The Storm Rolled In Before We Left, and the Start of Our Vacation

The night before we left for vacation, we had a storm roll in. The clouds were amazing. It passed over us fairly quickly, but was able to get these shots. They are a little noisy, so please excuse.






On another note, we made it to Lake Kabetogama without incident. The 4 hour ride went very well and Ella was wonderful. Unfortunately, the weather has been super crappy since we got here yesterday.....I am crossing my fingers that it clears up because I am getting cabin fever already! We are currently up here with a bunch of teenagers and I gotta tell you, I have never felt so old in my life. I am only 32 years old, but being around a bunch of 18 year olds makes me feel 50 in comparison! We came up with Keith's side of the family (his Dad and stepmom wont be up until Monday or Tuesday). Two of his sisters are up here with us (18 years old and 24 years old (I think...)). Also, alot of his Dad's friends are up here with thier kids and all the kids grew up together.....so it is just swarming with teenagers! Its actually quite humorous sitting back and watching them, but I still feel old.

I have limited access to the internet. I have to go up to the lodge to get a connection. It is taking forever to upload images, or download them when I go to a website. So I will have to catch up with everyone's posts when I get back into town. I am going to try to post each day though because I have a gazillion pictures. I never had a backlog of images with my p&s like I have with the Nikon already. I LOVE IT.

Since we have been stuck in the cabin for the most part, I havent gotten too many "vacation like" images. But heres a couple I got yesterday.


Ella and her Daddy standing on one of the docks when the rain let up.


A giggly moment with her Daddy....

Snapping, Snapping, Snapping

Why does it seem like I get this new camera and Ella doesn't want anything to do with me? Every time I try to get a picture of her, she stands up and walks away! I took her to the park yesterday so she could get some energy out. It seemed every time I tried to snap a picture, she was behind a bar or moved onto the next thing. Ever feel like you are losing your rhythm? Hopefully this uncomfortableness wont last for long. I am looking forward to getting up north and taking some pictures there, where I dont necessarily need a subject. :0)


Sometimes when I am taking pictures, she likes to pretend to take a picture of me....


And yes, because I didnt get very many good shots, you get a picture of some stools at the park.....Exciting, I know.

IT'S HERE!

I can excitedly announce that my package has arrived! My new Nikon D80 is in my hands (and everything else that was supposed to come with it). I had said before that I was trying to decide between the Nikon or the Canon EOS 450 XTI. The Canon was tempting because it is 12 mp whereas the Nikon is only 10mp. But I gotta tell you, I went into Best Buy one day, just on a whim to look at them both close up. I held both of them and I ultimately picked the Nikon because it felt better in my hands.

I had found the 2 lens kit (18-55mm & 55-200mm) at Adorama, but it was on back order. I still ordered it from there, but after getting two emails telling me that they didn't know when it would ship, I ended up cancelling it and ordered it from Abe's of Maine instead. I was not familiar with this online retailer, but the reviews were decent and the price was comparable to Adorama. Some people had good experiences and some did not. Within an hour after I placed my order, they called to confirm my order. An hour after that, I got an email saying it was going to be shipped. And then by 6pm that night, I got an email from UPS with a tracking number. I couldn't believe it was going so smoothly.

Anyways, I am a little overwhelmed at this point. When it came, I charged the battery and then just started shooting. What a difference from my point and shoot!! I mean unbelievable. I almost feel like I have never taken a picture before. Alot of people say that they feel like their photography got better overnight....I feel exactly the opposite.

In any case, I have added two pictures to this post. The first one is of Ella looking through the deck at the birdies (taken with my p&s). And yes, that is exactly how I look when I was taking pictures of them.


The second one I actually took with the Nikon. I was just playing around with light and thought it came out kinda cool. Remember the viewfinders we used to have as kids? This is one of the disks that goes in them.



We are going on vacation this Saturday through Wednesday, so I wanted to get a feel for the camera before we left. We will be up by the Canadian border and it should be beautiful and relaxing. I plan to shoot my ass of this week and we will see what I come up with.