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