I'm Just a Newbie

Yeah I said it, a newbie. As much as it pains me to say the truth is I barely know a damn thing about the fine art of making pictures. But luckily I am a quick study and I read a lot. More importantly I am pretty good at retaining details from what I read so that helps considerably...I hope! Because if there is one thing that this photgraphy gig is good for is an incredible amount of niggling details, many involving numbers and settings. :D Whether I can master it is another question but I'm going to do my best and most of all just have fun.

How Come I Made a New Blog When I Have Others?

Well, I like to shoot a lot of different subjects, not just my stuff. So it seemed like inserting pictures of flowers and bugs just wouldn't be right in a place like Planet Pocket Tool or the Atwood Museum space. Those are devoted to my tools and cutlery pieces and my business side. I needed a spot for some play. Because you know the old saying, "All work and no play makes Peter a very unhappy monkey. " :P

So what will you see here? I'm partial to nature shots and landscapes but I also can't resist abstracts. I will also post random shots of virtually anything I run across in daily life. I live in a remarkable area with some amazing geographical features, interesting buildings and beautiful wildlife of all kinds. The little town of Turners Falls which is next door to my town of Gill has remarkable stuff like the Ct River, a huge bridge going over a large hydroelectric and flood control dam, an adjacent canal with crumbling old papermills and other factories and just tons of other weird and beautiful sights.

There was an eagle nest on a little island on the river, just two miles from my house. The folks at UMASS had rigged up a closed circuit TV camera to it and you could actually tune into a local public access channel and watch the nest from home. It was pretty cool. Unfortunately the tree that the nest was built in blew over in a big storm last year so I'm not sure what's going on with the eagles now. I will continue to keep my eye and lens out for them. There is no shortage of waterfowl however and they make for awesome shooting:

Howdy Folks!

Alright, I needed a space for my hobby pursuits and the most interesting to me at the moment is photography. I've enjoyed taking product shots of my tools and knives for many years and I've upgraded cameras a few times, going through various point and shoots. But I've grown frustrated this past year in that the quality of my images has not been up to the level that I would like it to be. So I decided to bite the bullet and invest in a better camera setup and really spend some time learning the finer points of photography. I've wanted to do this for a long time anyway and right now seems like a good time to do this.

A recent pic of the BigShot cup: