Feeding My Passion

My brother in law is letting me use his Nikon D200 body and Tamaron 17-50/2.8 most of the semester for this class. It is quite the beast compared to my little Nikon CoolPix 5400. And my dad has given me his Nikon 85/1.8 as well, a very fast and sharp piece of glass. So after reading some of the manual and a 3rd-party guidebook for it yesterday, I took it out for a test drive today, up into the foothills, stopping in the Spanish-named gold rush towns of Hornitos (population: 10) and Mariposa (translation: butterfly and a rather pejorative word for a homosexual man – the things you learn while working in restaurant kitchens!).

I’m shooting in Nikon’s version of RAW format, the first time I’ve shot RAW format of any type. The amount of detail it retains is awesome, especially if I underexpose by .7-1.0 stop, but I’m not happy yet with my processing. I have Photoshop 7 and my brother-in-law gave me Lightbox 2. I have a lot to learn about the camera and about processing its output, and the 30-day assignment is a good way to do both.

St. Catherine Catholic Church, built in 1862, occupies the highest point in Hornitos, and has a cemetery behind it.

Richard Ortiz, who mother opened the bar in 1948 and gave it to him just last year, serves Tuck and Tim Megher, who live in nearby Mariposa.

Downtown Mariposa, Cal.

Downtown Mariposa