Apartment Warming Flowers

My old co-workers sent us some flowers to welcome us to PA and tell me they miss me. I wonder if I will be able to find people I like as much at my new job. Not likely because I really adored several of my CA co-workers. But I will give them a chance.

Monterey Bay Aquarium

We decided to take a little break from packing on Saturday and take a quick trip down to Monterey to see the Aquarium. We have been meaning to go there for a while and are quickly running out of time for things like that. It was of course ridiculously crowded, especially with kids in strollers (and running around outside of them as well). I can't say I really thought it was worth the 2 hour drive and the $25 per person ticket price. But it was fun, and we loved the jellyfish exhibit. It was so dark in there though I had to crank my ISO up to 1600 which I hate to do because of all the noise I get with the XT, it really is time for a new camera, now if Canon would just announce the darn thing and start selling it I would be all set!.

All with 24-70L lens

Golden Gate Fields

Yesterday Mike and I went to the race track over in Berkeley for dollar day. It was pretty fun and we hit a trifecta box on the 5th race that paid out $118.10 so that was our last race. I did get to play with my camera a lot. It's a good thing I brought my 70-300 lens with me, the 24-70 just didn't have enough reach.




















Number 3 in those last shots is the longer shot that won the fifth race and made the trifecta pay out so well.

Spring has Sprung

It officially appears as if spring is starting here in Northern California. Since I had yesterday off of work I decided to take the camera for a little walk to document it. Plus my Mom asked me too.
No promises about the post-processing on these as I am still without photoshop on the mac and the laptop monitor hasn't been calibrated yet since I rebuilt the harddrive.



















And yes I know I need to clean my sensor, badly! I would have cloned it out for you but see above reason.

At the Park

While we were walking through Heather Farm Park on Friday night, to get me to the funnel cakes, I saw some cool berries and flowers that I had to stop to take a shot of. I didn't take too many, didn't want to make Mike wait for too long, I knew he was hungry, and tired from the long walk.


24-70mm L, 1/160, f/5.0 ISO 200


24-70mm L, 1/160, f/5.0 ISO 200


24-70mm L, 1/60, f/5.6 ISO 200

I did a curves adjustment on all of these, upped the sharpness a bit, and burned the edges. (I know that sounds like greek to a lot of you, but the photo board girls get it right?)

Walnut Festival

I don't know what I was really expecting, I guess something like the strawberry festival that we grew up with in Owego, except with rides. Oh and centered around walnuts instead. We walked the mile over to Heather Farm Park Friday night, and maybe it was just the wrong time, but there were no walnuts to be found. It took us longer to walk there and back than it did to see all there was to see. I did take my camera with me though, and the highlight of the evening I got to have a funnel cake!!

SF then and now

There were a lot of San Francisco pictures in the latest box of slides Dad sent me. I thought it would make a fun post to compare pictures of similar sights from 1987 to pictures from 2005-2007. Do you agree?

Lombard Street in 1987




in 2006




Alcatraz




Golden Gate Bridge




City Skyline




Japanese Tea Garden