BaLtiMoRe RoLL

Mac and Cheese

Mmm, yummy. I substituted a couple of splashes of white wine for the Roquefort cheese.

You'Re StiLL HeRe?

I just checked my blog stats and I have come to the conclusion that I have done some pretty good variable operant conditioning on you all because you keep coming back even when I'm not updating. See, if I updated once a week on a regular basis, you would only come back then. But now you have to keep coming back just in case I get in one of those blog moods where I post for four days straight.

So thanks everyone for visiting my blog more than I seem to lately!

Another reason I felt compelled to update is that I found that I'd gotten a couple of hits from the AOL City Guide to Baltimore. Turns out they've got me on their list of "Blogs We're Reading" and that list is only 5 blogs long. I was flattered at first, but then I noticed that the first blog is DCist (huh, didn't realize that was about Baltimore) and then there are four Baltimore ones with first letters ranging from A to C. So it seems that I was just lucky enough to choose a blog name that starts with a letter so early in the alphabet.

And I can't say the traffic from the AOL guide has been overwhelming. When I say I got a couple of hits, I mean that literally. :)

But otherwise my life is truly too boring to blog about right now. I sit at home, writing, writing, writing (my dissertation, of course, not the blog) and planning the wedding. Figuring out flowers. Setting up a registry. And let me tell you, putting together a registry sounds like it would be the most fun thing in the world, but it is a lot of work. You'd think you could just pick out dinnerware that looks nice, but no, it comes in bone china, porcelain, stoneware, etc. and they each have their pros and cons and range widely in price. So what to pick? If we just pick what looks nice, it can be hugely expensive. And we don't want to pick the absolute cheapest stuff because it's also the least durable and the whole point is that people want to get you something lasting. So we have ploddingly gone through everything, and once we pick something out I end up going back later and dumping it and picking something totally different. Eventually we'll get it up on our wedding site... (Actually, I really like a lot of the stuff we picked out. It's just that the process of picking it has been time consuming.)

See, this stuff really is too boring to write about, isn't it.

I have more photos from San Francisco, but haven't had the chance to get to them yet. (I shoot in RAW, so I can't just throw them up on the web without converting them to JPG first and resizing them and stuff.)

I'll go back to my dissertation and leave you be now. If you're in Baltimore, go check out Hopkins' Spring Fair for me. Remember when I was selling photos there last year? That was fun... Wish I was doing that tomorrow instead of writing, writing, writing.

Guess where I'll be tomorrow afternoon...

Sushi Taro

ALL YOU CAN EAT from CHERRY BLOSSOM BUFFET

Saturday, April 15, 2006
12:00 - 8:00 PM
$35.00 per person

Transamerica Building and the San Francisco Harbor

Chiaroscuro just sent me some photos from the trip and in each of them my face is pressed up to the camera. She apologized, but what could she do. I really did see practically the entire trip through the viewfinder. It was such a blast to be traveling around with two other photography obsessed people and I really just let myself go and shoot everything I could.

Using the Digital Rebel was a real joy. It's so fast compared to my camera. And although you can't see it in any of the pictures here, playing with shallow depth of field was a lot of fun for me. (Actually, you can kind of see it in the Muir Woods picture in the previous post, but it's subtle especially in a thumbnail.)

The thing that kept messing me up the most, though, was getting the exposure right. Since I'm used to getting a live preview with my camera, I kept assuming that whatever I saw through the viewfinder was exactly how my picture was going to look. So I ended up with a lot of really over- and underexposed pictures as I tried to guess what the right exposure was supposed to be, and then I often forgot to check afterwards to see if I got it right. But I had prepared myself for bad pictures and decided to just have fun with the camera and not be too disappointed if I came home with badly exposed blurry photos.

And I did manage to get a few decent pictures, so here are a few more.

On Monday, I explored the city of San Francisco with Chiaroscuro. In the morning, we nearly got on a ferry boat to cruise around the harbor but a big grey cloud moved in overhead so we ended up going for lunch in Chinatown instead. After lunch we walked back towards the Financial District down Columbus, where we got a nice view of the Transamerica Building. I took this photo from a median in the center of the street, if that's not obvious from the photo and from the extreme closeness of the bus passing by me in the second shot. (Don't worry, it looks closer than it really was.)

Transamerica Building
1/125 sec, F/11, 18mm, ISO-100, EV -0.6
Canon EOS 300D with Sigma 18-50mm f/3.5-5.6

San Francisco tour bus
1/8 sec, F/22, 50mm, ISO-100, EV 0
Canon EOS 300D with Canon EF 50mm f/1.4

By then the sky had cleared up enough so we took off for Fisherman's Wharf to take the bay cruise. From the harbor we got a fantastic view of the city skyline. I'm not sure why, but a bunch of seagulls followed us around the whole time (no one was giving them food), so I took some shots of them too. Then we circled around the back of Alcatraz before heading back in. This was probably the best weather we had the whole time, so we really timed that bay cruise well.

San Francisco skyline
1/320 sec, F/8, 86mm, ISO-100, EV 0
Canon EOS 300D with Sigma 55-200mm f/4-5.6

seagull
1/640 sec, F/8, 112mm, ISO-100, EV 0
Canon EOS 300D with Sigma 55-200mm f/4-5.6

Alcatraz Island
1/400 sec, F/11, 200mm, ISO-100, EV 0
Canon EOS 300D with Sigma 55-200mm f/4-5.6

Then, before heading out for dinner, we caught this view of the clock tower at the Embarcadero Ferry Terminal and the Bay Bridge from a window in Chiaroscuro's hotel

San Francisco at night
1/25 sec, F/1.4, 50mm, ISO-400, EV 0
Canon EOS 300D with Canon EF 50mm f/1.4

Muir Woods, Napa Valley, and the Golden Gate Bridge

I'm back from San Francisco, feeling tired from lack of sleep but refreshed in spirit after three amazing days of walking around San Francisco. Here are the first of the photos. (More will be on my photoblog.)

On Sunday, we tagged along with our friends Visual Field and Chiaroscuro who had rented a car to drive around outside of the city. It was a gorgeous misty day, perfect for walking in the forest of Muir Woods, for driving through the rolling hills of Napa Valley, and for watching the fog blow over the Golden Gate Bridge.

Muir Woods
1/60 sec, f/5.6, 50mm, ISO-400, EV -1
Canon EOS 300D with Canon EF 50mm f/1.4

Napa Valley
1/125 sec, f/14, 18mm, ISO-100, EV -0.6
Canon EOS 300D with Sigma 18-55mm f/4-5.6

Golden Gate Bridge
1/250 sec, f/3.5, 18mm, ISO-100, EV +1
Canon EOS 300D with Sigma 18-55mm f/4-5.6

Also, Chiaroscuro has an amazing photo of the mist in Napa Valley floating over the hills in the distance.

Oh! And how could I forget?! I'm 99% sure that we spotted Louis Lombardi (Edgar on "24") at the Robert Mondavi vineyard. I really wanted to go over and say hi, but I chickened out and just stared from across the way, which (embarrassingly) did not go unnoticed. I just couldn't think of what to say, but then again do actors really mind if you gush over them?

Free fLiGht

It already feels like we've been gone for days, but it's only been about 24 hours. Yesterday morning we left the house at 5 am for our 7 am flight, only to discover that they had overbooked the flight and we might get bumped. It worked out in our favor though because they asked for volunteers to be bumped, gave us each a free flight voucher, and got us to SF only a few hours later.

Today, I'm up with an unusual amount of energy. It's just after 7 am and I feel like I usually do only after noon and a full cup of coffee. I think it's because I'm going on a picture taking adventure in the wine country and Muir Woods this afternoon.

Only problem is that it's supposed to be grey and showering all day. So there's a good possibility we'll be spending most of the day indoors. But hey, that's what they invented wine tasting for!

StAyinG HoMe FoR OnE MorE NiGHt

It turns out that we are not going to Philadelphia tonight after all, since our flight leaving from Philly tomorrow morning was cancelled. Apparently there is some severe weather in Ohio or something and I guess it must be bad enough that United is already afraid of it today.

Having just watched Six Days Seven Nights*, I am eager not to recreate a plane crash myself. Of course... if it meant being stranded on an island with Harrison Ford for a week, I suppose it would be ok. :)

(By the way, don't you hate it when bloggers link to a movie without telling you what it is? If it's not in the URL when I mouse over it, I'm not going to bother to click it to find out what you already should have told me.)

Anyway, what was I talking about? Oh, Philly, and how we're not going to fly out of there because apparently the weather is going to be too dangerous. However, United had no problem putting us on a flight out of Baltimore. So I'm a little nervous about it because Baltimore's not exactly thousands of miles away from Philadelphia, but hopefully if the weather is really that bad they'll just cancel the Baltimore flight too. Or more hopefully, the weather will be fine and all will be well.

Did I mention that while I'm in San Francisco I'm going to be borrowing Chiaroscuro's Digital Rebel? ... Yes, I know that I did. But I am so excited! (She doesn't need it because she also owns a beautiful 5d.) I've already read the manual cover to cover, to make sure I know everything I need to know ahead of time. I know how to switch between focus points, I finally learned what A-Dep is, and ... well, truthfully it all works very similar to my own camera so it's not that hard. One weird thing that's different though is that the Rebel doesn't allow you to select the metering yourself; the camera does it for you, and even uses different metering depending on whether the camera is set to aperture priority or manual. So if I want Evaluative in AV, fine, that's what I get. But if I switch to Manual, it switches to Center Weighted. That's kind of annoying. I can't imagine who's brain child that was. Even my PowerShot Pro1 allows me to select the metering. (Not surprisingly, this is one of the things they fixed in the newer Rebel XT.)

See, this is the real reason I'm going to San Francisco. To take pictures.

 

 

 

*Incidentally, it was a pretty bad movie.

I HaTe BeiNG ColD

Last week's warm weather was inexplicably accompanied by our heat coming on in the middle of the day. It was so warm that I packed for the weekend at my parents' house in upstate New York as though I was headed to Florida.

In the past couple of days the temperature has dropped, and although it hasn't been terrible, it's been cold enough that a little heat in our apartment would be very nice. Last night I wore my turtleneck sweater to bed and today I sit here wrapped in a blanket and a scarf wrapped around my head. I did hear the landlord a few minutes ago messing around in the basement, so hopefully they were restarting the heater. (Sometimes the pilot light goes out and no one in the building has access to it.)

I just checked the weather to see if it's really that cold out or whether it's just me, and I see that today's forecast is for rain/show/showers/wind. Well, that sounds pleasant. At least I'm already wearing my scarf.

BuSy

Sometimes I update my blog furiously when I am busy. Othertimes I find myself too busy to even get to it, and the things that have been keeping me busy don't lend themselves well to a few paragraphs.

If you know me in "real life", then you probably know what I've been up to.

Dissertation writing. Yes, actual writing! I do the occasional reanalysis, but mostly I'm writing. And re-writing. And staring at a blank computer screen. And wondering why I ever thought writing a dissertation was a good idea. I can tell you that I will never write another one of these again.

And wedding planning. This weekend J and I went up to my parents' house, along with my sister and her boyfriend. We went to the wedding site, met with the caterer, went fabric shopping, went dress shopping, and met with the florist. And within 48 hours we were back in Baltimore. I guess we got a lot done, if only because caterers and florists simply need to be told what we like and then they go off and do it.

This weekend I'm going to San Francisco, like I have the time to do that. But J is presenting at a conference this weekend, so the hotel is already paid for. And Chiaroscuro and Visual Field are going and planning to drive around and take pictures the whole time and they've offered to let me tag along and borrow their Digital Rebel*. (Insert big red flowery "yippeeeeee" here!) And unless his plans have changed, our Finnish friend is also going to be there and I haven't seen him since Ianqui and Super G's wedding.

Oh, and in case we're not feeling busy enough, we're planning to squeeze apartment hunting in Philly in either this Friday or next Wednesday. (In fact, we're flying to San Francisco via Philly.) So far we've identified neighborhoods we want to look in and we've perused the ads (along with city crime statistic maps, just in case), but we haven't made any appointments yet. It really wouldn't be like us to make plans more than 12 hours in advance, so we've still got time. :)

 

 

(* For those of you with cash to buy such things, Canon is offering a rebate at the moment on the Rebel XT for $100 off. Personally I think they are just doing it to taunt me!)