San Francisco II

As promised, I got my photos from my 35mm developed. Surprisingly, I put them in the shop the very next day. I usually sit on them for like 3 months and then pay extra for rush developing. Here are a few that I liked (as you can tell, I put a lot of thought into the titles):



Crash



Driftwood & Footprints



Flood




Log & Surf

San Francisco I

Today was a beautiful day. After meeting my former roommates for brunch, I hopped on my bike and rode to Baker Beach. Despite the many times that I've been to Baker Beach since arriving in San Francisco, I have never taken my camera with me. I took both cameras with me today: the 35mm and the digital. Below are a few pictures taken with my digital camera. I quickly realized that digital cameras, well at least my digital camera, aren't very useful in very sunny conditions. Given the lack of a viewfinder on my model, it's almost impossible to see what you're about to shoot when intense sunlight is bouncing off of the display screen. Therefore, most of my shots from today were taken with my 35mm, which I'll try to get developed later this week. One upside to the digital, however, is that I can turn color pictures into black & white, which is what I've done here:



Golden Gate Bridge I B&W-- this is the very first picture of the GG Bridge that I've ever taken.




Golden Gate Bridge II B&W




Sea Foam B&W




Man and Kite B&W

Chicago

I love taking photos of nature. Now that I have a digital camera, I'm going to start posting some of my favorites that I take from now on. To kick things off, here are a couple that I took in Chicago late last year.




Autumn in Chicago




Caution: Geese X-ing




Lonely Tree with Airplane (although you can't really see the airplane in this post)

Just Sitting Back and Waiting for the Decision Letters

Whew! All done. Over a month later, I've finally finished with the whole grad school application process. This process was a lot more arduous than I was expecting. I knew that it was going to take a while, but it was making sure that all of the little pieces were in place that proved to be most challenging. I suppose, however, that applying to eight(!) separate schools didn't really help matters. As if I didn't already have enough to worry wbout, for Georgetown, I even had to convince some generous native German speaker to fill out a form attesting to my language ability as part of the application process. What's the point of that? Do they honestly expect you to think that they aren't just going to re-test you once you get to campus? And if you don't already speak a language, it's a university. You can just learn it when you get there. That is the purpose of the university, isn't it? To teach you stuff. If I'm supposed to already know everything before I get there, why am I paying you 40 grand a year?

Now that my applications are all in, I don't really know what to do with myself. Before there was always some preparation that needed to be done. There was always a form to fill out, an essay to revise, or statistics homework to do, but that's all done now. So after work, I find myself with all of this free time on my hands. Part of me says that I should use that time to take on noble and enriching endeavors such as volunteer work or French classes or visiting museums or staying a little later at work to get ahead. However, that's only part of me. A very small part. The other, and more influential, part of me says that my free time would best be spent out drinking and partying with my friends. I, of course, chose the latter of the two options.

Afterall, I'm only human.