There is more to life than writing

         It's true. Even for me, there is more to life than writing.

There's also photography!

Russ bought me a lovely Canon EOS T4i Digital SLR camera for my birthday, with two lenses. I have not had an SLR camera since I was still shooting film back in the dark ages (late 1990s). It's going to take me a while to get used to the feel again, but I'll be working at it. This takes me back into the realm of truly serious photography, which I used to do.

I got the camera late on the 6th as an early present and I've taken almost 1500 pictures with it already. This is because we went to two wildlife refuges on March 8th, which meant I was taking about 100 shots an hour or more. Swans! Ducks!  Geese! Eagles! Trees! Weeds! PICTURES!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

Yeah, I went a little nuts. But it was a great birthday and I got quite a few nice pictures, even though it was basically my first real day out with the camera.

Many of you know about my Picture-a-Day Blog, where I have been posting a picture every day since January 1, 2007 (http://zettepicaday.blogspot.com/) but I also have a Flikr account where I post groups of shots rather than just one. (http://www.flickr.com/photos/zettepics/) I will be getting more stuff posted there.

I am also considering a photography project which is going to be based around stuffed animals and dolls. I'm looking into backdrops that I can set up for this one, which should be interesting and allow me to experiment with the new camera without a lot of pressure to get a picture before something moves.

No, writing hasn't suffered for any of this. I am very close to 200k for the year already. The new novel, The Legend of Tom Luck, is moving along slowly but doing well. Badlands is going very well! I have just started the formatting for Xenation: Draw the Line, too.

So this has been a fantastic few days and I'm looking forward to experimenting with the new camera.

Life is very good.