Corner of Whatever

So in the midst of this great website redesign I got going on at work, I decided to go into the city and snap some pictures. Thankfully my camera lens was fixed and returned just in time. So what a great chance to test it out to see if it works. By the end of the day, I had walked again through most of the city and came back with about 500+ photos to boot. And just as a side note: before you go snapping photos anywhere, be sure to read Scott Kelby’s book “The Digital Photography Book: Volume 2″. It’s an awesome book that’ll give you some excellent tips on how to take quality photos. Hopefully my photos will come out decently well, but right now I’ve made some considerable first steps in getting there.

Anyways, so as part of the work project, I’ve realized that we need new photos for our website and also for our image library so I took it upon myself to go out and see the sights. So I stopped by the “Walter E. Washington Convention Center” and started my excursion from there. So rather than bore you to tears about my exploits, how about I just list the spots I stopped by?

1. Convention Center
2. Gallery Place/Chinatown
3. Marian Koshland Science Museum
4. National Building Museum
5. National Law Enforcement Memorial on Judiciary Square
6. Old Post Office Pavilion
7. National Air & Space Museum
8. Tidal Basin
9. Washington Monument
10. World Bank
11. IMF Building
12. George Washington University
13. Rock Creek Park
14. Embassy Row
15. Dupont Circle
16. Gallery Place Chinatown (to catch the Metro back home)

It was a rather lengthy walk. I need to look up the total mileage that I walked and hopefully burned some calories. I wish that Google Maps has some sort of distance measurement feature that I could track my walking, but oh well…guess I’ll have to estimate it.

Anyways, I think some of my pictures came out decently well. Now I need to decide whether to go onto Flickr and pay the $25/year fee to upgrade my account so that I can continue to post my photos online. I’d like to say yes, but my Chinese side says no…the battle seems to rage on…

Popularity: 48% [?]

Pictures, Sightseeing Photo Shoot, Photography, Washington DC

So while out on the town this morning, I again stopped by Borders to check out what books they had. I took a slight detour beforehand and stopped by CompUSA where they were advertising 80% off all their stuff. In case you didn’t know, CompUSA is closing all of their stores so when I walked in, I wasn’t surprised by the lack of inventory. They had been doing this sale for the past few weeks so now they were down to the last two days and the shelves (or lack thereof) was rather empty. I left and walked down the street to the Borders and my intention was just to read through some of the books and kill some time before heading over to the gym.

‘Lo  and behold, a book naturally caught my eye. It’s The Digital Photography Book: Volume 2 written by Scott Kelby. Of course I consider myself a decent photographer, but by all means do I think of myself as an expert. Hell, nothing could be further from the truth. Besides, what’s listed in this book is quite informative and I’m actually glad to have bought it. It tells you the “step-by-step secrets for how to make your photos look like the pros’” There are pretty intricate tips that you can take for wedding shots, traveling, and all the other things to make you a better photographer.

So I get home and naturally now I need to figure out what to get for my upcoming trip. What do I do? Well I hop online and skim through FredMiranda.com, look up lens pricing on B&H Photo & Video, Amazon.com, and any other place I can think of. Found some stuff and I’m surely going to be broke after buying all the stuff I want….but what exactly do I need want to get?

• Canon Zoom Wide Angle-Telephoto EF 28-20mm lens
• Canon 50mm lens
• Supreme Flash Diffuser
• Vertical battery grip
• More batteries
• More compact flash memory cards

Well I guess it’s time to figure out what’s essential. Need to get some dough first…

Popularity: 51% [?]

Pictures, Uncategorized

Okay, so not the real Stephen Colbert, but rather his portrait hangs in the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. CNN broke the story earlier this week about how Stephen Colbert approached the Smithsonian and asked to have his portrait posted up there next to the hall of Presidents. Of course you might know that he tried his unsuccessful attempt at running for President but was denied in South Carolina. So I decided to head over to the Portrait Gallery on Friday during lunchtime and to my surprise it was quite interesting. There were a few people there taking pictures with the portrait. I think there was even a camera crew - not with any major television network, mind you, but probably filming for something nonetheless. Interesting if it would be for Comedy Central, but there were too few people that seemed to belong to the crew and they didn’t seem too entertaining.

So this portrait is only temporary and will be there for about a six-week run, or rather five weeks now. So I toured through the rest of the gallery as much as I could for the next 30 or so minutes and it’s quite an interesting journey. Took some photos so hope to have them up soon on a more public gallery than what I have now - right now it’s on my Facebook page. If you wanna see his portrait, go check it out. It’s right near the place where they have all those Presidential portraits, but it’s hidden away. Where, you ask? Go to the bathroom and it’s right above the water fountain. Why is it there? It’s part of the joke! What joke? Go check out the video of the episode where this all started.

Popularity: 40% [?]

Pictures, Sightseeing Comedy Central, National Portrait Gallery, Stephen Colbert, Washington DC

So I finally got around to looking at all the video that I took through my small rinky-dink Fuji FinePix point & shoot camera I bought a few months back and just started to upload them onto YouTube. I figured since I took the video, I might as well do something with ‘em, right?  Click here to view my videos…

Popularity: 21% [?]

Pictures Videos, YouTube

So I was at my cousin’s wedding last weekend and unfortunately one of my lenses decided to crap out on me…with the aperture permanently shut…so I was forced to get a new lens that I could use before the wedding. So I went to Ritz Camera and reluctantly bought a nice Canon 17-40mm L-series lens for about $800+. So I used it for the wedding and used the lens and it worked fine, but one of my friends told me that I paid too much which turned out to be true.

Flew back to Baltimore and printed out the price off of B&H Photo and also from Ritz’s website. The price I paid for the lens was exactly the same price on the Ritz Camera website and turns out that B&H was advertising the lens for about $100 less! So I went to the nearby mall and went to see if I could get a price match. Apparently you can’t do that at Ritz…they won’t really price match anything UNLESS the store you have the quote from is local and primarily a retailer (e.g. Best Buy). So the lowest price guarantee that Ritz has is pretty much crap. The salesperson told me that the reason why they’re doing it the way they are is because of the instant gratification aspect. It’s more convenient for you to get it from Ritz because it’s right there…as opposed to you waiting a few days for the lens to arrive by mail (even though you’re getting it for less).

Don’t you think that the lowest price guarantee that the company would have on the website would pertain to EVERYTHING…hell, even if you bought the lens off of their website, they still WOULDN’T match the price because B&H is primarily a online retailer. Unless there are a lot of stores that are equivalent to the size of the Ritz Camera company, forget about having a price match. Way to weasel out of honoring your commitment to the consumer, Ritz Camera.

Suffice it to say that I managed to make out pretty well…but had to return the lens. So now I gotta wait a couple of days to get a new lens, but luckily I don’t have any photo shoots coming up soon so no worries…now to go on B&H and get me my new cheaper lens…

Popularity: 44% [?]

Pictures Ritz Camera