I have been planning for a long time to buy Lindsey a camera. I saved up the money, nickels and dimes at the time over the past year, and last month I was ready to buy. Research led me to choose the Canon SD750.

I surprised her with a nice spaghetti dinner, then hid the two wrapped gifts (camera in one, 2 gig memory card in the other) for her to find afterward.

She freaked out! And now that we've been playing with it for about an hour, I can tell she loves it.

I like it, too.

Speaking of Canon, I've wanted to switch for over a year now. In fact, when I was camera shopping in April of 2006, I originally wanted the 5D. I didn't have $3300, so I went with the Nikon D70s.

No, I don't know why in the world I didn't get the Canon 350 or something else. Man, I don't know.

Hopefully I will get the job I applied for last week and start making some good money. The first thing I'm buying? Well, a new computer, because this one is five years old. But the second thing? Well, we need a car. OK, the third thing is going to be the 5D, unless my research leads me to a different Canon camera. I'm definitely switching to Canon, though, unless someone gives me some monumental information to sway me against.

Do you know what I hate most about people? They're everywhere.

I've followed Heather Armstrong's blog on and off since 2003, though the past year my visits have been much more seldom. Her site has an inviting, open quality about it. There is something very appealing about the way she presents her life. Maybe that's why last night I dreamt I was a guest in her home. Leta was playing with a plastic container of pills and Chuck was in the bathroom. I was in the living room, with Jon on a couch across from me.

I was very excited because I know they have a Canon 5D. I looked at Jon with my hands fanned out and said, "I don't want to borrow it, I would just like to take a few shots right here to try—" He knew what I was asking and went to get the camera. "Oh boy," I thought, "not only am I going to get my hands on a 5D, I'll probably take some cool photos and Heather will put them on her site and link to me and I'll get a billion views to my Flickr page!"

Jon was walking in the hallway on his way back to me, saying something about a 50mm f/1.4 and then—

Lindsey shook me awake.

"I am so disappointed," I said.

"Good morning to you, too!"

Then I heard a door slam or something and went back to sleep.

As I learn and continue with my photography, things will change. For the future, I'm writing this.

I shoot usually on aperture priority. If I need a shorter or longer exposure time, I go fully manual to make an appropriate shutter speed for the shot. Until recently I have not shot RAW, but I do now. After I hit the button, I view the photo on the LCD to see if the exposure was correct. When I return home, I plug my Nikon D70s into the computer and pull the images I want into Adobe Lightroom. I go through the Library and select the image I want to process. Over in the Develop module, I may try a few presets, including the custom presets I've made. If those don't suit the photo, I go through and adjust everything. Hopefully I've captured the scene correctly and there is little to do to the image. However, if the exposure is too much or little, or if I simply want to give the photo a certain mood or tone unachievable by camera alone, then I have fun with all the sliders. When I've done all I want in Lightroom, I save a full size and quality TIFF version of the photo. The photo currently in processing is then exported to Photoshop CS in sRGB color, 300 dpi, 16 bit. Adjustments are made accordingly with levels, curves, or whatever I want. It's cropped if necessary, usually with a maximum side of 900 pixels. Other modifications are performed if the photo asks for it. The photo is finalized, sometimes with vignetting. It's saved as a JPG with 95-100 quality.

For other photos I choose to do something more special. Right now I call it "digital painting," though I'd like a better term. What I mean is that I often use various brushes, gradients, many different kinds of layers, multiple uses of curves, colors, levels, selective colors, hues, etc. to dramatically alter a photo. This takes a lot of time and RAM, which makes it a slow process.

Shooting RAW creates large image files—several megabytes each. I've taken about 10,000 shots in the last year and a half, so storing and organizing is essential. I sort all my photos by date, with folders for each year and multiple folders therein. I keep my photos in three external hard drives (60, 120, and 250 gigabytes, which also hold 69 gigs of music and other stuff) and lock those in fire- and waterproof safes. I'm careful.