My camera is dangerous. I love my (still new) Nikon D60 DSLR, and I’m still using it whenever I can. I finished my stint as my daughter’s swim team photographer this week, and I continued to get compliments on the photographs I took every week. In fact, the swim team organizers are looking for someone to bring an LCD projector so they can show the pictures during the swim party this weekend.
And this past weekend, I took a few pictures at a “water day” event at my family’s church. There were only a few people there, but I had my camera with me and tried to get some good splashy action shots. About half of them were good enough to share, and after posting them to my Picasa album, I get several compliments.
Water pictures are especially dramatic with my new camera. The good optics combined with the low latency of the shutter release (so that I can take a picture precisely when I want to, and not 2 seconds later) allow me to get people’s faces with abstract water blobs seemingly floating in air. It’s the kind of shot you can’t get with a typical point-and-shoot digital camera.
People just don’t realize that it’s not actually that hard with the right equipment (which I now have). Granted, I do color-correct the photos, only show people the good ones, and crop almost all of them (cropping photos correctly makes a huge difference), but it still isn’t difficult.
So the dangerous part is that I like taking pictures with my new camera, but when I do people are really excited about the results. I foresee being asked to be the official/unofficial photographer for future events. That’s not all bad, but I don’t want it to feel like a burden or that I’m obligated to be the photographer for every event.
Hopefully, I’ll be able to find the right balance. In the mean time, I’ll enjoy taking photos and the ego trip I get from all the effusive compliments afterwards.