At 7:00am in the morning I got it.

My husband has been home for two weeks. He left at 3:15am this morning. Originally scheduled for vacation the week after Thanksgiving, it worked out that he got the extra days before the holiday as well. Won't be grand on the pocketbook, but he really needed the time off. And, much to our happiness, we managed to get a very large project 98% completed with that extra time. We built a brand new, custom to my specifications, computer desk! Still need a filing cabinet, but that will be taken care of soon and I can certainly live with the wait. 

As pleased as I am with my new work area, I have to admit the construction zone that became my house for two weeks almost made me nuts. Yet, the worst part, was not the mess of having stuff sitting all over the place. The hard part was being without my computer until this past Saturday night. That, folks, was bordering insanity. You don't realize how used to a piece of electronics you can get until you don't have it. It's really not a happy place to be.

One of the things the husband and I did while he was home was Black Friday shopping. He discovered what Black Friday was all about last year. Scary thing, that. Needless to say, he'd been surfing the net for Black Friday sales ... spent several weeks plotting his game plan for that day. He needed a new drill. We needed a paper shredder. And during his internet pre-shopping, he discovered some pretty awesome sales for things we didn't "need" but would like to have. One of those was a new camera. Okay, some back story ...

The husband and I both love photography. I had a Minolta X-370 I had bought in my early days in college for graphics, and he had a Nikon F3HP he had purchased overseas while serving in the Marine Corp. Both cameras had lots of extras, both were dearly loved. As most people know, traditional photography is now a dinosaur in this age of digital cameras. We understood this. 

We even own a small Nikon CoolPix 7600 which we bought several years ago for taking photos of my art to make it easier to put images on my website. It ain't all that great, only 7.1 megapixel, but it served it's purpose. But for "real" photography, we both found it pretty lacking. Still, our beloved 35mm's languished on the shelf in our closet, snug in their protective cases, pitiful and mostly unused for the past eight or nine years. It became harder and harder to find good film, get decent prints, etc. We finally bit the bullet and sold them on ebay this past year.

Discounting the small Nikon, that left us pretty much camera-less. It has never sat well with either of us, not being able to indulge our love of taking pictures. Hence the husband's itchiness for Black Friday and the possibility of changing our camera-less state of existence. We were in Asheville at the butt-crack of dawn (4:00am) on Black Friday, raiding the tool department at Sears for his new drill (and yes, some other great toys, too!) and then wheeled it a short zip down the road to Best Buy, where we became the proud new parents of a Cannon Rebel T2i. Sweet, sweet deal.  

Yes, I played with the camera later that afternoon while the husband worked on the computer construction zone. He, very graciously, allowed me a couple of hours indulgence. He's such a nice guy.

Now, I confess that I've always been a photography snob. Such a bad attitude toward digital because I know the mechanics of traditional, old fashioned photography/printing very well. The difference in quality was just far too much for my old-school expectations. But then, my experience with digital cameras was limited, nothing over 9.9 MP. I seriously disliked the cameras delays when set at their higher resolutions, limited abilities to override settings, their stinkin' built-in flashes, limited macro (close up) abilities, and most of all, camera shake (out of focus images). I'm sure most of y'all know what I'm talking about.

This new Cannon has fully automatic settings, but fully manual as well - Nice! Shoots at 18.0 MP - Sweet! Two impressive lenses, a 18-55mm and a 55-250mm zoom - both with Image Stabilizer technology - No.More.Blur.! I feel like I need to put about seven hundred bazillion exclamation points after that last sentence. But aside from all it's lovely features and functions (which will take me several days to figure out), it has a bonus feature I never considered until just this morning. 

Digital photography is actually very GREEN. And y'all should know by now how much I'm about earthy-crunchy, eco-friendly green stuff.

I'm guessing the reason this photo-greeness never occurred to me is because I was too busy being snobbish. Shame on me, I got it.

But when I woke up this morning it was like an miniature epiphany. Traditional photography is a zone of incredibly hazardous stuff. Miles of film and the chemicals to make it, process it, not to mention the wasted film from photos that turned out bad. All the trees cut down and used for pricey and more chemical laden paper for prints. Tons more trees used for all those photo albums with their pages sleeved in plastic. From beginning to end, the journey for one traditionally printed photograph is a toxic, earth destroying nightmare.

Going digital cuts out staggering amounts of all of that. No film - just a memory card that doesn't need developing, and is reusable as well as recyclable. Don't like the photo, erase it! Print only if you want to. Instead, store all your photos on your computer or online photo album services like Flickr or PhotoBucket. Share them with family and friends through email (or on a blog!). No, it's not perfect. There are still chemicals and plastics involved, but it's a huge and significant improvement in the world of photography. With the evolution of digital cameras, even the quality of the photos are so vastly improved I'm totally, truly impressed.

Love our new camera!

 Weeds

Mums

Glasses

Tuck Butt

Namaste', y'all ...

Carol