I finally got round to flickring my photos of Chichen Itza, the “large pre-Columbian archaeological site built by the Maya civilization located in the northern center of the Yucatán Peninsula, in the Yucatán state, present-day Mexico” says Wikipedia. Now, I’ll look it up in my $150 university art history book to make sure that’s right (the very same one that I took for light reading on my first trip to England to seem “cultured”.)

Oh wow. I’m actually reading a book. It feels weird and unnatural. I can’t scroll. Ack! I have to turn these big heavy pages. Ug. So apparently Chichen Itza means “at the mouth of the well of the Itza”, and has nothing to do with the Leaning Tower of Pisa, but rhymes nicely with pizza. Hmm… there are only 3 paragraphs about Chichen Itza in this 1167 page book! What a jerk! I guess we will just have to rely on the web as our guide to this weird and wacky Mayan world.

The massive and awe-inspiring Mesoamerican pyramid in the middle of the site is called el Castillo or the Temple of Kukulkan.

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Ok. So I went to Vidfest and was super inspired by Dooce, the sassiest female blogger ever and MightyGirl’s Maggie Mason.

Then, I went to the Vancouver Apple Store launch and waited in line for 2 hours and cried because i didn’t get a free t-shirt until they gave me one out of pity and embarrassment. And then upon returning home, I realized the t-shirt was sooo big I could fit my entire body inside it.

Then I accidentally URLed my blog on a few iMacs in the store. Oops. And I realized that there wasn’t anything in the store to see that I hadn’t seen when I went to the London Apple Store.

Of course, I took all sorts of video and photos at these awesome events, but I’ve had so little time to set up my MB Air and my MB slowed down to G4 stylez last night because I packed it so full of media goodness that it had no room to breathe. It was gasping and overheating and complaining a lot, so I’ve decided to take a good chunk of today and spend it on sorting my heaps of GBs, reformatting my MB, reinstalling Leopard on my MB, and digging into the MB air.

iJustine/eJustine reminded me about some software that I always forget about when my machine is acting up called Disk Inventory X. It’s super at showing you what stuff is taking up so much room on your computer and why it’s moving slower than a dehydrated donkey. I also used this opportunity to add more cartoony arrows and text in Skitch cuz it’s sooo fun!

Yikes! I take a lot of photos. almost 30GB in 4 months. I’m glad i found those old iMovie HD files though. Saved me a bunch of room!

Oh yeah! I got a Lomo last week! I’m ready to get so lomosexual.

This Holga Lomo has a hot shoe so I bought this awesome Colorsplash flash kit that came with a little rotating wheel that you can put coloured gels in to get extra snazzy tint in your shots.

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Here are some photos I grabbed with my trusty Canon Xti/400D (with the 50mm f/1.4 lens) of the 604 Records Showcase last Friday at the Red Room for New Music West. It was great to see Jessie Farrell et al. as they rarely play their hometown of Vancouver. In fact, I heard them play more in Jamaica than in Vancouver! But, as always Miss Jessie and her rock star band looked and sounded smokin’ hot!

Jessie Farrell and Jesse Tucker rockin’ it.

Miss Jessie is lookin’ super fancy.

Ryland Haggis knows which ace is bass.

There were also other bands who were totally indie stylez like:

16mm

& Lotus Child, who were awesome

& Aaron Pritchett, who has some huge guns.

PS. Chad didn’t show. I know. He totally blew me off.

Pownce tee provided by Startups Schwag.

As you already know, I’m a big fan of the 2.0 social nets. I was an early adopter of the big three 2.0s: Facebook, Twitter, and Pownce. (We shall not mention myspace. I like to pretend that it doesn’t exist). So far I’ve maintained active accounts in all three, but lately I find my ability to keep up witty repartee a la hotdogladies on all three almost impossible.

After a while, I find my tweets turning more into “What are you putting on your toast this morning?” than intelligent commentary of the technerdy things I’m doing. Plus, with the audience of these three nets differing so dramatically it’s not really appropriate to copy and paste or feed your status from one soc net to the others.

Twitter’s audience is uber geeky, from the tech, design, and blogging elite, to the politically active, to the dot com moguls. Anyone who is anyone on the www is on Twitter. Pownce seems to draw in a mixed bunch of users. For me, Pownce’s audience seems quite diverse, somewhere in between Twitter and Facebook with a huge teenage population who love youtube clips. Wowie! And the behemoth Facebook seems to attract everyone, including grandparents, ex-flings, your 9th grade English teacher, your arch nemisis, your 12 year-old Turkish penpal, and that annoying kid that ate Beefaroni out of old camping thermos everyday for lunch… Seriously, who isn’t on Facebook? I can only think of one person I know who isn’t on Facebook.

So if you are to keep the peace between your geeky Twitter iFriends and your tech-illiterate Facebook friends and your uber trendy Pownce friends you probably shouldn’t feed your daily WP plug-in tweets to your other nets. I find that it confuses people and then I have to explain things to people who think that Google is the internet and then I get annoyed and then bored and then I fall asleep in mid-sentence. And people seem to not like it when you fall asleep during dinner time discussions. Oops. Plus, with so many people on multiple nets, you don’t want to be double, or triple posting stuff to the same people.

What’s the solution then you lazy smart arse? Well, I think if you want to maximize your networking and community building opportunities you really need all three. I feel the same way with IM programs. You really need Adium, iChat, and Skype to communicate to all your iPeeps. But, in order to minimize the amount of time and effort you need pick one 2.0 net as your home base. This is where the majority of your updates and networking happens.

For me it’s Twitter. I have the most contacts on twitter and find it to be the best resource for tech updates, random geekiness, and general good times, including drunk tweets (:p) But, I must say there are a lot of fun times on Pownce. The ability to share photos, vids, and muxtapes is pretty awesome. I do think that Pownce is underrated, and I think in the next year it we will see it really catch on. But for some reason I don’t think that the Twitterati will ever abandon the little bird, no matter how many times they see him upside down or robotized or 404ed.

What’s your 2.0 home base? What do you find good or bad about this trifecta of 2.0? Do you use Twitter, Pownce, and Facebook? Opinions? Thoughts? Or comments on my drumming skills?

PS. Why am I sat in front of an uber kit? Kind of random isn’t it? More sweet photos and a special DIY photo blog from my latest shoot with uber Vancouver drummer, Jesse Godin this week!

Is it true? Is Canada finally getting the iPhone?

Canadian wireless carrier Rogers Wireless said Tuesday it has reached an agreement with Apple to begin offering the iPhone later this year, putting an end to months of speculation on the subject.

Well. It’s. Aboot. Time!

Now, I can finally ditch my unlocked Fisher Price Skytalker Walkie Talkie which I’ve been using for the last 12 years as a method to communicate with my friends, family, lost polar bears, ice skating beavers, and the Mounted Police within a reception range of 1 - 25m… assuming they have the other Walkie on them… and they turn it on at exactly the same time as me… and the batteries don’t die in the subarctic temperatures.

It’s a crap shoot, I’ll admit. But, you know how Canadians love to be the underdog in a long and arduous, losing battle.

Another great screenshot I see. Sometimes you just can’t win. Zoink.

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Photo by my mum Jane Bettany.

My last trip to the Mayan Riviera marked my sixth trip to Mexico. Every time I am in Mexico, I am always warmed by the beauty, kindness, and generosity of the people. Here are a few pictures of people I met, or passed by that I captured in Akumal and Tulum.

I saw a small school and library from the road and walked into the courtyard. I saw this tiny boy playing with blocks in front of a bright blue wall with an aquarium mural. I was just able to grab this shot before he ran off.

She was soooo shy and I had to pester her for quite a while for her to allow me to take a photo of her. But she was still so shy and giggling, so I quickly snapped this candid while she looked away.

nomnomnom these kids were shucking these coconuts so quickly with their teeth!

Super fantastic Hollywood tribute show at the Grand Sirenis Resort where I was staying. It was almost as fun as the sweet Pixar themed blacklight show they put on the next night.

There is a lot of development going on in the Mayan Riviera down near Tulum. i really hope they don’t develop too much. It would be such a shame to destroy the natural beauty of this area. These construction workers were not really thrilled at me taking pictures of them. A leedle bit of attitude.

En español:
Mi último viaje a la Riviera Maya marcado mi sexto viaje a Mexico. Cada vez que estoy en Mexico, siempre me ha calentado por la belleza, bondad y generosidad del pueblo. Aquí están algunas fotos de gente que conocí, o pasado de que me capturaron.

Besides failing miserably at putting on suntan lotion evenly, I was attacked by an albino Mexican sand bear! swathhhhhh. After he pawed me, I gave him some tortillas with cheese dip. This seemed to settle him for a bit while I made my get-away!!

As I’ve mentioned before, I love Strobist super DIY photo guru, David Hobby. His blog, Strobist.com is a daily inspiration for me. When I got my first digital SLR, about a year and a half ago, I spent most of my time sculking about in the alleyways of my city, photographing “hidden treasures” that I’d find. This “derelict” phase stopped abruptly in July 2007, about 10 days into the 88 day Vancouver city garbage strike.

I then moved my attention to things that smelt nicer like cupcakes, Pez, & trees. And after a few months of photographing happy shiny things, I worked up enough courage to photograph real live people who were not always happy or shiny. My main lighting techniques were:

• Natural light is your best friend;
• A big window on a sunny or partially cloudy day is your second best friend;
• Low light? Open the aperture as wide as that sucker will go. f1.4 is money;
• Cheap whiteboard makes a really nice bounce.

During this time, I experimented with using my behemoth of a flash, the 580ex. But, it was so heavy, I always regretted bringing it out to live performances, and frankly it scared people, and now I have no friends. That’s an exaggeration. I have a few friends, it’s just they seldom talk to me.

In the last six months, I’ve started to the long journey to master off-camera flash setups in order to exploring light more and create cool fashion, modeling, and artsy shoots. The trouble is that I need to make these setups for cheap as I only found $1.45 in the crooks and crannies of my sofa.

Using Strobist’s awesome DIY projects as inspiration, I am starting a new series on Mostly Lisa entitled: DIY Photography tips for the Thrifty and Unrich.

For the first shoot I wanted to do something a bit moodier than a typical modeling/acting headshot using an off-camera flash, some hard reflective surfaces (both portable and non) and a wee bit of creativity and smarts.

How we did it:
For these two shots, we had two Canon speedlights (430ex and 580ex) with Stofen Omnibounces at the same height as the subject, pointed straight up to give a “bare bulb” effect that would simultaneously blow out the background (a white wall in my living room) and light up the two 2′x3′ pieces of whiteboard in front of the photographer’s face (just out of frame) as fill.

The flashes were triggered with two cheap and untrustworthy Gadget Infinity remotes and were at 1/8 power, with the 580ex maybe less two thirds of a stop because it’s a more powerful unit. We started shooting at f1.4, but the focus was a bit soft in the above photo, so we bumped it up to f2.8 and added the second flash to create edge highlights (as you can tell by the highlights on both sides of my hair).

The Set-up:
One whiteboard was clamped to another lightstand with a couple $4 Home Depot clamps duct taped together to make a two-way clamp and the other (actually two boards taped together) was standing up on a nearby shelf (like a Christmas card). The camera was handheld just behind and in the middle of the two bounces.

Some Levels and Color Balance adjustments were made in Photoshop to enrich the blacks, push the highlights up some more, and warm up the whole image a little bit. No retouching was done on the computer-induced-big-black-bags-under-my-eyes. Not one bit.

If you have any cool off camera flashy photos that you’ve experimented with, link them in the comments!

Or if this is all waaaaay too technical for you you can just answer one question:
What camera do you use?
i’m actually really interested what camera everyone has - even if it’s not a fancy smancy one. So, talk camera nerdy to me!

Quick! Mac Attack! Alert the Airport Extreme and launch the iPod fighter jets!

I’ll admit it. I once owned a PC. It was a dark period in my computing past, complete with a CD drive that wouldn’t work and a system infected with the Trojan horse virus… Seriously? I thought that was a myth? It’s not. And this big meanie, circa 1999, has got it. Bad.

So, why is it here? Well, my mum who has been storing this beast in the basement for the last 9 years, was about to junk it and not wanting the Paps to find any indecent snaps, my im records from high school (ack!) or my crappy early teenage poetry, i wanted to make sure to wipe HD crystal clean…. before smashing at least part of it. Wiiii smashing a PC. Oh come on, you’ve never wanted to smash a PC?? Never ever???

And how to my Macs think about this new “guest” in their zone? Nothing pleasant. In fact, they are planning a full fledged stealth attack at day break tomorrow to catch the PC Meanie off-guard and hopefully take out his power source and memory.

If I’m able to get up early enough, I may capture the mac attack on video. I can feel your excitement building. I can feeeeeeel it!

Opera T-shirt provided by Startup Schwag.

Captions for these photo are welcome.

PS. I already thought of “Horny for Opera”