I know I haven’t posted in a while, but I’ve been keeping pretty busy.  So here’s a quick recap on what we’ve been doing in school.  We’ve basically covered the technical side of photography at this point and have started to move into the creative side of things now.   We’re learning to critique photographs and discussing what makes a good photograph.  We’ve also had our first print lab where I got to print out a couple of my photos.  It’s amazing how good they look when you have a good printer. 

We also had some more studio time, this time working with multiple light set-ups.  I’m not really getting into the studio work.  I’m finding I like shooting outdoors much better…big surprise, I know.  One of the last technical concepts we covered was the color zone system.  I’m finding that it makes my life much easier when shooting.  In the last week or two, I’ve found that I can get the exposure right the first time on the majority of my shots rather than having to take additional shots to make adjustments.  I think I’m finally making some improvements here.

Last weekend, much of our class went to Augusta, Montana to shoot the rodeo.  I ended up with a few good shots, but the majority were not as great as I hoped, primarily due to the lens I was using.  The 50-500mm lens I have just isn’t very good.  So the following Monday, I cracked open my wallet and bought the Canon 70-200mm f2.8L IS lens and the 1.4x teleconverter.  It’s not as long as the 500mm obviously, but it’ll work in most cases and will give me much better results.  It’s a very nice piece of glass.  And just for fun, I bought a Lensbaby 2.0 as well.  If you’re unfamiliar with those, you’ll see some shots from it in a week or two.  It’s a lot of fun.

Speaking of photos, I’m way behind in my processing, which is why you haven’t seen many being posted lately.  I’ve started catching up so you’ll start to see new stuff being posted little by little in the next couple of days.   The moon shot above is from the middle of June when the moon was full.  We had to stay out until about 11:30pm before it was high enough to clear the mountains.  My 500mm worked well for this type of photography so I guess I’ll keep it around despite having the new lens.  There’s a few more shots of the moon on my Flickr stream.  The shot to the right is from a old growth cedar grove I visited during the second or third week here…I forget when.  Days and weeks are starting to run together now.

Tonight, I’m going to try my hand at photographing fireworks.  With any luck, you’ll get to see any good shots I get by the end of the month.

This is my birthday present to myself (a month early). I’m such a giver.

The rationale for these purchases:

The gorillapod: Because sometimes you just don’t want to carry a full tripod.

The 50mm: I’m always reading about how great these lenses are for portraits, especially in low light, so I had to have one.  This shot was taken with this new lens.  The DOF will take some getting used to.  My face is slightly out-of-focus and I’m only at f3.2!

The 12-24mm: I’m moving to Montana at the end of the month.  Is there a better reason to get an ultra-wide?  This lens should rock on my full-frame 5D!

The 40D: Why get a 40D when I already have a 5D? Three reasons. 1. I wanted to have a back-up body when I’m at photography school.  I don’t want to be in the situation I was in two winters ago at a photography workshop in Maui where my camera (my old Digital Rebel) broke and I had to tape it back together in order to keep shooting. 2. I also own the Sigma 50-500mm lens.  I was happy with this lens on my old Digital Rebel with the crop sensor, but was really disappointed with it on the full-frame 5D.  It shows significant vignetting on the full sensor.  The 40D has a 1.6X crop sensor so I should be happy with it again.  3. I like wildlife photography and wildlife tends to move, often very quickly.  The 40D can shoot at 6.5fps while the 5D can only shoot at 3fps.  I figure the 50-500mm will stay on the 40D most of the time.  I’ll use the 5D for everything else.

I also purchased a couple of polarizers and some camera bags to carry all my new gear.

Now this would be fun to play with: a Casio Exilim EX-F1.  It’s capable of shooting at bursts of 60 frames per second (fps) and movies at 1200 fps!!!  Just think of the cool action shots you could get with this camera.  For comparison, my Canon 5D is only capable of shooting in bursts of 3 fps and most camcorders record at around 30 fps.