Today was a rainy day, therefore, it was also a lazy day. In class we did little more than discuss technique and review the past week’s work. We were introduced to our first project but I’ll tell you about that later… For now let’s focus on the photos!

I’d always wanted to go out and photograph in the rain but was always too lazy to do so. Our teacher recommended we do it, try different things, get creative… So in short, I did! I took a plastic bag and poked a hole in the back and fit it around my lens, I was gonna go out just like that but it struck me as a bag idea… I mean bad idea… so I got out some tape and made myself a propper rain coat for my camera. I threw on some warm clothes and my own not-so-waterproof waterproof jacket and headed out to shoot!

Heading down moody street I snapped off a few shots of people walking by with umbrellas. That was my mission, to get photos of people hiding from the rain. So I walked up and down the street a few times snapping shots of passer-byers from afar, and as I gained more confidence, from up-close. I headed back towards my house and to the train station, it might be interesting to get the train as it went by. They do have a rather large gap of time inbetween them though so I walked around the area and conspicuously shot photos of people waiting for the bus. Which happens to be right infront of the police station…

No… I didn’t get arrested, I didn’t get yelled at, hell I didn’t even SEE a police officer! This was kind of disappointing… I want to get heckled for my photographies! It will come with time young padawan.

So I heard the bells start a-ringin’ and I knew the train was a-comin’! I steadied myself and set the settings on the camera, got ready and as the train was starting to pass by me I began shooting some slow-exposure shots. As the front of the train got just passed me it let off a loud whistle and I swear if I wasn’t already wet… I would’ve wet myself! But I didn’t.. I headed back towards the house, snapping some more people pics along the way, and changed into some nice dry clothes as soon as I got home and wrapped up in a warm blanket and got to writing this. Okay I’m done now.

To see the rest of the photos from this shoot click here.

You asked for it so here ya go! My school Photo-ID!  Okay so I can’t get my external to work with my laptop (surprise surprise… time to throw this out the window! I’ll have my Mac in a few weeks.) But I really only got 1 photo today that I was entirely happy with so here it is. A pretty standard day today. We learned about exposure, metering, etc. and just went out to shoot. We walked down to a park and shot eachother and waterfalls and things and it was pretty neat.

And thus ends the first day of classes. Okay I’m done, time to go home. Nah… So we started off with the regular boring orientation, reading the student handbook, all the generally fun things. Then we broke off into our separate classes (photo, video, 3D animation etc.) and headed off for the boring stuff… Oh wait I got that backwards… well you get the point!

So we got introduced to the photographers who will be our teachers for the next two weeks and the photo class, about 30 people, split into A group and B group. They paired us up with another student and then we just got to chat for a while. While we were chatting and learning about one another we were waiting to use the studio set up to shoot our student IDs. We were encouraged to be as wacky as possible! As soon as I get a copy of mine I’ll be sure to post it for everyone to laugh at. So we all had a great time shooting and laughing at eachother and then we went on our lunch break.

It’s really awesome to be able to walk home and eat lunch, and just chill out for an hour in the middle of the day. It will be so much better once we get our own internet and I don’t have to wait an hour to connect, eliminating the point…

I decided to return a bit early and begin my journey to obtain the money that the school still owes me. So I went into what I assumed would be the best place, the business office. The woman in there told me that the best place to go to ask about that would be the business office… Let me just reiterate the point that… I was in the business office… Oh okay, now she decides to tell me that they switched the offices but orgot to switch the sign. Off I went down the hall to the… business office… of which I just left… and was now heading to… again… I think… So I got to the REAL business office and.. bah I won’t bore you with the story, I got duh money!

The rest of the day was spent with all the photos the class took of one another being projected in front of the class for everyone to get a good laugh at. Quite the ice-breaker if you ask me. But it was an excellent demonstration of the ease of use and power of the software that we will be using. Not too much of an exciting day but it was great to get to know the people and definitely showed us that… this will be one crazy year!

Yeah that’s it. Shorter than the last one, but I feel that it’s best not to try and live up to the last post, otherwise it may get boring and cliche, so I’ll end with that. And just to negate this little rant and enforce my point…

This will be one crazy year!

Public Transportation… Oh boy… Monday night Keith (my roommate) got a phone call from a friend asking if we wanted to go to the Museum of Science in Boston, students got in free. So we checked the schedule, and headed down to the train station for our first ride on the MBTA; lovingly known as the “T”. We walked down the street and over to the platform, found a bench and waited… Then the train came… and went… We were at the wrong station… We deftly sprinted from one end of the street to the other, arriving at the train just in time to jump on, winded, but victorious! On our way we went on our first social event in Boston.

Tuesday night we decided to go visit a friend in the city so we hit the train, this time in the right place, and then the subway. We checked the map, we needed a D train, so we sat and watched four trains pass by… the C train, the E train, the C, another C, and then we were lucky enough to be informed by a station-worker that to take the D train we should take any train to Government Center Station and then transfer from there, so we hopped the next train, an E train I might add, and off we went. Upon our arrival in the station we caught a bench and waited for the next D train. We walked up to the doors and… hey wait a minute… Oh no! They opened for just a quick moment, enough for Keith to jump in.. Oh shit! What now? I looked around, pulled the doors open, and jumped on myself… I was not waiting around for another D train!

We spent a few hours there just chatting, eating cookies, and getting to know each other better, and then we said our goodbyes and departed for home… We caught a subway train to the our transfer station, then waited.. and waited.. and waited.. for a subway train to take us to North Station, where we needed to get on the rail train. The funny part of this portion of the trip is that we actually HELPED someone who was lost.. It was more of a common-senseless person than an I-Don’t-Know-The-Area person… But we finally got on the subway train headed where we needed to go and got to the rail station.. We walked in to look up at the board.. only to realize that the soonest departure to Waltham wasn’t until… 8am… So we took some time to debate and decide on an action plan and just took the subway back to Boston and spent the night at our friends house.

The rest of the night was pretty hilariously awkward. Rachel and Vivian (Our friends we were visiting) taught Keith and I how to play a rather funny card-based game known as “Apples to Apples”. If you know what that is you’ll know how funny it can be, if you don’t… Be sure to find out!

Public Transportation… Oh boy…