Finally....

I FINALLY did it.  I braved 34th street to go to B&H yesterday (love B&H, hate 34th Street) and bought myself a DSLR camera.  I didn't want to spend a ton of money on my first DSLR since I'm pretty much a beginner so after some research I decided on a refurbished Canon EOS Rebel T3 with a basic 18-35mm lens.  I am in love.  Why oh why did I wait 6 years to do this?!  I think I was afraid it was too big and bulky to carry around and I wondered if I would really use it.   But the image quality is so fantastic just on auto mode, and I can't wait to delve into manual mode.  And the camera is really not that heavy (at least not with the lens I have).  Here are a couple pictures I took yesterday afternoon with my new DSLR... Um, the quality is soooo much better than my Canon PowerShot A710 or my iPhone Camera.

The New York City Challenge and Blogging as a Virtual Playground

As part of 'Documenting the End?', I have decided to challenge myself to go on two specific New York City adventures weekly. Ideally I will go to one museum or cultural location, and one design store or related location. One will allow me to be inspired by all the unparalleled art and culture this city has to offer and the other will allow me to catalogue all the amazing design resources here so I can reference them in the future. I can't wait! The first arts and culture post will be about our trip to the Children's Museum of the Arts in Soho.

I will also be practicing my camera skills along the way so hopefully I will begin to improve my photos for this blog. It's been a long time since I paid more attention to the art of photography rather than using it purely as a documentation tool. I took a couple photography classes while in high school using my parents old Nikon film DSL and developed my film in a dark room! How OLD SCHOOL. Since then, I haven't paid all that much attention to the art of photography. But I plan to change that. I've always coveted a Digital DSL and if I continue to post regular blog entries and improve my skills with my current Cannon Digital point and shoot camera and IPhone, I may be able to finally justify spending the money on one. I already have Photoshop and Illustrator so I will be able to tool around with those programs as well.

Blogging is really becoming a great motivator for me to finally explore many of the subjects that I love in more depth and learn new skills. Blogging as a Virtual Playgroud. Yay!