Moar pictures!
So, last semester I worked an overload of teaching (and am this semester too) -- between them I will make an extra $8000 or so. A great deal of that is going into the The Economy Sucks Fund and/or the Make Sure I Have A Working Car Fund, but I decided to spend about $1000 of it on Nice Things For Myself. (Yeesh, I'm writing like a tvtropes page, what with the Gratuitous Capital Letters -- and, now, Self-Referential Trope Names.)
I decided I'd get either 1) an electric piano, so I can play again (ye gods, how I miss that...), or 2) a new camera, so I can take better/moar different pictures.
Turns out electric pianos are a lot cheaper than I thought -- by a factor of about three. I still haven't found somewhere in Tucson to buy the one I want (that I saw in Huntsville) -- that's on the menu for this weekend, if I can escape the physics.
So I had some money left over... and found this dude in Pennsylvania selling a used SLR (the sort of camera with interchangeable lenses and a mirror that makes the goofy "kerchunk" noise when you trip the shutter) for $cheap. My dad's been poking me for a while to join him in the flippy-mirror crowd -- that is, when he's not shouting at me to get out of his house.
I think photography is going to be a Srs Pursuit of mine, just like music is, so I might as well do it right. I have absolutely no skill at drawing or painting or anything like that (ask my students!), so my visual-artsy side consists of finding pretty things Nature's set up and recording them. :)
So I now have a spiffy SLR. It turned out to be just what I was after -- old enough that it's cheap, new enough to have all the interesting bells and whistles, and a system that is known for even their cheap lenses being actually really darn good optically. Then I got the display model of a critter-lens from Circuit City's clearance sale and wiped the sprog noseprints off it. No kidding -- the kiddies were climbing around on the camera display. I pointed this out to the employee who was helping me, and he said "Meh. Not my problem any more!" Firing all your employees does wonderful things for company loyalty, amirite?
Fortunately the most destructive of them was whomping on the brightly-colored Sony pocket cameras, and leaving the unassuming black plastic tubes with cryptic things like "ED 70-300 4-5.6" stamped on the side alone.
So I headed off to Madera Canyon to find things to shoot, and got there only shortly before sunset. That's fine -- that's the best light.
Wound up getting into a flock of turkeys milling around in the road, and rather absurdly close to a pair of deer. I've never known wild deer to tolerate people that well; I was so close you could have gotten decent pictures with a camera-phone.
Did you know deer had horizontal pupils? Makes sense, but I didn't until I saw this!
The mountains surrounding the canyon:
I had a little time to kill yesterday on campus. I was planning on sitting in the cactus garden and grading and shooting the birdies as they came by, but when I found a woodpecker who was so intent on finding bugs she didn't mind me:
... and a very patient flock of doves in the cactus garden, all floofed up against the cold:
Here's a 1600-pixel-wide version of another shot that I'm not putting here since it's, well, hueg:
Now, eating rice and hoping my pion data look good!
TUCSONANS: Anyone up for a hike on Saturday? I don't care where.
TUCSONANS WHO ARE NAMED BECKY AND SEAN: Some of the physics folks are having a board game party/dinner/night/thingie Saturday night. Interested? We can play Arhkam Horror/Munchkin/whatever.
Also: My fingers are cold so I keep typing hardon instead of hadron. This amuses me.
EDIT: Sorry to anyone who got the full-sized images dumped on your friends page due to my screwed-up html. It should be fixed now.
I decided I'd get either 1) an electric piano, so I can play again (ye gods, how I miss that...), or 2) a new camera, so I can take better/moar different pictures.
Turns out electric pianos are a lot cheaper than I thought -- by a factor of about three. I still haven't found somewhere in Tucson to buy the one I want (that I saw in Huntsville) -- that's on the menu for this weekend, if I can escape the physics.
So I had some money left over... and found this dude in Pennsylvania selling a used SLR (the sort of camera with interchangeable lenses and a mirror that makes the goofy "kerchunk" noise when you trip the shutter) for $cheap. My dad's been poking me for a while to join him in the flippy-mirror crowd -- that is, when he's not shouting at me to get out of his house.
I think photography is going to be a Srs Pursuit of mine, just like music is, so I might as well do it right. I have absolutely no skill at drawing or painting or anything like that (ask my students!), so my visual-artsy side consists of finding pretty things Nature's set up and recording them. :)
So I now have a spiffy SLR. It turned out to be just what I was after -- old enough that it's cheap, new enough to have all the interesting bells and whistles, and a system that is known for even their cheap lenses being actually really darn good optically. Then I got the display model of a critter-lens from Circuit City's clearance sale and wiped the sprog noseprints off it. No kidding -- the kiddies were climbing around on the camera display. I pointed this out to the employee who was helping me, and he said "Meh. Not my problem any more!" Firing all your employees does wonderful things for company loyalty, amirite?
Fortunately the most destructive of them was whomping on the brightly-colored Sony pocket cameras, and leaving the unassuming black plastic tubes with cryptic things like "ED 70-300 4-5.6" stamped on the side alone.
So I headed off to Madera Canyon to find things to shoot, and got there only shortly before sunset. That's fine -- that's the best light.
Wound up getting into a flock of turkeys milling around in the road, and rather absurdly close to a pair of deer. I've never known wild deer to tolerate people that well; I was so close you could have gotten decent pictures with a camera-phone.
Did you know deer had horizontal pupils? Makes sense, but I didn't until I saw this!
The mountains surrounding the canyon:
I had a little time to kill yesterday on campus. I was planning on sitting in the cactus garden and grading and shooting the birdies as they came by, but when I found a woodpecker who was so intent on finding bugs she didn't mind me:
... and a very patient flock of doves in the cactus garden, all floofed up against the cold:
Here's a 1600-pixel-wide version of another shot that I'm not putting here since it's, well, hueg:
Now, eating rice and hoping my pion data look good!
TUCSONANS: Anyone up for a hike on Saturday? I don't care where.
TUCSONANS WHO ARE NAMED BECKY AND SEAN: Some of the physics folks are having a board game party/dinner/night/thingie Saturday night. Interested? We can play Arhkam Horror/Munchkin/whatever.
Also: My fingers are cold so I keep typing hardon instead of hadron. This amuses me.
EDIT: Sorry to anyone who got the full-sized images dumped on your friends page due to my screwed-up html. It should be fixed now.