Monday, April 6, 2009

Your camera as a tool ...


I love taking pictures and I almost always have my camera with me. The camera I use most often is a Canon Power Shot S3 IS, which is a few years old. They have newer models out now, but I don't know if I will go to those or take over Rick's Canon EOS when he upgrades his. I like my camera because it has a really good zoom. It's larger than some of the popular ones out now, but the results are worth the extra size. It's my second Power Shot and I've always been really happy with Canon.

I subscribe to the online photo newsletter by Photojojo and they just came out with a really good article about using your camera as a tool. Click here to see the actual article. It shows how you can use your camera other ways, like taking a picture to remember where you parked your car, using it as a printer to copy a list, remembering details like what ink your printer takes, using it as a mirror to see how you look, etc. It's a fun article and I've used my camera for things like this before. I'll take pictures of things really far away, just to see what they are by zooming in on the image. Or I'll take a picture of a bag of circus peanuts so I can talk about them on my blog. If you were to go through my photo files, you'd see the weirdest images, from the boy's Lego toys to close-ups of my cat's food. I even have pictures of people taking pictures. I take pictures to identify plants and flowers too.

There is one thing I take pictures of that grosses my family out -- SCAT! I have so many photographs of animal poop that I could make a slide show that would literally make you gag. When they show up on my screensaver full-size, it's pretty icky. I'll spare you by not posting any. But if I find something on a trail I'm on, I want to know what kind of animal it was. If I don't have a field guide with me, my camera is the next best thing. Got poop pictures? You bet! I'll take pictures of signs with historical facts, simply because a lot of times we're rushed or the boys want me to look at something else. By taking a picture, I can at least read it later. You never know. Maybe someday I'll have a coffee table book published that's all about bear poop! Anyway, the article about using your camera as a tool is interesting. As they say -- a picture says a thousand words!

12 comments:

  1. Personallly, I think it'd be interesting to see pics of scat and knowing what animal they belonged to. Wouldn't gross me out at all.

    I've got an Old Canon Power Shot S410 that serves me well.

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  2. How funny. I would never have thought about using a camera for that purpose, very intersting. I suppose a book about bear poop would be interesting to some. LOL

    Nancy

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  3. If only I remembered my camera! Gah! You should enter some of your photos in the CondeNast Travelers contests! I bet you have some good ones...but not the "scat" ones. LOL

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  4. Wow! Cool post. I never thought of using my camera for stuff like that. :D

    And you do great pics!

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  5. I like those ideas! My kids do have a book called Who Pooped in the Park? They could have used your photos instead of the illustrations of the various animal scat!

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  6. Kelly -- We have that book too. There are different versions for different national parks. I subbed to the publisher once, hoping I could get the same illustrator as the oldest books. No luck, but they're still cool books!

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  7. I think a coffee table book of scat would be hilarious and informative! There's actually a coffee table book called "Who Sh*t (rhymes with that) That?" I got it for my stepfather for Christmas last year since they live on a mountain and there's crazy scat everywhere.

    DO IT!

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  8. I never know what I'm going to find on your blog. Love this entry!

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  9. Ohhh I have a Powershot - but never take the kind of photos you get - guess I should take a photography class - maybe. . .

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  10. That is too funny Rena. While I want to get your Dilly books, I think I might have to pass on the coffee table poopy book! lol

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  11. I"m bookmarkng this to my favorites and the next time anyone in my family complains that I take photos of strangers kissing, I'm marching them right over to this post.

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  12. Okay, Rena...You need to meet Hubs...if he and I are hiking and he sees a pile of scat (which by-the-way I have never heard it called that so I wasn't quite sure what it was until you told us)..he has to take a stick and dig through it...he wants to know what it has been eating, etc. and he gets all excited if it has been eating berries close to the house...I just stand there and think back on how normal he use to be...grin...

    I also have a Canon Powershot (A590 IS) and I love it...

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