untitled due to lack of imagination

With my recent discovery of photoshop, I'm really into pictures. Having a whole bunch of photographers around me everyday helps too. My job basically consists of understanding the artists and their work and promoting them to the advertising/magazine/fashion industries this means taking their portfolios out and showing them around to the various people responsible for booking them - which means they make money and therefore that I have a job. Right now I am about to start a major campaign on our makeup & hair artists. And if you've ever had a picture taken of yourself, you pretty much understand that it looks a helluva lot different than what you may find in a magazine - partly because of the makeup artist and partly because of the photographers lights. But what I am getting at is that this month, I have to put the photographers books down for a little bit and take out the makeup, hair & sfx books. The thing about that is that I have become kind of attached to our photographers books. Not that I have ever attempted to take any credit for their work, but I've begun to develop a relationship with it after looking at each picture like 5 times a day and knowing the guy behind eash lense, well, as you might be able to tell, I'm a little emotional about this. Believe me, I'll probably be the same way after some instensive months with the makeup,hair & sfx books...

In any case, I've never believed myself to have any skill with a camera. I mean I've taken the odd great picture and there are even a few that I am very proud of, but I've never taken the time to really learn the basic tricks nor have I ever had a nice camera - always just a point & shoot. But thats okay. And in high school, for some reason - during the worst period of my life I always had a camera with me. So now that I have kids (and the fact that Holly takes pics of her little baby like every other day) I wonder why I am not overstuffed with pictures of every single one of their developmental accomplishments. I think the main reason here is that I don't have my own personal digital camera. I don't even have my own film camera anymore. Steve does - he has the brilliant Nikon which has nice big lenses to make you feel important when you are taking a picture. And he is entrusted with the 2 digital video cameras his office down here owns. And I know that in a marriage, things get shared, but for example, it would be wierd if Steve picked up my guitar, so for me its wierd to ask to use the cameras, cause I don't know how to work them.

So the other day at the mall, while I was buying pyjamas that cover my kids' wrists, I had a look around for the cheapest digital camera I can find. The cheapest camera is R800 - I really was thinking about looking at half that price, but no deal. So I decided to settle for having a go at the Nikon, as I was sure Steve had taken the vid cams to Cape Town with him for this story he is working on. So I bought some film and I went home and took some pictures with that. I finished off the roll quickly so that I could hand in the film and have a look at my pictures. I asked for a CD as well so that I could play around in photoshop. Needless to say, my pictures are crap. And after looking at pictures for so long that are professionally styled, with makeup and hair styles perfect, with lights that can make anyone look beautiful - I was devastated. Nonethe less, I intend to work on this until I can get it to a point where I can bring my pictures into work without shame.

However, last night I discovered that the video cameras (both of which do take stills) are both still here. So I think I'm gonna have to switch over to that because while the film is nice, its expensive, not to mention the fact that the CD they gave me has the pics at a resolution of 26 dpi - and I could literally feel photoshop laughing at me as I tried to open them...