Greetings All, This link will show a short picture show of Lincoln County, New Mexico where I now live. Some of you will recognize the picture of the court house from the many Billy the Kid movies. This was the place where he made his actual famous escape although none of the movies were ever filmed here. Young Guns was filmed around Santa Fe.

I am planning on creating another website that will be a photo essay on Lincoln County. With Dog, Camera and Jeep I plan on exploring this vast country with sleepy little towns. Ruidoso is a resort with ski area and casinos. The rest of Lincoln is so remote that you can drive all day on the back roads and rarely see another car. As always I welcome criticism from the many great photographers on this board, let me know what you think.

http://www.wnewton.com/slideshow.php?gID=36&

Someday I'll take another cruise. Chip

Chip, we have missed you, and welcome back! I am one of the more amateur photgraphers on this board, and now that I have a new camera, I am confounded! I got that new Olympus thing that goes from 28-504mm all in one camera! Getting to know it is a challenge.

It is nice to have you reporting in again! We all enjoyed that long cruise when you were on Crystal and reporting to us with frames from your Sony video!

Hi Olivia, I've been moving with all the ramifications involved.

On my cruise to Iceland last summer I used a Nikon Coolpix. It fits in the palm of my hand and I am amazed at the quality of the photos that it produces. The day of carrying goobs of photo equipment on the airlines are over. I missed the carry on ban by 4 days out of London. I don't know what I would of done if I had been stuck there with all my stuff. Stayed there until it was over I guess.

That's quite a focal range. But if it works maybe I should look into one.

Hey, Chip - Nice to have you check in here.

Didn't know you moved - I was in Santa Fe for a photoworkshop last month. Off to Las Vegas for a professional photo convention tomorrow too. I have been doing some commercial work lately, which has been a lot of fun. I got one of my images published this week in an ad (Headshot for the local paper!)

Will check in with your site and see what you are up to...good to hear from you

Olivia,

I did not know that new Olympus camera was out. I will have to check it out. Maybe it will be at the photo trade show tomorrow.

Kathy, I sure wish you would buy it and leave your other stuff at home like Chip! Then maybe you could give me some advice! I am seeing great stuff out of this camera from people on dpreview.com, but they speak a different language than me. I'm a point and shoot girl. Just went and bought a tripod today, but the darned thing only goes to 41". Not good when I took it out to the garage to try to capture my many Canada Geese that live in my yard. I was getting tree tops.

I finally got an high speed Internet connection that really works. You know your in the sticks if the only Internet connection is a motel's wifi down the street, which only works if the wind is blowing from the west.........

Olivia, I was looking at dpreview and trying to figure out which model you had. My Coolpix is not through the lens and has the video screen. It's not very good for those pop shots. It's great for landscapes but if the sun is bright, luck in involved. I know what you mean, there is so much tech stuff it's hard to keep up with. So for what it's worth I don't use all the programs like night scene, close up, etc. I shoot in normal mode and correct the the density, contrast and color with Adobe. Then every computer screen is different. I miss the old darkroom days when you just did it by hand. I'm still trying to figure out how to do time exposures at night with digital so I can run down the road to Roswell at night and get a picture of a UFO.

Kathy, congratulations. Getting published is good. Getting paid for it well that's another story. I would love to go up to that workshop and others, it's been years. But I did it with film and I don't know if I want to start all over again. I've been thinking of getting out the old medium format but I don't think I could find anyone who develops the film within a half a days drive. Do they still make Velvia?

Good to hear from you guys.

Chip, There is always so much to learn in the photo world. I absolutely love all the aspects of it! You can never be too old to learn new things.

Olivia, I do have a point and shoot type Canon and it works great-but the creative control has become very important to me. I would have a very hard time leaving the SLR behind. I did put it away in London and was sorry that I did not take it everywhere. I wish it weighed ounces and not pounds.

Chip, it is an Olympus SP550 UZ

Olivia, That's a pretty state of the art camera, I'm impressed by it's ability to go to 5000 asa. 7.1 Mpx is more than enough. You can also use the thru the lens viewfinder and the screen. I never use the digital zoom on those things to go up to 100x. It looks funky and it's very hard to find your target with that much magnification. With the geese I would go to the maximum analogX, see if you can see them either on the screen or the viewfinder and practice, it doesn't cost anything. You can practice on a garage basketball hoop that's the same distance and the same size until you get it right. Keep your shutter speed as fast as possible but be aware you will lose your depth of field the faster you go.

What I do when I am on the road or sea. Is download the days shooting on my laptop. Then I crop them on the laptop with Adobe Photo Editor. They even have auto fix, which does a pretty job in a lot of cases. But then you can tweak it easily. That way I can use Max resolution and not worry about filling up the photo card. Then I burn a disk on the laptop of each day shots so if something happens to it, so I'm not SOL.

Hope that helps, I wish I had the Camera in my hands. Also I don't read the entire manual, I take a new camera out and play with it, See what I'm doing wrong and right. My Daughter's think I'm Nuts and should read everything but they are so well versed in Techno speak I'll leave it to them to find out how to use a camera as a alarm clock.

Kathy, By getting paid I've learned by working for publications sometimes just an offer for a free hotel room doesn't pay all the bills. Someone wanted me to shoot a horse show in Kentucky. "You can stay at the Hilton." However that doesn't cover food, gas, etc, plus all the work I put into it. See the Santa Barbara Polo tread on my website. Those guys paid me $50 per photo that they used. Didn't even cover the gas one way. I go up to Colorado once a year to do a horse show. These are my friends and I just give them the pictures as long as they give me credit. You have to get published to get your work out there but you just can't work and and lose $, as my CPA tells me. That's good though Kathy, there is lot of other photographers out there and competition can be tough.