life, photography, and everything else

Art scares me a little.  Actually, it scares me a lot.  I’m kinda strange so I like strange things, but art makes my skin crawl sometimes.  I still hesitate to call myself an artist, that hallowed title.  I say it sometimes, though, because I want to get used to how it feels in my mouth, how it sounds.  I’m still not used to it.  Most of the time I feel a bit of a hack carrying around a couple cameras and making people do crazy things my brain comes up with.  It’s my brain, and it’s not me.  A sort of detachment, I guess.

I like to be in control of what I create.  It helps me when things make sense and art’s just not like that.  Sometimes, when I visit art museums with friends and we look at all those paintings, they comment about what they think and technical aspects and historical backgrounds, and I just kind of slink to the background nodding my head in appreciation, furrowing my brows in vain frustration to understand.  All I see are a bunch of lines.  What’s so special about that?

It’s a journey for me.  This is probably unprofessional and some professional photographer is reading this post with professional criticism shaking their professional head at my naivete.  If they visit this at all.  But I thought I should let you know.

I was never good at this business thing anyway.  I just like taking pictures because I don’t have the patience to paint and words don’t string together so well for me on paper.  I don’t have an art background, I was a philosophy major in college (sucked at it) and basically googled my way to learning photography.  At least that’s my excuse.  The truth of the matter is, I’m kind of a strange guy, and I just like strange things.

Kimmie, I know you’ve been waiting for this one.  Barb and Lindsey, too.  There were so many photos I wanted to feature on my blog and it was nearly impossible to pick.  It was a beautiful wedding, and an even more beautiful couple.  I can’t say enough about you guys- so full of life and kindness for others.  I count myself blessed and privileged to be a small part of your day.

All the India pictures were taken with the “compact” canon G9.

This is not a DSLR, but it’s built like a tank and take pictures flawlessly.  There were some noticeable grain issues at high iso’s as you can tell, but I won’t go into that.  You can read plenty of articles with a simple google search for the Canon G9′s performance.

I ended up selling this awesome camera after I got back from India, but recently I’ve missed having a compact to carry around with me everywhere.  My blackberry has a decent camera for tweeting but I’d much rather have a dedicated compact for those once in a life time photos.

Meet the Canon S90.  Younger sibling to the G11, I was so impressed by the performance reviews that I decided to invest in one.  If the G9 is a tank, then this little hell raiser is mechanized infantry.  I’ve taken a handful of photos with this and am happy with its results so far.

Remember everybody, it’s not the camera that makes the photographer.  It’s the photographer… that makes the photographer.  That doesn’t sound right.  Let me work on that quote and get back to you.