New Hampshire

A few weeks ago, we went up to New Hampshire where our friend Desmond has a house. It's right on the border of a state park which has great rock climbing, hiking trails and a beautiful lake. The leaves were just turning and it was just fantastic.

This is White Horse Ledge and Echo Lake

I thought this picture looked better rotated. It looks like a painting!

Tony and I decided to go for a swim. It was cold and I got numb but I loved it.

I can't wait to go back and climb mount washington next year!

New Camera, Rubin Museum, A Night in New York

Before we left on our big trip, and partly for our two-year anniversary, Jim and I decided to buy a DSLR camera in order to become better photographers and take pictures we could possibly make a living off of in the future. We ended up getting the Canon Digital Rebel XSi along with the standard 18-55mm lens, a 50mm lens, and a 55-250mm telephoto lens.
This weekend we went into Manhattan to practice and learn more about our camera and its functions, while trying to take some nice pictures.
Here are some of our favorites:

We came across the Rubin Museum while in Manhattan, which is a whole museum of Himalayan Art.
These first three are taken by me, experimenting with depth of field and composition.

After that, we walked through the streets some more and came across a lovely puppy who looked like a dirty Snowy.

We made it to Union Square, which was already all set up for the Christmas market. Here, we experimented with long shutter speeds:

In this one, Jim was supposed to stay still for 2 seconds but a little kid ran in front of him and was posing for the camera. Jim cracked up and the camera caught him laughing.

I took this one of Jim on the subway platform. I love his expression and his crispness.

Back in Great Neck, we experimented with really long shutter speeds (30 seconds) and multiple exposure, leading to a ghost-like effect. It came out pretty well for our first try.

Now we're in love with our camera and can't wait to get more use out of it in the future.

Happy Halloween

We decided to go all out for Halloween this year-we hadn't dressed up together yet, and Jim got a brilliant idea for this year. We love the Tintin comics and the animated series, and Snowy has been our faithful companion for a year and a half. We got most of our costumes from thrift stores or our own stockpiles, and it cost about $50 (mostly my shoes.) I think we pulled it off quite well!

Here are some pictures for reference:

We had a good time dressing up, but we didn't get to see too much of the parade. We ended up hanging out around astor place/union square from about 3pm to 3am. We met up with Olya (Jim's cousin) and then had an interesting conversation with an 18 year old kid in Union Square-rather intellectual. Then, because of Daylight Savings Time, we missed the 1:19 train about 3 times. I think they just cancelled it to avoid confusion. Penn Station was filled with costumed, tired, drunk people. It was very fun for people watching. Jim even ran into an old friend from College (dressed as Aladdin), and I got a hug from someone who used to love Tintin. It was a pretty good Halloween.