Brandon and I hiked the Berry Creek falls trail, about 11 miles round trip. It’s one of the longer hikes in my guidebook. A nice change from the previous hike, the scenery was almost completely wooded and dark. The three waterfalls were a treat in the middle of the hike.

Redwoods

Stairs to the Berry Creek Falls viewing platform

Berry Creek Falls. ISO 200, f/8, 1/6s exposure, handheld. Pretty pleased with how this came out.

Wiped-out after returning to the trailhead.

Mt. Diablo is east of San Francisco, on the other side of the Berkeley Hills. Brandon and I climbed to the summit (~3,800ft) from Rock City. A gorgeous sunny day, although it was a bit hazy. 8.5 miles round trip.

The Start of the Hike

Sentinel Rock

Steep stairs allowed climbing to the top of Sentinel Rock.

Local flora…

…and fauna!

At the top.

Best part of the day…seeing two paragliders take off and float around the valley.

A few more pictures on Flickr.

Photography was strictly forbidden inside the Blue Man Group show, but we were allowed to pose with the Blue Men in the lobby post-performance. The show lived up to its recommendations; it was eclectic, exciting, and engaging. The audience was called on to participate multiple times, with some people getting picked by the Blue Men to have extended roles in the show. My favorite parts of the show were the percussive elements; many innovative instruments were created out of PVC pipes and other tubes. The picture below is my best “Blue Man” face. I didn’t quite get the eerie smile right, and somehow my eyes came out huge in the process…

The next shot was taken in the Boston Public Garden. There are a line of bronze ducks that commemorate the book “Make Way for Ducklings,” a story about a mother duck raising her ducklings in the lagoon in the Public Garden. I had to wait for all the little kids to get off the ducklings, but in the end I finally got my “big duck” shot.

Thanks to my brother for taking the last two pictures that I was in. I have many more photos to share, so when I get home I’ll put them up for your enjoyment.

During this past year at the U of R, I lived in Hollister 640, a single in the Susan B. Anthony building. The room had a fantastic view of the Genesee river and the skyline of downtown Rochester. I loved to just stare out the open window at night and enjoy the lights. One of my favorite memories came during the first few weeks of school, when I could see, over the Kodak building on the far left, the fireworks that were being shot off after the Redwings baseball game. I’m really going to miss this room.

The shot above is ISO 50 with a 10s exposure. I tried exposures between 5 and 15 seconds but decided that I liked this version the best, because it captured the cloud without blowing out the lights in the foreground. No editing except a small crop.

By the way, I’m now a junior

Flickr is a phenomenon that you can’t understand the hype behind until you have used it yourself. It is intuitive and easy to tag your photos, add them to sets and link them to others’ work by adding them to groups. I could spend hours browsing through the millions of creative and beautiful shots that people have taken.

In this process, I’m also realizing how inadequate my little Canon Powershot Elph SD450 snapshot camera is. It’s 5 megapixels, it takes good pictures for a non-SLR camera, and it has a really large LCD screen, but to get really good photos you need an SLR. I can’t justify spending money on one, though, as I have no idea what I’m doing with photography yet. For now, a tripod would be a much better investment.