Endless summer

It’s freaking HOT again here in the Bay Area, and the heat makes me lazy. It also makes the gradient on the left side of my head much darker than it is on the right (I’ll leave visualizing that up to your imagination 😉 ).

I shot this oak facing directly into the HOT sun today at about 4:00 PM. I did some Photoshop Black and White tweaking on it, shrank it down to blog size, added a tad of sharpening…

End of summer oak

Canon G11 staring into the sun.

Pissoir plumbing

We played an Oktoberfest yesterday. Consequently, I visited this spot several times. I took the shot because I happened to have my sling pack w/camera in tow during a post show visit. And because there was only one urinal in the bathroom, I got questioned by the guy next up in the queue–“I’ve got to piss and you’re taking pictures??” Hey pal, the show must go on! 😉

Pissoir plumbing

[For you francophones wondering about the spelling: pissoir]

Canon G11 after a piss.

Changing lenses

A couple of months ago I bought a Canon T2i. The G11 is a great point ‘n shoot camera and perfect for the commute, but I wanted to add the ability to change lenses to my new found addiction. The T2i seemed like the way to go. To start, I bought the body and a Canon 15-85mm IS USM (instead of a kit lens). The 15-85mm is a nice lens! It’s a bit big and stubby on the smallish T2i body, but that’s irrelevant. It’s good glass and will be my main “walk around” lens. The next lens I got was a Canon 28mm f/2.8 prime. I got this one for low light situations and for a general purpose equivalent (more or less) to the old film SLR with a 50mm lens days. 28mm on the crop frame (APS-C) T2i equals about 45mm on a full frame camera. Anyway, I’m busting it out for the upcoming 10,000 mile train trip–I’ll be blogging about the trip here. So far, most of the shots I’ve taken with the T2i have been around the house (I’m still in the “dialing it in” phase). Here’s a “macro” shot I recently took of a potted geranium out on our patio.

Geranium up close

I shot this through the 28mm at f/2.8, ISO 200, and 1/160 shutter speed.

Canon T2i on the loose.