A Pigeon

This is definitely a picture of a pigeon. There is simply no way around the pigeon. You have to look at the pigeon before you look at any of my other pictures. I often think about what animals are thinking about when I look at them. In this case, I don't think the pigeon is thinking about all that much since it is obviously a zombie pigeon. Look at those eyes. Everyone knows that zombies don't think. They just eat...brains.

Yellow Wall

This is a yellow wall. It is in Cairo. I had a good time there.

Up

First of all, I'm Jewish. This is not a religious picture in any way, shape, or form, as the first flickr commenter seems to think. That said, if that's what you want it to be, then it is. I picked this picture at the request of my roommate. I wasn't paying attention to the tour guide while we walked through Cairo. It was louder than hell, and I couldn't understand a word she was saying. Instead, I spent most of the time looking around. This is what I saw when I went into a back alley and looked up. It was cool. I pressed a button.

On another note, updating daily might exhaust all of my good pictures very quickly. I'm considering reducing the number of times I post a week to 3 or 4. Thoughts?

Wrigley

Walking into the stands at Wrigley Field is easily one of the most memorable experiences of my life. Seeing the ivy on the outfield walls, I froze as I thought to myself "Wow! I'm really here!" Funny thing is, I really hate baseball.

Without digital photo editing, this shot would be nothing, just a boring, run of the mill wide shot of Wrigley Stadium. Even post processed, it's still nothing special, but I tried to imitate a style of photography taken with a special lens called a "Tilt-Shift" lens. A tilt-shift lens is usually used for architectural photography, but it can be used to make a live scene look like a miniature because of it's selective focusing capabilities. It's complicated, just trust me. Anyway, it didn't turn our so well in this photo, but it still kind of gave the scene an interesting look.

And it's freakin' Wrigley!

Veggies

I am glad I didn't get kicked out of Whole Foods this day. I spent a good twenty minutes just walking around the store taking pictures of anything and everything. Whole Foods always feels so yuppie, but the level of organization in this store in particular was outstanding. All of the fruits and vegetables were perfectly stacked, and the labels on all the containers were turned outwards. It was pretty disgusting. However, it made for an awesome image.

Personally, I think this image is one of the least appreciated of my collection.

Mantis

This photograph is the reason I keep my little Canon PowerShot point-and-shoot around. I don't own a macro lens for my D80, so I'm limited to using the macro function on the PowerShot.

As I was mowing my neighbor's yard a few years ago, I noticed this guy sitting on a bush, and I really wanted to get some pictures. I ran back to my house, grabbed the camera, and threw the bug into the grass where there was a bit more light. With this picture, I started to realize that I wasn't terrible and taking pictures, and it encouraged me to start taking the hobby more seriously. This was before I even owned the D80 that my parents got me for my birthday. Possibly the best birthday present ever.

Street Lamp

Up until this point, I hadn't done a lot of night shots, and I really didn't plan on doing any night shots when I set out to shoot. Originally, I wanted to catch the sunset, but failed miserably. Instead, I stuck around to do a little experimenting with long exposures and passing cars. I was pleasantly surprised that no one passing by decided to call the cops on me, or if they did, I apparently left at just the right time.

I took dozens of pictures, and each shot took about 30 seconds to capture. By the time I left, the sun had long left the scene.

Sunrise Over St. Simon's Island

A couple of my friends and I planned to go to Canada for Spring Break, but due to an unfortunate series of unfortunate events, our plans were thwarted. As a back up plan, we packed warm clothes and decided to "drive south." Without a real destination in mind, we drove 14 hours south and ended up on St. Simon's Island in Georgia. Before doing anything else, we drove straight to the beach to catch the sunrise. This picture was taken about five or ten minutes before the sun cracked the horizon. Very little post-editing was done to this picture. The exposure was a little fast, so I had to adjust the brightness a little bit. Other than that, the colors are true.

Not Google Street View

I don't think Google has made it down this street in Cairo yet, so I'm going to take the liberty of posting this small section of a street in Downtown Cairo for them. I'm really not much of a street photographer, and it makes me nervous taking pictures of other people, especially in a foreign country. Since I was already being judged by the Cairenes for walking with a camera around my neck and with a large gaggle of white Americans, I felt like I could get away with being a stupid tourist. I turned around and took one snapshot of the street scene behind me. It really had been a beautiful day in the city, and more people than usual were out on the streets. For those of you that have been to Cairo, you know that's really saying something about the crowd when there are more people than normal. Somehow, I managed to capture a rather relaxed, uncrowded shot.

Broken Promise

No photo today. Broken laptop. Limited to my Blackberry for the time being.

Jefferson Memorial by Day

I love the Jefferson Memorial. At night, it is easily on of my top two favorite places in DC. By day, however, it's a different story. The nicer the day, the more swamped it is with tourists and other pleasure seekers. I didn't take too many pictures that day because there were so many people around, and they were all getting in my shots. That and I was on a walk with one of my friends.

Regardless, this shot turned out pretty well given everything, and the Jefferson Memorial still remains one of my favorite spots in the city, despite the crowd.

Chicago at Dusk

After a very disappointing visit to the Shedd Aquarium, I walked up the pier towards the Adler Planetarium. The sun was starting to dip lower and lower in the sky, and with it, the temperature. I forgot my gloves and hat, and my coat was barely substantial as some light flakes began to fall, but I was determined to get a night shot of the skyline of Chicago.

This is an HDR (high dynamic range) image, meaning it is a combination of three different images that is processed using a special program to get the highest range of colors possible. This also meant that I had to hold the camera in the same exact position over three exposures, one of which was over 30 seconds. If I had a tripod at the time, the job would have been much easier, but I instead had to set the camera on a ledge. Since I had little choice of camera position, this is why the ladder and platform are in the shot, but I believe that without them, the picture would have been boring and somewhat cliche.

Welcome to From the Window..And welcome summer

Well, for the longest time, I have thought about creating a photo-blog and making a post a day, but I could never convince myself that I have the time, the patience, or the motivation to do it. This is hopefully the beginning of a successful experiment.

Spring is well underway, and as I am wrapping up this semester at American University, summer is on my mind. I thought it would be appropriate then to post a photo from last summer. All the kids in my neighborhood were out playing on the cul de sac on the 4th of July, and there was something about the tether-ball pole that added to the Americana of the scene. It truly felt like an American afternoon.

I promise my writing will get better, and hopefully so will my photography. By the way, all of my photos link directly to their respective flickr pages.