I Have a New Toy

I got my first real camera for my tenth birthday. I got a 35mm point and shoot automatic camera and I used it until it finally wound down from old age when I was 18. It's final pictures were of the San Francisco area and they aren't too shabby if I do say so myself. When I turned 17 my Mom gave me a Pentax photographers camera--meaning that I had control over the focus and the fstops and exposure times. I used it to take tons of pictures including one of my friends's Senior Pictures, portraits of my boy, and two years worth of portraits of one of my college buddies who was trying to build up a modelling portfolio to start taking to modelling auditions. I also took tons of nature photos and documented the my junior year of college's entire theater season. If you piled up all of the photos I've taken I'm sure they would collectively weigh at least half of what I weigh now!

I think in pictures. When I look at the world I see it captured on a 4x6 sheet of photo quality paper (or larger). I imagine how the landscape would look in black and white. I am much happier when I am looking at the world through a viewfinder. The camera helps me think. It's weird. I don't know where I go when I take pictures. I seem to go into an alternate universe where I still have control over my movements but my mind is off thinking of other things. I'm not daydreaming, I'm just...elsewhere. Some might say it's medititation, but that's too Ravi Shankar for me. I simply relax and everything that normally bugs me fails to be important.

So today I took the next step in my photographical evolution. I bought a digital camera. I had only intended to price cameras when I walked into Circuit City, but there was a really cool one on sale so I caved and came home with it. The camera I bought is a Nikon Coolpix 3200. It's a 3.2mp, 3x optical/4xdigital zoom with a movie making feature, a self timer and a ton of other cool goodies. I've been playing with it ever since I got home. I've taken shots of the sunset, the fall leaves and one of the neighbor's cat yawning (which is my favorite so far). If you added up the amount of pictures I deleted to the amount that are saved I would have used two and a half rolls of film already. The cost of those rolls plus the development is a good fraction of what I paid for the camera. When I realized that, my buyer's remorse went right out the window.

This camera is going to pay for itself.

I can't wait!