journal – Page 5 – Tiana Feng

How to Photograph a Funeral

March 18, 2013March 18, 2013Art, Photography1 Comment

While photographing a funeral may seem morbid to some, it is normal in some cultures to want to capture the moment. Funerals tend to be one of the very few times where entire families and friends gather in a room, even those who haven’t seen each other for 10 years. Asian funerals tend to have a lot of tradition and are quite interesting to document.

To be honest when grandma asked me to photograph grandpa’s funeral, I thought it was weird. I thought I would be shy, break down (well I did occasionally), or that it would be awkward. However, I learned a lot from this experience and think I became a much better photographer because of it.

Here are a few tips:

1. No Flash
Having a photographer at a funeral can be awkward enough for some visitors, don’t be intrusive with a giant flash. I used my 50mm 1.8 lens for the majority of the shots so that I could absorb the most light as well as purposely blur backgrounds.

2. Be Considerate
Funerals can be a great opportunity to be photojournalistic, but at the same time you have to still be sensitive. Don’t stick cameras in people’s faces and be as invisible as possible. In my case, it was a little bit more difficult because I was part of the immediate family.

3. Edit Photos to Fit The Mood
Photos shouldn’t really be high of contrast and colour, that doesn’t really fit the mood of a funeral (or at least not the ceremony/wake). Don’t “bloom” your photos, apply appropriate filters that aren’t too bright and cheery. A mix of black and white and colour is okay too.

4. Watch People Interact With Each Other
Chances are if you’ve been asked to photograph a funeral, the person doesn’t just want to remember the deceased, but also all those who came out.

5. Be Confident
If you act like you are unsure you are supposed to be there, than it makes it awkward for everyone else too. If you’re confident than people will know you are doing your job.

If you ever get asked to photograph a funeral, treat it as a honour to help someone keep their last memories of a loved one. For now, most of the photos are for my family’s eyes only but they are some of the most intimate and emotionally beautiful photographs that I have ever taken.

The Only Things I Remember From Having Leukemia

February 6, 2013February 14, 2013Health, LifeLeave a Comment

It wasn’t until I was around 20 that I learnt why I was sick when I was around 4. Growing up I just periodically had to go to Sick Kids for checkups every year and I just assumed it was a regular routine thing for a growing child. I’m completely healthy now, whatever strain of leukemia I had (I’m still somewhat unclear on all the details), it was curable. Doctor visits have become much less frequent and trying to recall the events of back then is actually rather difficult. Here are some things I do remember:

I remember my doctor’s name was Dr. Freeman. Other than that, I don’t remember what he looks like. Every time I try to picture him I get the image of Colonel Sanders from Kentucky Fried Chicken. Maybe that is what he looked like.

I remember ALF came to visit me in the hospital and it was fuckin’ frightening for a 4 year old. Also I’m pretty sure I still have the pogs he gave me.
I remember playing with a kitchen set. It was yellow, and I loved pretending to cook pretend food.

I remember wearing a weird fanny pack for a while when I was out of the hospital. It made me feel like a robot. Around the same time my parents also threw out all the microwaves and we weren’t allowed to have them until 10 years later.

I remember making friends with a girl name Sarah. She had down syndrome. I wonder where she is now and how she is doing.

What I don’t remember is what it felt like to be sick or how I got there. I don’t remember all the depressing parts of being sick. I have Sick Kids Hospital to thank for that.

I’m Never Buying You A Watch

January 11, 2013January 11, 2013Life, Relationships1 Comment

Mom told me never to buy a clock for a Chinese person. In Chinese culture, the words for “giving a clock” also sound like the ones for a funeral ritual. It also symbolizes that your time is running out and considered an offensive gesture.

When I was in high school I dated this guy for a couple of months. I saved up money for what would be our first Christmas to buy him this shiny GUESS watch. When I finally bought it, I’d take it out of the box occasionally to bask in the glory of its shininess. I gave it to him for Christmas and he was delighted. However, it stopped working after a week and a little while later we broke up. 14 year old me was devastated.

In college, I found the perfect gift for the vest-wearing guy I was with at the time. It was a pocket watch. The back had a hole that displayed the inner-workings of the ticking clock. The outside was a shiny silver with interesting carvings and the innards were gold. It was wind-up power so it never needed battery. I’m 88% I got it engraved. Anyways, I gave it to him, the spring broke and a week later he broke up with me for another girl. In hindsight, he was probably an asshole.

Now fast-forward and I am with somebody who appreciates me for me and I am the happiest I have been for years. Nash, you are stuck with me forever because I’m never buying you a watch.

Who Should Blog?

January 7, 2013February 12, 2013Social Media, Technology3 Comments

A couple weeks ago, I wrote one of my many restaurant experiences on this blog. I hit publish and then proceeded to paste the link on my Facebook wall. Most of my friends enjoy reading of local eats, so I do the occasional share on social networks. A minute later somebody posted this rather passive aggressive Facebook status:

“Unless you know what a mirepoix, paysanne or bain-marie is you shouldn’t write about food. Eating out with a camera doesn’t make you a writer.”

Technically, it wasn’t personally directed at me, but the timing was just too perfect. For the record, I do know what all those things are without looking them up on Wikipedia. I do my fine share of making fried rice, cutting vegetables for stir fry and watching the food network. Anyways, all those things are irrelevant to what makes a blogger.

If you’re reading a food blog, unless it’s a recipe blog, nobody cares if the carrots were julienned. In the Yelp and Foursquare era, people just want to know that things taste good. That is what the food (books and other) posts are for, to give an opinion on something. If you don’t care about my opinion than kindly hit the x at the top right corner (or left if you’re on a Mac). Also, what are you doing here in the first place? I have a modest following of people who do care.

In the internet age, everyone has the right to blog. All food critics probably started out paying for meals themselves and evaluating them. Just like all music bloggers started out paying for concerts and practising their camera shots and reviews. Blogging is not a god-given right to somebody with a pretentious degree in a subject area. In fact I don’t think people would even want to read something with a lot of condescending jargon. Would anybody care if I told you some song had too many parallel 5ths? If you are passionate about a subject, or if you just like sharing things regularly then go ahead and blog.

I lulled on this subject for the past few weeks and then realized. Who cares what one dude thinks? As long as you can maintain readership and a following on your blog (even if it is a few really dedicated fans), then keep writing. You have every right to.

Ps. I love all my followers. Thank you for continuously following my life adventures and nerdism. I promise to bring you a lot more in 2013.

I Swallowed A Chicken Bone

December 6, 2012December 6, 2012Food, Life4 Comments

Yesterday night I was eating chicken wings. I love chicken wings. While I was eating, Mom was rambling on about something and distracting me. Then I somehow swallowed a chicken bone.

I’m not sure how much bone I ingested, but it felt like at least half of one of the wing tip bones. The situation was probably not that big of a deal. However, during my ordeal Dad told me a frightening story.

He once had a friend who was very intelligent but swallowed a small rib bone. He proceeded to flush it down with rice and water. He thought nothing of it except for small pain he would have once in a while. Few days later he was dead. The bone had pierced his esophagus and arteries which lead to some complicated internal bleeding.

I started to over-think. I took to Google to self-diagnose myself and of course on the internet you can find the worst results of any case. Through this anxious over-thinking, I started to feel my own throat hurt and felt it every time I thought about swallowing a chicken bone.

However, I concluded that the condition is psychological. After some researching (in my old psychology books, not Wikipedia), I found out that this is called globus hystericus otherwise known as globus sensation, the feeling of having a lump in the throat. It can be caused by actual inflammation, but often by anxiety. Strangely after writing this post, the feeling is completely gone, so I guess I’m not going to die of chicken both death. Thanks blog.

Being An Imperfect Musician

November 19, 2012March 10, 2013Art, Entertainment, Inspiration, Life, Music1 Comment

I played piano today, and I enjoyed it. This was a statement I had not been able to say for a long time.

Over a year ago I had posted about rekindling my love for the instrument, but it never really happened. Life got in the way- or so I thought.

I blamed a lot of not playing on being busy, which I was with various internships. I also pushed the piano aside because Teddy (my precious little puppy) hated the sound and would howl whenever any instrument was played.

Though the above were contributing factors, none of them really explained why I was avoiding the piano. The truth was that in fourth year after a rather disastrous jury, I was tired and frustrated at the piano.

I am a big cognitive science junkie. In Levtin’s book This is Your Brain On Music he talks about how 10,000 hours of practice makes a great musician. I calculated that if I started piano when I was five and averaged about 2 hours a day since then (with the long hours in my advanced years evening out the early years and holidays) that it amounted to something like 12,410 hours. This was approximate number of hours I had spent at a piano from when I was 5 up to the day of my piano jury when I was 22 (I am currently 24).

It was disheartening having put in more than the required 10,000 hours and be far from “perfect”. This anxiety had caused me to be afraid of performing in front of other people. “What if I mess up?” was a constant worry during the hours spent in university practice rooms. The consequence of this unease was more intense practicing and the development of carpel tunnel (which I am happy to say I don’t have any more).

Today I sat at the piano without too much thought about it. I picked up a book of Chopin waltzes and simply started playing. I realized some of my strengths:
1. I am a great sight reader.
2. If I played a song once, my fingers will remember it forever no matter how long it’s been since I last played it.

Though imperfectly, it was nice to be playing again, especially the music of my favourite composer. Now that I am out of school (and finished RCM exams), I don’t have to be playing under the pretense of needing to be perfect or performing for somebody else. I can also explore pieces that excite me and not have to drill them to perfection. I want to continuously enjoy performing for myself. And for me, imperfect is okay.

Comfortable Silences

November 11, 2012March 10, 2013Life, Relationships1 Comment

There is a famous quote from Mia in Pulp Fiction that goes something like:

Don’t you hate that? Uncomfortable silence. Why do we feel it’s necessary to talk about bull in order to feel comfortable? That’s when you know you’ve found somebody really special. When you can just shut the hell up for a minute and comfortably share a silence

I’m surprisingly (or not really) a semi-awkward person. Are’t we all? When I’m in an uncomfortable situation I tend to feel obliged to talk , blurt out something even if it ends up being really stupid because silence as the alternative is just too uncomfortable.

Luckily, I found someone who I can have comfortable silences with. That doesn’t mean we don’t talk (hell we can talk for hours), but we can appreciate quiet moments. Whether it’s staring into each other’s eyes and smiling or sitting in the same room on separate laptops, talking is not a requirement.

Unplugged For A Day

September 5, 2012September 5, 2012Art, Photography, Social Media, Technology2 Comments

With a view like this. Who needs the internet?

As my previous post mentioned, I went to my uncle’s cottage last weekend. It was 3-4 hours up north, and a boat ride across the lake. I was surrounded by nature and 3G was sparse.

I previously wrote a post, Could You Give Up the Internet for $50 million? where I admitted that I could not give it up. However this weekend unplugged for a day I learned that I was able to (at least for a day). I also realized that there were benefits to it. It was stress-relieving. I didn’t need to constantly check my e-mail, think of what to tweet or give a damn about what my friends were posting on Facebook. I didn’t even have the urge to instagram photos of our BBQ’d food.

Instead I taught Teddy how to swim, went hiking and took some breath taking photos of my surroundings. The only time I did use my 3G was to download Sky Map, an app that names all the constellations in the night sky.

Though I will probably not quit social media or the internet, sometimes I wonder how much of the real world we’re missing as we sit in front of blinking screens.

It’s a big and beautiful world out there.

That Is Old News…

August 22, 2012Social Media, TechnologyLeave a Comment

Yesterday we all learned the existence of Chadvil. An hour later I turned to Nash and said something along the lines of “WHY ON EARTH ARE PEOPLE STILL TALKING ABOUT THIS? IT’S OLD NEWS. WHY ARE THEY JUST FINDING OUT NOW?” Then he asked me how something from an hour ago is considered old news. It made me ponder.

Before social networks the phrase “That’s yesterday’s news” was still a thing. Now with Twitter and Facebook we are inundated with vast amounts of information, and we are able to find out about things almost instantly. It’s scary to think that maybe years from now an hour ago will be too slow. Imagine what our future kids would say. That’s 5 seconds ago’s news.

Whether it’s celebrity deaths, world news, the viral video, they’re instantly forgotten about as soon as they are posted. It also makes me wonder how fast actual news outlets have to be in order for them to survive. That’s a bit frightening.

Thanks For Putting Up With Me

August 13, 2012Life, RelationshipsLeave a Comment

Me and Nash’s anniversary is coming up. We think it’s tomorrow, but we’re not the type to count days. It seems more indefinite this way. Indefinite seems like a strange word. Like forever, but possibly a longer time. That’s a really long time to be with someone.

Then I realized, he must put up with a lot. The dude wrote me the most beautiful letter thing on my Facebook wall, so I thought I’d return the favor with this blog post thanking him for the myriad of things he must put up with while being with me.

Thanks for…

Not sleeping and coming to late night shows with me. Many of which have probably made you question my taste in music.

Eating burgers with me. We’ll probably grow obese and both die of heart-attacks, but it’ll be the best death ever.

Waiting to meet parents. Asian parents, enough said.

Being patient and waiting to watch the latest episode of Breaking Bad and Adventure Time with me. Even when their facebook pages contain spoilers.

Dealing with my social media addiction. You’ve let me instagram my food, foursquare places and twitter our stories. This is probably the third wheel in our relationship.

Losing video games on purpose. You must be losing occasionally right? I mean you can’t seriously get beaten by a girl in Tekken.

Letting Teddy lick your balls

Love you.