I fancy myself a good amateur photographer, but if we let the truth actually creep into the fiction of that statement I suppose I might be someone who can take decent pictures but who only knows a little about photography.  I understand about the relationship between aperture and depth of field, the inverse relationship between shutter speed and aperture, and the use of some filters to compensate for incorrect lighting and/or add an effect to a given scene.  I'm just learning about zones, push and pull processing for effect, and the utilization of lenses outside the 50mm range -- mostly wide-angle -- to get interesting effects.  It's quite ironic to me how a 24mm or 28mm lens can be used to focus in on an object when they're wide-angle lenses.  Most of all, I'm learning to develop an eye for good images; this is probably where most photographers fail and has historically been my stumbling block as well.  Some scenes just cry out for a camera while others -- most others -- don't.  It's the eye of the photographer and his/her ability to see past the obvious that turns everyday images into photographic gems.  I'm working on that...

For those interested in my equipment, here's the list.  I have a 1984 Canon AE-1 Program 35mm SLR with Canon 50mm and 28mm lenses, a third-party 80-200mm f/4.5 zoom, and a third-party 500mm telephoto.  I have a power winder for it as well as a collection of Cokin filters that will fit on the Canon lenses and a top-mounting flash unit.  I got a 4.0 megapixel digital camera for Christmas of 2002, the Olympus Camedia C-4000, which is an autofocus camera with an LCD screen in the back.  That gadget is proving to take some real time to master, mainly because the autofocus is slow and changing things like the ISO speed and manually setting the aperture and/or shutter speed is a bother given the menu system on the thing.  For Christmas of 2003 I got a new 35mm SLR, the Sigma SA-9.  I did a lot of research on new SLRs and chose this one over the others mainly because it has the most unobtrusive computer built into it.  Most other SLRs now have a bunch of buttons and a menu system that requires you to poke around to change even simple settings; the two Sigma SLRs are more old-fashioned, the SA-9 being the more advanced of the two.  Along with the SA-9 I have two Sigma lenses:  a 28-80mm zoom and a 70-300 f/5.6 zoom; additionally, I have a top-mounted flash unit and several circular filters for both the regular zoom and telephoto zoom, but I'm going to start adding Cokin filters for these lenses as well since I'm worried about vignetting with stacked circular filters.

I currently use the Canon for astrophotography since I can set it to bulb and lock it open with a trigger cable; doing that for the Sigma requires the use of the remote and it drains battery juice for the duration of the photograph.  I use the Sigma for high-quality non-astronomy photographs that I want to keep.  I use the Camedia for everything else, or sometimes I use it for things I want to keep but at places where I can't drag my film camera.  As a result, I favor Fujichrome 200 in the Canon and Fuji Velvia 50 or 100 in the Sigma.  All are slide films and I use slide film exclusively since the output is all my doing -- for better or worse -- and not some compensated print cranked out at the local drugstore or camera shop.  I do my shopping, by the way, at B&H Photo and Video in New York City; they seem to have competitive prices, especially on film, and have a good selection.  I'm not getting paid to hawk their merchandise -- I just think it's a good shop.  Plus it has a really well-done web store.

Most of the images here are from my digital camera since the slides require that I scan them with a special attachment first.  As a result, since I'm still playing with my digital camera to learn how it works, I'm taking ... umm ... somewhat less than spectacular photos of somewhat less than spectacular subjects.  Nevertheless, some might be interested in seeing a few of the sights around my area of the country, either to marvel at their splendor or laugh at my choice of topics.  Right now, since I'm learning how to master this thing, I'm not too picky about what I shoot.  All I can say is thank goodness for Adobe Photoshop for cropping the images.  I don't usually touch them up or add enhancements, by the way, but will indicate so in the description of any photos I might alter after-the-fact.

By the way, I tend to take pictures of places rather than people.  One could get all psychoanalytical and attempt to divine the inner workings of my tortured mind, but in the end places don't get upset if you take a photograph without permission and most places are nicer to look at than most people.  I also take photos for memories and I tend to remember places less well than faces, hence the photographs.

Click on any thumbnail to view a larger image in a new window.  Credit should be given to the Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection at the University of Texas at Austin for the base map of Louisiana used to identify the town locations below.  Original source: U.S. Geological Survey, 1972; online source: UT-Austin, 1990.

Last edited 03/20/2005 by Edwin Alexander.