Vacation Photos

If you’ve been reading this blog very long you know I spend a fair amount of time talking about cameras, film and other photographic equipment as well as techniques and experiences but hopefully through it all you realize as I do that it really is all about the pictures.

When I say things like that I am thinking of friends and acquaintances who claim to be into photography and spend an inordinate amount of time and money researching, buying, playing with and talking about cameras but very little time actually taking photos with them. In my opinion these folks are more collectors than photographers or photo enthusiasts. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that. Some people collect things for the sake of collecting and never use them at all. In fact some would be aghast at even the thought of actually using any of their collectibles. I confess that if I had the time & money I might collect cameras too but I don’t think I could ever resist the desire to take pictures with them.

Anyway, the point I wanted to make is photography is about photographs. The one above was taken by a “professional” photographer that hangs out at the Creole Queen taking pictures of tourists as they board the old paddle wheeler for a two hour sightseeing trip down the river from New Orleans.  As you can clearly see I had my camera hanging around my neck. Mary had her camera in her hand. Why would we pay someone to take such a photo when we both had excellent picture making devices in hand.

Easy, this photographer took the one picture we could not take. We took a lot of other pictures that day. Many of them much better than this one but this is the one sitting framed on my desk. Go figure!