The Johnson Blog

A few can be found in this gallery album.  Here’s one from today: Neo.

Every now and again I add some, so if you’re really bored, check back.

Adobe launched Lightroom in late January of this year. Sometime last year I heard they were working on a photo editing application for photographers but shrugged it off because I had Photoshop Elements and had no need for anything else. With the influx of photos from the new camera, however, I needed something different and turned to a Lightroom demo after seeing the name again on a photography forum.

Let’s see, I downloaded the Lightroom trial (full-featured, 30 day trial) last Sunday afternoon, played around with it for a few hours, and purchased it Monday or Tuesday from Amazon.com. It is a very slick software package.
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Well since I’m not tired tonight, I may as well continue my rambling….

Now, on to pictures. First, I take a lot of photos. I mean a whole bunch. For example, on our recent vacation I took nearly 3000. There’s so many that I have to review and change how I handle them.

Pre-DSLR, I would take pictures and upload all of the non-blurry ones to the photo gallery. This worked great because there weren’t ever that many of them (some of you may disagree!), and the picture taking lag time was so great on the PnS that most of the photos ended up being documentary in purpose – recording events with no real creativity. So great, now I have one place for all of my photos to be kept and displayed. This one place was backed up, and life was simple.

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So as you have probably gathered, I’ve become immersed with a new hobby. Photography.

Ever since my first digital camera 5 years ago, I’ve grown more and more interested in capturing the world around me. With each successive model of camera, I’ve gained more resolution and more control over how the pictures were taken. What caught me off guard was that as I learned more and my cameras got better, I was getting more and more frustrated with them. Too slow, too large of a depth of field, poor low-light shooting, etc.. As time went on, I kept my eyes on the digital SLRs and tried to deny that I really wanted one. I knew what they could possibly offer me, but the price was just too steep for my occasional photo taking.

With the news of the child on the way, it was a perfect time and excuse to finally bite the bullet and purchase one. I mean, really, 20 years from now do we want to be looking at photos taken with a PnS or DSLR?? 😉

I never thought that I would consider the money spent on this camera to be worth every penny, but it sure is. I finally have control over everything I used to fight against in my old cameras. I can now get close to taking the pictures I envision when I’m looking around at things, and it’s a great feeling! The hardware is no longer the limit!

Those of you reading this that don’t really like taking photos probably don’t understand this, but oh well. For years I’ve wanted the capability I now have, I just didn’t know it yet. I think I’ve just discovered a world I find almost as deep and rich as writing software; those of you that know me well know that that’s saying a lot.