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So almost unexpectedly, I bought a new camera today on eBay. Mostly, I was buying the lens that was being sold with the camera, but at least now I should have some nice, compatible lens/camera combinations. It was a really good deal and its a good camera with two decent lenses – but lets just say this: when I woke up this morning, I didn’t expect to be buying $200 worth of used camera equipment.

oh, and for some reason, my pictures don’t look like art when the are printed 4×6. I’m definitely going to have to see what happens when I print them 8×10 or 13×19. I need to get the paper, but I really want to start playing with the large format printer I have access to.

I didn’t make it, so give me your honest, brutal, and uncensored opinions: http://www.art.unt.edu/NewSite

the more I read about lenses, the more I realize I don’t know.

I know this, though. The lens I have works. Harumph.

So I went and reshot my construction site yesterday, shooting in RAW format instead of JPEG. If you are serious about your photography and intend to print your photos in even a semi-professional way, I have an article that will really convince you why you should be shooting RAW.

Anyway, the only down side to shooting RAW is that I get significantly fewer pictures on the card, about 100 or so, which is just under three rolls of film. That sucks because when I used to go out shooting, I took anywhere from 4 to 7 rolls of film with me. I need another damn card just to keep up. The other down side is now I can’t copy my card to a CD-R 1:1. I have more than a CD-R worth of pictures. So now I’m looking at portable digital image storage devices to see what would be most cost effective.

Heather makes a good point (over ICQ while I type this), I may be getting ahead of myself. If this semester doesn’t go as well as I am optimally hoping that it will, I may not need anything like this anyway, I may go back to just shooting for fun, in which case I won’t need so much storage. I guess I’m just being optomistic, but I think that’s how I should be thinking. I should be saying I ca do this – and that I will be taking a lot more pictures a lot more often. I guess I’ll keep my eye on sales, ebay, amazon, etc for the cheapest alternative I can find. It doesn’t have to be great, it just has to work. I don’t need extra features or anything, I just need it to grab my photos and take them off my card.

So I went out for my first day shooting, today. Not sure if I feel successful or not. I took a lot of photos (150) and I like a bunch of them, but I don’t know if they’re going anywhere. I was looking for a particular location, and when I drove past it, I realized it wasn’t going to be as accessible as I had imagined. I may have to have someone drop me off there and come back and pick me up… either that or I’m just going to have to commit to a longer walk than I had planned on. I also wore shorts because I expected to have to wade in a bit of water, but at the same time, I have to walk through a lot of brush to get to the location. I may just have to look for something similar, in a more acessible spot.

I’m still not sure where I’m going… but I think I can get there with enough pictures. The problem is, if there’s something technical wrong with these, I’d have to go back and re-shoot, and it would seem like the moment would have passed. I dunno. It was about half way through the shoot I realized my camera was on JPEG high, and I think I’d rather have it on RAW high instead. Less compression, which would mean I could blow them up a lot larger. I want to see how big I can get these things. I’m going to print out some contact sheets tonight and see if I feel like they’re worth anything. I think aesthetically, they’re okay… but I don’t know if I feel like they’re exactly what I’m trying to say, but then again, I don’t really know what it is that I really am saying.

The thing is, I want to be ecologically minded and environmentally concious in my work, I want to say something about the fact that we’re eating up our planet in leaps and bounds. But at the same time, the area that I shot today was the site of a future housing development. People need a place to live, right? I live in a housing development, though it was developed in the 60’s – its still a development itself.

So then I started thinking about the new shopping centers that are being developed. There’s a bunch of them around here, as well as down by corwin75 where I’ll be driving later. But again, I like the convenience. I remember how excited I was when they built a Best Buy in town. I’m a walking contradiciton… maybe I need to explore that somehow. I just dont’ know… but then again, thats why I’m taking this class.

We’ll see what happens in a couple weeks.

Posted by: peloquin3 on Buzznet

I really should be asking my mother…
…but what kind of plant/flower is this?

Its the optimizing that takes the longest.

I used to like They Might Be Giants a lot more than I do now.

I’m a little sad about that, but I guess its all part of growing, changing and evolving. That’s not to say that liking They Might Be Giants is childish. Its not, its just I’m a different person. I’m sure other people have grown to like them in the same age brackets as I’ve grown away from them.

Gas boycott day must be a failure, I just waited behind four cars for gas.

Update: My little 15 gallon, 300 miles on a tank car just cost me $44 to fill up. How can people actually buy SUVs?