The Digital Tribe: Emoji Cafe & Bar (言文字)

 

Emoji cafe is founded by the Taiwan Digital Nomad Association (TDNA) on 2023. Sometimes I like to worked for my side projects here with a cup of coffee and a chocolate fondant.  

There are some personal reflections.    

Friendly Place for Digital Nomads

If you are also looking for a place to work remotely or meet customers for business, I recommend this place for the following reasons. 

• Traffic 
• This place is near the Taipei Main Station which is friendly for foreigners or tourists.  
• Address: No.8, Sec. 1, Kaifeng St., Zhongzheng Dist., Taipei City
• Service 
• Unlimited time to stay (at least ordering one drink)
• Environment
• It's an extremely silent place for working
• The table is large enough to use even you have many books and laptop  

Besides the convenient traffic and friendly environment, an interesting feature is the cat-room. There are two cats in this cafe and customers can feel free to work with them.

 

Digital Tribe

As a digital tribe, the Emoji coffee is not only a co-working space for freelancers or developers. It also helps to build connections by hosting activities.

Taiwan Digital Nomad Association (TDNA) is an organization for dedicating the promotion of the concept of digital nomads. I believe it'll be helpful to learn how to become a digital nomad by joining their activities.

Summary     

Compared to mentioned features, I personally love the relax atmosphere there either processing side projects or chatting to friends. I always can retrieve something positive here when feeling depressions.

   

Grand Mayfull Hotel Palette (美孚彩匯)

Having a meal with the family at different famous restaurants is a new plan of this year. My parents lived in a strict and frugal in the past, I am grateful it very much. 

We decide to visit Palette for the mother's day. 

Nice Environment for Festivals 

As one of famous buffet in Taipei, each person has to pay about 2000 NTD for the dinner. It's not cheap. 

I felt it's suitable for having meal with family. The environment is what I like the most. The table and seat is large enough for placing a low of foods and people are easy to chat to each other. 

Palette is a part of the Grand Mayfull Hotel, the lobby and the second floor are luxury. People could take pictures there. However, the lens I bring only has the 40mm fixed focal length. The FOV is not wide enough to record the whole lobby.

I would suggest that you can bring the wide-range lens if you are planing to visit here. 

Summary

My parents told me that they are happy to have that experience to visit here and see their grand daughter. But they didn't really enjoy the food because they were used to eat simple food.

I felt a little depressed but I still appreciate for having them. Let's expect the next restaurant. 

Model Picture Taking

It's my first time to take a picture for a model, thanks for the class arrangement. I use the following settings with different focal length. 

• camera and lens: Sony ILCE-7M3 + Sony FE 24 - 105mm F4.0 OSS 
• camera mode: manual mode
• aperture: f/4 
• ISO: 640 
• focal length: depends
• metering: dot (點測光)
• flash light: Godux V1 (TTL mode)

Unlike the activity photography, we won't have to catch audience's inadvertently poses. In the model photography, we can totally control the subject, environment, and etc.

However, the photographer has to change the position and the angle frequently for retrieving different pictures for increasing the diversity of pictures. A professional model will throw different poses when she notices there is a camera, we have the catch it. 

Environment and flash light

The limitation is that we have to stay in a single classroom. The color of ceil and floor are gray and yellow individually.

• When light hits the floor, the color is. the picture will be near yellow (left one).
• When light hits the ceil, the color of the picture will become gray (right one). 

The last choice is set the angle of the flash light vertical to the model to hit the model directly if the environment is not ideal.

Shadow effect

Beside using the flash light, using the continuous light, screen and the reflector board could lead to different effects. I use the following settings with different focal length. 

• camera and lens: Sony ILCE-7M3 + Sony FE 24 - 105mm F4.0 OSS 
• camera mode: manual mode
• aperture: f/4 
• ISO: 640 
• focal length: 105 mm
• metering: dot (點測光)

Summary

I thought I can understand why many people are enthusiastic about it.

• A professional model is able to notice cameras and takes turn to look at them. Every photographers will have nice pictures if we catch it properly
• The photographer can just focus on the composition because the subject (model) will handle the smiles, poses, eyes contacts by herself

Even for introverts, it still makes a lot of fun through the interaction to the model.