I want to go travelling again really badly Too bad I am broke (as usual, although when did that stop me) and the stupid visa revalidation program does not leave me with too many options.

Click here to view this photo book.

On weekends Baltimore reminds me of old movies that portrayed the world after World War III, except that in the summer it is not completely dead. So that’s the kind of mood I wanted to create with the pictures below:

Happy New Year! Hope 2010 will be even better for me than 2009 was Took some pictures of the lighthouse today:

I am reading Within the Frame: the Journey of Photographic Vision by David duChemin right now (got it as a Christmas present, and the book is amaaaaazing), and I can’t help but think of all the shots I could have made while in Peru a year ago, but did not due to the lack of a decent camera or simply because that was the first time I went to a place I always wanted to go to so I was busy being a tourist rather than a traveller (much less a photographer). Well, missing great shots for various reasons happens to duChemin on a regular basis, and he learned to deal with it. I absolutely have to go back to Peru though – I even made a list of places I need to go back to: mainly Cusco, lake Titicaca, Colca Canyon, and Arequipa. Machu Picchu is awesome, but it is impossible to get a non-postcard view that would not have a tourist group on it. Ideally, I would combine this with a trip to Bolivia – just hop to the other side of Titicaca and you are there!

Too bad I don’t know when I will be taking this trip – getting a visa to come back to the states is a pain in the butt Can’t wait to graduate and never have to deal with this shit again. I swear, the closest I’ll be coming to the states once I am out of grad school is Cuba.

Got to play with Lensbaby 2.0, which I borrowed from the JHU Digital Media Center, a little. Its a freaky looking lens that takes some getting used to, but it is capable of producing some interesting photos. All I did in the image below was cropping and a bit of color correction, the rest comes from the lens itself:

I have to say, the kit lenses are crap compared to the nice fancy ones that cost as much as my camera. Who would have thought, right? On a more optimistic note, the Lightroom 3 beta version is available and free until April. If you have not played with it – do so, its a lot of fun. So much fun that I overdid with it on the first picture of the Rotunda below:

Both of these were taken with the kit lens (18-55mm). I have my eyes on the 50mm lenses right now (f1.4 would be amazing, but f1.8 is 1/3 of the price), but that will have to wait

Here is what the official website says: “Obama has as President created a new climate in international politics.” The deadline for submission of nominations to the prize committee is February 1st. Obama became president on January 20th. How in the world did he manage to create a new climate in international politics in less than a couple of weeks?

Took a photowalk around Homewood with Vadim today, here are some results These were taken with one of his lenses (Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro). I did some editing with picasa (you can probably tell – I was not trying to hide it), and posted both the original (left) and edited (right) versions of each photo:

I have not updated for awhile, life has been too busy this semester. I finally got the DSLR I wanted for the longest time – Canon’s EOS Rebel XSi kit + the EF-S 55-250mm f/4.0-5.6 IS Telephoto Zoom lens, which I used today on a trip to the DC Zoo I took with my awesome boyfriend There you go, all the important stuff in one sentence. The telephoto lens worked out really well at the zoo, since animals were pretty far away.  Also, it creates the blurred background for portraits that I could never get with my old camera. Here, see for yourself:

On a different note, I started studying Spanish a few days ago (via Rosetta Stone, an overpriced but helpful language learning software) and made up my mind to TRAVEL TO MEXICO OVER THE SUMMER!!! Whoever is reading this, let me know if you are interested in coming along