A photography Chat ...

Yesterday I went with my BF on a photo shoot with his photography club.
We congregated at a local lake to take scenic pictures.
I've spent a couple of thousand dollars on my photo equipment, thinking it was a lot of money, but I was flabbergasted at the cameras, lens, etc...this group hauled out!
These people were lugging around cameras costing thousands, massive lens and equally impressive tripods. (I learned one guy who likes to take photos of insects has $40,000 invested in his stuff.)
After I recovered from my initial feelings of inadequacy, it became obvious to me that camera lens are phallic symbols. I had a private chuckle thinking about this, imagining all their lens turning into giant penis's.
I wanted to take pictures of the club taking pictures but I felt that might be considered invasive or something so I didn't. I'm kicking myself now because it would have perfectly illustrated what I'm talking about. I even could of photo shopped them all taking pictures with their huge dicks.
Anyway...I couldn't compete with my own small inventory, so I decided to content myself with playing around with my $16 dollar tripod & my new (gasp) $400 telephoto lens.
I just thanked my lucky stars that I had a tripod to put my camera on. Otherwise, I would of looked even more puny and impotent.

A light drizzle was coming down when we got to the lake at 9:00 am. An hour later it was a cold hard rain.
I can't tell you how hard it is to concentrate on taking pictures in the rain. The biggest issue is keeping the camera dry. Then there's your cold fingers and drops of water fogging your glasses.
On the other hand, the lake was pretty and the people were nice. I enjoyed hanging out with my BF & actually learning what some of those dials & buttons on my camera are for.
Picture of the lake taken with my wide angle lens. Focusing on the snag across the lake in the center of the picture. (As usual, click on pictures to make them bigger.)

I have a wide angle lens that I've never been happy with. It was not cheap which makes me even more discontent with it. I thought it had been dropped or damaged in some way or I just couldn't get the settings right. So, the other night I decided to look the lens up on the internet, to see what other people had to say about it.
Low and behold, it wasn't anything I was doing wrong... other people had the same issues that I did. Apparently,the lens is sort of a lemon.
Quite a bummer, if you've payed a lot of money for something...
Fortunately, I found a site that had something good to say about it and recommended using it in unconventional ways for some great shots.
Shooting from 3 ft. using the same wide angle lens. (Click on this picture to see how clear the detail is).

Another reminder to think out side the box.