After my two-week road trip to Florida, the purchase of our new Canon DSLR, building a new PC for Caroline, and trying to finish writing my travel journal detailing the cross-country drive, it seems as though I have had little time to dedicate to doing much more than posting my POTD here on my site. – (The photo above is from a back road in Lousiana on the way to Mississippi near the banks of the Atchafalaya River)
Maybe it’s aging, but making my way from the West to the East Coast on a slow crawl over farm roads, country roads, and minor highways, the recovery is similar to finishing a demanding book read to fast.
I thought we were having a problem with the new camera last night, which required me to return to Foto Forum for more of Joe’s excellent help. Turns out my lens is not as defective as I thought, nor does the clean sensor work simply by selecting it. Joe showed me that a piece of dust had penetrated the inner sanctum of the body and had lodged itself on the image sensor, normal, I am told. A puff from a Hakuba Super Blower bulb from Joe’s expert hand and the camera is back to perfection.
For my $9 purchase, Joe invested more than a couple of hours walking me through various lens configurations familiarizing me with the why and why not of particular choices in choosing our next lens.
While Joe and I go through the motions, a gentleman on my right excuses himself and enters our conversation; he is Hal Byron Becker. Mr. Becker was a programmer before what he claims is retirement; he is now a professional photographer although I think he may not agree with this title, he calls it a hobby. Mr. Becker not only has a tremendous eye for photographing people he has a sharp mind for the intricacies of the dynamics and methodologies of digital photography and raw image manipulation.
If I can continue with my run of good luck, Mr. Becker will share some of his knowledge with me as he has offered to. Along with Joe’s help and the support of his employer, I am more certain today why I have continued to buy photography equipment from Foto Forum for the past six years. Thanks, Joe, Foto Forum, and now Mr. Becker too.
Caroline’s new PC is quietly humming along, so next week, I should be able to finish reconfiguring her old 2.8 GHz P4 with 1GB RAM for myself. After a week of shooting 8MP jpg and the odd raw file, we will, I am certain, be looking at building a 1TB image storage computer within a year.
As for the Florida travelogue, I am on my 33rd unedited page with a little more than three days of the trip left to write about. Over the 15 days and 5,988 miles, I shot 1,546 photos, which I will begin posting as soon as the story is finished being edited.
From last year, I am going to make another pass over the text of a trip Caroline and I took with our friend Jay Patel from Phoenix to the Tetons, Yellowstone, Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, and New Mexico. We shot almost 1,900 photos, and I hope to glean two to three hundred of the best for the story.
In a bit more than a week, I will turn 42 years old; I don’t know that I could be any happier. It is a great time of life right now – wow!
As for blog direction, if you have stumbled across this hodgepodge site, it is not necessarily for you; it is for me, it is for my wife, it is for my friends and family who might have more of an interest in my mundane life than someone looking for great blog journalism.
Last note, this photo of the day is getting much more difficult as the days go on. How many restaurants, cat photos, Caroline and John photos can I shoot?