Tuesday, September 07, 2010

Photoggin'

One of my many hobbies/interests/jobs is photography and it has begun to really take off as of late. My wife and I decided it would be a good activity for us to do together, so I got her a dslr for Christmas last year and it's kind of snowballed from there. We're now booking steady shoots on the weekends and the occasional shoot during the week when we're not at our day jobs. We have a few wedding shoots in the works, but most are either family or engagements.

My real passion still lies in outdoor photography, which has been reignited with our recent purchase...the widely renowned Canon 70-200mm f/4L. The f/2.8L is actually the more popular of the L-series 70-200's, but the f/4L is a great first step into the high-end lens market. It's not the fastest or the fanciest lens, but it's a pure workhorse of a lens for outdoor photography. It will work ok indoors as long as it's reasonably lit, but it really shines in the outdoor settings. It will work perfect for our first real foray into serious nature photography, giving us a better edge at getting the shots we dream about.

I'm itching/excited to get out this fall to get some shots of the Kentucky whitetail deer, turkeys, and maybe even a bear or two. We'll probably take a little trip to Cades Cove in TN as well, which is almost guaranteed to give us some good wildlife shots. We're serious enough about photography as it is, but we admittedly do not make enough time or take enough opportunities to get out and shoot the outdoors like we really want. We settled into a bit of a funk over the summer with being either worn out from our day jobs or other shoots, or it was too hot to even think about so much as going hiking, much less pack around a bag full of gear in 90+ temp and humidity.

Admittedly, we are a bit of fairweather photogs, which is something we need to work on. Some of the best shots can appear out of the crappiest situations. Neither me nor my wife are too thrilled about getting up at 5:30am to head out to a blind or treestand, but the potential to get some great shots is beginning to override our apathy. We think our recent purchase of some higher end glass will be the nudge we need to get out and really shoot like we need and want. It would be nice to have a few big prints made to hang on the walls and maybe peddle a few as well.
I guess we'll see what happens once the UPS truck gets here today with the goods, this weekend will be fun anyways. We'll have a couple days to get familiar with the new lens, which will be nice since we have a family shoot scheduled Saturday. Probably after that we will head into the woods and see what else we can come up with. Stay tuned, shots will be posted soon!