It's been a while.
Tending to my website, telling visual stories, finding time and the ambition to get it all up and moving again hasn't been easy.
But with a New Year comes new goals, new routines, and most of all a renewed sense of purpose. As the days get longer, and the sun continues it's ascension towards summer a new light emerges--both literally and metaphorically--and sometimes we make our way back to where it all began, to our old haunts.
With winter depression taking its toll it was time for new sleep patterns, new exercise routines, new eating habits. The walk, as boring and mundane as it always seemed to me, brought me back from the brink, and with my camera in hand I've slowly made my way back to normalcy.
All images taken with the Fujifilm X100T
Newberg Oregon
ANIMAL EXPOSURE
One of the first things new parents around Portland do is take their children to the Oregon Zoo, and while the zoo is a double edged sword in terms of child education vs. animal incarceration, it's still a worthwhile experience.
We started with a great breakfast at The Babica Hen in Dundee, and arrived at the Oregon Zoo at about 10:00am.
The bears were out, the cats were sleeping, and kids from the Boys and Girls Club were running about.
Shot with Nikon D750 and Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8G ED VR II AF-S Nikkor Zoom Lens
NEW CAMERA, NEW INSPIRATION
While in West Virginia for my sister-in-law's wedding I came to the conclusion that my current (at the time) camera simply would not work for event work. We were in a dark hall, with some significant back lighting, and the Fuji cameras had a hell of a time focusing.
It pains me to say it, because I love the Fujifilm cameras for their weight, ease of use, and tactile controls, but they are not ready for serious event work. With that said, we came home a couple of days ago, and I found myself ordering a new Nikon D750 with the following lenses:
- Nikon 70-200 f/2.8G ED VR II AF-S Nikkor Zoom Lens
- Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8 ED AF-S NIkkor Wide Angle Zoom Lens
- Nikon 105mm f/2.8G IF-ED AF-S VR Micro-Nikkor Lens
- Nikon 50mm f/1.8G AF-S Nikkor FX Lens
Unlike the Fujifilm primes these things are build like tanks, and as a consequence they weigh like tanks. I can't say I'm thrilled to switch back to Nikon, but you should never have to fight your camera tooth and nail to get it to focus in light that DSLRs have been able to for a decade or more.
Nonetheless, the camera and lenses arrived yesterday, and it was time to walk around my property in Dundee, Oregon (close to Newberg, Oregon) and find something interesting to photograph. The Nikon system is nothing like the Fujifilm system, for good and bad, thus muscle memory has not developed yet.
My daughter is an easy subject, so you'll see a couple of her here, and a helicopter buzzed our house so it was nice to see that the Nikon D750 was capable of focusing in fractions of seconds with significant back light.
These were shot with the first three lenses mentioned above. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did taking them.
