More gear for the weary photographer traveller

I already have 3 trips to Europe scheduled for Q1 and managed to slot in a few extra days here and there for photo shoots and sight-seeing.

In prep I used up some membership points, got myself some gift cards to Amazon and upgraded my bag and added a monopod. Being delivered next week will be a Lowepro Vertex 100 AW Backpack ($180), Manfrotto 680B Monopod ($55) with a Manfrotto 486RC2 Compact Ball Head with RC2 Rapid Connect System ($70).

I'm toying with the idea that I might be able to take all of my lenses along now as well as my laptop for work (which is essential). We'll see when the gear comes how everything fits together.

Happy New Year

I reaped a fine amount of booty this holiday season, "aahhrrr!" Some of it photog related. The best (that doesn't attach to a camera) was from my girlfriend who got me a copy of Scott Kelby's latest book on Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2. I'm only a tenth of the way into the book but it already has rewarded me with some good tips on Lightroom. I'd recommend it for those just starting out. I've only got about 1-1/2 years of Lightroom experience and most of it is fairly rudimentary.

The remainder of my holiday break has been to complete my summary of work titled Retrospective 2008. I'm preparing a set of large format 2009 annual calendars and a book using Blurb's BookSmart software for friends and family. Hope to have it all complete in January. If you're a close friend you might get one free. Links will be posted here once they are available for purchase.

It has been an immense amount of work and I will be changing how and when I post process images for 2009. To give you some flavor of the task, in 2008 I shot approximately 7700 images totaling over 45 Gbytes. All of that boiled down to a set of acceptable images for print of exactly 549 images totaling 2.89 Gbytes. Of those only a smaller amount will make it to print of course as I further refine and select for appropriateness.

It is a labor of love because I can expect to actually sell none of it. And in learning Lightroom 2 I also want to return to my 2007 library of images and process them down to a 2007 Retrospective publication. Again another 7200 images and roughly 32 Gbytes. These will be a bit more challenging because I didn't shoot in RAW for most of 2007, and Lightroom treats JPG images different from RAW.

Got the goods!

Picked up the 70-200 f/2.8L this morning. Snapped a few of the wintery weather at our Apple Tree house on my way home. Very happy with this lens. It's performing like new.

Some images from today -->> CLICK

This article was posted on one of my frequented photography forums. It is by no means a great article and isn't meant for the more technically astute photographer (your author included). But it's a good short read as we head into the holiday season full swing and will be snapping away like crazy.

Holiday Lighting Challenges

In other news I bought another Canon XTi body so I can make my best "Asian Tourist" impersonations when out shooting. And I finally managed to score a good deal on a Canon EF 70-200 f/2.8L and will be picking it up tomorrow. Having rented this lens during the summer I am anxious to add it to my bag. Come to think of it I might need a bigger bag and a better tripod. :rolls eyes: $$$$$ My little way of helping stimulate the economy. ;)

How diverse are your artistic tastes?

Not as diverse as mine I would guess.

"Uuh! Let me see you shake in your boots! Come back to the old school...back to your roots!"

$20.00 to anyone who can correctly identify where this quote comes from. Hint: it's from a musical piece. And using Google won't identify the correct source.