Learning to use my new camera (img)

[Monkey]

I went to an event today and tried to do some on-site learning with my new camera. Lots of blurry shots, but here are a few you might care to see.





Click for giant version:




(Today was pretty much cool beans.)

[Anne]

The shots are fabulous, the opportunity is glorious. You lucky duck. My mum and I are thoroughly impressed.

[Monkey]

They announced his visit on Monday, details came out on Tuesday. 3000 tickets became available at 9 am on Thursday. People started lining up for them at 5 pm Wednesday. They were kicked outside at 1 am and camped out through the night in the bitter cold.

...

I showed up at 7 am, which I contend is still disgustingly early, but I just waltzed to the end of a (n extremely long line) and started waiting. It got colder and colder at the day wore and I somehow managed to wear the very wrong shoes and lose my winter gloves a few days prior, so I was perfectly fine except for my digits.

At my place in line, we had no idea if we would get tickets, but after a few hours, workers came around with red tickets to give to the first 3000 people in line. I held onto that thing like it was a winning lotto ticket... which it kinda was in my book.

After 5 and a half hours outside, they took away my red ticket (that was quite difficult for me) and gave me this:



You had to present your id and then sign with the name on it... but my hands didn't really work anymore, so that was awkward. I kept laughing and apologizing out of exhaustion. xD

SO I HAD A TICKET and missed my stats class.


THEN ON FRIDAY, I got up even earlier (five am, my brother drove me to the location since he was still awake xD). And even though many people were already there, I was definitely in the first several hundred and we only had to wait outside for about two hours.

I managed to get a surprisingly good place. I was off to the right next to where the special guests were seated and very close to the front, directly behind these adorable children. They were great because the special guests (my two Senators, a congressman, the US Secretary of Education) kept coming to talk to them. Here's a photo of Senator Carl Levin...

I was nerding out quite a lot.

[Sorie]

Dude, that's super exciting, and you got some impressive shots. I want to hug the children.

[Ice]

Whaaat. That's awesome!! Apparently presidential debates will be hosted at Hofstra again, which is only about 40 minutes from me, so I might actually go if they are... or try to, anyway, idk what ticketing will be like.

I think I can actually tell by your signature that your hands were frozen. Totally happens to me all the time, even @ home... D: right now, my hands are actually a little awkward! The misfortune of bad circulation.

Also, your camera seems pretty awesome.

[Monkey]

8) Yeah, those kids were great.

Ooo, seeing a debate would be awesome! I'd love to go to one sometime.

My signature it usually pretty awful, but this was supposed to be printed. xDD It's all jagged and awkward. Hey! I have bad circulation too! Cold hand buddies! <3

[Anne]

I'm always overheated. Which is fine in winter, but not so good in summer.

[Ice]

Yay for cold hand buddies! We'll just sap your body heat, Anne. :3 I totally do it to my brother all the time, I'll just grab his arm until my hands warm up because he's always pretty toasty.

[Monkey]

I just remembered another amusing anecdote about my cold hands that day. After about hour three or four, I went inside to pee and get warmed up a little (a couple new comrades were saving my place in line as I did for them), but when I went to button my pants back up, my hands weren't really up for small motor skills. It was quite a struggle to make myself decent again.

[Ice]

LOL. Very smooth. Have you been testing out your camera on any other cool stuff?

[Monkey]

So, no. xDDDD

I haven't had much to take photos of lately, maybe I'll take my camera with me around town tomorrow and see if I can find a subject. But that's the puzzle my mom and I did for Christmas. It seems to handle macro fairly well. I'll wander over to the food photos thread and post a couple there too.

[Ice]

Puzzles! I have an ongoing one with a friend right now, but we don't get to meet very often so we only really have the border done. Too much sky to make it easy D:

[Monkey]

It's always the sky! *shakes fist* Curse you beautiful abyss!

[Ice]

Indeed! xD It's of the lighthouse at Montauk, it's at the very end of Long Island's north fork. It has a lot of sky and ocean, super hard! D: I actually visited the lighthouse and got a view, it was quite nice albeit a bit tiny (there was literally 2x1 foot area that you could stand on to look outside).

[Sorie]

The sky is indeed always a problem. xD I recently did a Christmas puzzle (maybe not so recently... It may have been over the summer actually) as well, and I had to deal with sky as well as silhouetted bare tree branches, which were often pretty misleading.