Out onto the Pacific for today’s Top 200 Photo.

photo #150 is:

I’d never seen a whale in the wild before, so I knew we HAD to take advantage of the humpback whales who come to Hawaii for the winter. We went out on a lunch cruise to go see some whales. The only disappointing thing (which is not mentioned in the brochures) is that you can only get within 100 yards of the whales. That’s a whole football field away! And I didn’t have my Sigma 120-400 (link to B&H) yet, so this is the closest I could get to the whale. At least we got lucky and this mother jumped out. She was teaching her kid how to slap the water and other things and at first I thought we’d just see fins and tails.

Today’s Top 200 Photo.

photo #151 is:

I was practicing my macro photography and I chose to try and photograph myself. And I decided to focus on my stubble because that seems to be a perpetual feature of mine. I was very happy with the comments I ended up getting.

Back to Baltimore for this Top 200 Photo.

photo #152 is:

Another photo from Otakon. I was especially happy to see these guys at Otakon. Ranma ½ was the first anime I ever saw. It was my entry into the whole genre. I remember discovering it at a video rental store in Tualatin, OR. They had some VHS tapes of Seasons 2 and 3. I remember being so psyched that there were cartoons that weren’t for kids. I couldn’t wait for them to get the next tape. I spent all my time in the library at school researching Ranma and learning about the story and getting into fan fiction for the first time. If I’d been born about a decade later I probably would have really gotten into the whole fan-sub scene. Bandwidth was just too small back in those days.

Still at Cornell for this Photo.

photo #153 is:

I was just walking back to my apartment when I passed by this mail truck. I’d never seen the inside of a mail truck before, so I took the shot. I also remember thinking it was neat how the back of the truck framed the inside which framed the windshield which framed a view of the outside. (If only it were more scenic out there)

Back to Cornell for today’s entry in Top 200 Photos.

photo #154 is:

One day we were just walking around campus and just pulled into the stadium to watch some lacrosse. Unlike hockey, there was no fee and there wasn’t really anyone in the stands. So I practiced my sports photography with the team. I was into photo editing back them and I decided that this shot would be perfect for a cutout (selective colouring) because we were The Big Red and red is so vivid. I think it work perfectly with this photo. I think it’d look great in a book of Cornell sports photography (without my byline/watermark, of course)

Here is today’s Top 200 Photo

photo #155 is:

Ever since I moved to Baltimore, I’ve been in the city during Otakon, the annual anime convention. The first couple of times it was a complete accident. For the the past two years I’ve looked up the dates ahead of time and made sure to be there to take some photos. I haven’t yet bought a ticket, but almost all of them tend to spend some time outside and everyone’s amenable to photos. After all, they’ve spent as much as the entire last year working on their costumes in some. I usually have a great time enjoying all the awesome costumes and they usually do pretty well views-wise on flickr. So I know there are at least two more Otakon photos on the Top 200 Photos.

Today’s Top 200 Photo.

photo #156 is:

Which is weird because, at the time, it was my favorite photo of Danielle and she hated it.  And the weird thing is that, looking at it nearly 4 years later, I’m not as keen on it as I once was.  I can’t figure out what I loved so much then.  It’s so weird to have feelings associated with a photo change that much in just a few years.

There will not be a #158 because it is a photo that was already covered. (Moved up quite a few ranks much faster than I thought it would)

photo #157 is:

This is a photo from the only time I was the paid photographer at a wedding. The bride was the sister of one of Danielle’s coworkers and needed to work on a budget. Working that wedding taught me that I enjoy photographing weddings a lot more when I’m not the official photographer.

And now for a completely different climate in today’s Top 200 Photos.

photo #159 is:

This is from my Honeymoon outside of Cancun, Mexico.  I love finding examples of American companies in other countries so I had to take a photo of this McDonald’s in Playa del Carmen.  While we always make sure to eat local cuisine in whatever country we’re in, we also sometimes try out the American chains to see how they differ.  McDonalds in England, for example, out-mayonaises the USA.  And TGIF in England has ham rather than bacon on their potato strips.  And the Pizza Hut sauce over there tastes weird. We did not eat at this McDonald’s in Mexico.

We stay at Cornell for this entry in the Top 200 Photos.

photo #160 is:

This has to be in the top 3 most depressing photos I took at Cornell. There’s a certain beauty in the photo, especially now that I don’t have to deal with that weather anymore, but just remembering trudging up that hill in that unforgiving weather is enough to make me happy to have graduated.