Ode to Joy

October 12, 2007 | Filed Under Personal  by michael | 

I am just ecstatic to be blogging right now, and for good reason. Earlier today I dropped by the local camera store and purchased possibly the most amazing lens on the planet, the Canon 400mm 2.8 IS. I was excited before I picked it up, but you have to actually hold this lens to appreciate its sheer beauty and magnificent glow. It weighs in at about 12lbs which is pretty crazy for just the lens (add a camera body and a tripod to that). Most professional photographers at some time have looked to others as mentors and can attribute a certain amount of their passion to that early fascination with whomever they idolized. For me, there are two great photographers that I would say have been my pro idols for many years, and one has used Canon for the last ten years. His name is Art Wolfe. I would see the images that he was making with this lens, and it just blew me away! The other’s is Franz Lanting. There have been many others along the way, but since I was about 12 years old, I remember reading about both of these photographers and just being so completely drawn in to the idea that loved their jobs, and that they were experiencing culture, history, nature, and getting to travel while doing it all! I was sold. I bought my first camera (with a terrible lens) from a newspaper ad that same year. It was a Ricoh, which I didn’t even know made cameras before I saw the ad. I photographed everything under the sun with that setup, and the photos were terrible. I spent a fortune on film, and just kept shooting anything and everything.

So, here we are almost 20 years later and I finally have the lens that drew me in, and man am I excited to try this bad boy out! Check back in the next week or so for some of the first images that this thing produces in my very own hands.

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