365 days of photography

I said I didn't want a camera. We really can't afford the expense. But The Wife and The Kid decided there was too much profit in co-opting me with a gift they knew I couldn't refuse. I can be bought. I admit it.

So today the UPS guys delivered a Nikon D-5000 camera body with Sigma 18-50 and 70-300 motorized lenses, tripod, filters, extra battery and on and on. The Wife picked this package out on her own. And she's justifiably proud of the results of her shopping journey. I've certainly got no complaint.

It has been a long, long time since I've used a real camera. The Wife's point-and-shoot camera is quite satisfactory for snapshots. Fits in a pocket. Always at the ready. The camera on my Blackberry has the immense advantage of being connected to the Internet. The image quality is poor at best but the immediacy is invaluable. And I like that images are geo-tagged automatically.

But there's just nothing like a real camera. I studied photography at Los Angeles Valley College and the University of Southern California back in the day. My first newspaper jobs combined photography, darkroom and reporting. I consider myself a journeyman. More than that, I enjoy it. It's something I can do. Something I think I do well.

This is my fourth digital camera. The first was a 1.2 megapixel Olympus with a fixed telephoto lens. I think I paid $1,200 for that camera. That's when I started Digital Art Desktops and learned the joys of Photoshop. Over the next several years I went through a pair of Canon Rebels. When The Kid played competitive soccer I spent hours processing shots from games and then posting them so parents could get reprints at Shutterfly. In 2004, The Kid, The Wife and I traveled to Italy for a two-week soccer vacation. I was the unofficial photographer, capturing everything and working late into the night to post the day's events on a website I created so the parents who couldn't come along could watch. A copy of the site is still online here.

And then The Kid stopped playing soccer and my reason for picking up the camera stopped too.
I couldn't see myself going back to arty photography. There just seemed no point. Suddenly snapshots on The Wife's pocket camera were good enough.

Now I wonder if it might be useful to try my hand again at photography for photography sake. I mean I've got to at least try to make this gift appear valuable enough to cover the expense. I owe it to The Wife.

I've also got some mad Photoshop and Illustrator skills that I'd like to keep exercising just to stay in shape.

Here's Day 1 photo:


One of the things you just can't do with a point-and-shoot camera is compress a scene the way you can with a telephoto lens. This is Cardiel. Over the next 364 days I'm going to try to limit the number of cat pics. It will be a test of the project: See stuff. Capture stuff. Most of all, I will be after the light.