UCSD Bookstore/Price Center

Here's a small gallery of a few snapshots I took over at UCSD -- I was over by the Price Center, and was pretty amazed at the amount of construction that's going on. The bookstore expansion looks to me to be much larger than I thought. Sure was weird being there and seeing it look totally different... Click the picture to go to the gallery.



All of these pictures were taken with the new 17-85mm EF-S IS USM lens.

Torrey Pines Gliderport

I went out to the Torrey Pines Gliderport today to see what it was like, since I'd never been out there. I used it as an opportunity to set up the Tripod and take a few pictures with the new camera gear I've acquired since the last time I went shooting: a Circular Polarizing filter for my wide angle 10-22mm lens, and the new 17-85mm lens. Even though I don't have the filters for the new lens, I thought I'd take it out and see what kind of pictures it takes. Clicky for the gallery:



The images in the gallery are a random sample of my different lenses: I used the 10-22, 17-85, and the 28-135. The 10-22 had the CP-L filter on it the whole time (except where noted) and the 28-135 was rocking the usual UV Haze filter. You'll notice from looking at the images that were taken with the 17-85 vs. the 28-135 that even the UV haze filter cleans things up substantially outdoors.

It looks like I had a small speck of some kind of dust on the camera sensor near the bottom right corner, that is consistently in the same place regardless of which lens or focal length I was using.

New Camera Lens

My new camera lens came yesterday. Here's what it looks like:



The idea here is that this lens (17-85mm) should replace the kit lens (18-55mm) that came with my camera. The new lens adds Image Stabilization and a faster, quieter focusing motor. It's also built a little bit better -- the cheap kit lens is made completely of plastic, and looks like a little toy. I bought this one used, and the seller threw in the lens hood -- so I've got one of those, too. The Circular polarizer and the UV filter should come within the next week.

As of today, my lenses consist of:

10-22mm EF-S USM
18-55mm EF-S
17-85mm EF-S IS USM
28-135mm EF IS USM

As you can see, the 18-55 has been made completely redundant, as has a large portion of the range of the 28-135. I'm thinking about trading out those two lenses for a 70-300 IS and a 50mm prime lens for night photography. I spend too much money on this stuff.

4th of July Fireworks

On July 4, Mom and I went to the cliffs over at UCSD to try to watch the fireworks from La Jolla cove and other nearby places. There was a guard posted there and he wasn't letting people into the area, so we walked down the road to Black's Beach instead and watched from there. Since my original plans were compromised and we didn't have much time to get down there and get things set up, I wasn't able to effectively use my tripod or get the kind of shots I really wanted to get. Nonetheless, a few of these came out decent -- I figured if I snapped enough, one would come out OK. Click on the photo below for the gallery.

La Jolla Cove Photos

A small gallery of a couple photos that I snapped at La Jolla Cove on July 1, 2007. Clicking the photo goes to the gallery.

Bowling Shoes

I ordered some new bowling shoes about a week and a half ago. They look like this:



They're actually pretty stylish. They almost look like semi-trendy sneakers. Problem is, they shipped UPS Ground from Portland, Maine to San Diego and took about a week to get here. When I got 'em, it took me about 4 days before I tried them on... I of course assumed they'd fit because I bought the same size shoe I wear at the bowling alley. Not even close. So, I had to send them back. UPS Ground. To Maine. When they get them, they'll process the exchange for free, which is nice -- and then send the bigger size to me... via UPS Ground. Sigh. At least the shipping all three ways was free, and I got a good deal on the shoes. I'm shooting for bowling on August 7th if anyone's interested.

San Diego Harbor

Pictures from the Harbor Cruise my mom and I took in the San Diego Harbor on June 30, 2007 are now posted. Finally. Here's a sample:

Access to older photo galleries

If you're looking to get to any of the 88 other galleries from between June, 2004 and June, 2007 that don't show up here because I'm too lazy to import the entire format of the old site, you'll want to click on the picture below to get to the old website.

Blogger

I have finally given in and decided that there are several mass-produced commercial systems that are much better suited to what I want to do than I could possibly come up with myself. [Edit: I am lazy, and that's the real reason.] First, it was the Gallery format moving to Aperture. Now, it's the main page moving to Blogger. This will also, hopefully, allow me to include NON-photo related entries in the 'blog' format like a normal person's website... without seeming weird or overly out of place.

Now, if only I could figure out how to navigate this stupid site... the admin interface for these things is amazingly counter-intuitive for how easy it should be to set up. Oh well.