Photography is an art. It's also a science. Photography is a way of seeing the world, and a way of hiding from it.
Photography is a way of recording life, though if you're not careful it will pass by as you watch in the viewfinder.
Lately I'm quite fond of Canon gear. I shoot exclusively digital anymore, and haven't touched film in probably five years (this being 2004). Shown on the right is my progression in digital cameras. I started with a Kodak DC120 in 1998. I paid a whopping $400 for this camera, and it was a refurb! 1.2 Megapixels, and it was the absolute coolest thing I ever owned. Then came the Olympus E10. I bought this in 1991, thus setting up my "Three-year digital camera lifespan" theory. 4.0 MP, a cool $2000. In September 2002 I the Fujifilm Finepix 2600 Zoom for my birthday as a camera to bring places the E10 just wouldn't go (like amusement parks). It was 2.0 MP. In 2004 I bought the excellent Canon s410 to replace the Fuji. 4.0 MP and substantially better picture quality and features. In August of 2004 I bought a Canon 10D (6MP, 1.6x crop) and then quickly upgraded to the Canon 1D Mark II. The Mark II is the state-of-the art Canon Digital SLR as of this writing, and weighs in at 8.2 MP (1.3x crop), has a 40 frame jpg buffer (20 RAW), and shoots an amazing 8+ frames per second.
The lenses in my arsenal currently number only two, but they're big guns. The 24-70 f2.8L is a magnificent lens that took all of the images on this mage. The 70-200 IS 2.8L is also an amazing chunk of (very heavy) glass, and has the near magical ability to stabilize camera shake with the excelent Canon Image Stabilization Technology.
Ever notice this; If you take a great photo and show it to someone, they'll say "That's great! What kind of camera do you have?". If you show the same person a lousy photo they will invariably say "Who took that photo?". Nice huh? Cameras don't take great photos, people do. Or you can use the opposite (and oft-used) argument: When in doubt, blame the gear. :) Now that being said, when I upgraded from the E10 to the 10D, and then the 1D Mark II, I noticed an immediette improvement in my images. The conclusiion I came to was that over the years my skills and knowledge had expanded beyond the capabilities of the E10. The E10 was a fine camera, but limitations like 320 ISO, not being an SLR, extreme depth of field and poor focus had limited my creativity in ways that I had not realized. Suddenly I have a camera with a very useful ISO 1600, and lenses with amazing glass and constant apertures of f2.8!
My advice? If you can afford good gear - buy it. If you're seriously into photography (or any hobby), buying better gear will not go wasted. My Mark II cost a LOT of money, and the lenses weren't cheap either. How do I justify it? With me E10 I took in excess of 15,000 images a year. Imagine what it would cost to develop all that film. It's a hobby I enjoy, and it makes me happy. In my case the high-end gear serves me well.
I don't have any articles on photography that I've written, because I don't consider myself good enough to write any. I also don't have any galleries up, because most of them are of my family, and, well - they're private.
So what do I take pictures of? Well... some people like landscapes. Some like portraits. I like it all. I seem to be drawn to certain things more than others though. For example a friend of mine whom I was traveling through Ireland with pointed out that I always seem to take pictures of doors. Any psychologists out there care to take a stab at that? Of course my kids are my number one subjects, and any old architecture - especially churces, is high on my list. As anyone who's been with me while I have a camera will tell you, I'll stop in the middle of a busy street if something catches my eye.
