Celebrating the End of My Cold With Some Pretty Photos From 2008

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 at an effective 202mm — 1/1000 sec, f/4, ISO 200 — map & image datanearby photos
A Metaphor For Me
a dead sunflower and pretty flowers,
representing the cold I just got over, and the getting over of the cold

I'm finally over the nagging cold I had for the last two weeks. It had relented a bit early on enough for me to write the posts on the gargoyle workshop, then returned and stuck with me until I finally went to the doctor the other day. He gave me antibiotics, and I started feeling much felt better the next day.

やっと風邪治っ、二週間ぶり元気です。手当たり次第に2008年の写真色々を見せます。

I couldn't concentrate on much while I had the cold, but to try to eke out some productivity, I picked a year (2008) and started going through my photo archive with and eye to delete cruft — stuff I no longer need, or never needed but had been too lazy to go through and get rid of. I got through about 90% of the 14,299 photos that I still have for the year, and identified a third as low-hanging-fruit that I can delete.

Wanting to post something now that I'm finally feeling better, here are a few pretty-ish shots from 2008. They're all taken with a Nikon D200, which was my first dSLR.


Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 at an effective 25mm — 1/400 sec, f/5, ISO 400 — map & image datanearby photos
Garden Lake
Heian Shrine, Kyoto Japan
平安神宮

From the same trip that produced Snowy Gardens of the Heian Shrine.

And a tree in the local park, during cherry-blossom peak:


Nikon D200 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 at an effective 240mm — 1/180 sec, f/4, ISO 500 — map & image datanearby photos
Weeping Cherry at Full Bloom

From the same day as Cherry-Blossom “Snow”.


Nikon D200 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 at an effective 300mm — 1/500 sec, f/3.5, ISO 640 — map & image datanearby photos
Kids Playing

I don't know who the kids are, but I like the feeling of action the shot captures. From this day.


Nikon D200 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 at an effective 127mm — 1/3000 sec, f/2.2, ISO 160 — map & image datanearby photos
A Pretty Sunset is a Pretty Sunset
from the day that started here

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR at an effective 27mm — 1/160 sec, f/4.5, ISO 400 — map & image datanearby photos
Wisteria Vertigo
from this outing

Nothing super great, and without the story that I normally like to write, but sometimes you just want to see colors.

Though here's a little story: after selecting the photos for today's post, and while starting to write it up, I went back to my archive see what other blog posts I'd written from the same outings these photos came from. It turns out that I'd already published a photo very similar to the one that leads this post, with the same metaphor of the dead flower representing my having a cold. Six and a half years ago, it was the lead photo on Venting About My (sort of) Cursed Vacation.

If nothing else, I'm consistent.


All 2 comments so far, oldest first...

Whilst I now shoot with newer cameras, D800’s for work, my retired cameras still get a day out for personal stuff. I kept one D200 and used it the other day and was frankly surprised at how great the nefs looked.

Further, high iso and convert to b&w reminded me how much I loved that look.

So, get your old gear out of the cupboard and go shoot.

Thanks for sharing your work. Japan is on my bucket list for sure reinforced by your images.

— comment by paul on September 13th, 2014 at 7:31pm JST (9 years, 7 months ago) comment permalink

Nice to hear you’re doing better.

It’s always a pleasure to read your blog posts and see your photography improve and progress from a point and shoot to several DSLRs, as I’ve been following your blog for quite some time now.

By the way, why didn’t you choose Canon? Not trying to troll or anything, as I shoot with Nikon too. If you have some time I’ve included my Flickr profile in this post as well.

Alvin from NYC.

Thanks for your kind words. Back when I was looking for my first dSLR, among the comparable models only Nikon’s had a dedicated autofocus-assist light, which meant that the pop-up flash didn’t have to pop up unexpectedly to provide a focus-assist light in dimmer settings. That popping up had annoyed me so severely when testing models in the store that it became the deciding factor. —Jeffrey

— comment by Alvin on September 14th, 2014 at 1:49am JST (9 years, 7 months ago) comment permalink
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