What a lame title.

Involuntary or not, this looks like a smile to me!

I’ve been scolded for not posting pictures of Grandfathers yet, so here they are!

Now for some Aunts and Uncles. I love how Luke is looking at Paul like he’s crazy.

To accomodate the new flash I had to buy a new camera bag. I bought it from a company called Crumpler. Their website is super crazy. I got the “4 million dollar home,” and it fits my d50 and sb-400 flash just perfectly. Everything is snug, there’s room for batteries/accessories, and it’s fairly small. If I had a second lense or something longer than the standard kit it would be too small.

I’ve scrounged up enough motivation to make the final vacation post. Here it is, New York City.

First stop we made was to eat at the Carnegie Deli. To be honest, it wasn’t very good. You know what a $13 turkey sandwich gets you? About a pound of dry turkey on the two thinest slices of dry white toast in history. Last time we went to the Stage Deli which was a LOT better. They’re just down the street from each other, so please, go to the Stage Deli. They did however have a colorful sign out front.

When we weren’t busy eating there were a lot of sites to see. This picture is of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. It’s a gorgeous church inside and out. Something that was extremely amusing was people taking pictures that didn’t know what they were doing. Now granted I’m not a professional photographer by any means, but even I know that a flash from 100 feet away isn’t doing anything. A group of Japanese tourists came in and they were clicking away on their cameras with flashes going off constantly. I hope they enjoy their black pictures when they get home. Here is one of the better pictures I took using no flash.

Something we didn’t do last trip was actually go to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island because they were still closed after 9/11. While we didn’t climb up the Statue of Liberty, it was a great opportunity to take some pictures and see it up close. From the mainland it looks really small, so a closer view is definitly recommended. I took this using the RAW mode on the Nikon D50 and was able to go back and tweak to my heart’s content. I think it came out pretty well.

At Ellis Island there really isn’t that much to see. There is a big building where immigrants waited…and that’s about all. They have computers you can use to search for your ancestors, but it’s the same thing on their website. Something interesting we did see was the Wall of Honor. The memorial shows names of people that came through Ellis Island. There is one caveat though: you have to pay to get the names put on. Out of the 20 million or so people that went through Ellis Island, half a million of them are on this wall. That being said, a relative was nice enough to pay the $100 and have my first ancestors that came to America put on the wall. These aren’t my first ancestors to come to America, but they brought the name I carry around today.

We spent a lot of our time riding around on a tour bus. It was a great way to see the city and I highly recommend them. This particular picture is from the Harlem area, and these are called Brownstones. It’s a special kind of building, and I thought they looked cool. That link says the Cosbys lived in one.

I’ve got another 500+ pictures, but those will have to do for now. Vacations are over and I look forward to posting about other things and getting back on the blogging bandwagon. Go Dodgers!

We got back last night from our short trip up the coast. We spent our first two nights in San Luis Obispo at the San Luis Creek Lodge. It’s a fairly new place that feels fresh and up-to-date. In San Luis Obispo we spent time walking around the downtown area, went to the farmers market and had a turkey leg, and drove to Morro Bay. A recurring theme on our trip was the wildlife we kept seeing, and this guy below was hanging out in Morro Bay. He even jumped up near a dock to let us take some good pictures.

I love these "smokestacks" in Morro Bay because they always look like a painting. They don’t look real for some reason, like they’re computer generated and my eyes are playing tricks on me.

After San Luis Obispo we headed up the coast and stopped in Cayucos on our way to Cambria, where we stayed at Moonstone Landing. I had never been to Cambria, but it reminded me very much of Poipu Beach on Kauai where we went on our honeymoon (but much closer and cheaper). While it’s not a Hawaii replacement (you can only spend a day or two in Cambria until you’re bored), it’s a very similar setup where a small street is the only thing between your hotel and a beautiful beach.

Cambria is just south of Hearst Castle, and even though we didn’t go there, we enjoyed the view of the coast and a nice drive. Something totally unexpected we found was a place along the beach that was literally crawling with Elephant Seals. Apparently male Elephant Seals have been coming to this specific spot since the early 1990′s to molt (get rid of their gross old skin). In a stretch of about 200 yards I would say there were at least 100 seals (there were two other spots similar to this one below).

It was great because they were barking and play fighting the whole time. There was also a really small pup that was getting chased by some big fat dude. That was hilarious. Another interesting site in Cambria was something called Nit Wit Ridge. It’s like Hearst Castle, but not really. Some guy did lots of funny/odd stuff to his house, and here is the result. Much like the hundreds of antique shops in these small towns, I’m not sure if it is art or crap.

Overall it was a very nice and relaxing few days. On a side note, I thoroughly enjoyed the Nikon d50 on the trip. It was great being able to snap pictures at will and have a lot of control over the pictures I was taking. My brother got me a nifty case to put it in that makes it much easier to carry around.

We leave Wednesday morning at 5 am for a Boston/NY trip with my parents and Denise/Paul. I’ll be sure to take a lot of pictures, but The Blarg will be update free for a week and a half. In the meantime, head on over to the Milkinator’s new site for some blogger goodness.

I decided to do a little testing between my older Canon s30 and the new Nikon d50 and see how they compare when it comes to depth of field (making the background blurry and the subject in focus) and also how they compare in terms of picture quality.

The DOF tests show that a much greater variation is possible using the d50 because it has a much bigger sensor than the point and shoot s30. From what I’ve read, DOF is very difficult with point and shoot digital cameras no matter how good a photographer you are, simply because of the small sensor size. First up, the s30. Rollover the image to see the difference.

Following in the footsteps of my brother, our new Nikon D50 dSLR camera arrived today in the mail (he’s got the even fancier D70). It’s a fancy schmancy digital camera that takes pictures like a real SLR camera, has all the features of an SLR, but it’s digital. You can replace the lens with other types for different shooting purposes and conditions.

I haven’t taken "real" photographs since my senior year in High School, so I’m a little rusty. Luckily the camera takes excellent pictures on full auto, and then for certain situations custom settings can be used. I bought a 2 gig SD card which can take over 600 pictures on max JPG settings, or 250 in RAW.

We don’t have kids yet, so here’s pictures of the dog.