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