New lens (70-300) & testing it out at Yaletown and UBC

Today, I completed a deal with a seller on craiglist and got a birding-lens for my Olympus E-620, the Zuiko Digital ED 70-300 f4.0-5.6. It's a dream come true, because it can reach 600mm so I can take much closer photos now. It's a much bigger, heavier, and beautiful than I thought but it's definitely going to make my photos better.

The seller is at Yaletown so I met him there this morning. Before he arrived, I took some photos of the people and dogs walking by.

This was the cutest dog.

Another of its own.

After the deal, I couldn't wait to put it on and try it out by walking along the Granville Seawalk! Even though it is not a macro lens, it takes pretty good close-up photos of flowers too.

Worries away in RNP & Zoom!

Today is the first day of October. Five days from today, I will return back to my temp office job in downtown Vancouver for this fall season.

Lately, I have been in a slump. Work-searching in my field has been unproductive (as usual in the winter season) and grad-school searching has been unsuccessful - not many openings and with my just average grades in my undergrad years, I imagine professors are probably hesitant to take a student without any scholarship support. So my future is unclear as muck and it frustrates me everytime I think about it.

With my new monthly bus pass, I visited Richmond Nature Park today. And when I step on the ground that's not made of cement and surrounded by trees instead of buildings and people, all of the sudden, my worries are gone. I am in the moment of just enjoying birds chirping and watching the leaves changing their colors. And photographing - it just takes time away and makes it all worthwhile.

Watching the frenzies in the bird-feeding area. Many chickadees and squirrels on the feeders. The sparrows and juncos on the ground. These are probably my first decent shots of a Dark-eyed Junco because most of the times, they are too fast or too difficult to photograph.

Dark-eyed Junco