Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Lost strangers - Meike and Werner (012 and 013)

While I was in Crete I managed to leave my camera at an ice-cream cafe never to be seen again. It was like having a limb cut off. I am still mourning the loss of my 200+ photos that I had on my card that I hadn't gotten round to downloading including friends I hadn't seen for years (and probably wouldn't see for many more years) and two strangers Meike and Werner, tourists from Northern Germany who I managed to persuade to pose for me at the Maritime Museum in Chania. Meike's dress of aquamarine looked stunning against the Cretan sky and yellow stone walls. And I managed to be a bit fancy with a reflection of myself in Werners mirrored shades. *sigh*

Luckily I was on holiday with my dad who had a Nikon D50 with him and he let me use his. Going from a Canon S2 to a full DSLR is a bit of a steep learning curve and the remainder of my stay in Crete was spent with me taking a gazillion blurry/dark/overexposed photos and wishing desperately I could have the control and familiarity of my old S2. My dad isn't one for manuals and the camera was relatively unused so I was basically trying to teach myself. Oh well I suppose it's a blessing - I have been forced to enter the world of proper photography... and I had insurance... and I had a happy moment when I revisited one of my Strangers one morning and he allowed me to retake his picture.

Onwards and upwards...

2 comments:

Julie said...

Good for you, girl! What a bummer!

I'm not one for pushing people into the deep end: but if that is where you find yourself then start swimming ...

You have underlined for me how important it is to organise my images each evening ... and not to have all my eggs in one basket card-wise.

Ann said...

What a bummer - its why I'm loath to work with big cards, you lose too much.

A D50 - lucky you - but I agree that an SLR is a whole new ball game, especially if you are going from p&s to manual operation. However, once you get used to an SLR, there is no going back. I went from a film SLR to a digital p&s because I was really nervous about going digital. It didn't take me long to get really frustrated and buy a DSLR. Its only now, however, that I'm learning how to use it the way it should be used.