Ahhhh, how I love pictures

My history with photography pretty much begins with the birth of Hallie, my first child. While pregnant I realized that I didn't have a camera. As I went through my mental check list of all things necessary to birth a baby (and bring one home) I realized that this whole new adventure could not begin without something to catalog it.

So, I climbed in my car and drove to the local camera store, walked in and said I needed a good camera. This was a long time ago and choices were not any where near as extensive as they are today. But there upon the wall were all sorts of cameras. How good, I was asked? Was I using it professionally, or personally?

I explained that while it was going to be a hobby camera, I was very much interested in quality. I had watched how the Polaroids my father had taken of us kids had dimmed with age, and my desire to provide my own child with a photo album of her childhood existed quite strongly because there was no such catalog of my own. (Boo hoo, I know!)

So my first camera was pretty impressive -- a Pentax something or other, and I walked out of the store with a regular and a telephoto lense, and once I started taking pictures for work, at the newspaper, I of course needed a wide-angle lense and an assortment of gels. And I took a LOT of pictures. Mostly of Hallie in the beginning, but then I branched out and started to discover how much fun taking pictures was. I found cost-cutting measures by sending my enlargements to this company via mail -- and I still have a lot of envelopes around with 8 X 10's in them I never used. My walls were covered in pictures (and still are).

Maddie wanted to see if the camera could catch water in the air. I would say, since this was my first shot, that indeed it does.

As the years went on and digital photography began its infancy, I was right there. I remember scorning my clunky Pentax for the digital camera I had purchased through the newspaper. Oh, the thought of not having to rush to the 1-hour photo store to have prints developed quickly so they could get into the next issue. What joy to pop out a floppy disk from the camera and insert that into the computer and receive instant gratification! I was hooked. And digital photography went from the crazy, slow Model T's to what there is today fairly quickly. So quickly, it was hard to buy a new camera for as soon as you did, a better model (for the same price) came out weeks later. And then with software and the ability to print your own prints -- Oh, it was so incredible. But then I just got sick of carrying around a heavy camera. And since the point and shoots were getting better all the time, I decided to get one.

I am pretty sure that I have done a blog on my journey with small, digital, point-and-shoot cameras. Because I have had a boatload of them. And when I called to complain that my like third camera had died, I was asked how frequently I used it. When I said daily, the person freaked and said that those cameras were not made for that kind of use! They were made for "going to Disney for a week then going back into a drawer until next year," type use.

Oh. Well, I didn't know. I didn't know that everyone didn't take a lot of pictures, sort of kind of everyday. So when my latest, not-that-expensive camera had a flash that died, I figured it was time to get back to "real" photography. No more easy peasy point and shoot. It is time to get

back to settings and gels and multiple serious lenses. And OHMYGOD what a difference. I had no idea what I was giving up in quality with those other cameras. NO IDEA! I'd let all this technology get ahead of me (there was quite a span where "good" cameras did not come digital, and once you even taste digital, it is not even possible to go back to film!) So for my birthday I got a camera, and I am loving every minute of it. Oh the clarity! The pictures that I have taken, for the most part, were taken on Lake Sunapee on Sunday, when the wildfire smoke from Canada had blown in. It seems as though it is hazy out, but it is really smoke.

As I rode in the boat, I became obsessed with the beauty of the wake splashing up in the sunlight. I attempted to capture it, and didn't, really, but sometimes it is just fun to experiment. We drove around the lake and I took a bunch of pictures of Peter's projects, and I felt like paparazzi with my long lense attached to my eyeball!

The first night I had the camera I was delivered a most amazing sunset from the universe.

I of course took like a 100, but these are quite representative of it.

I will say this -- Blogger sucks when dealing with pictures. I am thinking I might look around for something else to use, because I get SO frustrated. Like right now I can't get past this bottom picture. The text just WILL NOT go there. I have another picture to get in, but it won't let me. This is why I rarely blog with pictures, because it is such a bitch. I go to blogs that have loads of pictures and think wow, how can they deal with so many. Obviously it must be easier.

How did I get by it? By moving the picture. What a waste of time!

I end with my final photo, one I call "Summer."