Digital photography and DSLR's

During the weekend I made special time for one of my favourite hobbies, the beautiful art of photography. Its not to say that I have been away from photography for a long time, just last week I snapped several lunch and snack time photos that I hope would make any food connoisseur proud. Those pictures were taken with my iPhone, which overall produces satisfactory, yet unspectacular results (it’s a camera phone after all). The main difference with last week's photos and the ones over the weekend are that the weekend snaps were taken with my trusty DLSR. It’s been a while since I used it (more than five months in fact) and after the first press and release of the shutter button all I could think was “wow, I sure missed this DSLR.” I also thought about how wonderful it would have been to have that camera while I was in New Zealand last year.

My wonderful, trusty non-video capable DSLR camera

Now I should mention that my DSLR is from the era before video capability integrated in DSLR cameras was the norm. Part of me is sorry my DSLR is not equipped to handle moving images and the other part of me is happy, having comfort  in the thought the picture quality would be better because my camera is just that, a camera. No matter which point of view I have at any given time, one thing is for certain, my DSLR camera rocks. I almost forgot the true joy of photography having spent the last few months in what might as well be referred to as the photography wilderness. During the weekend memories returned of numerous assignments in my journalism days as well as freelance projects. Feeling happy to be using my DSLR again I kept snapping away at the lovely scenery on the rugged east coast of Barbados. I will post some of the images on my Twitter account during the next few weeks.

My overall photo tally during the weekend was just about 400 photos. Ah, the beauty of digital photography. I am indeed grateful for the digital photo age. I remember years ago as a child the excitement of receiving the developed photos from the photo studio or department store. Sometimes that initial excitement was replaced with surprise when you realised not all of the photos were in focus or the composition was not quite what you thought it would be when you looked in the viewfinder.

Of course, it can be argued that those were also the days when you thought more carefully about each and every photo….after all, you had to pay for the film and to develop it. Now its click, click, click, review…"hmm…maybe I’ll delete this one” then click, click, click again.  For me even in the digital photography era I place great effort to ensure that as much as possible each photo is of the highest quality, of course not every snap taken would meet that standard. Some would argue that the main disadvantage of digital photography is you may end up being overwhelmed by the hundreds of images accumulated during a photo shoot. For me however, I enjoy the wide variety and so love this era of digital photography.