on the 5th of april i got my new tamron lens. some technical details can be found here. for the impatient ones, read this: SP AF 17-50mm F/2,8 XR Di II LD Aspherical [IF], with minimum aperture of 32, a minimum object distance of 0.27m, 67mm filter size and it weighs only 430g. ok, enough with the technical specs. the day i got the lens, klaudia (yes, the chick with the horse) and i went to the botanical garden in linz to test it. klaudia and i ordered a lens each at the same shop, so we both were looking forward to test the lenses. it was also the last day that the botanical garden had butterflies in their glass-houses. botanical garden with klaudia, in linz i wanted to try some things out with gimp so i searched my picture archive for old "portraits" of friends. i found some pictures, actually all of them were more or less spontaneous shots with no intention of portrait photography. the one i like most is a picture of nipes. below you can see it, along with a picture of chris. on the left the gimped versions, on the right the original versions. the portraits series coming up next in the "wrapping up the past:"-series: a more professional approach to portrait-photography and kite-surfing with michele (of course in spectator-mode).