7-29-02

Just minutes into the digital era...

 (my own, that is, with the Nikon Coolpix 4500), here are a few pics taken minutes ago around the house.  It's going to take me a while to figure this thing out, but I think I've got the motivation: it's like a mini-computer but it can do so many things!  And no expensive runs to the lab for developing!  

The pic at left is of my... er, command center.  As Ben noted, the picture makes it look more cluttered than it actually is, but everything's within arm's reach, and if you note the chair, you can see how I manage to stay here for hours at a time, keyboard-on-lap.  Once, scrounging under the cushions, I even found two crumpled $50 bills--not bad for a chair donated to me when it failed to make the grade at a garage sale.

Our soft-sided pool in the backyard, beside the Mexican sage and mallow (at left.)  Somehow the perceptions are deceiving.  Once you step inside the pool, it seems much bigger than it does from just outside, and it gives us plenty of room for exercise or, in the boys' case, choppy seas, diving and general horseplay.

I went around snapping at random--different lighting situations, varying focal distances, but this picture of a sunflower really wowed me.  The resolution was only 72 dpi but the pictures are huge and crystal clear.  It seems weird to be focusing through the little monitor and not a viewfinder, but I'm sure I'll adapt.

A few hours later...

Having read through parts of the manual (as much as I could take before my mind started to twist into little knots), and having eaten and taken a dip in the pool, I headed outside again to try for a few more pics.  Just before sunset I hopped into the truck and drove south of town (toward the ocean) to get a few shots of an old building I'd noted on a drive some weeks ago.

Mexican sage and mallow in the back yard.  The larger originals of these pictures are amazingly clear and the colors very vivid.  There's almost a quality of transparency to them, as if they were being lit from behind.  I'm quite impressed.

The lighting is very true, too.  This scene actually looked like this when I took the picture.  The hill on the left lies at the edge of the CSUCI campus.  A campus photo tour can be reached from the MyWorld page.

This is the old farmhouse I'd driven by one day and decided to come back and photograph.  The light was failing, but again, it actually was pretty close to this color.  Part of my shadow is at lower left.  Now it's back to reading more of the camera manual!

The next morning (7-30-02)...

Research into the capabilities of this camera is continuing.  I've discovered that I really miss the 100-300 zoom lens I have on my Canon 35mm, because I tend to be a medium-range photographer--I don't generally do either macros or those really long-range panoramic shots but something in between, and the 300mm brought those details I was interested in very close.  But I'm also finding that I have a kind of default macro capability with this camera after the fact, where I can crop things way down once I'm in Photoshop and still have good resolution. Opens up a whole new range of possibilities, as you can see below:

Detail of my back fountain.  I liked the ripple pattern.  Those reddish-brown areas you see are roots; my willow tree is very thirsty and I allow it this indulgence to keep it from wandering under the house in search of a place to break into my plumbing.

Windspinner in the back yard.  I'd thought the lighter areas would be more washed out than this because of the severe contrast, but they held up well.

Detail of two morning glories on the fence.  This was one of those pictures I cropped way down.  Gives a bit of a Georgia O'Keefe feel.

Blossom of the very drought-tolerant rock rose.  This particular variety is the only one I've seen growing wild, which it does in the open country east of San Diego.