The photography.
In a word, I love it, and hope that the photos speak to that. For the most part I like to take pictures of things that don't move, at least very quickly. Animals move. People move, and worse, they talk, they ask questions; and they don't really want their picture taken, they just want a flattering photo to appear as if by magic. I was once asked to be the photographer at a friend's daughter's wedding. If I hadn't been able to foist the job off on another friend (and act as his assistant), I would have had to enter the witness protection program and move to Kansas. As my friend Joe (Bloomingdale's master of the pithy bon mot) would say, "No thank you, please!"
I learned photography largely by trial and error. Pre-digital you had to understand things like light (and particularly it's relative intensity in the frame), focus (and particularly depth-of-field), aperture (and its effect on exposure and on depth-of-field), and shutter speed (and its effect on exposure and your ability to hold the camera steady). The vast majority of photographers today simply point-and-shoot, and cameras today do a credible job of turning out acceptable photos with, unfortunately, little understanding on the shooter's part. The experience of actually taking pictures with an almost wholly manual camera is one all serious photographers should have.
The technology.
I started out in the late sixties with a little fixed lens Kodak, then around '70 moved to a purely mechanical Yashica SLR. In 1975 I bought a Nikon F2 SLR with a 50mm F2 lens and an advanced metering system, still purely mechanical, probably $900. In the nineties I bought a Nikon 6006, autofocus but metering still a little rudimentary, really great 28-85 lens, probably $600. In 2004 I bought my first digital camera, a Nikon Coolpix 5400 ($575). I probably took 15,000 photos with it and uploaded 12,607 of them into the computer.
In 2007 I came to a fork in the road. I love being able to walk around Cape May or Cape Cod with a camera that I can stick in the pocket of my cargo shorts. I spent years carrying my Nikon SLRs on planes or on hikes or on the beach and having to think about them and worry about them all the time. I know that if you're going to be a truly serious photographer you must have a serious camera, with the big sensors and the big quality lenses, but I just didn't want to go back to the equipment lugging. So I took the I'm-not-that-serious route and bought a Canon SX3 IS. What a fantastic piece of technology, a total leap from the Coolpix, very much in look and feel and operation like an SLR. 36-432mm lens, 6Mb sensor, fast autofocus and shutter operation, good image quality. I took about 18,000 photos with it and uploaded 14,680 into the computer. I paid $320 for it and sold it to a friend for $100 when I bought my current camera.
I now use a Canon SX20 IS ($349). 12Mb sensor, 28-560mm lens, otherwise much like the S3 IS with some improvements in the ergonomics; I really bought it for the increase in the resolution and the wide end of the lens. It JUST fits into my shorts!
