For Christmas of 2009, I gave myself a Canon EOS 7D, which at this time is the newest in Canon's line of pro-sumer digital SLRs. The camera arrived on December 24th, and on Christmas day I started taking my first "real" pictures.
On another note, I also bought Adobe's CS4 Web Premium suite plus Lightroom, and am creating this site in Dreamweaver. I'm basically starting from ground zero here, so if you stumble on this site before I've made it beautiful, pardon the dust. I have a publish or perish mentality at the moment.
Day One
Christmas Day 2009, Laurie and I walked to the park, stumbled upon Toby, and then walked back to "Grand Central". All of these pictures were taken along that trip. And yes, that's a red pole coming out of Toby's head. Needless to say, I have a lot to learn at this point.
Wide Angle
I rented a Canon 16-35mm f/2.8 L USM lens for an upcoming trip to Lake Tahoe, thinking that I might want to take some landscape shots. I also thought the lens might coming in handy for taking pictures of the Christmas Lights on Thompson Street in Alameda. A few other pieces of gear I acquired were a tripod (from Best Buy!), a cable release, remote release, a variety of filters, and a new camera bag. Except for the tripod, I got all of this at Looking Glass Camera & Photo Supply in Berkeley.
Tahoe
Laurie and I went to Lake Tahoe for New Year's 2010. We were staying at a house with Matt & Ruth, Rick & Jen (unpictured), and then the babies - Toby, Maya, Ava and Scarlet.
We got to Tahoe very late the day before New Year's Eve, so besides the goofy picture of Matt that starts off the series, all the action started the next day. I got my best pictures of the trip that day, all with the 28-135mm f/4 IS USM kit lens that came with my camera. Notice this is not an "L" lens! In fact, it's one of the kit lens options, which I opted for simply because I had no idea what kind of lens I wanted. The image stabilization on this lens is very nice.
On New Year's day I decided to try and find some landscapes to shoot, so I put the 16-35mm lens on the camera, but before I left I shot some more of the "kids" playing (the adults seemed to have fun too). These images are all a lot softer than from the day before, partly because of my technique but also partly because the lens had some focusing issues. Later I drove down south to Vikingsholm and took some pictures of Emerald Bay. I have a lot to learn about landscape photography.
The third day I wanted some new subjects, so I drove into Truckee and found people sledding. Once I found a set of folks who didn't mind me taking pictures of them, I got some fun images. Later I went up past Donner Pass and asked the owner of a local gas station where he'd go if he had a new camera and wanted to take some nice pictures. The last image is the result of his advice, along with some friendly people I met on the one-lane road I ended up on.