Dead Air, Empty Space

of course you may! i shoot with a canon 10D body with a 24-70mm f/2.8 L series lens.that's typically all i carry with me, but i'm starting to get in the habit of tossing my tripod and remote in the car when i go for drives. the canon 580ex speedlite flash has started to tag along recently, too. :)

don't be scared! mostly it's just big and heavy and looks expensive. the camera body is great, but the clarity you see in the photos comes from the lens. in my opinion, there are only two things that really matter about photography. the first is composition - you just gotta have an eye and notice stuff. the second is glass. a lot of people say that once you get a canon "L" series lens, you can never go back. i wasn't sure about that until i purchased one (they ain't cheap), but it's totally true. the crispness you get from that kind of lens is just phenomenal. there are two photos that i think really prove just how good the lens is. the first is the shot of the concrete post. a shot with a "normal" lens would have softened the edges of the stones in the concrete. this lens makes them pop.now take a look at the last photo. one of the amazing things about this lens is how it manages bokeh. in a nutshell, bokeh is how the lens renders out of focus objects. there's a great article about it here.in addition to being able to render sharpness and bokeh incredibly well, it can also function as a semi-macro lens (see my hinge and backyard rusty stuff photos). so really, the only thing i can take credit for is noticing things and framing them in an interesting way. everything else is handled by the camera and lens. :)wow, that was a long response!