Killer Kiwi

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Will's cat, Kiwi, is not actually this scary.

Week 2: C & O Canal

I love vacation. I'm spending the rest of mine in Maryland. Besides being FREEZING here (I'm a weather wimp now and not afraid to admit it) it's awesome. And soooo pretty.

Will suggested we go to the C & O canal down the road from him this week - it has a nice little walkway and bridge. I was under the impression there were actually sidewalks here but Will's mom stopped me on the way out and told me that my outfit was completely inappropriate for hiking (??) so she outfitted me in these awesome boots. They came in pretty handy actually, the canal was muddy and pretty gross and would have destroyed my suede boots. I would not have been pleased.

The scenery was nice though - lots of trees and some leftover snow from the huge storm that happened last week. I got a chance to play with some different photo sizes, including the panoramic setting & Kodi (Will's dog) came too. Unfortunately, we went late in the afternoon and it got dark (& colder) really quickly, but I think before then I got a few pretty good shots.

View more pics on flickr

Happy Holidays

Obviously I'll be spending my day battling the soccer moms at Target and the mall, but here's hoping that I'll get to watch Love Actually at least 7 times in the next 38 hours.

Week 1: Shoreline

The whole drive to Shoreline I was tempted to put on the Broken Social Scene song. Don't even get me started on the girl crush I have on Emily Haines. I didn't though, for Will's sake. But I digress...

I chose Shoreline because we were on a bit of a time crunch, plus, I've never been there and its only a couple miles away. I didn't really know what to expect when we got there and I was a little concerned when all I saw at first was a dog park, a Google building, and a golf course. Luckily, as you go further into the park there is actually a shoreline. There's also a TON of birds, no joke. It was fun, and as it turns out, Will is actually quite the photographer (he took a couple below).

See more photos from Shoreline on flickr.

Birthday Extravaganza

Like I said, I got the camera for my birthday. Eugene brought it to me after I had dinner with my parents, Will, Norys, and Lauren. I ran around Nola's taking tons of photos the rest of the night, almost every single one of which is completely blurry.

Despite the rain and the awful first photo attempt, it was a great time and AWESOME birthday. Maybe the best part of it though was getting to go to the Monday Night Football game a couple of days later. I took my camera with me, of course, but didn't bring the bigger lens. Kind of regretting it now since we sat so close to the field and I could've gotten SUCH good pictures... oh well... guess I'll just have to go to another game :)

And the Niners won. So awesome.

Anyway, the birthday week didn't end there. My best friend, Lauren's, birthday is 5 days after mine so we celebrated Thursday on Santana Row. Good times. Better cake... seriously. It was great. After a week of non-stop birthday-ing, it's vacation time.

BTW - you can see more birthday extravaganza pictures on my Facebook photo album here.

Shiny (sort of) New Toy

Finallllly.

So, 3+ months later, I have my camera. I actually picked it out about 2 months ago it was just a matter of actually acquiring it. And it turns out, birthdays are a GREAT way to acquire things. Like cameras. So thanks mom :)

I decided on the Panasonic Lumix GF1. It's amazing. Everything that I want. I picked it because of the size, mostly. It's a micro four-thirds DSLR - which to me means that it takes high quality pictures without being so huge you might not be let into a show or sporting event.

It wasn't new. It was slightly used. My friend Eugene bought it back in October (coincidentally, after I decided it was MY dream camera)... but Eugene is a video guy. He's amazingly talented and ended up getting a 7D and putting his GF1 on the market. And he even gave me a lost manual/birthday discount. So thank you, Eugene.

I also purchased a lens from him which, I think, will prove to be PERFECT for this project. It's a 45-200mm f/4-5.6 blah blah blah something or other lens. Basically, it's huge - so huge that it looks funny on my small camera. And it can take pictures of things very far away.

This is going to be fun.