Happy New Year!

Looking forward to new things in the New Year. Productive writing. Continued health. Welcome changes. What are your resolutions?

New camera

My Dear Husband gave me a wonderful gift for Christmas, and even let me have it a few days early: A new camera! (And he was in the first photo I took with the camera.)

A Nikon D40x -- a digital SLR.

Is it the year of the digital SLR camera? Perhaps.

My sister, my sister-in-law and I all have the same camera now all purchased within the past few months.

It's been years since I used an SLR -- way back before my first digital camera. I think the digital SLRs have finally come down enough in price, and more people are switching over again.

Expect to see lots more photos in the coming months. I burned through at least 500 of them over the holiday weekend (many were instantly deleted because I was just playing). The nice thing about digital SLRs? Pixels and 1s and 0s don't cost money to develop.

So far, my favorite photo I've taken is this one, also of my Dear Husband, this time holding his new nephew:



And here are some runners up:



And of course I had to experiment with some abstract and artsy photos, which are not necessarily my best, but I had fun:



What do you think? Anything here worth saving?

I have a lot of technical things still to figure out on the camera (using lighting better, using the auto focus better, etc.) but that's what classes are for. Wolf camera is nice enough to offer free courses in January. I'll be there.

In the mean time, here are some more photos I like:

Merry Christmas!

I hope Santa brought you nice treats and your stocking was stuffed with everything you could hope for.

Do your worst

Interesting article on Perfectionism in the New York Times. Two sentences that I like from near the end:

Allow yourself a set number of tries to finish a job; then turn in what you have.

The British have a saying that encourages people to show their skills while mocking the universal fear of failure: Do your worst.