Tilt-A-Whir

I participated in a photography meetup event yesterday at the Schaghticoke Fair. Meetup.com is an incredible collection of groups, similar to yahoogroups for email lists, but meetup is for .... meeting, doing things. There are groups for every possible interest/location combination, I'm sure. Take a look at meetup.com for your area and see what's there!

Since photography is one of my interests, I joined this group (and a gourmet group) when I got to upstate NY late last year. I've only gone on one other outing before this one - it was a hike to see local waterfalls. I've skipped get-togethers at a local cemetary, and architectural photo walks in some pretty old towns around here, just because it wasn't convenient. That's the beauty of meetup. Participating when it works means that everyone wants to be the same place you are, and that's neat.

Anyway, yesterday's meetup at the fair (pronounced Scat'-icoke) was to take pictures of the midway as the sun set, and after. I took over 100 shots, going mostly for shapes and colors. And words. For some reason I like taking pictures of letters and words. And juxtapositions of things that don't belong together. And to leave something missing, so you have to think, ... what's missing here? This one is easy, I hope.



I got a chance to try out an old camera of mine that I had given to my father a few years ago. He didn't use it, so he gave it back. It's a big, hulking Panasonic Lumix with a 12x optical zoom that I compared to my trusty Sony Cybershot that's been around the world with me and across the country twice.

What I noticed (and have suspected for a few weeks now), is that the Cybershot is having trouble focusing. It's hard for you to to tell because I size these pictures so small, but this last shot (as most of my recent shots with this camera) is a little out of focus. One of the things I love about this camera, in addition to how small it is, is that it has a 'vivid' setting that makes things look so good! The two top shots are with the Panasonic, the bottom one is the Sony. Come on little guy! You can do it!