Much of a muchness

I have just upgraded my camera and finally bought a digital SLR. (Pentax K10D, if you’re interested.) I am in heaven. As I said to my boyfriend L, a truly gifted and experienced photographer, who recommended this camera to me and who spent several hours explaining the basics of photography this weekend, if his knowledge has him sitting on the summit of Mount Everest, I am not even in the foothills yet. In fact I’m probably just landing at Kathamandu Airport. A very steep learning curve lies ahead.

Of course the weather, which has been glorious right up to the day my camera arrived, has now changed to wind and rain, so I am feeling very frustrated that I cannot get out and about, taking photographs, to put my lesson into practice. However, I may go down to the coast near where I live and see if I can get some stormy sea shots out of desperation.

To inspire me, L recommended a whole raft of photographers whose work he admires and has bookmarked, my particular favourites from this list are below.

• Sam Haskins
  

• Tim Flach

• James Nachtwey

And of course, I ought to mention and add to this list, L’s own work which can be seen at

• Ludwig Haskins
• Maternal Images

So that’s, learn all about digital photography including how to use this extremly complex camera without resorting to shooting everything in automatic mode, how to use Photoshop and Illustrator CS, continue to expand my knowledge of html, CSS and javascript, finish the web site I am coding, plan a new career…