Before I went to Los Angeles, I bought a new camera. It's a Canon Rebel XSi, and, yeah, it's a sexy motherfucker. Don't hate me because my camera's fly. I did a fair amount of research before I got it, and I chose this one because it's wasn't your average point-and-shoot, but it wasn't some unwieldy monster either. I got the average lens with it, and the camera bag that doesn't beg for the entire affair to be stolen by proclaiming what's in it, and some other stuff, like an extra battery. I am happy with it. I bought it at Best Buy, where the customer service was astonishingly horrid the first time I went, although the second time I went it was OK. They should work on that. Yes, Best Buy, I'm talking to you. Because I don't really know what I'm doing with photography, and to get myself friendly with the device, I've been taking a photograph a day with it. You can find some of my handiwork here. Some of it is astonishingly boring, and some of it is not, but the point is not the photograph, at least at this time, it's what happens in between, me getting used to the camera, so we become one, like a cyborg.
Mostly, I just set the thing on automatic, because I don't know how to use the rest, or I turn it to the setting where the flash won't go on, because flashes are like the plague, IMO. (Please do not send me "advice" on how to use my camera. I won't use it. Thanks.) And low-light is not its best-friend. But, mostly, I love it. If another natural disaster were closing in on my life--and once you've had one, you know it's always possible!--I would grab the camera and the computer, but the rest can go. Dear Mother Nature: This time, please take everything but the computer and the camera. Thanks! Love, Sus.
I got my first camera in 2001, maybe. It was a Nikon. I thought it was rather clever at the time, but ultimately the colors were sort of flat. Sort of yellow? Sort of gray? Sort of tan? So I switched to a Canon this time. I think the colors are better. Maybe the greens could be better sometimes.
If someone slipped me a million dollars tomorrow (please do!), I would give up writing for about a year, because I have been doing this professionally for about a dozen years, and let me tell you, I am pretty tired of it, and I would just take photographs. Where? In Porn Valley, of course. Because nothing else holds my attention like the Valley does. Everything else is shades of gray.
