Photography

I think I was in middle school when I received my first camera.  It was one of the kind where you had to buy the flash separately.  You also had to buy film and had to know which speed of film you wanted for what kind of pictures.

When you took a picture, you had no idea if it was good or not.  You didn't want to "waste" your film on unnecessary pictures because when you were done shooting the roll, you had to take it somewhere to get developed.  It would take a few days or a week to get the pictures back.

If you wanted to share your pictures, you would need to get double copies.  And if you were going on vacation and planned to take lots of pictures, you had to bring extra rolls of film.

Today with our digital cameras, we can see what our picture looks like instantly and take another one if the first didn't turn out to our liking.  We can take as many pictures as our memory cards can hold, which is a lot.  We don't have to worry about developing them.  We can just upload them to our computers.

Sharing our pictures is very easy, with many different ways to accomplish that.  Also, if are photos aren't picture perfect, we can edit them in different software programs to make them better.

What this means for an artist, and I'll speak for myself here, is that we can take lots of photos of the things that inspire us and have them right at our fingertips (no shoebox to get out and sort through).

What that means for you, is that I get to torture you one more day with some last pictures from our trip to San Diego.  The few I've showed you is a very small percentage of the number of pictures I took.  Someday, they will get sorted into my electronic files by category (i.e. flowers, trees, landscapes, animals, etc.).  Then, when I need a little inspiration, I can find them.

How do you use your camera?  Do you take as many pictures as I do?

Also, does anyone know what type of plant this is in the first picture with the holes in the leaves?