It's you... Not Me

Waiting for the plane to arrive is always the worst part about air travel these days. In the past few months, I've been on enough trips (or waited for enough people at airports) to know that no plane at a gate at least an hour before scheduled departure means a late departure. So, we'll see whether the current situation at E67 in Milwaukee will remain the same. Right now, the board says “Departs: 9:16AM” and it is 8:38am. The plane isn't at the gate. Why do they lie??? Why do they insist I'm an idiot???
Hopefully, I'll be proven wrong, but ... we'll see.
Anyway, I'm looking forward to the trip. I have two new lenses for the D100 that I want to test. A few weeks back, I purchased a Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 IF-ED VR for taking action shots of Steph and Ode and things around the ranch. The lens is a monster, but the pictures from it have been fantastic. I've been disappointed with an older Nikkor 35-70mm AF lens I've had since purchasing the camera (I can't find a link to the model because it is a bit older and hasn't been in production for some years). I know picture quality is 90% the photographer and 10% the equipment, but I really have had a hard time getting more than 20% good shots using that lens. So, after reading rave reviews (despite its limitations), I picked up a Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G IF-ED VR lens from Amazon (right now, the link I used to purchase the lens is gone and they are only offering it through an Amazon storefront reseller - they seem to be a hot item) and am looking forward to testing. It is the first non-f/2.8 lens I have added to the collection. I tend to find myself taking a lot of limited or low-light pictures, so it'll take some getting used to - i.e. knowing how to tweak the D100's settings and properly placing myself and steadying the camera. I'll say one thing; the lens is lightweight and with the VR, my slight, coffee induced handshake should be helped a bit.
So, besides seeing one of my best friends get married to a fantastic girl (here's to a good weekend, Matt & Stefanie), I get to possibly learn some things about photography that I usually don't have time for. If the flight ever leaves...

Technorati Tags: delays, photography, nikon, travel

I was talking to Ebi (my former German professor at Hillsdale College) during my visit last week and mentioned to him that I like to write and was hoping that maybe, just maybe, it would grow into something where I'd write and others would read. Perhaps some of them would even pay for it. It's a dream of all dreams because with what little writing I do, I know how difficult it is to not only hold someone's attention, but write a coherent story. It is easy to do the typical blog meandering that most writing exhibits these days, but it is difficult to come up with a story that flows and yet dips and bobs enough to keep the reader's interest. He made a statement that fell upon me with all the weight of a gigantic boulder, “you can't just write about your life, you have to be able to actually write a story... There's a difference.”
Think about that. I sometimes treat good writing as if it were a diary. Take WWdN: In Exile and dooce. I look forward to reading the latest postings because they almost always make me laugh. Both Wil and Heather talk about benign, some might say, boring, things. But, I hang on their words. Wil's description of his son mocking the death of a bottle of soda and Heather's writing about her daughter's blunt and inappropriate statements make me laugh. I can see the motions, I can hear the sounds, and I can fully imagine what is taking place when they describe a given event. I doubt everyone walks away from their writing with the same feeling, but I do, and that's the way I want to write. I want to write stories about life and the catch is this: I want to write them in such a way that others might be interested to continue reading...
Ebi's right. That's quite difficult.