Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Stock Photography

Covered Stairs
Minneapolis.

I've been trying to sort through my pictures to find the decent shots. It's been taking a while. There are so many photos, that I'm a bit daunted. I took just short of four hundred pictures that need to be viewed, approved and made public in my photo stream.

That doesn't include the pictures of Scotland.

It's one of the few things I've been really procrastinating about. I know that people are interested, but I don't want to overwhelm them (nor underwhelm them - they need to be the best of the best). I think there are a few decent pictures in there. A majority of them have some decent elements in them, but perhaps need to be cropped correctly.

Here's the one major complaint I have about the camera that I used on recent travels[1]: the optical viewfinder is an asymmetrical cropping of what the lens sees. This really has ticked my off in the final evaluation of photos. Many that I thought were centered have a slight (like the one above) to seriously noticeable asymmetry.

This has created one of the major sources of procrastination: I don't really want to post-process my photos. If they didn't turn out well, then they get dropped into the archive.

It's also created a desire to drop some more cash on a new camera. I really would like to get a nice[2] SLR camera, with a set of lenses for varied zoom levels. I would like to be able to take more intimate photos while shooting street scenes, or at gathers. It seems to be the best way to capture natural emotions if the subject doesn't know that you're shooting them.

I could probably get by just with learning how to shoot around this particular camera's idiosyncrasies, but why "get by" when I could do it right? Or is it just throwing money at a problem?

[1] The Canon SD450. It a great camera for point and shoot, really.

[2] Digital, but not too expensive. I don't ask for much, really...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Nikon D50 dude... you know you want it...
Fast
smaller than D70
great battery life
FAST
has beautiful out of the box pictures - unlike the D70 which shines in the raw mode but requires additional modifications. based on your laziness to recrop your canon photos, this is a definite plus
FAST!
and finally, we could borrow each others lenses!! :)