The last class is over, and all that remains is graduation: readings, dinner, the Sweatheart Ball (yes, ’sweat’, not ’sweet’). Tomorrow a long drive and a couple plane rides and I’ll have my sweet chickens back in my arms Monday morning. Not much more to say than that, really.
I settled in for my flight across the pond with my packet of workshop stories and my journal, prepared to work and studiously ignore the person in the seat next to me. People don’t like to be bothered, and neither do I. After an hour or so of my seatmate typing diligently on his Mac, and me jotting in my journal, I went to the loo and left my books in my seat. When I returned, he said, “That’s a nice journal,” or words to that effect, and so I told him where it came from and we started talking. He was nice enough, and so I yammered on about my MFA, and about my program, and my writing, and when I finally stopped talking about myself and asked him what was working on, he mentioned that he was, you know, preparing for his interview on Fresh Air because his second book just came out. I squealed (politely), crawled into his lap, and asked if he would consider taking me to the studio with him and introducing me to Terry Gross. “I’m pretty sure she’d like to meet me,” I told him, “Because I’m planning to be a famous author some day, and she’d probably like to make my acquaintance, now, before my interview.”
Okay, not really. But I did question him about everything from Kentucky stud horses to word processing for the rest of the flight. His name is Kevin Conley, and you can find his work in the pages of The New Yorker, Men’s Vogue, and GQ.
He was so terribly interesting, and honestly, how often is it that you get to corner someone truly interesting and talk to them for oh, say, 7 hours? He showed me a picture of himself on fire on his laptop. That particular picture graces the book jacket of his latest book, The Full Burn, so you should probably go run out to your local independent bookstore right this minute and buy it. Kevin also promised he would visit my blog, and my feeling about this is, when a guy that’s lit himself on fire comes to call, you have to make an effort.
So, in my limited computer time, here’s a couple more strangers, for Kevin:
Robert
Hear him school me in London geography:
And also Paul, who looks a bit suspicious of me.
Get ready; here I go, dropping of the face of the earth for a bit. See you on the other side.
June 2008
On the swing today, in Baxter’s Field:
July 2007
While I was uploading that audio file, which I titled “giggle”, I ran across another one, recorded in June last year, titled “marlee-laughs”. This one has bonus material: me alternating between ordering Boyish to perform like a trained monkey for her (”Roll around on the floor again.”), and talking like a baby myself. Warning: baby giggles are contagious.
They sure grow up fast, don’t they?
What 5 Looks Like, originally uploaded by texasgurl.
Happy Birthday, Big Boyish. It’s been a good day.
We talk here:
And, just so you don’t think me a slacker, I have three or four more strangers in the queue, but I’ve been shooting film lately, and I don’t have a way to get them online yet. I’m working on it.
For SanDiegoMomma’s Prompt Tuesday, write something inspired by this poem:
Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock
by Wallace Stevens
The houses are haunted
By white night-gowns.
None are green,
Or purple with green rings,
Or green with yellow rings,
Or yellow with blue rings.
None of them are strange,
With socks of lace
And beaded ceintures.
People are not going
To dream of baboons and periwinkles.
Only, here and there, an old sailor,
Drunk and asleep in his boots,
Catches Tigers
In red weather.
Here goes:
Sailor told her parents straight out that she intended to join the circus. Her mother rolled her eyes; her father said “Like hell you are,” but when that lanky boy with the blue-black hair took the center ring she might as well have been gone already. She was gone to another world, a world that unfolded before her that night as she sat in the dusty bleachers, watching the boy return to the rings in front of her again and again: this time juggling fire, that time riding backwards in a ring of thundering horses, and again twirling the long ends of a pearly cloth threaded high through an iron loop, spinning a leggy acrobat until her beaded costume fractured the light like fireworks. She would be his acrobat, she thought, and when they brought out the tiger she wasn’t surprised to see that he was also the one who entered the cage with a whip. The tiger snarled at the boy; the boy flashed his teeth: at the tiger, at the crowd. She imagined him after the show, rubbing the fur behind the tiger’s ears, placing his palms under its great chin, feeling the vibration of its purr quivering beneath his skin.
That night, in her room, she left her nightgown in a puddle of moonlight on the floor, slipped on her jeans and her red boots, and shimmied down the drainpipe outside her window. She’d seen the trailers glowing like lanterns behind the circus tent, heard the crickets’ song calling her to him. He was expecting her, she knew. Soon enough, she would be there.
Well, she’s gone and done it. Blondish bought a camera. It must of have been months ago when she first asked me what she should get. She told me she was interested in a point-and-shoot, so I recommended a Canon Powershot. Still do, for those who want a point-and-shoot. As I understand it, Canon makes the best of these, providing the best quality and the most control for these kind of cameras. I’d actually really like to have one for myself, but my photo gear list is many pages long, and I’d have to burn through three to five grand before that particular item came up. My favorite photographer who uses this camera is Officially A Mom, on Flickr. She used to have a blog, too, but she rarely posts there anymore. Her photographs, however, continue to amaze.
But if you want a camera with interchangeable lenses (and you do), you want an “SLR.” Stands for “single-lens reflex”. Sometimes you’ll see “DSLR”: “D” for digital. I’m already in trouble for it, but I recommend that you go with either Canon or Nikon. There are many other fine brands out there, and many fine photographers using those brands, but I think going with one of the two big guns makes sense for a number of reasons. Not the least of which are the large communities of users that you can tap into if you have questions along the way.
Canon or Nikon?
With only a few exceptions, most everyone I know shoots Canon. Everyone else I know shoots Nikon. These brands have been around a long time. They both have what are widely considered to be superior lenses, and large secondary markets for lenses and accessories. If you get into this photography thing, you will want lenses. You will want speedlights, and lighting gear, and tripods and eyepieces and filters. You will want stuff that costs all kinds of money, and If you go with Nikon or Canon, you’ll be able find the stuff you want, both new and used, in a number of places. You’ll be able to compare prices, and find more information about whatever expensive thing you’re considering, and how it compares to other, similar less expensive and more expensive things.
First Cameras To Consider:
Canon’s entry-level offering is the Rebel. My good friend Aaryn got started with that, and you can see all kinds of amazing images she took with it, here. Melanie, my new idol over a BeanPaste does all kinds of cool stuff with her Rebel, and K-k-k-katie has a 20D (It’s a step up from the Rebel, but an older model. Canon’s got a 40D now, which Aaryn is presently making use of.)
Nikon’s entry-level offerings, are the D40, D50, and D80. And now a D60, I hear, but know nothing about. I suppose it’s the new D50? I have a D80, which I love. If I didn’t have one or two kids and husband in bed with me every night, I’d probably sleep with it. But the reason I probably love it so much is because it’s been my first camera. I learned to shoot on it; I’m attached to it. I love the way it feels in my hands, and because the camera is a manual as well as a visual instrument, there’s a lot to be said for how it feels in your hands, where your fingers fall in relation to the buttons, etc. . . . So that’s another piece of advice. Before you buy a big-girl camera, go to the camera store and get your hands on the models you’re considering, see how they feel. When you get your hands on the one for you, you’ll know.
Trustworthy places I like to buy online are here, here, and here.
MOST IMPORTANTLY: GET YOURSELF A FIDDY
A normal lens on a digital SLR means a lens with a focal length of 30 to 50mm. “Normal” means not telephoto, and not wide-angle. It means that when you lift the viewfinder to your eye, what you see through the viewfinder doesn’t change that much. You don’t get a telescopic “zooming in” or a wide-angle “stepping back” effect.
Nikon has three good options here, the Sigma 30/1.4 (it lives on my camera), the Nikon 50/1.4 (it’s in the mail to me now), and I think there’s also a Nikon 50/1.8 (cheaper than the 1.4, a fine lens, but not as sharp at all apertures). Canon also has a fast, sharp 50/1.8, which is supposed to be excellent, and 50/1.2, which costs well over a grand—not your starter lens, probably.
A fast normal lens will allow you to shoot indoors, using natural light. And natural light? Makes prettier pictures. These lenses are sharp and fun and you will take beautiful portraits, fabulous night shots, and really get a handle on what your camera can do and your eye can see. Note: these are fixed-focal-length lenses. They do not zoom.
The kit zoom lenses that come bundled with your camera are kind of crap, frankly. Zoom lenses, unless they’re super-fast (like 2.8, which makes them cost about $1500 minimum) are not as sharp, have less attractive out-of-focus areas, and are useless indoors without flash. On-board camera flash creates harsh shadows and ugly highlights, and freezes all the life out of most pictures when you’re starting out. There are good uses of flash, but almost none of them come attached to the camera, and none of them are cheap or easy to figure out when you’re just getting started.
There’s more I could say (there’s always more to say about cameras) but I’ll stop here with a call-out to all my photographer-grrrrrlz. You know who you are. What do you say when someone asks you what camera they should start with? What lens lives on your camera?
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