On Focus Photo Blog

Hi! Did you miss me?

So… yeah. I will just come right out and state the obvious: I stopped posting. I will have to change the tagline to something more appropriate, like “updated when I feel like it.” After all those festivals, I misplaced my inspiration.

But my new camera? It is awesome. Then it snowed, which is sort of difficult to wrap my head around here in Seattle, because we’re on almost a full week of snow. I’ve taken a few photos in the cold and it is a super fun time. Maybe I should post some of those. However. I soon discovered I needed Photoshop CS4 to interpret the RAW files from the D700, and I don’t own that software yet. Put a wee crimp in my style.

Then for Christmas my husband gave me his present early: Strobist Lighting Seminar DVDs. And lately I’ve been reading this: HDR: An Introduction to High Dynamic Range Photography. I decided I needed to add some technique to my bag of my tricks. And maybe a monitor. My monitor is… good at word processing.

So, no promises, no pressure, but if you haven’t already you should add me to your RSS feed reader. Eventually I’ll get my act together, but it’ll probably be less scheduled than before. And maybe I’ll change the design if it doesn’t break everything. But let’s not get too crazy yet — need to feed the Google monster.

I apologize for the sporadic posts. I just haven’t been too inspired to take photos — so I decided to do something about it. I bought a new Nikon camera body and it should arrive tomorrow.

I’m very excited to own this particular model and I can already feel myself looking at the world differently again. By that I mean, when I’m not actively looking for shots I tend to walk around head down, not noticing my surroundings. It is a waste of eyeballs. But when I have that camera in reach and I seek out scenes to capture, it’s a different experience. I frame whatever I’m seeing mentally, I calculate the exposure I would like to try, I imagine what it would look like after a color boost in PhotoShop or with a specific filter.

To me, cameras are a way to focus on a world outside my head. Does that make sense? Sometimes the strain of seeing the world that way is too much, and I reject it. Like when I’m on vacation, where the unfamiliar heightens perception in a totally different way and it can be overwhelming. Sometimes I HAVE to put the camera down and just experience life already. But when I’m in a rut, able to predict my movements to work and from work, to bed and to the bus, I need something like this camera to remind me how unimportant my routine is against the bigger backdrop. Then I want everyone else to see exactly what I see. Apparently I am a photo-exhibitionist. Is there such a thing?

Well, that was long-winded.

All of this is to say, I am excited to announce that tomorrow I should be receiving my Nikon D700. If that’s an unfamilar model then let me just say this camera is very very fancy and a huge upgrade to my Nikon D70. I am looking forward to what we can make together.

I shot this odd cloud formation over Santa Barbara, CA. I believe it is an exhaust trail from something launched at the fairly close Air Force base.