So, I posted recently about a telephoto lens that I had received from my friend Jordan. In this post, I mentioned that I had not been having any trouble with the lens after cleaning the contacts. Unfortunately when I went to D.C. the next day to shoot, I pulled out that lens and it failed on me again. Nothing I did made it work. I called up Jordan, and he said that he has an older camera that this lens works fine with, so he’ll be taking it back…

All is not lost in the land of lenses, however. For Christmas my family gave me a Canon f/1.8 lens for the Rebel. It takes some really beautiful photographs. It’s a really clear prime lens, and when I shoot at 1.8, it looks like a movie. The subject is in focus, and the background is very blurry. It makes for a really cool effect.

Here’s a picture of a stop sign I took with this new lens:

I’ve decided that I want to increase my blog’s visibility. I know that there are a number of strategies for this, but the one that I am about to currently employ is registering my blog with Technorati. I’m going to continue posting frequently, and I want to make sure that I also make blog posts that contain substance and significance. I hope that with Technorati I can reach a larger audience with my blog. Anyway, to check out my technorati profile, you can go here Technorati Profile and you can also check out my company’s blog at EmpWeb.

I was talking with Steph about the Greyhound business. She did some research and helped me find a bunch of links to other bloggers, legal documents, and the Greyhound Media Protocol. Apparently I’m not the only one being harassed. A quick tour of the blogosphere shows that a large number of photographers are also being tormented by security personnel all over the country. Here is a link to the Greyhound media protocol document www.greyhound.com/company/media/mediaprotocol.doc
which specifies what you can and can’t take pictures of, according to their rules. The document does not restrict any photography of publicly accessible areas, which is what I was taking pictures of.

Thomas Hawk was harassed for taking pictures from the street of One Bush Place. A security guard attempted to physically block him from taking pictures, and threatened that he had called the police.

Gerald, over at Baltimore Inner Space was also harassed at a Greyhound station by MTA transit officials, who told him to delete his pictures, show them ID, and tell them his life story.

Anyone else who has had trouble with this kind of a thing, KNOW YOUR RIGHTS, and fight them to keep control of what you photograph. I deleted my pictures because I didn’t have a clear understanding of my rights, don’t let this happen to you too.

So I had to delete all of the pictures off of my camera today because
“This is D.C. We have the president. We need to protect the president.”

I spent the weekend in Great Falls at Steph’s house. This morning Steph and her father took me to the Greyhound station. We got off to a little bit of a late start, and were slowed in traffic by two pretty nasty accidents. We made it to the terminal at 8:45a.m. My plan was to catch the 9a.m. Greyhound bus to Philadelphia, arrive at 12:00 and catch the 12:30 Bieber bus home.

The 9:00 bus left at 8:50 without all of its passengers. The driver wouldn’t wait for me, as I was getting my bags. I had my ticket in hand, and was going to take about 30 seconds to retrieve my bags from the car, situated about fifty feet away, when the driver took off. This made me miss my connection to the Bieber bus for which I had already bought the ticket.

Another passenger had been on the bus from its beginning in Richmond and had stepped off the bus with the driver’s permission to buy a snack. Entering the snack line left him stranded until the next bus would depart at 10:45.

Steph, her father, and I went to Starbucks for some breakfast, and returned to wait in line. I had a brief discussion with a Peruvian photographer, which prompted me to take out my camera to show him. His bus left at 10:00, and I was left to stand in line. Thoroughly pissed off at Greyhound, I started taking some pictures of the bus station for my upcoming blog post about how terrible Greyhound is.

Three pictures later, a burly black man wearing a Greyhound uniform began a less-than-pleasant conversation with me:

“Come over here.”
“Can I help you, sir?”
“Where are you from?”
“Allentown”
“Where?”
“It’s in Pennsylvania.”
“I don’t know who you think you are, but there is a lot of photography going on right now.”
“Sorry, sir?”
“You can’t do that. Not since 9/11. I know you’ve heard of 9/11, haven’t you?”
“Yes sir.”
“Well then you should know that you’re not allowed to take pictures.”
“Of a Greyhound station?”
“Of any mass-transit system. You do that in an airport and they’ll take your camera. This is D.C. It would be wise of you to delete those photos you took.”
“Would you like to see them?”
“No. If I were you, I’d delete them right now.”
“Why?”
“This is D.C. We have the president here. We have to protect the president.”

Oh my god. I can’t believe that I was given such a lame reason. How often does the president visit the Greyhound station anyway? Is that picture of the soda machine really a matter of national security? I can’t believe that he would use 9/11 as a reason to abuse his power and bully customers around. Greyhound really has terrible service.

After this, my bus arrived an hour late, drove off with the luggage bay doors open, pulled over on the side of a highway to close them, and when we finally arrived in Philadelphia, the luggage crew threw my bag into a large puddle.

Final Decision: Not going to ride Greyhound anymore unless I can help it.

So, having recently bought my Digital Rebel XTi with Steph, I set out to talk with my friends that I know who are camera nuts. My friend Jordan had a Quantaray telephoto lens (70-210mm) that he could not get working. He believed that it was a problem with lens compatibility with his old camera. He said that if I could get it working with mine that I could have it. I put it on my camera and didn’t have any problems with it the first day. Today I got to Washington D.C. and started taking pictures. When I put on the telephoto lens, sure enough up popped Error 99. I fussed with it for awhile, trying to get it to line up in different ways, and eventually it would work only in the 190-210mm range. Steph and I stopped by a camera store and asked about the problem. The manager at the store said that the electric contacts on the lens are probably dirty, and to clean it with denatured alcohol. When I got to a computer, I looked it up and found this solution on Richard’s blog. I cleaned the lens contacts with an eraser, and it seems to be functioning properly now. Back to D.C. tomorrow for some more field testing though!Pics soon!Quantaray-CN AF1.4-5.6 70~210mmFull BatteryEmpty CF card 

So, during my last couple of weeks in Taiwan Steph came out to visit. She brought her new Canon Digital Rebel XTi along. It’s a really beautiful camera. I’ve been shooting on film with her Nikon FN-10 and my mom’s Pentax. We went together to the photography district of Taipei, which is near the main station, and I bought the japanese version of the XTi. My camera is called the Canon Kiss Digital X.

Boy does this thing take beautiful pictures. The colors, the resolution. It can get incredibly sharp, and because of the ability to change ISO speed, I can take pictures in really bright light and really dim light without the use of a flash. Steph and I spent the last two weeks running around Taiwan taking pictures. Now that we’ve got a significant number of beautiful pictures, we’re looking into Microstock photography. Currently we’re submitting pictures to ShutterStock. I’m also working on rebuilding my image gallery, so stay tuned for updates!