Well, it seems I haven’t posted in nearly 3 weeks. Honestly, there’s been very little to report and I think after Holidailies 2006, I was sort of sick of posting. The only thing blog-worthy would be the change in my job situation - nothing bad, but all very good. I’m moving to another area of IT - development (.NET specifically).

Beyond that, there’s really little going on. Photography has taken a bit of a backseat as I am really not a fan of the cold (30F is fine - 15F isn’t). It is hard for me to voluntarily go outside. I did hear of a show at the High Falls Gallery where I can show up to 3 ready to hang works. The cost of printing and framing the works won’t be cheap but I could potentially sell the prints.

I also met with my first “clients” - a couple from Florida whose wedding I’ll be shooting. We walked around the venue (Crowne Plaza) and I got a good idea about what shots I’d like and the lighting.  I have realized that the 70-200mm f/2.8L IS lens that I’ve longed for will have to wait and I’ll be renting the lens instead.

With owning a Digital Rebel, and a few other Canon dSLRs, you unfortunately get what is called the “crop factor”. Basically, the sensor (”Film”) inside the camera is not a standard 35mm - it smaller - “cropped” if you will. This has a benefit or two. One, a crop-camera (aka: crop body) does not see the absolute corners of a lens due to the crop factor. This can be a good thing as some lenses display a very visible lack of contrast/resolution/light fall-off known as vignetting on the corners. The result is an image with darkened corners (I kinda like the look). The second benefit is that it makes your lenses a bit longer - great for telephotos. Due to the crop factor (1.6x on a handful of Canon dSLRs) you basically take the lens focal length - 24-70mm for example and multiply the wide and the long end by 1.6.

24 * 1.6 = 38.4 and 70 * 1.6 = 112

So in theory my 24-70 is actually a 38-112. Not terribly awful, except the wide end is no longer that wide. Crop bodies tend to make a usuable focal ranges into kinda strange ones. A range of 24-70 on a 35mm camera (Or a Canon 5D - full frame dSLR) is actually a great range as it is both wide and can do portrait work.

So, to get a really “wide” lens, one that I’ve been craving for months and months I picked up one of these:

Now this is one wide lens. On the Rebel XT it is the equivalent of a 16-35mm lens - nice and wide. I took a slew of pictures with it over the weekend I’m looking to get them up soon.

Also, we are currently training for the Lilac 10k - not a huge race, but it is a goal that both of us feel is very attainable and with that goal has come a lot of motivation to run - feels good to be working out again

I am late with this post, and Holidailies is officially over. I hit a speed bump in the “motivation highway”, hence no posts for awhile. Now then, onto a rundown of 2006…

2006 opened with a bang, and a massive credit card bill - I purchased a Canon Digital Rebel XT, Canon 28-105mm USM lens, Lowepro Bag and a slew of other “essentials” for my trip through photography. The choice to buy was difficult. Difficult until I realized I was days away from the expiration date of Canon’s then “Triple Rebates” - I snagged myself a $170 rebate check in early February. And so I started photographing…everything. I think by year’s end, the little shutter on my trusty rebel must of snapped open and closed roughly 3,000 times. Divide that by 12 and you have 250 photos a month and roughly 8 photos per day. Impressive says I *toots own horn*.

We traveled this year - Denver in Feb ‘06, Denver/San Fran in August ‘06. A word to the wise: spend more than 4 days in San Francisco…trust me on this.

Our lives came closer as we decided to get a townhouse together and give living together a go. It has been a time of learning and growing - a wonderful experience.

A hobby turned into a passion as I grew with my new (and out grew) camera equipment. After weeks of mental stress, I again racked up the rewards points with the purchase of a coveted Canon “L” lens. Concerns about the cost drifted away as I was greeted with wonderful photos requiring little, if any post-production - I was now hooked on L-glass.

2006’s theme for me personally, was photography and growth. Growth is always a nice thing to do for yourself and I plan on kicking it up a notch or two for 2007…improvements of mind, body and soul.

Happy New Year!