Back Again

Good, it is, to be back to my blog! Many hours have I spent over the past couple of weeks building an new photography website. After exhausting research, test trials, and cancellations, I ran across a photographer's website reviewed in Shutterbug Magazine who had chosen a host named Photium. It is a UK company with servers based in London and has proven so far to be the best, most polite and responsive organization I have so far worked with through a computer. Please remember that I am still digitally challenged. For one who regarded the by-gone analogue world of electronics to be sufficiently overwhelming, I have needed much help (and I click on it all the time, usually to my disappointment) in becoming digitalized. I have indeed studied the world of digitalia, as I call it, extensively since I decided to move my photographic methodology beyond silver oxide, and though I am still lost when reading forums where webmasters are discussing the details and possibilities of search engine optimization, I have been surprised in casual conversation with friends how many people are much more capable than I am with clicking and keying through complicated programs and producing beautiful and efficient work, knowing all the tricks and applications for linking Facebook to the known universe, while still being clueless as to how much RAM their computer has, why a hard drive must be kept cool, and exactly why Windows Vista tanked. Perhaps, for me, I should only skim PC World Magazine and just get more experience in front of the monitor. At least, I'm making progress.

So, the new website has slowly come together as I have continued to select and upload new photo portfolios and added on new features. I'm excited just to get any visits, period, and I have watched the counter (ticker, as the British call it) continue to increase its speed. Again, however, allow me to recall just two weeks ago as I watched the early results come in and witnessed a sudden increase from 27 hits up to 51 in just one hour, I thought I was going viral! I could just see the headliner on MSN News for the next morning..."New photo website attracts a billion from around the world over night...Google servers crash!" OK, I'm up to 260 visits and no sales yet, so Google and the universe are safe, but, again I love progress.

Thank you for visiting my new site at rclinephotography.com! I am quite tickled with it and my plans are for constant improvement of both the photographs offered and the site itself. Check it out and purchase something while you are there..I feel like tossing in something for free to the first customer.

...and much thanks to all the crew of Photium across the Atlantic for your patience, your grace, and your kind professionalism...hail ye the British!

Now, while still in the photography mode and on the technical rant, let me say a few words about Nikon which have been in me for a spell. A few weeks ago I shared on a forum concering the top cameras of all time. When I was researching digital cameras just over a year ago, trying to determine to which model and manufacturer I would contribute precious, long saved money, I could not discount the years of faithful service accorded to me by a pair of Canon SLR (single lens reflex) cameras which I had obtained in the early 1980's. The first was a Canon AE-1 followed by the addition of its upgrade, the Canon A-1. These two fine film recorders survived years of travel photography throughout the back roads and small towns of Texas from Paris to El Paso, including ten grueling expeditions through the scorching desert heat of the Big Bend National Park. I still have them today even though I dropped the A-1 off of a rock onto another rock shortly before I proposed to my wife...it still works. After having cranked thousands of feet of Kodachrome and Tri-X through those cameras and having recorded an unknown quantity of frames across twenty-five years of clicking, I did award the Canon AE-1 my personal distinction as one of the top ten cameras of all time. What a workhorse it has been!

So, I approached the digital camera world with Canon in mind, especially if my collection of fine Canon lenses could be used on these new electronic machines, but that was not to be. The early information I gleaned said that Canon digital cameras were not "backwards compatible" and my old lenses would not function. I have since heard words to the contrary, but this news, correct or not, gave rise within me to an old desire...Nikon!

The Nikon name carries a certain mystique, a romantic notion which stretches from the jungle wilderness to the high fashion runway. If Indiana Jones was, instead, a traveling adventure photographer, he would have sported a Nikon under the rim of his fedora. Even Paul Simon embraced the Nikon in "Kodachrome" and an old advertisement lauded the testimonial line of a model who said "I know I'll look good when I see a Nikon pointed at me!"

So what is it? Decades ago, Nikon took the 35mm SLR to the top of the ranks. Nikkor lenses using precision ground glass made from the finest silica on the planet plus meticulous engineering and tough standards allowed these cameras to expose film to the best light possible. These tough standards made tough cameras. I observed Nikons for a long time, borrowed a few and dreamt of owning one. I saw them with dents and body scratches. I saw them dusty and with the paint worn off their edges. I watched professional photographers work with three of them hanging around their necks, grabbing one for a shot as the other two clunked together. These cameras kept working. The sounds of the early Nikons, clicking shutters, clacking mirrors, and the whirring of the motor drives advancing the film as quickly as possible became the sounds which represented the press rooms. Sometimes you could hardly hear what the movie star or the senator was saying over the din of twenty Nikons all being held up over the crowd as photographers would shoot them blindly while hoping to grab the Times front page.

Nikons survived the Elvis tours, the Civil Rights movement, the Viet Nam War, and Twiggy. They filled the pages of "Life" and "National Geographic". They saw the barefoot children of Appalacia and they have honored the Queen; they have exposed the horrors of secret wars and they have brought home the peaceful, intimate moments as the lioness groomed her cubs. Hang medallions on these cameras for bringing the world to our eyes.

The mystique...so I bought a Nikon.