Camera in the Bag

Went to the Guadalupe Mountains NP Labor Day Weekend. (I've now been to 5 National Parks!) It was extremely foggy and rainy there. We had to cancel our camping plans (the only way to stay overnight at the park, which is 35 miles away from any gas. Need to upload pictures...

Plan to buy Lightroom soon.

Labels: fog, Guadalupe Mountains, Lightroom, photography, rain

I let my trial version of Lightroom run out, so now I have to convince some people to hand over the $95 for the student version....

Labels: Lightroom, stupidity

A zoomed out view down Tenaya Canyon, with Tenaya Creek at its bottom.

Labels: B/W, Half Dome, photo, Tenaya Canyon, Yosemite

Our first day at Yosemite, our second day in California:

View down Tenaya Canyon, and past Half Dome, from Glacier Point.

Labels: B/W, Half Dome, Tenaya Canyon, Yosemite

I shot all of my pictures of California in RAW, so I'd been putting off processing them... but I now have a trial version of Photoshop Lightroom, so the pictures will be up soon.

Labels: California, Lightroom, photography, RAW

Here getting ready to leave the heart of Silicon Valley for Yosemite, having been to downtown San Francisco twice, a redwood grove, and four different museums!

Now for the four hour drive east....

Pictures of the Golden Gate and Highway 1 later...

Labels: California, Golden Gate, Highway 1, travel, Yosemite

I don't know if it's real envy, maybe a lack of make-up-your-mind-ness, but now that I've got a really nice Inspiron 1525 laptop, I find myself gazing longingly at Apple.com, wondering what life would be like if I had a MacBook instead. That started to happen after I visited the school where my mom teaches and sat down at one of her room's iMac Core Duos, suddenly amazed at one cool feature or the next. First it was the Dashbord; finding all the different ways to access it, then it was GarageBand! But I really don't know if I'd be happier with a Mac. I don't know if maybe it's all flash... Why do I feel this way?

And then there are the things I feel as if I should be doing: stuff like hand-coding HTML for a proper website, or organizing my room, or writing my extended essay for IB. I'm not actively putting it off, I'm just not devoting any active attention to any one of those, especially deficient in light of the fact that I'd like to have some serious progress completed on one of the above before I reach California within a week. :P

Labels: Apple, California, desire, EE, HTML, IB, iMac, laptop, PC, stuff, web design

Here's a scoop out of some old railroad pictures I took last year at Saginaw, Texas; it's a BNSF SD70ACe southbound on the head of a Powder River coal train.

Labels: photography, railfanning, Saginaw, Texas, trains

Now, I am looking into a good MF landscape lens, since I visit Yosemite sometime during my trip to San Francisco in two weeks. I'm really eying a Super Takumar 28mm f/3.5 I've found on the Ebay, even though I already have the SMC DA 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 kit lens, which provides me with a 28 f/3.5 lens, I have found the Takumars truly attractive, with their silky focus and good looks (both optically and structurally).

Hope to have that lens soon....

Labels: California, lenses, Pentax, takumar, trip

Hopefully soon, I want to buy a S-M-C Takumar 50mm f/1.4 lens for my K100D, which will be several stops brighter at its most open aperture than my current 50mm lens, a SMC-M 50mm f/2 that came with my dad's K1000. I've gained a respect for Takumars, with their reputation for silky-smooth focusing, spot-on focus, and incredible bokeh. All-in-all, it's made me covet one for a long time now.

Also hopefully soon, or at least as soon as I can find the login info to my FTP account, I will start posting some more pictures, mainly of the wildflowers blooming all over my yard. (In two weeks there might start to be some from the San Francisco Bay area, too ;) )

Labels: California, FTP, lenses, plans, San Francisco, takumar

If there's anyone out there that actually reads this blog, I'm sorry for the delay. School's gotten in the way, along with getting a new laptop, which coincidentally, should actually make blogging easier, not the opposite. :P

And as well, something with my connection has made it to where I can't upload pictures to Blogger, and right now I don't have the FTP login for my website, so even though I have a couple of photos ready, they can't be posted right now. :(

Sorry. Wait a little while....

Labels: apology, blogging, photography, readers

A snapshot of one of the fields of Green-thread that surrounds my house; yesterday afternoon.

Labels: coreopsis, flowers, Texas, wildflowers, yard

The last good bluebonnet I could find on my land that hadn't yet gone to seed.

Labels: Bluebonnets, country, flowers, Hill Country, wildflowers, yard

Wonderful bunch of Prairie Verbena on the side of a drainage ditch along RM 243 south of Bertram, Texas.

Labels: country, photo, purple, Texas, wildflowers

A simple Antelope Horns milkweed in my yard. They look almost alien, these giant round heads, with multiple flowers that pop open when ready.

Labels: country, Hill Country, milkweed, photo, photography, Texas, wildflowers, yard

I thought I'd get ready for this year's wildflower season by posting pictures of last year's amazing wildflowers, especially the bluebonnets! Because of all of the rain last year, everything was so amazing; this year, though, there hasn't been much rain yet...

Gallery - Bluebonnets - 2007

Labels: Bluebonnets, fields, Hill Country, local, travel, wildflowers

I visited northern New Mexico (Santa Fe area) for my Spring Break this year, to visit St. John's College, a small liberal arts school in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. I sat in on several classes, and toured the beautiful campus.

My family also visited Pecos, New Mexico, site of Pecos NHP, home of the ruins of the Pecos pueblo, and the ancient Spanish mission church that served it; for the longest time the Pecos Pueblo was one of the largest in New Mexico, with a population numbering several thousand, but after the Pueblo Revolt against the Spaniards in the late 1600s, the pueblo suffered many attacks, and was eventually abandoned.

Northern New Mexico - 3-11-08

Labels: B/W, church, New Mexico, pueblo, Santa Fe, slideshow, Spring Break

Regency, Texas, a spot in the road kind-of-place. Back on dirt county roads in the middle of Mills County, seemingly hundreds of miles from nowhere, and do I mean nowhere! But it's also the site of the last active road suspension bridge in Texas, the Regency Bridge, spanning the Colorado River.

Regency, Texas

Labels: B/W, bridges, Colorado River, country, interesting, slideshow, Texas, travel