New Orleans Photography
In the tradition of our now yearly photo excursion to Boston in January (I suspect we may re-think this now that we’re branching out), Matt and I headed to New Orleans this past weekend for some shooting. Renting a tilt-shift lens seems to have become part of the tradition, but this year we stepped that up a bit by renting not just the new Nikon 45mm f/2.8 PC-E tilt-shift, but also a Nikon 135mm f/2 AF DC, and a Nikon D90 body. The D90 being particularly interesting because it is one of the new breed of digital cameras capable of recording video.
As an aside, I’m feeling like I should rename this weblog to something like “Travel Troubles.” I drove to Providence where Matt and I were scheduled to fly to New Orleans via Philadelphia. This flight is scheduled as one hour and twenty minutes long (which seems generous for just 327 miles). About an hour into the flight, we were informed that Philadelphia airport was busy, and we’d be circling the airport for a while. Over half an hour later, we were told that there was fog developing in Philadelphia, and that we were running out of fuel (!), so we’d be diverting to Baltimore (!!) to re-fuel (the diversion to BWI representing an almost 40% increase in distance). After some time in Baltimore, we continued on to Philadelphia where we had now clearly missed our connection.
Now with an eight hour layover in Philadelphia (and not even free drinks and cookies at the Admiral’s Club making this an appealing situation), we took the train into town where we met up with Shuli and had a few drinks and some snacks. Upon arriving back at the airport two hours ahead of our new flight, we found the airport completely locked down (with vague descriptions of a “security issue”). After standing in line behind hundreds of other travelers, we finally made it through and boarded the plane only to sit on tarmac for an hour and a half before finally taking off and heading to New Orleans.
Having lost an entire day to travel woes, we tried to pack as much as we could into Saturday. We had breakfast at Café du Monde (arriving for Beignets just minutes before a huge tour group). We had excellent cajun at Mulates. We took pictures in the French Quarter, wandering around Jackson Square, Bourbon and Royal streets, and spent a lot of time watching trains and street cars near Woldenberg Park. After some time in the Quarter, we drove south into Bayou Segnette and Barataria Preserve for some time away from the bustle of the city.
A day and a half obviously ended up being too short to feel like we weren’t rushing everywhere, but it was still enjoyable. Compared to the near-freezing temperatures we left behind in the northeast, the immensely sunny upper-70s weather we got in New Orleans was a nice change. Flying back last night, we got to Providence at midnight, and I hit the road for the three hour drive home to be ready for class in the morning.
I’ll post some of the video clips I was able to capture with the D90 soon, but for now there are some photos and one video from the trip on Flickr: New Orleans, Fall, 2008.