Good news, bad news

Today has been a day of ups and downs. Yesterday my computer went into the shop because of the (possibility) of a hard drive failure. This possibility became a truth. One of my 500 gb drive failed -- catastrophically, no less -- and will no longer spin up. Good news is, I moved my music collection (some 350 gb) onto a backup drive. Bad news: I think that it may have taken my previous photos with it. Some six months worth or so. I find out tomorrow, most likely, after the backup drive is installed and fully functional. The new drive will do just that as well -- back up everything.

More bad news is that my D200 is screwed. Today (and tomorrow) have not been good days for myself and technology. So it's off for repair and will probably arrive back in around four to six weeks. Until is does get back, I'll have to use the D60 that I used to use. It's a serious downgrade from the 200, but I guess that it'll have to do. I see no other solution, short of buying another body of good quality to tide myself over, and I don't have the cash to do that. So it goes.
The good news is that I found a place that I'd be interested in going to school at. It's called the School of the Photographic Arts: Ontario. The stuff that they do really appeals to me, and I think that I could learn a lot from them. I'll start to put together something to call a portfolio from what I have left, as well as start throwing in actual film prints and the likes. I'll also get the old medium format camera that's been sitting in my basement cleaned up and start teaching myself how to use that -- first year is primarily black and whites using medium format cameras, something that appeals to me greatly. I also need to look into view cameras. I want to learn, in time, developing glass plates. Nowadays, view cameras use film, but I would love to learn the development process of glass plates. It's an old art, highly toxic, and very interesting.

Oh well, knuckle down, drive through it. Let's see what tomorrow brings

Running dogs

Yesterday I got to shoot something new: running greyhounds. I wish that I did have lenses that were faster than my current ones, not to mention longer, but one works to the best of their own ability with the given equipment.

During the shoot, I used the continuous high-speed shutter release for the first time in a number of weeks -- not because I wanted to, more because I had to. Out of the two-hundred or so which came out of the run, there were about seven or eight which I think were passable, with the others being relatively bland in my opinion. For such occasions, an ideal lens would be a 200-400 with a large aperture. I was using a 55-200 at f5.6. All things considered, it was a very successful evening. The light was pretty good, and shooting on aperture priority allowed me to think more about what I was seeing. As much as I like the control of full manual, sometimes aperture is more useful. I think that I would like to borrow a better lens before the next run next weekend to do what I can with it.

Other than that, I also need to look into throwing a website together, registering with the Canadian Government as a new business, get some cards printed, establish myself, look into the possibility of setting up a show someday... There's too much to do. So it goes. On the bright side, I no longer need to worry about school work, so that's one big plus right there. Baby steps, baby steps...

A Beginning

Well, this is one beginning. A first step onto the internet, hopefully to be followed by many more.

To say a brief bit about myself, I go by the name Grey, I am highly interested in photography. Although I am starting out, I feel confident in my skills as a photographer. I shoot with a Nikon D200 and, occasionally, with a Nikon FM2. I use a few different lenses in various sizes, and prefer to rely on natural lighting and my own ability to manipulate said light than relying on speed lights, flashbulbs, or hot lights. I only use a 50mm lens with the FM2. I do little to no post-processing, and prefer shooting in greyscale to shooting full colour.

My interest in shooting stems mainly from my father -- an artist and former senior designer at a number of museums located in Ottawa. My love of the arts has also driven me to take up photography, as it allows me to communicate my ideas in more than simply words.

I enjoy shooting contrasts between natural and manufactured objects, isolations and general nature. I am, however, looking to expand my repertoire to cover many more subjects.