I love Budapest at night
This isn’t my Day 32 post, by the way. I’m working on that. This is just a lovely shot of the Liberty Bridge and the Danube River, with the Gellert Hotel in the background.
It was a lovely evening yesterday. :-)
Euro Trip Day 4: See that “no photography” sign? I’m pretending I didn’t.
Let me preface this post by saying that I don’t expect everyone to have a huge level of technical expertise when it comes to photography. I really don’t. Honest.
But for the love of pete, if you don’t learn ANYTHING else about how to operate your camera, PLEASE PLEASE learn how to shut off the flash. Please. I do realize that many camera manufacturers make it somewhat challenging to do so, but not knowing how to do so is, to me, akin to owning a car and not knowing how to operate the windshield wipers, so you drive around with them going all the time whether or not you need them.
Please, for me — your friend/relative/coworker/someone whose website you randomly stumbled upon, just try it. Somewhere there should be an option that looks like a lightning bolt. You need that lightning bolt to be in a circle with a little line through it. Often cameras don’t let you shut that off unless the camera’s settings dial is turned to the P. So do that.
Why am I griping? Because it’s because of people who can’t operate their flashes (or who are just jerks and won’t turn them off) that photography is prohibited in a large number of museums and other cool places of historical interest. Flash photography can damage old stuff, so rather than outlawing flash photography (since so many people can’t operate their flashes) they just outlaw photography altogether. And then I miss cool pictures, and I get sad. :-( Actually, we all miss cool pictures.
See that sign with the picture of the camera and the circle through it? I'm a bad, bad person.
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I know that ignoring this sign is a real jerk move, and it’ll probably end me up in trouble someday, and I just shouldn’t do it. But seriously, how can I be in a room that awesome and not take pictures??? See those shelves??
THOSE ARE ALL BOOKS.
Over 250,000 of them, as a matter of fact. This is Trinity College’s Long Room, where some of the university’s oldest books are found. It’s absolutely INCREDIBLE. Cribbed from the brochure:
The main chamber of the Old Library, the Long Room, is nearly 65 metres in length, and houses around 200,000 of the Library’s oldest books. When built, it had a flat plaster ceiling, with shelves for books on the lower level only, and an open gallery. By the 1850s these shelves had become completely full. In 1860 the roof was raised according to plans by the architects Deane and Woodward, to allow the construction of the present barrel-vaulted ceiling and gallery bookcases. Marble busts are placed down either side of the room, a collection begun in 1743, when 14 busts were commissioned from the sculptor Peter Scheemakers. Other sculptors represented are Simon Vierpyl, Patrick Cunningham, John van Nost and Louis Francois Roubiliac, whose bust of the writer Jonathan Swift is one the finest in the collection.
THEY RAISED THE ROOF TO FIT IN MORE BOOKS. THAT’S HARDCORE, YO.
So yeah, I ignored the sign. So shoot me. Three things helped me get these pictures:
1.) A great wide-aperture, wide-angle lens.
2.) A great incognito camera bag (I’ll be doing a review on this camera bag at some point — suffice to say, it’s awesome!
3.) The entrance of a group of noisy schoolkids, who sufficiently distracted the two security guards that I could sneak these (even though I couldn’t look through the viewfinder to do so.)
I absolutely love the barrel vault ceiling. Love it. Want to run my hands over its lovely glossiness.
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It was substantially darker in this room than these pictures indicate. Yaaay for my new lens. :-)
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In retrospect, I really should have shot these at 1600 ISO, or dropped the exposure and upped it in post-processing, or something else so that they weren’t a bit blurry. But I couldn’t exactly futz around openly with my camera, could I? Even with my cool little incognito camera bag, I still risked being noticed. Oh well, these aren’t horrible, at least. I’m just picky about blurriness.
One of the room's many busts. I wish I could see who -- in the large version, I can make out the letters of the first and last name--T.L.
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"The oldest books are still only just out to those who have not read them." ~Samuel Butler
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The rest of today was ok, but it had a start I’d rather not remember (which is, of course, why I’m writing about it here.) I’ve slept horribly the past two nights. Yaay jet lag, I know. It’s insanely frustrating to me though, because I NEVER have issues with jet lag. Ever. Joel! and John can verify this. So the fact that it’s been kicking my butt these past two days is really really ticking me off, to put it mildly. So anyway, I couldn’t fall asleep this morning until almost 4AM… and I woke up shortly before 1PM. Ummm, whoops. I didn’t bother setting my alarm, because honestly, how often do I oversleep? How about never? The absolute latest I ever sleep, regardless of bedtime, is around 9 or so. Which would have been a bit later than I wanted to be up, but still fine… So when John woke me up at 12:45 and announced the time, to say that I was a bit upset was an understatement. Profanity was said, chaos ensued, and we finally got downtown and to Trinity College (to see the Book of Kells, a 1200-year-old illuminated manuscript) about an hour later.
The thing that frustrates me about Dublin (well, and a lot of places) is that the museums and other cool historical places tend to shut down around 5PM. I liked London because a lot of the museums had one day a week where they were open until 9 or 10–what a great idea! Here, the only public exhibit that’s open that late is the National Library, which had one measly exhibit on Yeats, which I liked, except that they somehow COMPLETELY omitted one of his most famous poems (“The Second Coming”.) To be fair, they did have lots of neat manuscripts and letters and recordings and such, but still. DUDE. That’d be like doing something on Walt Disney and forgetting to mention Minnie Mouse, as far as I’m concerned.
The other frustrating thing, besides the early close times, is that in Dublin, the National Gallery, National History Museum, and Museum of Modern Art are all government-run, so they’re free… but they’re not open Mondays. So I was going to try to cram in all 3 today (since we have to be at the airport at 1 tomorrow) and instead, since I overslept, we made it through about 45 minutes of the history museum before they kicked us out because they were closing. Oh, and since it’s government-run, they say they close at 5… but they really start pushing you out of the exhibits at 4:45. LAME.
Anyway. At least we got to see the Long Room — that was so worth it!!! That’s why I decided to go to the effort of hooking up my camera to my computer to get these pics online–it was just that cool.
Ya know, you’d think that with all the jet lag I’ve been dealing with and related late-night wakefulness, I’d have all of my other pictures processed and uploaded… nope. But I have spent untold hours reading up on 20th century European history, specifically the Balkans and the rise and fall of Communism. Ahhh Wikipedia, my love and my nemesis. It’s like crack. I can’t help it. So many lovely little links.
Anyway, I’m going to go shower now and try to get some sleep, since it’s almost 1:30 AM. I am NOT going to oversleep again, darn it!!!! :-p
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Where we are now:
View Larger Map
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Trying out a new lens on my living room
Because I like to play, I opted to rent a wide-angle lens to take to Rome, as I don’t own one, and I remember feeling frustrated in London with lots of large buildings and things that I couldn’t fit entirely in my lens. You might remember last spring when I rented Canon’s 10-22mm lens, and while I liked that, I thought I’d try something a bit different. So this time I went for my first non-Canon lens — a Tamron 11-16mm. My reasoning for that over the Canon was that the Canon is an f/3.5, whereas the Tamron is f/2.8. If that means nothing to you, don’t worry about it. I’m just getting geeky again. Anyway, I also wanted to try a lens that wasn’t a Canon, just because I never have.
When I got it (again I rented from LensRentals.com, whom I HIGHLY recommend if you’re looking to rent a lens) I of course had to play a bit with it, so I took a few shots of inside my apartment. Here are a couple of my living room I took, and yes, it pretty much always is that clean. I so love my living room. :-)
(Next post will be of Rome pictures!!) :-)
My mishmash living room. Couch and pillows from grandma, chair from Christine, rug and end table (wooden icebox) from Dad, plant from Mom, coffee table from Ikea, bookshelves from Craigslist, entryway ottomans from Target, stools from a yard sale, and lamp table from Overstock.com. It's so cozy and comfy!
Underneath the glass on the coffee table are postcards from trips I've taken and that people (Joel!) have sent me, as well as random foreign coins, also from my trips and from Joel!. (And yes, Joel!'s name must always be written with an exclamation point. That's how I've been writing it since college.) :-)
Out of season
I really think it's time to get rid of this thing...
(Note: this is NOT my tree–honest!!!)
Wide angle lens fun day 5: Able to capture whole murals in a single shot
It's four parking spaces wide, and I was standing right at the end of a parking space. That's *close*.
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100 degree field of view, baby!!
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More snowboarding pictures
Here are some more pictures from the ones I took on Saturday at Sierra-at-Tahoe. After spending pretty much the full day (and taking over 700 pictures) I’ve decided that I can safely strike “professional snow sports photographer” off of my list of potential careers. I spent most of the day crouched/lying in the snow with numb fingers and a slowly-soaking-through jacket and ski pants, waiting for people to come whizzing by me on the mountain, and I also spent a fair amount of time tromping through deep snow in my ski boots (contrary to the song, those boots are *not* made for walking!) and sliding down icy slopes that I was trying to climb up so that I’d have a good vantage point. I also have tree sap in my hair… don’t ask.
Over the past couple of weeks, knowing that this trip was coming up, I spent quite a few hours researching how to take good snow sports pictures, as well as going through various Flickr galleries and finding pictures with available Exif data. Exif data is information that most newer digital cameras (including my cameraphone, oddly enough) embed in the picture file. It contains various information about the camera’s settings when the picture was taken – what type of camera and lens were used, the shutter speed, aperture, focal length, what program (if any) was used to edit the image, and some other stuff. On Flickr, you have the option to make the Exif data publicly viewable, and it actually kind of irritates me when people don’t – for me, looking at other people’s Exif data has been a great way to learn how to set up pictures. I guess the photographers must be worried about some sort of artistic infringement, but I still really don’t get it. Anyway, to see it on Flickr, go to a picture’s page, and on the lower right side of the picture, under “additional information”, you should see something that looks like this:
EXIF data on Flickr.
Click on where it says “More properties”, and that link will take you to the picture’s Exif data. I always keep mine publicly viewable – click here to see an example.
As I was looking at Exif data for the pictures, I noticed a lot were taken with a wide-angle lens. Since I wanted to try one out anyway, I went ahead and rented one. I’ll post a full review of the lens in another week, after the rental period is up, but in short, I ended up using my 70-200 telephoto a heck of a lot more (and I think those pictures came out a heck of a lot better.) If I’d been a bit bolder, I might have stuck to my wide-angle lens and just gotten closer to the action, but I almost got run over once just when I was crouching on the sidelines (a woman lost control and careened off-trail and down the slope I was lying on – she was fine but it took a couple years off of my life!) so I wasn’t about to get out there in the middle of things and let people go around me.
Overall though, I had an absolutely fantastic time – I think I had more fun taking pictures than I actually did skiing (especially after my unfortunate collision with the mountain!) and I’m really really glad I had the chance to do that. I never thought I’d take my camera out in the snow, but overall it survived (I had it and the lenses almost completely wrapped in plastic bags while I used them) and I had a ridiculous amount of fun and learned a lot. :-)
Ok, here are some pictures, and click here to get to the gallery with the rest of them.
Wide-angle lens shot. I love the sun in this one.
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I love the rays of the sun in this one, as well as the fact that this is one of the few where I managed to catch someone against just blue sky.
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I love this because it gives an idea of just how far these people were jumping. This was a HUGE jump. This wasn't even the whole thing! I also love the sense of depth perception, which is one thing I like about the wide-angle lens.
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This person did nail their landing (there's more pictures of this jump in the gallery.) Crazy.
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There's something I like about this one. I can't put my finger on it though. The sense of depth? The look on the guy's face? Or maybe it's his shirt...
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Click on this picture to see the large version--you can see the mountain reflected in his goggles!
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Did I mention that it was an absolutely gorgeous day? Because it really really was! On a side note, if I hadn't fallen, I wouldn't have seen the potential for this shot. So maybe some good came from my pain. :-)
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I love that he's sticking his tongue out in concentration.
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A skiier, a snowboarder, and someone who's apparently along for the ride. Weird.
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I'm soooo debating photoshopping out the entire ski lift in this one... I don't like doing stuff like that, but it bugs me on a fundamental level.
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I find this one amusing because it looks like he's about to land on the dude below. For what it's worth, he wasn't anywhere near close to that guy.
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Wide angle fun, day 4: Haunted house
Last Halloween I was wandering around town looking for Halloween-themed pictures for an October photo challenge when I stumbled upon a really creepy-looking house several blocks from where I live. I snapped some pictures which I posted to my Flickr but later decided not to use, but then I promptly forgot about it until a few weeks ago, when I was talking to a friend of mine and the subject of the house came up.
It turns out that the house is called the Martinez House, and it it’s over 100 years old. It’s been vacant for decades, and and while there are a number of conflicting (and interesting!) stories on its history, the current owner is adamant that it’s not haunted.
I don’t believe in ghosts, but if anything were going to be haunted, I’d put this place on the prime candidates list for sure.
Pic from last Halloween
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Another Halloween picture
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Full-front wide-angle shot. This is all the way zoomed out, and you can definitely see the barrel distortion of the lens on this one.
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Here’s a couple more links on the place, in case you’re curious:
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Wide angle fun, day 3: The skate park
Yesterday after work I wandered a few blocks over from my house to a skate park that’s in an old warehouse. It’s right on the way I take to the river, so I’ve noticed it before, but I’ve never actually stopped to check it out. I figured that in preparation for Saturday’s upcoming funness that I needed to practice some shots, and I decided the skate park would be a good place to do so.
I ended up going home when my camera battery gave out and I realized my spare was still on the charger at home (lame mistake!) but I figure I got a few good shots at least, so it’s a start. I definitely want to go back there sometime and take more pictures–good times. :-)
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Flight.
[Click here for more pictures]
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Wide angle fun, day 2: On my street
A couple fun things from my street:
My neighbor's Kharman Ghia. I'm taking a photo workshop at the Towe Auto Museum at the end of this month, and I SOOO want this lens for that... sigh.
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Stop sign at the end of my street.
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Wide angle fun, day 1: Inside my house
For the next two weeks, I’m renting a Canon 10-22mm wide angle lens from LensRentals.com. I’m doing this for a couple of reasons. First, a friend of mine told me that I need to quit focusing in on details of stuff and try zooming out and looking at the big picture for a change. I retorted that I don’t have a decent wide-angle lens, so that’s why I always go for the details… but he’s right–I was starting to get stuck in a rut there, more or less. Reason #2 is a photo outing that will make itself known after this weekend, but I’ll wait until I have pictures to post before I explain further. :-)
Anyway, so I spent today at work obsessively clicking F5 on the FedEx tracking page, and then I got home to find the lovely lens waiting for me. I immediately popped it on my camera and looked around for a subject. Ok, so my house isn’t all that clean, but these are the best pictures I’ve manged to get thus far (given that my place is tiny and normally everything gets cut off.)
My living room. Ignore the clutter--it's laundry day, and I need to put stuff away.
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My kitchen, with a quite lovely chicken-and-dumplings soup stewing in the crock pot.
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My bedroom--somewhat messy, but cozy nonetheless.
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My favorite place to hang out.
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Last but not least, I tried to get one of those pictures where the animal’s nose looks huge because it’s up close to the lens, but Stein would have none of it, and this is as close as I managed to get. Dumb cat.
Stein the cat.
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