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!