New Toy

Before I started this blog, I took a lot of photos. Most of them I took for the normal reasons, but there were a lot that I took so that I could paint them. When taking reference photos for painting, it’s the form and the colors and the light that are important; focus, depth of field, composition, etc are less important, because you can change all that when you paint the scene. Photography skills aren't very important. My camera stayed on "auto".

When I started this blog, I began to see the need for better photos. So I dusted off my old photography books and bought some new (i.e., digital) ones. I took the camera off “auto” and began to re-learn about f-stops and white balance and depth of field. I knew that one day I’d trade in my trusty 5-year-old Fuji bridge camera for a DSLR. First, though, I decided to learn all I could with the Fuji and to keep it till I had learned enough to need more than the Fuji could do.

Last week I decided that the time had come. I had done a lot of research, decided what I wanted, and VOILA!

It's a Nikon D90. I have to note that I’ve had a really hard time taking a good photo of it with the Fuji. I’m trying hard to ignore the nagging thought that the Fuji is jealous of the Nikon. My early training as a Psychologist is not serving me well here, I’m thinking.

Needless to say, I’ve spent all my free time snapping away, trying to learn how to transfer what I learned from the Fuji to the Nikon. LOL, it reminds me of when I was younger and got the chance to drive a Lambourghini from one side of town to another. I got in it, put it in gear, and popped the clutch. YOWZA! I was not prepared for that kind of power....

The Nikon is a little bit like that. It can do amazing things, if only I knew how. So I’ve been taking photos of everything in sight. I thought I’d share some of them with you. Kind of like vacation photos, but I never left home.

This is our friend Etienne. He’s a photographer who lives in Paris. He spent a day here with Dan taking photos. (Did I tell you that Dan is a sometime model? Maybe I didn’t.)

I spent some time with them, learning what I could from Etienne, who was very generous with his time and expertise. While he was taking photos of Dan, I was taking photos of him, playing with the settings on the new camera and trying to learn how to change them quickly to capture what I wanted. Needless to say, I’m having to upgrade my photoshop skills at the same time. My head is spinning. But in a good way.

Here are a few of the several hundred that I took. No, let me re-phrase that--here are the few that are presentable out of the several hundred that I took:

Here's Etienne looking at his camera--I love the expression in this one.

Here they're working on the terrace of an old chateau:

This is my favorite one of Etienne, directing a shot:

Finally, here’s my sweetie, looking pensive:

And here he is looking at me.