Category: Uncategorized

  • More Pugs with Nikon Z 50 1.8

    After the pug pictures with the old 50mm 1.4 AFD lens, which made me actually feel things, I decided I want to do more of that, but with a lens that I can actually use the autofocus with. So on Sunday, I got out my Nikon 50mm 1.8 Z lens, which has just been sitting patiently in my camera bag. I don’t use it much because I have been using the 16-50mm 2.8 DX lens a lot; it’s really good for photos that I do at church of the kids, and a lot of the time, that’s the only time I use this camera. So all that to say, I put that lens on and tried to recreate the photos I took the other day with the 50 1.4 AFD. And…I like them! I don’t think I need to get a 50 1.4 at all. However, I’m still looking at 35mm focal length, and I don’t know…I may end up with one of those. The seed has been planted. But I want to do a little more research. Until then, I have some good tools to make some nice pug pictures and that makes me happy.

  • Fun Little Lens: Nikon 50 1.4 AFD

    My 52 Frames challenge this week was Shallow Depth of Field, and extra credit was use 1.4 aperture. Well, this one was one of my favorites! I fell in love with shallow DOF back when I first started really getting into photography, about 25 years ago. (How is that even possible?)

    I don’t have any lenses with a 1.4 aperture, except for an old Nikon 50 1.4 AFD lens that I keep on my Nikon F100 film camera, that hasn’t been used in years. I have an FTZ converter so I can use the older lenses with the newer Z system, so I thought I’d give it a try. I did not realize that that lens will not autofocus with the FTZ/Z50ii combination, but honestly, the Z50ii is such a great camera, it made manually focusing easy. I got the camera ready, got a couple of treats for the pugs, and headed outside before work. The light was nice, and the pugs did an amazing job modeling. There’s hope for Hazel yet! Gary was just awesome. And while I was taking these photos, which may or may not be that great, I felt something. And that’s significant because it’s been a long time since that’s happened. It was almost like euphoria and it carried on throughout the day. I was reminded what I love so much about photography. I love that shallow DOF. I love dog photos using it. I love easy, soft light. I love looking through the camera and seeing something, then looking at the photos on the computer and realizing I actually captured them just like I wanted to. It was good. It was so good that now I’m contemplating how I can do that more often, but with a modern autofocus lens, because let’s face it – I don’t have the greatest vision these days (or ever). New prime lens? New full frame camera? Both? I don’t know. But now that I’ve felt that feeling again, I want to keep on feeling it.

  • Thomasville Clay Road Classic

    This weekend we went to South Georgia to ride some red clay dirt roads at the Thomasville Clay Road Classic. I’ve done this ride before, but only the 25-mile route because in 2024, it was raining, and rain and dirt roads make messes. But the weather was amazing for this year, except for the rain the day before. So it got messy, but so much fun! This year we did the 50-mile route, and even dipped into Florida. I think we hit the Florida line in a mud pit section, and I thanked Florida for their hospitality at that point. But besides a couple of sketchy mud sections, the roads were actually great. The rain kept the dust down and tamped them down some, too. It was 80 degrees and sunny for a large part of the ride, and then some periods of clouds, too, so it didn’t get too hot. This is a self-supported ride, but some people in Metcalf actually did a rest stop for us, and it was a welcome sight. We needed water, and there they were! And there was even a porta-potty! I mean, I felt like we were on a civilized ride! The area near Hubs and Hops, the sponsoring bike shop/brewpub was so nice. They have a little amphitheater, a nice outdoor area to hang out in, and they were generous with the beer and food. We really had a fantastic day from the beautiful (and challenging) ride to the fun afterparty. If you get a chance to do this ride, you should! Highly recommend! All photos shot on my Ricoh GRIIIX.

  • Saturday Gravel Ride

    We rode out to some new-ish roads which were pretty remote. It was a pretty cloudy day – sun didn’t break out until we were home from the ride. The Graffiti Bridge we found was a lot of fun, with interesting graffiti messages, baby piglets, really pretty roads and a couch in the river. All in all, a good day. All images taken with my iPhone 17 Pro, mostly shot in RAW.

  • Saturday in Atlanta

    I had a chance to walk around a little in downtown Atlanta after I finished shopping at the Blick store. (Yep, bought a pen…) Atlanta is kind of a weird city to me. I was on Peachtree Street and there are like no people out walking. Plenty in cars. And the Waymo autonomous cars all over the place and those little autonomous boxes on wheels…it’s a strange world we live in. But it gave me a chance to get the Ricoh out, so it was all good. I might have taken more photos, but it was COLD and I apparently touched some button on the Ricoh and turned the display off. I thought I had a dead battery, so I changed it, and of course, it still didn’t have a display. Once I got back to the car and had a chance to look at it, I figured out what I did. So live and learn, I guess!

    The pond and ducks are NOT Atlanta – they’re in our neighborhood. These little ducks have taken over the pond. They’re pretty fun to watch. Seems like the males just follow the female around. LOL.

  • The Last Couple of Weeks

    I have not been really inspired to take photos the last few weeks. It’s winter in Georgia and that means everything is brown and gray. Also it has been really, really cold here. So, I’ve been riding my bike indoors, staying in as much as possible. I’m not much of a cold weather person, though I do like a nice arctic blast…for about 10 seconds. Very invigorating. But I have been keeping up with 52 Frames so that’s pretty much all the photography I’ve been doing. And thank goodness for that. Also have been pretty obsessed with my fountain pens, as I’ve mentioned. I’m at a total of 8 and who knows how many I’ll actually end up accumulating. But it’s fun and the inks are really fun to get to know. It’s a great winter thing. I have not done any sewing, even though I’m in the middle of a quilt. I have 3 out of 12 blocks done, so not making much progress there. Here are a couple of my latest 52 Frames submissions since that’s all I’ve really got to show for the last few weeks.

    I actually really like the chair one (the theme is “Chair” lol) and the other one was an “oh no it’s Sunday and I need a photo” submission. That theme was “Get High” so that’s about all I could do with that. I have been taking pictures for our church about once a month which has been good. Forces me to actually use the camera! I know the chair one is the Fujifilm X100VI and I think the other one is as well.

  • This Week

    The fountain pen hobby is getting intense so we went to Greenville SC for the day to go to Truphae, a beautiful pen store. Odd that a city the size of Atlanta does not seem to have a dedicated pen store, but we don’t really have a camera store either so there you go. I brought the Ricoh GRIIIX with me to take pictures for my 52 Frames challenge (this week it was Get Low) and I did find some good shots. So that was fun. I put the Ricoh on a black and white setting and shot in RAW+JPG. Doing this made my LCD black and white and I quite enjoyed shooting like that. I think I will leave this camera like that, as opposed to paying $2200 for a Ricoh GRIV Monochrome. (Yes, I would love one of those, no I do not need it. We do what we have to do around here. LOL.)

    And yes, I did buy a pen. A gorgeous Lamy Studio LX All Black with a fine nib. It’s gorgeous and delightful to write with. I’ve basically spent the entire day messing with it. That makes four pens in less than 2 months. The rabbit hole, indeed.

  • Lately

    I’ve been taking photos lately but the holidays have kept me busy. Now that we’re past all that, I had a minute to post something. One really cool thing that happened was one of my photos got selected for the 52 Picks album on 52 Frames, where I’ve been submitting photos weekly for 23 weeks so far. The challenge that week was Fill the Frame. I have to admit I was super excited to see it featured. I got the email that it had been chosen on Christmas Day, so Merry Christmas to me! LOL. Here’s the image:

    The next week’s challenge, for the new year, was self-portrait. I am NOT a self-portrait kind of person, but you know, I’m old enough to be able to do that without it being a big deal. And it actually was kind of fun. I figured out how to get my camera to focus and shoot with the app on my phone, which was pretty cool. Then once I was done, the kids who were visiting got in on it, and I even did everyone’s passport photos. Fun times!

    Hazel is always in on it.

    Also for one challenge, I went to the woods near here and got a couple of fun shots, I thought:

    And I have a new obsession: fountain pens. Apparently it’s a whole thing with pen shows, YouTube channels and all of it. So I said goodbye to some more money and have been buying pens, ink, paper…but they just write so nicely. It makes it a joy, and it’s becoming a lost art, in a way. I had some time to go through some of my old boxes of “stuff” and found all these old letters from my dad, mom, grandparents, aunts, friends. And just seeing their handwriting was really moving, but also when I’d see it, I would know immediately who it was from without looking at the signature, and it was such a nice thing to see. So I want to do more letter writing. I think it’s just such a great thing.

    And I’ll close with some fun photos from the holiday break from the iPhone (new one, 17 Pro…it’s nice).

  • Cafes and Chairs

    I really love the look of the cafe chairs in France, apparently, because I took a lot of photos of them. I like the repetition and patterns I think. And there are plenty of them to choose from!

    All images taken with my Fujifilm X100VI.

  • Bretagne, France

    We took a weeklong trip to Pont-Aven, France in Bretagne. I loved it there so much and I took so many pictures. Way too many to post here, but I’ll try to make it reasonable. I just really felt connected, engaged and inspired there. I have some themed photos that I’ll post later, but for now, these:

    All photos taken with Fujifilm X100VI.