Urban Decay

As a photographer, I have always liked graffiti. Today, I took my daughter out for some photo hunting. We found a great spot to wander around and take photos...an old abandoned house, we think, that was taken over by graffiti artists. Kayla took my old Nikon, I had the Leica, and we walked around having a blast taking photos of each other and the graffiti.

Back to work tomorrow...the fun always has to end...

Working Late At Night

My daughter (and wife) loves puzzles. They will stay up until the wee hours of the morning working on a puzzle. My wife gave up and Kayla took over last night...way past her bed time. I couldn't resist grabbing a photo...

Kayla Jumps

Have a great weekend!!

I am off on a road trip to the Smokey Mountains...see ya on Monday!!

Kayla Waves In The Sunset

Have a great weekend!

I am in Singapore at the moment. I have brought my Drobo with me to have it looked at...wish me luck in getting all of my photos back!!

My Daughter, Kayla

Since my entire data bank of photos are still in jeopardy, my only new photos are of my family. This is my daughter, Kayla....

The Drobo nightmare continues, but I am going to try a third party data recovery program called, Data Rescue 3...I have read that it has been successful in recovering data. Before I use it though, I have to buy a couple of new external drives so that there is a place for the data to go if it can be recovered. That will take me a few days...so, in the meantime, I can post some old favorite photos this week....I still have on another drive all my "blog sized" photos that I have used on this blog...do you mind a few repeats this week until I can hopefully recover my photos?

My First Shots With The Leica M9

Well, here they are...some of my first shots taken with my new M9. I gotta say, after using my Nikon for so many years, shooting with the Leica has a bit of a learning curve. It is almost like starting over again...you have to consciously think about your f-stop, shutter speed, and focusing. Nothing is automatic, so your true knowledge of photography must be applied when taking photos with the Leica.

Do I like it better? Well, YES!! I have TOTAL control now of my photographs. If they are out of focus, it is my fault...no longer can I blame the camera. With the Nikon, I would just compose, and shoot...but the camera would not always get it right in terms of what I wanted, and that was frustrating at times...with the Leica, I can focus where I want to focus, and I can set my f-stop for shallow or deep depth of field. Of course, I could always have had set my Nikon to complete manual, but that would kind of defeat the purpose of having all those bells and whistles that come with the Nikon. The Leica is just plain fun to shoot...I am really liking it, and starting to get the hang of it. I still can't focus very quickly, but I am getting better.

Anyway, below are five photos I took this morning of my two daughters...Kayla and Kelly. Kayla is my older daughter, and Kelly is my younger. I had to be quick with my focus because Kelly would not sit still for very long...it was a good way to practice my focusing skills.

I have only two lenses so far (which I traded most of my Nikon equipment for). I have the Leica 18mm Super Elmar and the Voigtlander 50mm f1.1 Nokton. I am loving both lenses, and these two lenses will be the ones I carry to Italy with me next month. All the shots below are taken with the 50mm at f2.0...they all had to be cropped as I am still getting used to composing with the finder (you don't look through the lens with the Leica). The frame lines are actually very accurate, but I still needed to crop for better compositions....I will get better at that as well. They were also treated in Adobe Light Room and a bit of Photoshop work...I have developed a certain style with my photos, and wanted to keep the same style with the Leica files.

The files from the Leica are outstanding...even after cropping, I still had huge files which can be printed large...it is an 18MP camera which has 6 million more pixels than my old D300 had...

Kayla...Leica M9, Voigtlander 50mm f1.1 Nokton at f2.0

Kelly...Leica M9, Voigtlander 50mm f1.1 Nokton at f2.0

Kayla and Kelly...Leica M9, Voigtlander 50mm f1.1 Nokton at f2.0

Kelly...Leica M9, Voigtlander 50mm f1.1 Nokton at f2.0

Kayla and Kelly...Leica M9, Voigtlander 50mm f1.1 Nokton at f2.0