Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia & Singapore

I went to Malaysia for work and some of my coworkers and I made a quick stop in Singapore. We had a really hectic schedule in KL so I didn't get to do much shooting, but I managed to get a shot of the Petronas Towers from a bar on the top floor of a hotel right next to the towers. 
The rest of the photos were taken in Singapore. Its such a colorful place, I didn't even have to adjust the color in any of the photos below. 

Petronas Towers - f/3.5 1/10 sec (handheld)

Sunset on Lake Champlain

We went to Burlington, VT for the annual Brewers Festival on the waterfront. These were taken the night before. They're just "meh" to me - I wouldn't get them printed or anything. 

f/8; 6 seconds

f/2.8; 1/15 sec (handheld) 

Sometimes point and shoot does the trick

In my opinion a DSLR is the best tool you can have to take strong pictures. However, carrying such a big camera is not always convenient, and it always has to be a planned event. There are so many times where I wish I had my camera. That's why point and shoot and cell-phone cameras are so great - they are always on you and sometimes, work just as well. 

I didn't feel like bringing my DSLR to the Bruins parade today; I knew it would be ridiculously crowded and didn't think any potential shots would be worth it. I had my small Canon Powershot with me and was pretty happy with how this one turned out: 

Rome at night, part II

So if you read my last post you know I had tripod problems on my trip. I was really looking forward to taking night shots of the Colosseum so you can imagine how disappointed I was when I discovered I was (for lack of a better word) screwed. 


Throughout the trip the big touristy spots were packed with guys selling knock-off designer handbags (bear with me here, this is going somewhere...) Much to my surprise on our last night in Rome when we were walking around the Colosseum, those same guys were selling tripods! Not the best quality - but actual full-sized tripods. How random is that? So, 15 Euros later I had one. Here is one of the pics I took:

f/18; 8 seconds 

Rome at night, part I

I surprised myself in my ability to pack everything for an 8 day trip using only carry-on luggage (I am usually quite the over-packer). I made it work, but there was no way a tripod would fit in my small carry-on. Dennis was nice enough to make room in his luggage for my tripod, so problem solved, right? Wrong. I managed to forget to pack the small piece that attaches the camera to the tripod.


There was a camera shop in Florence with some small, reasonably priced tripods and we ended up buying a 6 inch one. I obviously wouldn't have as much flexibility as with a full-sized, but using some benches I got a couple of okay night shots in Rome. 

Pantheon at dusk (f/25; 30 seconds) 

Trevi Fountain (f/32; 20 seconds)

Street action on Via Veneto (f/7.1; 2.5 seconds) 

Rome sights

Inside the Colosseum

St Peter's Basilica

St Peters from afar

Pantheon 

Its been a while - Venice!

So I've been slacking on posting but I managed to do a lot of shooting in Italy. Here are some from Venice: 

Final project for advanced digital photo

With the help of my classmates I settled on the idea of arches for my final project. Architecture photography is not something I'm especially drawn to (and I don't have the best lens for it) but arches showed up a lot in my mosque/museum photos from Turkey, and Boston has a lot of old buildings with gorgeous arches so the idea allowed me to continue to shoot while being able to use my Istanbul photos. Some of them are really obvious, but see if you can determine which ones were shot in Boston vs. Istanbul...

Spring cleaning

I spent a lot of time last weekend organizing my digital files, they were all over the place (old computer, external hard drive, multiple memory cards, iphoto, Lightroom, etc). I love the develop panel in Lightroom but the library and general interface takes getting used too, especially when you are used to iphoto. I decided to keep my "fun" pictures in iphoto, particularly because iphoto has the Faces tool, which in a creepy way identifies people in your photos after you tag a few. Its a really easy way to find photos if you don't have them organized in albums. I'll use Lightroom for all other photos (i.e., those taken with my DSLR). I'll see how this works - a lot of advice out there says to keep everything in one place but I don't think I'll ever have the need to edit St Patty's day bar crawl pictures in sophisticated photo software. 

I found this old photo when I was going through the process of setting ratings and key words in Lightroom. The composition isn't the best but I love the colors in the water. 

Upgrade

It was time to say goodbye to my kit lens (18-55 f/4.5-5.6). It's not like I was particularly attached to it, I knew I would eventually upgrade. And to be honest, I've rarely been using it. Since I got my 50mm f/1.8 last year I've been spoiled with a fast lens, and its really hard to go back to a maximum aperture of 4.5. So I was on a mission to get an everyday lens (that actually zooms) with a low f-stop. 

In a perfect world I would have gotten the Canon 24-70mm f/2.8 but there was no way I was going to drop more money on a lens than my MacBook Pro. I thought about getting the Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 which is a "bargain" compared to the Canon. I nearly made the purchase, but ironically enough I was watching Suze Orman at the time and it would have given me a guilty conscience. 

So after reading lots of favorable reviews I went for the Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 (thanks to my friend Dean for the suggestion). I bought it used and actually sold my kit lens on amazon for a pretty good price so overall, I didn't spend too much. I've yet to receive it so will post about it once I try it out. 

UPDATE: love the lens, the 2.8 makes me happy. The two big cons in my opinion are that it's really heavy (significantly heavier than my kit lens despite the similar focal range) and the auto focus is so, so loud! Here is the first test shot I took with it (please no judgment on the ll bean slippers):

Copley Square historical sights

Did you know Boston Public Library is the oldest library in the country? It's ok, I didn't either. 

BPL

BPL - Courtyard view; B&W

Trinity Church