i'm in love

I have officially fallen in love... with my camera! I admit I was not impressed with my new Canon Rebel at first, but this trip I've been playing around with it and its INCREDIBLE! I am having a blast. I think I've taken about 9,000 photos all in one day and I am officially gonna have to get a new computer to hold all the images!

I have been in a quite reflective and somewhat melancholy mood lately, a lot of fear based on uncertainty about the future. I have this odd mix of self-assuredness and boldly going forth mixed with deep-seated fear and anxiety and self-consciousness. Somewhere in there I just take it day by day and know by faith all things will work out. By this afternoon I was starting to feel a bit better, and these are the reasons:

(1.) I fell in love with my camera and have had so much fun playing with it and getting some great photos.

(2.) I have met some cool people including a photographer who showed me a few things. I have to get this totally groovy lens called a lens-baby that he has- www.lensbabies.com

(3.) I went kayaking on the Colorado River today and got out at this little cove where there were two small spring-fed waterfalls. I got out of my kayak and walked barefoot on the limestone ledges and explored a small limestone bluff under which were a bunch of mussels - a raccoon must have taken them under there. Very cool. Climbing around barefoot on the rocks just reminded me how cool and fun it is to explore and how interesting life is when you are outside the box. Outside the box has become so cliche' but if you're really doing things that are out of your ordinary average everyday experience, feeling and experiencing life and interacting with the earth, and trying to see things through a different lens, its a lot of fun.

(4) We took a short hike to Gorman Falls and it is drop-dead gorgeous. The funnest thing was figuring out how to use the blur feature on my camera, and though I need a tripod some of the shots turned out pretty cool.

(5) Lots of article ideas!

I will not have email access after tonight until Sunday. I'm heading where no cell phones dare to roam - East of Eden (literally...) I'll update later.