UstadKhanAli

Yup, all of 'em are available in higher resolution. Thanks!

He did indeed. I simply asked if I could take his photo. That's what I got!!

We had been hanging out talking to them for quite some time, and there was clattery music with ten foot long horns going on for rehearsal for the Hemis Festival...and the hanging out is the key, not that I was doing this specifically for the photos. It was for the sake of hanging out. The monks joke around a lot, and that's something that people frequently don't see, and something I wanted to show -- that they're people too, and not people who do nothing but meditate and study Buddhist texts and dispense wisdom or whatever.

Later, during the Hemis Festival, they did funny stuff like stomp puddles to splash the audience and things like that while performing their dances.

Thanks! You might like this monk photo then, Lee!

Well, you live in a place that a lot of people want to travel to... Thanks for the great comments, though, and thank you to everyone else.

Just to keep geeking out on camera equipment for a second, there's this new Nikon, the D3S, that has serious low-light capability.

http://www.nikonusa.com/Find-Your-Nikon/Product/Digital-SLR/25466/D3S.html

So, 12,800 ISO...expandable to 102,400? Are you freakin' kidding me?

My D50 - bear in mind that it's a budget camera that is 4-5 years old now - goes to 1600 ISO. And my little point-and-shoot Leica goes to a grainy 3200 ISO.

Now I realize that the DS3 is over $5000 and I'm comparing it to cheap cameras, but still....

Hey Dean, every single one of these were taken with the D50. I just got the Leica this summer, so I don't have a ton of photos taken with that. Any photo on my website taken before the Brazil trip was taken with the D50, or in some cases, the N70, a film camera....or this ancient Canon that I no longer have if you go back *really* far!!!!

This is a photo of Bryan Carlstrom, the engineer for a bunch of stuff including Alice In Chains "Dirt", that I took last weekend when hanging out. No flash, dark room. It does pretty good, I think.

Here's some other photos taken with the Leica. I'm showing you a bunch of these because you know you're interested in the LX3 (more or less the same camera as the Leica DLux 4):

Crystal Cove, near Laguna Beach, CA, Oct 2009

Salvador, Brazil, Summer 2009

http://www.elevenshadows.com/travels/brazil2009/

Salvador, Brazil, Summer 2009

http://www.elevenshadows.com/travels/brazil2009/

Buyepongo @ The Echoplex

http://www.elevenshadows.com/travels/miscellaneous/osmutantes2009

http://www.elevenshadows.com/travels/miscellaneous/osmutantes2009/index.htm for more from this concert with Buyepongo and Os Mutantes. I can't remember when this was taken...probably September.

As you can tell, the Leica does *really* well in low light, much better than the D50, which is an older camera, like 4-5 years old, which for D-SLR technology is old. The new D-SLRs do much better in low light than the D50, which is not so good at low light situations. But it's just surprising that the Leica can do this well for a little point-and-shoot.

OK, Ken... I usually cut you a lot of slack but I have to say... ... on this front you cheat ... ... I mean, you go to all these amazing looking places... :D Congrats!

Well, I do gotta say that it's a lot easier to take photos when you're in these fantastic places!!!!!

T'anks everyone!

Hey everyone!! I figured I'd share this with you...this morning I found out that three of my photos were selected for the Top 100 Travel Photos from LA Times readers for 2009!!! I have had the photos here on my Ken Lee Photography website and my personal Eleven Shadows website for a while, and there are links from my sites to the photos, or you can click on the links below!!

http://www.latimes.com/travel/photos2009/

My three photos selected for the Top 100 Travel Photos on the LA Times website:

My photo of us floating through the Amazon

My photo of monks in Ladakh covering their ears from the clattery sound

My photo of the otherworldly Lamayuru Monastery in Ladakh, of this earth, not of this earth.

Right, but how does determine if your monitors are up to snuff any more than audio that is not clipped? That's what I'm asking. Thanks.

Can you elaborate on this?

I write "outboard" because technically, the Mackies weren't outboard preamps even though I used them as such, bypassing the rest of the board.

Hey, how's it going?

Agreed on all counts. From my personal experience, the 57 can be perfect, or it can be okay, but it rarely sucks.

For preamps, I personally like the way it sounds with a Neve preamp, such as the Portico that I own, but didn't like it so much back in the day when I used Mackie preamps (the older ones; I don't know how the newer ones sound). It's nice with an RNP. I honestly cannot remember if I've ever used it with the Peavey VMP-2 I have, and whether I like it through that or not, but my guess is that it probably mates well with that too.

There. Now I've discussed every single "outboard" mic preamp I've ever owned.

Exactly. Why buy something if you don't need to?

Cool. I'd definitely try the 57 first. Especially with a nice preamp, you might be surprised at the vocal recordings you get. Not for everybody/everything, obviously, but what is?

Agreed with what Lee said.

I looooooooove ADAM monitors, and use my A7s constantly.

I am not familiar with that particular JBL, but some of the LSR monitors in the past, at least the passive monitors, have sounded really really good.

Okay, so you do know what those 2 extra bits bring. So glad you understand. I feel bad for anyone who is missing two of their bits...

So you don't usually record in 26-bit? You have no idea what you're missing. Those extra two bits really push it over the top and open up the stereo soundfield in a way that 24 bits just cannot touch!!

It comes down to this: do you want more tracks or better sound quality?

I would choose sound quality without evening wringing my hands over it, but you have different needs.

If compression makes an artist sound like Nickleback, I think I'll avoid it.

"Why, there I was, recording Bjork. I strapped a compressor across her vocals and suddenly, she sounded like Nickelback!"

Yeah, that's how I approach vocals too, although I conceptualize it more as a waveform-shaping thing in this case...but obviously, as you point out, you are affecting the EQ as well. But it works well. And that's why it's always important to listen....listen....listen....listen....

This statement implies that vocals always need to be compressed. I've done sessions with really gifted, professional singers who either need no or very little compression. They knew how to sing for a recording and knew how work the microphone and knew how to sing, knew how to pronounce words correctly while singing, knew when to back off.

There is no substitute for this.

It's amazing, really, how easy a great musician can make a recording engineer look. If I needed to add compression, it was very little. If I needed any more than this, it was for coloration and nothing else. I could gain ride the vocals if necessary...but it often was not necessary.

The (hard) knee-jerk reaction (sorry, that's one of the worst puns I've ever done) for recording vocals is to simply sing into a mic and then think that the compressor's going to do the rest.

~~~~~~~

Note: I am not saying that I will not squish the living snot out of a vocal. I have and I will. But that's a whole lot different than what I'm saying above.

I dunno, what do you have? A lot of that old analog stuff is really cool. And some of it is complete garbage.

Yes. Beautiful, glorious 8-bit. That thing, buggy as it was, had a certain magic in its deliciously grainy audio.

The thing is of the matter is that my old computer could get a great sound with one processor tied behind its back...

But yes, a C4 with hard drives that have green marker drawn around the hard drives, just for good measure. Yes, that warm, vintage 8-bit sound.

Blooop! Bleeeep!!

Yes. Why, I've even heard of some people who have gotten 8 1/2 years of service life out of a single-processor computer!!! Yes, scientists call them "Neanderthals". :poke:

Y'know, Phil, some of just really prefer that vintage sound.