I am pleased how my BW film turned out . Unlike digital files, the grains & noises in the picture looks so beautiful. It is challenging to calculate right amount of light and shades to produce wonderful contrast. I am thrilled… thrilled to challenge a new phase of my photography… : )

my next optical glass will be Victor & Rolf

isn’t it so pretty ?

from  http://www.stevehuffphoto.com/

View from my house … I like walking around my neighborhood with camera on my hand

Easy Company, 2nd Battalion of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 4th Brigade combat team of the 101st Airborne Division a.k.a. “Screaming Eagles” is one of the most well-known companies in the United States Army. Their experiences in World War II are the subject of the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers based on the book of the same name by historian Stephen Ambrose. In 2009, twenty of the last few remaining survivors from Easy Company recounted their stories in the oral-history book project We Who Are Alive and Remain: Untold Stories From the Band of Brothers.

The 506th PIR was an experimental Airborne Regiment created in 1942 at Camp Toccoa, Georgia. Easy Company missions were to be dropped from a C-47 Transport Airplane over various hostile territories. The units would parachute from the aircraft, and regroup once they had landed. The purpose of an experimental parachute regiment was to gain tactical advantage over the enemy; also as a fast access to wherever the unit needed to be mobilized.

Major Richard Winters described the original organization of Easy company as follows:

“[Easy] company included three rifle platoons and a headquarters section. Each platoon contained three twelve-man rifle squads and a six-man mortar team squad. Easy also had one machine gun attached to each of its rifle squads, and a 60mm mortar in each mortar team.”(Pages 16-17, “Beyond Band of Brothers” ISBN 978-0-425-21375-9)

The training for Easy Company was not an easy task. Besides attending the standard Airborne school, the unit had to perform battle drills and excruciating amounts of physical training. One of the more famous exercises performed physical training was the running of Currahee. Currahee was a large, steep hill, up which the men of Easy Company had to run on a regular basis. Their well-known phrase, “3 miles up, 3 miles down” was derived from this run. Easy Company, while training at Toccoa, was under the command of Herbert Sobel, who was known for his extreme strictness.

Also as part of their physical training, the members of Easy Company performed formation runs. Formation runs are formed into three-four column running groups. The purpose of this training was to first push the soldiers to their limits, and also to teach them how to work together as a team . [From WIKIPEDIA]

(HBO series: Band of Brothers)

After 9 years, HBO is now showing the part 2 of WW II… “The Pacific”

looks and feels so pretty : )

After 15 years of using Window, I am finally moving to MAC . The reason? Simple. I don’t care how fast computers run on benchmarks, I will leave that to the hardware geeks. I want something simple, something that runs without the viruses, crashes and spam. I don’t want to be bothered with constant need for upgrades, supports, defrags and maintenance. Tomorrow I will be seating in my desk like the doggy in the pic below.

pic from http://www.flickr.com/photos/purprin/3655887487/

Los Angeles to London -> Spend few days in London and move to Portsmouth. Take a ship/cruise over the English Channel to Cherbourg, France. Somehow (I don’t have any plans for this section) get to destination #4: Mont St. Michel. Stay over night at Mont-Saint-Michel (was used in the sixth and seventh centuries as an Armorican stronghold of Romano-Breton culture). Then somehow (once again I don’t have any idea… haha) arrive in Paris.Voila!

I think I am going to add this beautiful place on my destination list.

pic from flickr.com/photos/yannl/2484261080/