Monday

I haven't mentioned this yet, but I got an exciting new camera for by birthday. I've finally graduated to a pretty adult digital SLR, and can now be expected to capture images of a scientific quality equal to that of more serious photographers. I'll still be producing the same old artistic quality as before, of course--no snazzy new camera can change the idiosyncrasies of my eye. But the ability to trap, and to manipulate, light is now more squarely under my control. It's a little daunting, and I think I owe it to this new mature photographic tool to learn a lot more about the process than I already know. It's also daunting because I'm so far behind on the production of images I've already taken with my old camera. Looking at the website, I see that I haven't uploaded new pictures in forever. I still have some from last Christmas to finish, alas, before I'm finally caught up to the current year. This might make it seem like I don't use my camera all that often, but that's just not so: I'm so many thousands of frames behind in my photo projects that I don't expect to be showing any evidence of my new birthday present for a long time to come. While that gives me a comfortably long time to learn how to use this new birthday present, I'd be more satisfied if I could start showing off, for better or worse, right away. All of this reminds me that I did upload a new half-baked movie this weekend. It's from Cambodia and can be seen here. The only drawback about my new camera is that it lacks a video function. It's a mature photographic tool, after all, disdaining the gimmickry of single-lens reflex mpegs. [Cavin]