stephanieNY

Some more pics from my new camera....in the neighborhood.

I go out and see places for my photography class, when I'd otherwise be stuck in Avery Hall working.  This is a good thing.

Queensboro Bridge on Tuesday.

Railroad tracks along the Hudson in the Bronx on Sunday.

I've been in the market for a new camera for-ever.  With all the hemming and hawing I've been doing about it, you'd think I was buying a house or something.  I've been reading all these reviews on digital SLRs and now the new micro four-thirds cameras.  For a while, I was being woo-ed by the simplicity of the solid retro body of the Olympus e-p1:

But let's face it, I need to take good pictures, not look good taking them.  So, my photography class and my impending trip to Brazil put a fire under my butt, and I finally made a move and ordered one today.  It'll be here on Wednesday...and I don't know if I'm gonna make it that long. I want to play with it right now!  I had dinner at a friend's last night where we talked shop on cameras, and I tested out a few they had in house...it was a dream. After shooting with my point and shoot the past few weeks, I think a good camera is going to be life-changing. 

Anyway, here it is.  It's sort of the "baby's first" camera of DSLRs but I'm pretty sure it's just what I need.

Last week I had my first assignment due for Architectural Photography that we presented to the class. I had heard scary things about the professor, so I was kind of nervous. But I think I like her a lot. As I silently flipped through my images one by one on the projector, she said..."yes, no, no, yes, no, yes, no, no, no" and she was totally right. She liked my interior shots and thought I was uncomfortable outside. Yup.

Here are some of the "yes"es.

Apparently there is this crazy network of secret tunnels under the city of Moscow. Construction workers just uncovered one near the Kremlin and now federal agents are trying to keep it all secret. This article along with other counts claim that "subterranean Moscow is honeycombed with secret facilities" that were meant for Communist Party officials in the event of a nuclear war, and are still maintained "just in case".

One of the lines runs all the way out to the suburbs and is equipped to "sustain the lives of thousands of people for up to 30 years". (!!!!) And there may or may not still be "food depots, generators, sleeping quarters, cinemas and even swimming pools" down there!!

One of my classmates came across this guy that photographs this city's underground tunnels. (Some must be less secretive than others.) He uses HDR processing (ala Adam's experiments last year) on the images so they're really detailed. These are my favorites, but check out the others here.

You might be here for a while. I uploaded my pictures from Russia and there are a lot of them. Enjoy!

Last weekend, I had my annual lobster fill. The past few summers, it's gotten to August or so and I find myself in a dire situation...dangerously close to the end of the summer without having feasted on a lobster. It's definitely more the ritual than it is the actual consuming of lobster meat, but either way, it doesn't seem right to let the summer pass without partaking. So, when Adam's family was here from the west coast last week and showed some interest in having some lobsters from the east coast, we made it happen. Rule #1 as set forth by Jessica: the word "lobster", whenever uttered, is from here on to be pronounced only as "lobstah". It made perfect sense and felt right. (That was really the only rule.)

For more lobstah photos (plus some more from the week), go here.

My lobster before and after:

I took this crazy picture last night on our friend's roofdeck. My shutter stayed open while his flash went off. The girls were trying to settle who was a taller 5'2" while the the guy to the right couldn't be bothered by sleeves on his Oakland shirt. Check out the candlelit foreground.

Yesterday marked the official opening of 45 Province. The building is done, and people are moving in! In October 2006 (almost 3 years ago!) I attended the groundbreaking ceremony. Last summer, the topping off ceremony. And yesterday, the ribbon cutting/grand opening ceremony. Per usual, Mayor Menino was there in all his mumbliness. He spoke along with some other important people with lots of money, before they invited us in for a tour of the building. It was quite the mid-afternoon soiree.

I met up with some of my former co-workers to walk around and admire our work. It was so strange/cool/enlightening to see our 2-dimensional drawings turned into physical space. Space seems way bigger on paper. Although my role in this project was more drawing-based than it was designing-based, I felt sort of proud to be there in the finished product with the people that I worked with.

This past weekend marked my final deadline for the semester - the End-of-Year Show. Each studio (class of 10 or so students) puts together a display on which to exhibit their semester's work. My studio displayed our work on a sort of poster rack mechanism that we designed and constructed. You stand in front of it and swing the panels to look through our projects. The panels were actually stretched canvases (ala Jackson Pollock) that we pinned our drawings to.

Kim and Jill came from Boston to see the show, to celebrate in NYC, and to accompany me back to Boston on Sunday. Ryan joined us from downtown for the show and the celebrating parts. We did brunch outside spring-style at Elmo, and returned to The Half King, an old favorite, for dinner after the show.

With fresh fruit smoothies from a street fair in my neighborhood on Sunday, the three of us packed up a sweet Saturn sedan rental with all my stuff and headed north. After Adam and I returned the car to Avis at Logan Airport that night, we stayed in East Boston for sausage and pizza dinner at Santarpios. It was the perfect ending to a weekend that was the perfect ending to Year 2.