Surfing sequence
Monterey Peninsula, CA. May 2012
Beautiful Traverse City
Traverse City, MI, USA. September 2008Ultimate Air Dogs 2009
Traverse City, MI, USA. July 2009Halsway Nov 2008
"Mostly English" at Halsway Manor, November 2008Ultimate Air Dogs 2008
Traverse City, MI, USA. July 2008Whirligig 2008
Sylvan Lake, NY, USA. October 2008Ultimate Air Dogs 2007
Traverse City, MI, USA. July 2007I have been taking digital photos since we were given our first 1.2 Mpx Olympus as a wedding present in 1999. I loved it because I could take as many pictures as I wanted and throw the failures away with no sense of guilt. Henry loved it because he didn't get to worry about the costs of developing the photos, and we both loved the fact that there is no longer an escalating pile of shoeboxes full of prints that we haven't even got time to look at, let alone organise into albums.
Over the years I have graduated from the Olympus through a succesion of compact cameras with more mega pixels and greater manual control until my resolve not to go the monster dSLR route finally broke down in April 2007. I have found that far from never getting out of the house, my Canon EOS 30D goes with me whenever I can bear to carry its large bag. It is so easy to use and so fabulously competent that I find I can take the kind of shots that I had only dreamed of in the past. Of course I still have a lot to learn and each session is a lesson in "next time I should..." But here are the first results - about 5% of the shots I took at the Ultimate Air Dogs competition at Traverse City's National Cherry Festival in July 2007.
A whole year later (I can scarcely believe it) and here is the Ultimate Air Dogs event at the 2008 Cherry Festival. Although at first glance the photos look pretty similar to last year, they have more resolution (you can make bigger prints from them) and they are generally sharper with more detail.
I have finally cleared some time to upload the photos that Henry has been choosing to show how beautiful Traverse City is. I think that there will be further instalments of this project as we keep finding other great spots.
These are some of the pictures I took at "Weekend Whirligig" this year (2008). It's a wonderful camp in New York State where we dance English Country Dances all weekend. Fabulous music, wonderful dancers and great food. What more could we want?
My Canon 30D was going to last me until forever but ineveitably the day came when Canon brought out the upgrade that I couldn't resist - the 60D. It has my longed-for flip-out screen so that I can sit with the camera on my knee taking stills of people without spooking them. And the icing on the cake is its fantastic HD video capability. So now I can take video in under-lit dance halls with my bright, wide angle lenses; places my miniDV camcorder could only dream about. Of course it isn't perfect, but my ideal camera doesn't exist yet and if it did I certainly couldn't afford it! But I love it every bit as much as my old 30D (which has gone to a friend to encourage him back into photography). The down-side is that now I can see the shortcomings of my lenses and have had to invest in some better (much more expensive) ones!
Copyright © 2007
Jacqui Morgenstein
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