God Beats The Recession...

Who would have thought that a day which began with a dental appointment at 8.30am could turn out well?

Not me, but it did. I've been having massive TMJ symptoms (jaw pain, in the colloquial) and found a new dentist who, in addition to taking me on as an NHS case, also does lots of private work and happens to be a jaw joint specialist. This totally explains my agreeing to go for an appointment at such a ridiculous hour. Turns out, my new dentist is brilliant! I've been referred to see a TMJ specialist at the Dental Hospital, and we've got a treatment plan for me starting tomorrow afternoon. Finally, after months of aching pain, I'm going to get some relief!

Such was my joy that I ventured straight from the dentist's chair into town. I had my camera in my bag (thanks to joining blipland) and spent the morning mooching and taking shots. I got a few interesting ones, and I also tested out my abilities with manual focusing. Turn out, manual focusing is actually a bit of a black art - sometimes, it works brilliantly, sometimes just fine, other times I get total blur. Seems I get more blur the further away the object is from me. I naturally snapped the same shot I'd done manually but with the camera set to auto-focus so I could compare when I got home. May just be a practice thing, but there you go. Day one of using manual focus properly, and I didn't get a total pass but nor did I get a total fail. I fully encourage any AFers out there to try it sometimes.

One place I popped into was John Lewis dept store, to browse their lenses. The camera dude in there was super helpful and nice. Sorry, I don't know his name, but if you're in Liverpool and need camera stuff, the young dude in JL who owns a Nikon D40 is the guy to ask. He let me try a couple of lenses and answered a bunch of questions for me about them, including encouraging me to MF more and suggesting I hunt around on fleabay and places for film and/or older digital Nikkor lenses - they will work just fine with my camera but there'd be no autofocus on them. But they'd also be £30-60 instead of the £170 I'd be paying for one with AF. So, he wasn't just being polite to get a sale. Top bloke, and now my go-to guy for camera needs in Liverpool. I didn't feel at all pressured or intimidated or horribly n00bish at all. Good stuff.

The lenses I tried were the AF-S 35mm and the AF-S 55-200mm. I'm officially in love with 35mm lenses. They're brilliant! I'm desperate to become competent at manual focus now, so I can pick one up on the cheap. The 55-200mm, I'm deffo going AF-S on, tho. It'll be a long while before I'm competent with MF at 200mm. Haven't yet decided when to buy, or whether to go Nikkor or secondary company with that, but I'll keep looking into it over coming weeks (not planning to buy a lens for about a couple of months, unless I go with a 35mm MF-only prime nowish.....I'm sooooooo tempted - have it live on my camera for everyday snapping and candids, man this thing is BEAUTIFUL for candids and photojournalism style shots, I'm in love, with a lens size/length).


Anyway, I had a bunch of shots to pick from for today. A couple of them were even a bit 'arty'. But I went with humour instead. This and one other that I took have something of a wry smirk to them. The other one is slightly artsy (it's a bit symbolic, I guess). More importantly, the other one had the top of a much-needed tree cropped off (my bad), so it goes in the 'nearly' pile. You can see the shots that didn't make it, along with my manual focus tests (of a stationary car, a building, and a street sign) over at my Framer's Intent blog on tumblr (link is in my bio on here - http://framersintent.tumblr.com/) now.

There's something very Tom Waits about the vibe I had for this pic. Albeit a Tom Waits in morning sunlight vibe (has he ever been spotted in the morning sun? does he even exist at such times? who knows..). Think "God's Away On Business" and you're almost into my headspace for this shot. I hope I don't offend any religiously devout blippers, but I love juxtapositions in general, and particularly liked this for the juxtaposition of the spiritual and the commercial (plus the suggestion that they are, or sometimes can be, one and the same).

The sign is regarding roadworks taking place on the street behind where I took the pic. But I saw it, thought of the Waits tune, and then couldn't help thinking about the recession and how much economic theory is little more than a matter of faith....amusing when you think how integral religions were in setting up the first trade routes, paving the way for capitalism as we know it today.



All that done, and I even have plans for tomorrow (I have an afternoon free after the dentists, and a few ideas for shots I want to try out). I'll get back to my light experiments soon enough, but probably not tomorrow.