you still reading this? Are you that into spiders? If yes, go find a some real spider content! If not, you must be pretty bored or are stalking me or both. Regardless, I hope this was enjoyable for you. Here are the hashtags, this is the last bit of enjoyment you'll get from this post. #montaramountain #macrofilter #polarizerfilter #macrospider #spiderweb #sonya6400 #rawtherapee

On this photography adventure, I was able to catch a couple naturally black and white photographs. It only took a small amount of editing to get to what you see now #streetphotography #urbanphotography #bwphotography #sonya6400 #bayerfilter