quaking aspen

And, oh, the joy that it is. Happy birthday to me.

Got the camera. Got the camera. Got the camera!


And of course the kiddos love it. The boy got a hold of it the other day and took these (and about a hundred others):


It is now so easy to take lots of photos. Lots of crappy photos, sometimes, but hey, that ups the chances of getting some good ones, right? Here's the very first one:


Surprises:

• The photos it takes are 4x6, not 4x5.3 like I've gotten used to. Wild.
• I've figured out how to rename the photos using Photoshop Elements, in order to have the date in the file name, which I love; I'm still working on a good method for the files. When you take more than 100 photos every day just the one monthly folder doesn't really cut it. Thank goodness for the PSE organizer and tag system -- I would be lost without it.
• I also must work on culling. Just because I can take so many more photos doesn't mean I should keep all of them. But bless you, digital.
  

I tell you, having a real camera (though I must point out that newer digital point and shoots than ours don't have quite as bad of shutter lag, I recently found out trying somebody else's camera) and not having to be fighting the thing the whole time just to get it to take the darn shot: it really does suddenly highlight all you need to learn, about lighting, composition, all that jazz. It's true that YOU and not your camera makes the picture. The trying of it is so much less frustrating though, I now have the patience to deal with learning what I need to.

Other favs:





I was trying to do the joke, y'know, zoom in on the nose hairs thing (don't you do that whenever you play with something that has zoom? um... never mind...), but then look -- look at the shallow depth of field thing, my nose in focus, my eyes a bit blurry. It's so awesome... I can tell I'm going to have a lot of fun with that in particular, like this:



Do I have all I could ever want now? Yeah right. Even just regarding the camera, I'd already like an extra flash (the kids already squint when I raise the camera, whatever will they do then?), more zoom please, and so on.... But am I happy? HECK YEAH. I have so much to learn, and I'm so excited, even about that.

How could I not be, with something that lets me get this so easily?

Posted by falwyn on Friday, September 22, 2006 at 10:18 PM | Permalink