One of the Activities I Did Over April Break

     So, I'm nearing the end of my April break, and I've decided to blog on one of the things I did over my fairly relaxed break.  Not once, but twice I went to the New England Aquarium with my friend Rory. The first time, we took the subway into Boston and walked to the Aquarium. To our dismay, the aquarium has a (somewhat bad) policy of not letting people under 18 into the aquarium with an adult. So we wandered around Boston and got lunch before heading home. A few days after that, we attempted again, this time with Rory's father walking us in and then leaving. We walked into his dad office and waited a few minutes while he accomplished things. As we were leaving, we were offered cake by one of the employees there. Even though we were headed of to get lunch, Rory and I consented and happily ate our cake. I was happy to eat cake.
From there we proceeded to a cafe across the street (where I had some delicious chowdah), and to the aquarium. We got our hands stamped, entered, and Rory's father left. First, we watched the penguins for a little bit. I took a whole bunch of photos, like the one above. I find it odd how how our attention was held by these little birds standing on rocks, not doing anything particularly interesting. After that, we went on to look at the smaller exhibits, like jellyfish and and other sea creatures. The tank was illuminated from below, lighting up the jellyfish in a neat way as they drifted around aimlessly. We then proceeded to the center of the aquarium and walked up and around the new central tank, watching the fish of very different shapes and colors swim around. Feeling a little hungry again, we walked into the aquarium cafe and got a snack, then reentered through the gift shop (proving that we could have gotten in on our first visit). Rory wanted to go to seal and sea lion training session, so walked over to the seal pool and watched as the seals waved at and high-five people. Both of us found this less interesting then we had hoped it would be. Rory had to leave, so we took the subway back. Both Rory and I had a good time at the aquarium.

Camera Class over the Weekend

     Yesterday, my mom and I went into Boston to attend a DSLR camera class. My mom really likes to take photos of things, and I went as extra memory to remember what the teacher said. The class started at 9:00 am and went until noon. We learned about the "exposure triangle", the three settings on cameras that can help you take good photos. These are the aperture, the ISO, and the shutter speed. Aperture is how much light the camera is letting in to the lens. This changes how much of the image is in focus, or the depth of field. The ISO is how sensitive the camera's light sensor is. This can help get good shots in low light, but the higher the ISO the greater the noise/fuzz in the image's background. The shutter speed, the final piece, is how fast the camera waits for light. A shorter shutter speed can get capture frozen action, while a longer one can get blurred motion shots. Also, the higher the shutter speed the darker the picture will be. I learned in this class that these three factors, when used in the right way, can produce exactly the picture that the photographer wants.