Out Of The Box

The piles of To Read and To Listen To are getting higher and higher, and even though these are being neglected in favour of other modern day trappings, I still don't seem to be making any progress in whatever I do, work-related or otherwise. Nevertheless, a few weeks ago I finally purchased my beautiful Nikon D90 digital SLR camera. Even though I only understand a fraction of the things it can do, it's still the best (in excess of) one month's rent I've spent in a long time. Yesterday was the first of two consecutive Fridays I'm using as annual leave, taken in part to get HR off my back about my large leave balance, and in part to trot around and get used to my new toy. Since the weather was so good, I ventured out to Brighton Beach in the search of its colourful and quirky bathing boxes, figuring that they'd make for a good subject to practice messing around with the camera settings. Even if you don't always get quite the image you're after, you might end up with something just as, if not more, interesting.




With about 1 kg of stuff attached to me (who's not in the photo above), the walk from the train station to the stretch of 84 neatly lined-up boxes probably seemed more onerous than it would be otherwise. I still couldn't help but notice how similar the picturesque and winding Esplanade is, with its enormous houses opposite the beach, to the very pretty (and wealthy) neighbourhood of La Jolla, in San Diego.



Last time I posted, I mentioned that I was in doubt as to whether the photo quality is much different between a 35mm and a digital. I'm still not sure. Ultimately, whatever you use, there are so many elements involved in order to end up with good pictures. I still like the idea that if you're good, you don't need a fancy piece of equipment to make your images good. Likewise, the opposite is also true in that putting a fancy bit of gadgetry in someone's hands is not necessarily going to make their images fantastic every single time. It's like anything else that simply requires lots and lots of practice.