13,930 – New old things

13,930. That’s the number of pictures I’ve taken with my new camera since I got it six months ago today. I still have a fair number (probably close to 1000) in the hopper waiting for me to go through them and delete, oh, about 90% of them if not more. I’ll get to it at some point. Spring break is coming up in three weeks, and I can’t wait… so many things I need to catch up on. Need to catch my breath.

This summer will be the first summer in many many years where my only plans are to stay home. Well, not totally — I’m going up to WA at some point to meet my new niece :-) but other than that, it’s going to be me and Moose and my camera and two long hot months to relax and focus on my horse and my photography.

And I really do want to focus on my photography. Like I mentioned last month in this post, I’ve been itching to try some street photography. And while I have plenty of camera for that job, I want to force myself to slow down and really focus (ha ha ha) on what I’m doing, rather than taking a whole heap of pictures and throwing away most of them. Well, I’m sure I’ll still end up throwing away a lot, just because I’m picky… but do you know what I mean?

And I have a reason to focus on it — I have two Second Saturday photography shows coming up in the next few months — one in May that I’m sharing with some other photographers, and one in September that’s just me. I’m pretty excited, and pretty nervous. But I want to make September all about street photography, so by hook or by crook (and by digital or by film) I’ll come up with some stuff to sell.

Anyway, when I was reading up on street photography, I read that the film camera that a lot of the great street photographers used was a rangefinder, something I’ve never actually used before. In fact, although I had several film cameras growing up, they were always the point-and-shoot variety — I don’t really know the first thing about how to use them, or metering light, or anything like that. And while it’d be more logical to get an SLR, since I’m already familiar with a DSLR, let’s face it — this is me we’re talking about. Logical actions aren’t always my strong suit.

So you can probably guess what I did next… Yep, I went on eBay and bought a used rangefinder camera from someone’s estate sale. And I feel kind of silly, because I have no clue how to use it. But you can pick up a basic one for pretty cheap, and I bought a lot of 8 rolls of black and white film as well, to get me started.

I don’t think I’ll be taking 13,930 pictures with it… but I’m looking forward to taking the time to play with it and seeing what, if anything, I come up with.

The new baby.

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