Saturday, July 5, 2008

It's Not the Size of the Wand. It's the Magic the Wand Posesses.

It's not the size of the wand. It's the magic the Wand posesses that counts. Today was the first day of my photography seminar in Watercolor, Florida. It is a beginning photography class, but one thing I didn't think of was to tell everyone to bring SLR type cameras, I just figured that if they were interested in photography, they would own a camera that you can put in manual mode...that means you, dear reader. If you are interested in photography and you aren't putting your new fancy new DSLR camera in manual mode, you might as well have a point and shoot, because the camera will be in charge of you, and not the other way around.

Well, today, every single person brought a point and shoot! I am here to tell you, as a person who has never had close personal contact with a point and shoot before, I pretty much freaked out, because everyone had questions that I wasn't sure I could answer. I went into instant freak out, panic, shove down a dozen donuts and panic some more mode, and then, just as I was set to embark on the next dozen, something inside me snapped and I just let go.

I don't know if it was the rain, the sweet faces of my absolutely cool students, Brian, Margo, Elliot, Jeffrey, Sarah from Alabama, Sarah from Tennessee, Jennifer, Julia, Jason, and Karen, or just a sugar high, but all of a sudden I just started giggling. If you can't beat them, join them, I always say. I called my trusty hubby and he ran out and got me a very cute little pink Olympus Stylus that seems to be indestructible...you can take it underwater to ten feet for a very long time, drop it from ten feet, change the ISO, adjust for macro, super macro, movement, blur, adjust the lighting for daylight, backlight, tungsten, and a couple of different flourescents, shoot in the rule of thirds insteadof those center weighted guys. I was impressed...It pretty much does everything except the laundry for you...gosh darn it...well, I guess that's why I have my hubby, now isn't it? So, in typical Barbara Stitzer fashion, I am learning as I go, and am for the duration of this whole course am going to become one with my mega macho pink camera, (whom I've named Pookie, of course, ) and then I'll show you what I did with it...and I am willing to bet that it's going to be pretty gosh darn cool. I'll be back after I snarf another donut.