September 22nd, 2007

1 Year With My D80

Well it’s been almost exactly 1 year since after walking over the Brooklyn Bridge for the first time, I, on a whim, purchased my Nikon D80, walked out of J&R in downtown Manhattan, sat in a park across the street and took the photo above. At the time, I was amazed at how much better my new DSLR performed vs my old Nikon 5000.

I still am.

In the past year since then, I’ve taken close to 15,000 photos!! I’ve had the good fortune to art direct a photo shoot for Six Flags (that had a photo featured in this year’s Communication Arts Photo Annual) with the absolutely fantastic Michael Warren who taught me quite a lot. I’ve acquired more gear including a fantastic Nikkor 50mm lens that I received as a Christmas gift. I’ve submitted photos to photography projects.

And, of course, I’ve begun using Flickr.

In the past year, I’ve posted 507 photos to Flickr. Those photos have been viewed over 11,000 times!

The above photo taken on Thanksgiving last year has been viewed 491 times, was featured in Flickr’s daily list of interesting photos, made it into a story on Gothamist, was printed in the Brooklyn Paper and requested as a print by the firefighters who responded to the fire.

I’ve had 3 other photos featured on Gothamist including the lightning one above which has also garnered 66 favorites from Flickr users. Also, 4 other photos have been featured on Flickr.

The above photo was the first photo of mine to break 1000 views on Flickr (I think). Since then 4 more photos of mine (none showing as much skin and 1 taken with my iPhone) have also crossed the 1000 view mark. One now hovers just below 2000 views.

Photography has really become a big part of my life over the past year. I just go through my days looking at everything differently. I think I may even be getting better if the above photo is any indicator. It’s not a super popular one, but to me, it’s one of my favorites.