I hope to take (and post) one photo every week in the year 2010. This blog contains the photos which I have taken so far. I have completed a photo a week for the years 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009.
Boston Landmarks Orchestra opened a series of concerts at the Esplanade Hatch Shell. They would be performing on all wednesdays till September. On the inaugural day they played the "Symphony No. 9 in D minor", which is the last complete symphony composed by Ludwig van Beethoven. Completed in 1824, it incorporates part of the Ode an die Freude ("Ode to Joy"), a poem by Friedrich Schiller, with text sung by soloists and a chorus in the last movement. This symphony is one of Beethoven's greatest masterpieces, composed while he was completely deaf.
A lot of my friends and acquaintances have asked me to take their portraits to use for matrimonial purposes. Last week, I took some portraits for my roommate and his friend. It was a chance for me to test my 50mm f/1.8 lens. We went to our apartment's yard and took some photos. The photos came out really well and I was very impressed with my 50mm f/1.8 lens. The images were very sharp and the bokeh was awesome.
Seen in this photo is my roommate.
Some people for whom I took portraits for their matrimonial purposes are - 1) Nagesh 2) Abhinay 3) Sriprasad 4) Raghu 5) Dheeraj 6) Sandeep 7) Suresh
I returned my Tamron 24-135 lens and bought a Sigma 17-70mm lens and 50mm f/1.8 lens. The sigma lens seems to be much lighter than Tamron. I liked its wide angle capabilities too.
Taken at George's island, Boston. My friend and his wife paid me a visit last weekend. We roamed around Boston. I took a lot of photos of them in my new SLR. They got a lot of good photos of them and I was able to experiment my new camera and lens :-)
Finally I bought a DSLR camera, Canon Rebel XTi (400D). It was not difficult to decide the SLR, but I had a tough time selecting the lens. I wanted a good walk around lens, but did not want the kit lens (18-55mm). Some of the lenses I considered are Canon 28-135, Tamron 24-135mm, canon 17-85 mm and Sigma 18-125mm. Finally I selected Tamron 24-135mm because I liked its focal range, its reivews were okay and it had macro capability. However, the initial tests with this lens disappointed me. The lens was too soft at f/3.5. The lens had to be stopped down to f/5.6 to f/8.0 to get sharp pictures. (But no lens is sharpest at its lowest aperture). I will be losing a lot of light if I have to shoot at f/8.0 always. So I might return this lens and get Sigma 17-70mm.
Other lenses I am planning to buy are Canon 50 f/1.8mm and Sigma 105mm f/2.8 macro.
This photo was taken from the 50th floor of the tallest building in Boston, the Prudential building. The view from there was awesome.
Posed in this photo are my roommates and a roommate's friend. I am glad that I am improving my skills to make people pose for my photos.
Edit: Here is a panorama taken from the top of that building. Three photo were merged into a single one. Since the camera was hand held (not in a tripod), the merge is not perfect. I initially tried to merge the photos using photoshop and found it to be difficult. But the canon's photostich software did that job very nicely.
Simple photo, but it was difficult to setup the background. (The background is actually a kitchen pan). I could have taken a better shot, but the egg slowly moved away from the initial place where it was broken and finally fell on the floor carpet :-( Then I had a tough time cleaning the carpet.
